Any form of transaction online is e-commerce but most people consider e-commerce to be online shopping. Whatever you definition Access Web Development has built successful e-commerce web sites from start to finish.
Small details make the difference between an e-commerce web site that pays its way and one that makes a difference to your business. Access Web Development understands how to measure and test your e-commerce web site to you get more visitors, and more conversions to sales. Please contact us to discuss where to start in e-commerce or how your online shop could be improved.
As with our web site design Access Web Development builds e-commerce site from solid first principals so you are getting a web site that suits your business and works effectively.
Most e-commerce web sites include some or all of these features:
Access Web Development has experience with all of these facilities and will discuss the pros and cons of each of each to ensure you get an e-commerce web site that matches your budget and business.
Electronic commerce offers many businesses an opportunity streamline business processes and improve customer service.
If you are running an online shop there is an opportunity to take a customer from first contact to lead, through to a sale and into the after-care cycle and beyond. Thoughtful design can ensure open communication and full explanation at all stages with minimum interaction from your staff. This benefits you and your customers with:
Even if you aren't selling products or services online e-commerce can help your business. It may be as simple as collecting data from customers or a full customer management system but there are potential savings to be made in many areas of your business. Why not contact us to see how we can help?
Unless your business has a specific niche you are likely to face competition from other retailers. There are many avenues open for advertising your e-commerce web site and Access Web Development has the experience to help you find cost effective solutions.
Aside from traditional search engine optimisation techniques many e-commerce web sites exploit pay per click advertising to target specific search phrases. Email marketing can also be a useful way of reaching previous customers or finding new ones.
Frequently e-commerce merchants rely on paper based or re-keying data into existing software. By examining where and how data is handled in your business Access Web Development can often find savings for your bottom line. This many involve anything from:
If you can save just 1 minute per order the time soon adds up over a year.
An often overlooked benefit of efficient order management is the improvement in customer service. Methods to reduce errors, improve communication and reduce the need to contact you all help. For example, automatically sending an email when goods have been despatched, allowing customers to view courier reference numbers online or simply providing despatch notes with address labels.
It is not unusual for a web sites to operate independently of a business's accounting software, except for the laborious process of transcribing orders, prices or stock. It is possible to import orders into software like Sage significantly reducing the time it takes to run and e-commerce web site.
Access Web Development has successfully imported and exported orders, stock, prices and customers from and to Sage, Microsoft Dynamics and other software including bespoke fulfillment house software.
The clearest measure of e-commerce success is how much profit is being made. What do you measure to increase profit though?
Do you know your conversion rate (percentage of visitors that buy) or your average spend per customer? Do you know which of your Pay Per Click adverts are generating sales and how much it is costing per sale? Do you know how many of your sales are from repeat customers? Do you know where you are losing orders in your sales process?
"If you can not measure it, you can not improve it."
Lord Kelvin
E-commerce has a great advantage over offline shops because it is much easier to measure and analyse what your customers are doing. Importantly it is often easy to make small changes and measure the results. In particular online advertising can be measured very accurately so you know the value of your advertising.
Access Web Development knows web sites are perfect to start with so is fully committed to measuring and improving your site to improve your profit.