“DIY online marketing PART 2”

Tuesday’s concept #6
e-commerce, do outsource technological e-marketing tools !
Themes : e-commerce, technology

Do It Yourself is very trendy. E-marketing is very trendy. Why not build everything by myself ?

We do realize how vague “e-marketing” is, and the sheer number of tools available in the market. We have selected for you 5 best practices that we consider essential for increasing your conversion. Some are to be dealt with alone, some are to be outsourced.

Logistics

Logistics is at the heart of most e-merchant concerns, an important variable in customer experience and satisfaction. When we say “logistics”, we talk about keeping stock and shipping goods. Why is it marketing would you ask me ? The answer is quite simple : boasting on an amazing shipping experience is a competitive advantage. Look at lexception.com : delivering the same day their client ordered made them a must-know pure player.

DIY !

Let’s be clear, we are not saying to deliver by yourself, just deal with your stocks and delivery strategy yourself. Depending on your status ( e-commerce, marketplace, affiliation …), decide what is the best gestion of your (and your suppliers) stock, and keep an eye on delivery, at all time. Automation will come slow. The moment your client opens the box is crucial : it is the first real contact he has with the product he bought, let’s make him tear off the tape in a good mood. We will never say it enough : a satisfied customer is a recommender !

Navigation Environment Personnalisation

In a world where we consider each customer as an individual, and where mass marketing is less and less recognized as efficient, showing the same products to everyone seems shallow. That is true, once again, easy to say, hard to implement. How to personalize interfaces ? How to recognize a returning customer and show him products according to his tastes ? Well, for the first time since the beginning of the article, we believe that you should …

Outsource !

A whole network of Big Data experts, real time specialists and data scientists is growing around e-commerce. We see your problems from a different angle, pure algorithms. Once we solve them, we offer drag and drop solutions, easy to install, to allow you to focus on bringing customers in the shop, while we take care of making sure these customers become buyers. Product Recommendations are easing the navigation, increasing conversion rate of 33% and almost 20% of your visitors click on our personalized ones. What is your number today ?

That is what we do ! Learn more on ezako.com

Online Customer Care

Yes, this is about this famous live chat. The one you start seeing everywhere. This semi robot semi real person who is talking to you to help you in whatever you are doing. This is basically made to ease contact, to create a customer relationship. Relationship you said ? So don’t be a robot !

Outsource … the technology

Responsive technologies to create the live chat are time consuming. Just buying the code and putting in in your page will take you less than a minute and a monthly budget to allocate. My ultimate advice would be : before taking the step, think about your workforce. Do you have anyone to take care of the chat all day, everyday ? Is this person well trained ? Does she know how to answer questions ? Poor online customer service is worst than no customer service. Outsource the technology, insource the workforce, at least until you know exactly how to teach someone else to treat the demand.

Analytics

“Track whatever you do” they say. Not that easy is it ? Even I use some basic methods such as multiple choice questions. Honestly, it is a full time job to understand how to use some analytics tools and certain dashboards. So I asked myself : would it take more tie to learn how to do the tracking myself ?

Outsource … the layout

Well, my conclusion : no ! It is so easy to get confused. The methods we recommend : dashboards comparisons. Use as many trackers as possible, and as many e-marketing tools that are not time consuming, as soon as they come with clear and usable dashboards. Then once a week, compare them all together and generate marketing strategy yourself.

Consulting  

“E-commerce consultant”, “E-commerce strategist”, “E-marketing expert” … it seems that a lot of consulting firms want to help your e-commerce grow. And they either are consultant because they have techniques while having no idea on how to implement, or because they have lots of experience they want to share with you. In our e-commerce and web world, we have ideas on how to improve, and our problem is more about execution. Do you really need someone to talk for 4 hours at a crazy price for no concrete implementation?

Do you need it ?

We say one question needs to be answered before hiring a consulting firm : why will he come ?
If it is to explain how they would do your job from a bird’s eye view, forget it.
If it is to give you a concrete list of best practices on a defined scope with a list of methods to be applied, start looking for the one that knows, and go for it.
If you need ideas, hire someone full time, not a consultant.

Finally, we did realize something : what is not in your core competencies can’t always be learned quickly. And it will always be someone else’s core competency. Let’s face it, it is reassuring to deal with content and networking by yourself, and you don’t seem to lose that much in efficiency at first. Learning web technologies and their development takes years and years and you will not even end up being sure it works well. Providers do spend their time making sure it works well and making it easy for you. Go for it !

Do not hesitate to share your opinions or questions with us, we are interested!

See you next Tuesday !

You would like us to write about something? Send us a mail: commerce.ezako.com or contact us via our facebook page EZAKO, or twitter account @BigDataEzako #tuesdayconcept