6 Key aspects of planning your e-commerce project
Dimitri Haussmann is the CEO of Shopboostr, an e-commerce agency specializing in the development of modern online shops and interactive web applications. Over the past few months, Shopboostr has been working in collaboration with Actonlytics, to help online merchants improve their existing online presence. We asked Dimitri about common mistakes that new online merchants tend to make when first starting out in the online shopping business and how these can be prevented.
As a full-service e-commerce agency for technical development with over 3 years of experience, we have had a variety of projects in terms of complexity, industry and client’s occupation. Over the years, there has been one thing that has been perplexing me and does not seem to be influenced by any of the above-mentioned factors — a serious lack of project planning and vision for the future development of the project.
This phenomenon can be also observed outside the online businesses — just consider how many startups have a great idea, reassure a huge amount of financial support by putting a lot of effort in attracting investors, but end up failing at some point of their journey. The reasons can be countless and you never know what might go wrong, but you have to make sure you take control of everything that falls under your power.
The typical scenario in the e-commerce world would include a client who has focused his business plan mainly on the subject of actually creating the online shop or online platform, without giving enough thought about the competition and the market situation, the further tasks that would be required to do, thir marketing approach and the costs involved in sustaining the whole project and its successful penetration.
The lack of vision for the future development or scalability could be a serious “vibe killer”. I can give you a basic example — a client, who wants to have an online shop for car parts but also insists on having their project developed in an unsuitable technical environment. For instance, choosing WooCommerce as your e-commerce platform when your product assortment is over 5,000 won’t get you anywhere, not even in the short term. The reasons for this could be several, the most prominent ones being the low degree of technical expertise or the lack of necessary budget.
When planning their project,clients have to make sure they have a clear perspective about the costs involved in the process. Since e-commerce development is a competitive industry, they are always able to contact several agencies and collect different insights and budget projections — from there, they could make an approximate cost forecast and plan accordingly.
The subject of budgeting also includes the costs for every step of your journey — from the technical development, project launch to the market penetration. Since an exact projection is virtually always impossible considering there are aspects unable to be foreseen due to limited knowledge or situational factors, and even an approximate forecast is by no means easy, clients have to make sure they have at least a little more than the worst-case scenario funds.
Another thing I have observed is the urge for clients to overdevelop their projects. This could potentially lead to two complications — one because they are inexperienced, they tend to want more functionalities than they actually need, which leads to unnecessary expenses or even usability problems for them and their future users.
The second issue that might arise is the launch of a very complex project with an enormous set of functionalities, whose value could not be obtained at that very early stage with basically no user base. This could be only advisable for clients who have carefully planned the further steps of their project development.
A serious problem that could occur quite often is the misunderstanding about certain specification details in complex projects. Since regular meetings between the client and the e-commerce specialist are obligatory in these cases, creating a protocol or any type of documentation of the highlights and important aspects of the discussion is a very good way to improve the workflow. This advice also applies to agencies since it creates a great work ethic and prevents miscommunication, hence higher customer satisfaction and even prevention of possible development costs.
It might sound surprising, but creating an online shop could be seen as the easiest task of the whole journey — after all, the product could be outstanding in terms of functionality and technical setup, but still be getting zero customers at the end of the day.
How can merchants prevent these issues from arising
Sometimes, as much as I am prone to increase my company’s revenue by taking large projects, I am forced to decline it since there is not much point in creating something that will not hold its value and is doomed to fail at some point.
It is absolutely fine to have knowledge gaps about the technical and market architecture when you are starting out with your project since you will be relying on the e-commerce specialists to guide you and provide you with the information you need to make important decisions. Having said that, you have to make sure you put a substantial effort into planning your idea at least on a basic level throughout the lifecycle of your project unless you want to be shooting in the dark.
1. Competitors
Essentially being in the role of an entrepreneur, it is vital for every merchant to conduct an in-depth market and competitor research in the very early stages of the project. Targeting at least 2–3 main competitors that have a substantial market share is a perfect starting point not only for the merchant, but also for the agency, since it helps with the identification of potential strengths and weaknesses of the market leaders and could potentially highlight mistakes that can be avoided or best practices that could be adopted.
2. Functionalities
A vital part of the technical specifications is to select the functionalities that will be integrated into the online shop or platform of the client, such as product recommendations or one-page checkout, to name just a few. These functionalities are closely related to the user experience that your website will be providing for your customers.
3. Payment and shipment providers
The choice of payment and shipment vendor is crucial because they could have a huge impact on your site trustworthiness, expenses, and bottom-line performance. Deciding if you are going to use PayPal as a payment option, for instance, could influence the number of sales you will be making.
4. Design
It is important to distinguish your competitors and their specific strengths and adopt some fragments of their approach which you believe are successful. The easiest factor that could be determined at first glance is the design. There are many websites such as ThemeForest, that sell themes for every e-commerce system and could serve as a potential starting point.
5. Data import
Does the customer already have an online shop? Is there a database that will have to be imported into the future project? This information is vital for the development of a workflow and could potentially have an impact on the time and cost scope of your project.
6. The choice of an e-commerce platform
This is self-explanatory — there are many different e-commerce systems in the market that have their strengths, weaknesses, and purposes. Picking the right one together with your designated e-commerce specialist could make the difference between success and failure.
Never forget
It is extremely important that the online merchant finds an agency that he can trust and rely on their expertise and advice when it comes to their project. The agency is there to support you on your journey to success and mutual trust is the only way to go forward. After all, they are the specialists with the experience and know-how that will help you achieve your goal.
About the author:
This article was written by Dimitri Haussmann — an CEO of the Shopboostr e-commerce agency specializing in the development of online shops and web applications.
