Customers are forgoing the shop around the corner to stay at home in their comfies and shop online from their own sofa instead, or on the go, or even on their lunch break.

It’s a known fact that consumers are starting to shop online more, with retail footfall now forecasted to decline at a rate of 4% for each of the next 5 years.

What comes with this rise of the norm of shopping online, is that the customer expectation for a positive and hassle-free online experience is growing at an exponential rate. While more customers start to shop online for more items, their demands are also increasing; customers expect satisfaction during their online shopping experience, and if they don’t receive it, they’ll simply turn to your competitors.

Gone are the days of it being acceptable to wait 5-7 working days to receive an item, customers expect to click, pay, and receive within 2-3 days, sometimes even 1-2, product dependent.

In October 2017, 70% of online customers said they want flexible delivery options, and 55% said speed of receiving their items was of high importance, yet only 40% of retailers say fulfilment is an area of focus for them in upcoming months.

Take Amazon for example, they’ve come a long way from the online book retailer the hit the UK in 1998, now offering one hour delivery on more than 10,000 items across 4 major UK cities.

With the rise of Amazon and convenience shopping, your business needs to be on top of your ecommerce play in order to have a chance of competing against the bigger players.

So you’ve built a great website, now what?

As with any business, success doesn’t tend to happen by accident, except for the lucky few. There are plans and procedures within most successful businesses, and while a plan or strategy may change, that’s the beauty of having an agile strategy.

The fact is, only 2-3% of customers that visit your website will actually make it all the way through to purchase. Customers can fall off at any time, for multiple reasons – slow loading pages, your price is too high, the delivery options aren’t desirable, other customers have left bad reviews, and the list goes on.

It’s not like the good old days when you could simply ‘build a website, and they will come’, no, no. The competition has grown much too strong.

To start to understand why customers are dropping off, an ecommerce strategy allows you to get to the bottom of this and introduce some clarity and structure into how you sell online.

Your website may look top of the range, but if it doesn’t function or work properly for the intended customer, then they’re not going to purchase. Does it work well on mobile? What is the load time? How are you bringing customers to your website? Is the bounce rate too high? Are you even targeting the right audience? It’s not just the big boys that need an online strategy these days; anyone selling online requires a strategy.

Consider who your target market is

Are they UK based? If not, how will you ship to them? What is your plan for marketing? Are your customers using social media? Do they need video content to help them decide on their purchase?

All these questions, and more must be considered. Considering building an ecommerce strategy can seem overwhelming, but it’s a necessary step to take in order to ensure the success of your online endeavour.

Knowing your business is your job, but knowing ecommerce is our job. At Venture Forge, we can work with you to help you plan the right moves to take to ensure your online business is a success. With an agile way of working, we take steps in ensuring effort, time and money are being spent optimally, and as the market changes, we work to adapt your strategy to stay in line with market trends, ensuring your product is in the right place, in front of the right customer.

Our defined processes ensure we deliver great growth time after time for our clients, working with you to ensure your knowledge and ours is combined for success. Interested? Get in touch to find out how Venture Forge can work for and with your business.