eCommerce: more than just facilitating online purchases

In these turbulent times, the demand for a properly functioning eCommerce platform is greater than ever. Many wholesalers are taking up the challenge, perhaps faster than originally planned, to bring their business online and / or improve online performance. However, many wholesalers do not yet know how to do this and where to start. We have a tip for these wholesalers: take eCommerce seriously! It goes much further than just facilitating online purchases. Therefore, don't forget to think about the strategic role of eCommerce within your organization. In this blog we help you to take the first steps.

The importance of eCommerce

We have just established that eCommerce is more than just having a webshop. But what is the importance of a good eCommerce platform? We see the following points clearly emerging at many wholesalers:

• Improve the (internal) processes;
  
• Facilitating contact moments in all phases of the customer relationship (customer journey);
• Taking advantage of opportunities in the field of marketing based on data you collect about visitors (suspects, prospects, leads and customers);
• A seamless collaboration between online and offline communication channels (omnichannel).

Where to start?

Now that you know the importance of a good eCommerce platform, it's time to get started! But where do you start? And how do you determine which strategic role eCommerce should play within your organization?

A successful eCommerce implementation starts with insight into the customer journey. To get a good idea of the "journey" a customer takes when he or she buys a product, it is therefore advisable to focus on the customer journey during an eCommerce implementation. By mapping the customer journey, you are better able to optimally tailor the role of the eCommerce platform to the purchasing process of your customers.

Customer journey

The customer journey begins the moment someone (a suspect, prospect or lead) comes into contact with you. From that point to the end of your relationship is the customer journey. We use a total of five stages to map out the customer journey.
 


Awareness: the first introduction / impression of a prospect with your company.
Consideration: comparing products with other solutions in the market.
Acquisition: the choice to buy a product has been made.
Service: all (service) questions and contact moments following a purchase.
Loyalty: creating repeat customers.

In part II of this blog, we will go into more detail on mapping the current and desired role of eCommerce per stage within the customer relationship.

The role of eCommerce in the customer relationship

By asking and answering the right questions at every stage of the customer journey, you quickly get a good picture of the current and desired role of eCommerce within the customer relationship. In essence, it concerns the following questions:

• Which contact moments (touchpoints) do we have in which phase of the customer relationship?
• What role does e-commerce play in facilitating the current contact moments?
• Where could e-commerce also play a role in facilitating contact moments? Think of replacing offline contact moments or creating new (extra) contact moments.

Conclusion

If you as a company have really done well in the field of eCommerce, you guide the visitors of your website from the first phase to subsequent phases of the customer relationship and then have them come back every time for new purchases. That is why it is very important that the interplay between these phases is well thought out in advance when implementing an eCommerce platform. So it goes much further than just facilitating online purchases.

Tips

Finally, we share two important tips with which we believe wholesalers achieve the greatest profit points in practice:

1. One integrated platform
   We still see many wholesalers with two different platforms: a separate corporate website and webshop. This is of course a missed opportunity. Communication then takes place in two places, while the webshop is often closed and does not have a CMS to manage content itself. As a result, most communication often takes place on the corporate website, while within B2B the webshop is the place where visitors sometimes even return daily and are in contact with your organization. Therefore choose an eCommerce platform with an extensive CMS so that the corporate website is part of the webshop.
2. Open webshop / catalog
   Many wholesalers do not (yet) dare to be transparent and open their catalog to all website visitors. A frequently heard argument is that the competitor can also look at, for example, price-sensitive information. However, by cleverly dealing with this and showing customer-specific information such as prices only after login, this argument can easily be undermined. Surely it is a missed opportunity if a prospect is looking for your offer on your website, but cannot see it for that reason, right?