Attitudes to eCommerce need to change

Irish consumers spent €3bn out of €5bn with online retailers overseas in 2017. www.siliconrepublic.com

Amazon Echo is a Trojan horse that threatens traditional retailers

2 articles from yesterdays news here in Ireland. The first is not new, this has been happening for at least 5 years and the rate of increase has not dramatically increased. The second is a nice soundbyte, but dips into where ecommerce is headed. Some things have not changed:

• The perception of ecommerce is a mess – it has to change. It has to be simplified and it needs to be understood.

• We have an enormous skills deficit in ecommerce.

• eCommerce growth rates of triple digit growth are not achievable in the most.

• Investment in broadband has a perception of holding business back. This is a bit of a crutch, in most regional towns, there is enough bandwidth and speed to start

• We have done very little to utilise marketplaces for learning how to trade online.

• Many companies feel they do not know still what their agency partners do.

If we want to increase adoption of ecommerce we need to understand, quickly, where ecommerce fits in the overall scheme of business today. Let me say this only once, ecommerce is not just shopping on Amazon, it’s foundations underpin all aspects of modern business – not some, all.

Systems-Processes-People-Investment-Customers

A series of processes and systems to sell a good or service. That is how simple it is at its raw level. The key is connecting those dots in a cohesive way. Up to now, most businesses do not. Example, you have a great young “digital marketer” running adwords, getting some successes but ultimately does not understand margin. 4 months of great spend, CTR and conversion (sorry for buzzwords, but I am painting a picture here). Then the GM or marketing manager realises, they are down 4% margin and the exec doesn’t know what to do, only curtail spend. Rather than look at things like the cost of acquiring that customer, the number of new customers reached, pricing and cost etc.

While this is a crude example, it is one of the day to day discussions that disillusions people on all sides and leads to apathy and contributes to the “meh” investment in time and understanding in ecommerce.

Let’s start banning the word ecommerce and let’s refer to the transition as transformation or re-purposing and for the sake of gaining more buy in, let’s just call this doing business, buying and selling.

There are a few core activities in ecommerce that drive sales – I did not say scale. Simply, sales:

• Paid Advertising

• Useful and relevant content

• eMail marketing

• Understanding how your business is shaped up to deliver it’s perceived growth – strategy

Our team is set up specifically to deal with those areas in a cohesive fashion. Next steps are simple, we tell you what we are going to do, when and how.

We demand that you are on board to learn the how, what and why of what we do. Then we measure the effect, tweak and go again. We combine and wrap this in overall strategic positioning to give your business the best chance of investing with certainty and with one eye always on what is coming down the road. The way we are interacting with the internet is converging with our day to day lives at home, though we know that is being denied, but with very little vigour. It is clear that over the next 3 years how we transact online will be drastically different in many categories. But is changing quicker than we can imagine. So for all those still on the fence, we are just saying get involved. Don’t sit in the dark, not asking the easy questions. Contact us today.