Setting an E-Commerce Channel Up for Success

by David Hunt Data Geek and Analytics Fanatic

Setting up an E-commerce store does not take loads of technological expertise. With modern templates and ready to use code, it is actually fairly simple. However, if you are planning to build a thriving business up from your E-commerce platform, there will be challenges and many of them. The first challenge is getting noticed among the crowd of online businesses, and the list of challenges go on. Honing in the customers, ensuring engagement, putting up recommendations, taking care of logistics, there are many things that will sweat you. Let us look at a few steps that you can take to overcome these obstacles and own a thriving online business.

Demand analysis

Before you start selling you need to assess the demand of your products. Who may want to buy it and why? What other products would they want to buy? What are the terms of association between your product and some other product? How is the competition in the market. You need answers to these questions. And even after you have successfully set your channel up and started selling, you need to re-evaluate the answers. You must be in a constant process of customer analytics where you use consumer generated data to understand them better.

Real-time inventory management

Once you have started selling you need to watch your inventory at all times. If you are working with other vendors, you need to understand their capacity as well. A system that updates your inventory records automatically with every order that is placed can save you a lot of time and effort. Successful inventory management is one of the key benefits of E-commerce analytics and you do not want to miss out on that.

A robust recommendation engine

A recommendation engine is an advanced feature of Ecommerce analytics which generates relevant recommendations based on the customer profile. Customer profiling can be done with the help of demographic, geographic, and behavioral data, as well as their past purchase records. The machine learning driven association between purchased products and probable future purchases powers the recommendation engines. A customer that finds useful recommendations on your E-commerce channel is likely to return.

Integration with different business functions

Your E-commerce channel should work in tandem with the other business functions like accounting, inventory, supply chain, distribution, and over all ERP. This allows your E-commerce channel to avoid the reputation-crushing situations like accepting orders for things you cannot deliver, or providing an irrational estimated time of arrival. The reference to ETA, again, brings us back to E-commerce analytics. Your logistic data fed into the analytical algorithm can help you throw out more accurate ETAs, thus building reputation.

Promotion and distribution

When you are starting out, it is a good idea to tie up with people with an audience. For instance, if it suits your business, you can work with a youtuber with a wide viewer base to get a word out about your channel. In this aspect, customer analytics will help you determine whom to reach out, with what message, and when.

If you can nail these steps you should expect a relatively smooth journey to E-commerce success. There will be an undulated path to cover, nonetheless. Hang tight, play smart, build risk-tolerance, and you should be good.