Why is that when it comes to selling online, people think about operations before customer experience? Is it not more important to ensure your customer can find you, order from your site and leave happy?
How a website links into your accounts package is way down the pecking order if you have no visibility from SEO and a website that works poorly.
The reason our clients and even our own eCommerce projects have been successful over the years is because we put the people who will actually be buying from the website first. Your customers will use a high quality brand’s website’s such as John Lewis or ASOS so they expect your website to feel and function similarly. This doesn’t mean you have to spend £250,000 a year on a leading IBM eCommerce system, it means you have to create a website that puts usability over function.
Whilst I do understand that it can take finance departments/ your accountant a long time to process orders and it can take fulfilment departments a while to pick and pack but this should not take a focus over marketing and conversion. Otherwise you end up with a ‘tail wagging the dog’ operation that means spend too much on admin and nothing on getting people in the door.
A Case Study:
Take our client Corks Out as a case study. They have 5 physical stores and their website operating separately. No ePOS, no accounting tie ins, just a website that converts very well, excellently user tailored content and SEO that give superb exposure. They are an excellent business, they put the customer first and it shows. Their customer retention and repeat order rate is extremely high. Together we understood that their customers use mobile to shop so we did one for them. It helps their customers order more so it makes absolute sense to put budget in to it.
It comes to a question of where you spend your budget. Spend it on making your finance department/ guy’s job easier or spend it on making your customers lives better.
