How can you know if your e-commerce is a success? It seems a simple question, and above all, logical; but it is not strange to see companies that remain on the surface of this evaluation when they bet on an online store. To begin with, the success of an eCommerce also depends on the expectations; so it is important to manage them properly among the different members of the team.
The perfect formula to evaluate the success of an eCommerce does not exist, because it depends on various factors (some subjective) that have to do with the uniqueness of each company and its members. To illustrate this statement, and reducing the question to its simplest, we could start by asking what success is… and we would realize the divergence of opinions, with a multitude of nuances that could appear in a conversation with a few colleagues. But what we can take into account are two questions that help in all cases in a general way, which, as we will see below, allow us to evaluate a project that can become tremendously relevant for a company.
Objectives
There is no other way to do it: having a clear objective is essential for the success of an eCommerce; as well as the only way to know if it has been achieved or not. And having an objective means, first of all, knowing what you want an online store for, who is going to use it and what can be found in it.
As usual, goals must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Temporary) so “sell more” shouldn’t count. You can aspire to improve sales, of course, and it is one of the most common objectives. But for it to be a “smart goal” it must have a why, a how much, a when; as well as relevance and realism. Without forgetting that the objectives can (and should) change over time, so they have to be reviewed.
The objectives must be, in the same way, for the company in question: that the competition uses a web portal to boost its sales, is not reason enough for us to undertake this rewarding but difficult path.
The objectives of an eCommerce must be closely related to the business goals so, generally, they have to do with the following main ones:
- Increase the income (via cross-selling, volume revenue, etc.).
- Reduce the costs (improving customer service, reducing administrative errors, etc.).
- Improve efficiency in processes (with immediate availability of information, freeing up time for commercial advisers, etc.).
- positioning of brand (improving online positioning, increasing brand content, etc.).
- increase the retention of customers (with promotional strategies, purchase incentives, etc.).
metrics
Achieving the objectives for the success of an eCommerce requires a planning and some actions to be developed. All these steps can take us away from the objective (in which case, they will have to be changed) or closer to it. And how do we know in which direction we are moving? Indeed, with evaluations and metrics.
The metrics must be related to goals, since they serve to evaluate the performance on them. Taking into account the main objectives that can be pursued, let’s see some examples of possible metrics:
- Increase of sales in the channel, the percentage of conversion, the average value of the orders, etc.
- Reduction of costs fixed, costs per order, percentage of errors per order, etc.
- improvement of the efficiency with reduction of sales times, commercial calls, error correction, etc.
- positioning with an increase in emails collected, number of customers, number of followers on networks, links to the web, etc.
- increase in retention increasing visits to the web, browsing time, orders, queries, etc.
To learn more about the metrics of an online store, visit this article on KPIs in eCommerce.
Have you considered the incorporation of electronic commerce to solve other needs of your company? Ask us and we study all the possibilities so that the success of an eCommerce in your company is safe.