Many retailers think they have Ecommerce on their website and are not happy with its performance, yet all they have is a basic shopping cart, and, although most web sites with just a catalogue/shopping cart are good enough to ensure a satisfactory experience for consumers at
point of purchase, few of companies behind those sites can execute rest of transaction with same degree of efficiency.After all, a shopping cart is just a payment mechanism, similar in function to point of sale in a retail store.
A customer has selected an articles/s from store and now wishes to purchase and leave with their selection. Ecommerce is all about acquiring and retaining customers on-line and means providing complete satisfaction from initial promise to delivery at their door while making a profit.
Poorly managed inventory, costly deliveries and a high number of product returns can quickly turn profits into losses, yet so many companies focus on their direct sales to virtual exclusion of fulfillment and channel connections.
Every on-line ecommerce website, large or small, faces seven main challenges; it presupposes you have successfully marketed your products directly, via channel resellers and your website; a planned merchandising program is in place; online store has a high degree of sophistication; controlling your customer data; integrating your on and off-line orders; plus a successful back-office fulfillment method delivering goods cost-effectively and handling returns, or you will pay price in lost customers and sales.
On-line fulfillment forces you to do far more than enter orders, pick stock, package and ship it. E-tailers must also answer queries of your customers quickly and accurately (while learning their buying habits and preferences) and make good use of data generated during transactions. Moreover, e-tailers must integrate their on-line orders and returns with off-line ones, and do so in a way that makes household delivery of small orders economically viable.
At present, every single transaction challenges e-tailers to deliver goods quickly, cheaply, and conveniently. Making contact with recipient is another problem and one that must be resolved if full potential of “e-impulse” orders is to be realized, for an impulse purchase loses its power to gratify if product or service takes too long to appear. Most e-tailers ship orders within 48 hours, and they are also making greater and greater use of two-day shipping services via direct connections with shipping companies and/or fulfillment houses.
In theory, e-commerce is simple: a customer selects product from a catalogue, buys it through a shopping cart and e-tailer delivers product when, where, and how customer wants it delivered. Making this happen, of course, is not simple. Therein is difference between just a shopping cart and true e-commerce.
The top five Canadian online retailers all quoted growth projections for 2003 of 25% - 40%. The unique selling propositions of retailers are what are behind this growth. Sears Canada has 2,500 catalog depots for shoppers to pick-up items. Canadian Tire offers and extended assortment of electronics and sporting goods online. HBC.com sell low price and discounted goods not sold in stores. Seventy percent of HBC shoppers buy these items online and have them shipped to stores.
OnX has a strong of understanding of what allows e-commerce solutions to succeed. We plan on leveraging that understanding to help our customers meet their goals.
Amazon.ca and eBay.ca have made a solid commitment to Canadian e-commerce market over last 12 – 18 months. Canada has become eBay’s fourth largest market with more than two million registered users. Amazon recently added software and video game stores for a total of seven Amazon.ca tabs.
Forecasts have shown that Canadian online spending will grow from $2.8 billion in 2003 to $12.2 billion in 2008, or %4 of total Canadian retail sales. Here’s what’s driving this growth.
Canadians will get hooked on online shopping. The catalog industry is tiny, and majority of population is concentrated in metro areas – most Canadians live 15 minutes from a Canadian Tire store, for example. But Canadians are incorporating Web into their daily lives, 46% of households have broadband, and users are getting hooked on Web’s instant access to unique products. 55% of Canadian shoppers say they buy online because they can shop during off hours, and 45% buy online to find products they can’t find offline.
Expanded product assortments will spur soft goods sales. Soft goods sales of home products will grow to $1.7 billion by 2008. This category first lagged behind other purchases online because retailers had not yet made investments in online shopping experiences needed to push consumers to buy. But as Canadian merchants begin to see their initial site investments pay off, they will invest in better e-commerce initiatives. With sites and sales up and running, retailers must focus on making site profitable as well as functional. 26% of US retailers with more than $10 million in online revenue have positive operating margins, their conversion rates average 4.6%, and their orders per customer average 1.6.
