Of all the business activities, what is the most important thing an e commerce website can do?
Here are the options to choose from:
- Have the most organised and cost-effective e-commerce back office systems possible
- Track the competition and offer better propositions and prices in the vast majority of cases
- Keep their customers satisfied
We will narrow it down for you. The answer is actually quite easy and straightforward - whilst answers 1 and 2 are very important, answer 3 is critical. The most important thing for an ecommerce website is Customer Focus.
Why customer focus beats it all?
There are several reasons your ecommerce business could face difficulty. From being too expensive to losses to competitors to product dissatisfaction. You can spend too much time making sure you’re bigger, better, and stronger than your competition that you think you can't lose. And, on top of all this, all your products can stand up to intense scrutiny too.
Still, even with hard work and dedication to these factors, your company might still not be successful and gently slide into losses and, eventually, oblivion. Why could that be?
What is e-commerce?
Here is a definition from wikipaedia: Electronic Commerce is trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web for at least one part of the transaction's life cycle, although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail.
It is a pretty good e-commerce definition as far as we are concerned. Getting the definition right is the first step in keeping the customer at the centre of the operation. And keeping the customer satisfied is the first thing to do. But having sufficient capital to invest in an efficient infrastructure is very important too.
Customer focus cannot be beaten
Customers are in a very lucky position in that, effectively, they hold all the power. It is up to them to chose whether they buy and with whom they spend. Generally speaking, they are marketing-literate and are able to quickly evaluate our sales promotions. They understand that there are lots of different options to them - they can quickly and easily compare prices and supply conditions. They can pick and chose and they have all the options available.
If we focus on customers and make them feel special we can build relationships with our customers. As consumers we do build up loyalty for suppliers who provide us with products and services which we value. That isn't just physical products - it can be advice and information too. We tend to trust places where we have had successful transactions previously and, over time, are happy to take recommendations from our trusted sources of information.
Conclusion
Whilst having a great customer experience is important - as customers we want to browse and have quick, effective check-out process - and having competitive prices is also extremely important, customers and customer focus remains the most important thing for a business to do.
Becasue if we don't satisfy what customers actually want, then they will not conduct commercial transactions with you.
If you liked this blog then you might also like this previous blog too: http://inbound.itqsolutions.net/blog/3-reasons-for-online-integration-of-magento-and-sap-business-one