When is the Best Time for Re/Starting an eCommerce Business

Synchronizing your business with the market trends by re-adapting or starting an eCommerce business it’s no longer a matter of choice.

It sounds overwhelming to manage your own online store, especially these days when the pandemic context seems to change everything around us. Prices, stocks, orders, deliveries, promotions, etc. – all these are day-to-day activities that an online provider must handle in order to be profitable.

The truth behind this appearance is that the context also provides real business opportunities as long as you are willing to reinvent your approach and start thinking of using suitable solutions and automating part of your current tasks.

On the other hand, having your own online store is essential if you want to count on long-term profitability as a result of delivering great user experience.

So, to understand in-depth this topic let’s take a closer look at:

How the context influences the online market (today, more than ever)

A business is always depending on market trends and events. By keeping your mind open to flexible business approaches, is equivalent to turning your company into a cat with nine lives (metaphorically speaking, of course): ready to fall to its feet and to keep going on an ascending path.

So, since the market context is always dynamic and challenging (in a way or another), the key-differentiator stands in the way you choose to react and adapt to those changes.

What’s happening today
The impact of COVID-19 over the global market is a reality that can no longer be ignored. The nowadays social and economic context brought some important changes in everybody’s life (consumers and business owners, as well).

While consumers turn their attention to the online market, business owners have to find, as soon as possible, solutions to adapt. Take a look at the following conclusions that a recent survey (ecommerce-europe.eu) showed on the “COVID-19 impact over offline and online business” topic.

• worldwide businesses are 100% affected by Coronavirus;
• the industries most affected by COVID-19 are: tourism, transport, traditional trade and events market;
• the industries that thrive in this context are: healthcare, the supermarkets and the electronics and appliances providers;
• 65% of business owners don’t perceive any tension between offline and online retail;
• 65% of the respondents are expecting to see major decreases in sales in the pandemic context and even to close (partially or entirely) the business activity during the quarantine.

There are some obvious trends that people had to adapt to rapidly (and so has to do your business):

• the offline businesses’ owners to migrate their sales activities to online;
• the urgent need for remote work, communication, and learning;
• the increased interest in the businesses that are able to offer online deliveries;
• tracking solutions (for employees, and you must have a multichannel presence and communication approach. especially) for more safety;
• online and card payments (rather than cash payments);
• replacing sick/unavailable employees with smart and business-friendly solutions.

Today, choosing your business prerequisite is easier than ever: The pandemic and the quarantine promote online shopping.

• 50% of China’s consumers and 31% from Italians use online shops more often to buy products that usually are bought from offline stores.
• the same behavior trends can be also noticed in Vietnam, India, Russia and UK (57%, 55%, 27%, and 18%)

Business opportunities:

• Reinvent your business approach by migrate as many as possible activities in online;
• Extended customization for your audience by developing specific features and functionalities to increase on-site engagement and facilitate the communication (e.g., online reservation, custom search filters, financial APIs, chatbots, etc.);
• Multichannel selling process by developing custom apps to sale more (deliveries apps, tracking apps, etc).

CASE STUDY Porsche Bank: one-stop-shop solutions for selling products and services

The client needed to develop one-stop-shop solutions for selling products and services (financing, insurance, maintenance).

This approach is a premiere for the Romanian market offering dynamic and intuitive features.

The project is based on Magento2 with a totally custom designed interface. We developed a REST API and a custom Magento module for doing the financial precheck of the customer.

Website features and functionality

• • Showing detailed information;
  • Calculating the credit rates on the fly;

• Advanced financial pre-check algorithms;
• Paying a reservation fee online.

Top solutions for an online store

• E-COMMERCE TECHNOLOGY: It’s not enough to use an eCommerce platform. It’s also very important to choose the right one (powerful and reliable) and select only those solutions that suit best to your business. For instance, we are usually using Magento 2 for our clients’ website.
• UX DESIGN FOR YOUR SITE – to deliver the best shopping experience for your customers. If a visitor doesn’t find what he is looking for on your site, he will leave it in less than 15 seconds.
• ONLINE PAYMENT SOLUTIONS INTEGRATED INTO A WEBSITE Performant online payment solutions are crucial if you intend to manage a high volume of sales.
• THIRD-PARTY INTEGRATION OF ERP AND CRM SOFTWARE You need performant data and processes management to simplify your activities and have access to valuable insight that could help you increase sales.
• INTEGRATED SOCIAL NETWORK APIS INTO THE E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONS By putting together the announced trends and the unexpected ones, you’ll realize that you must have a multichannel presence and communication. That’s why it is so important to integrate social network APIs into your site smartly.
• INTEGRATED SPECIFIC APPS, FEATURES, AND FUNCTIONALITY (e.g., tracking, managing stocks, ) Each industry / each business has specific needs, one more reason to take into account developing specific features for your eCommerce site.
• DEDICATED TEAM What you really need is an end-to-end eCommerce solution, able to integrate all the features, apps, and functionalities your business needs. And a complete solution for your online store can be delivered by a reliable, experienced dedicated team.