ITQ Solutions Blog

Wishing everyone a great Christmas and happy New Year from all of us at ITQ Solutions.

What are the three things that make the most difference to maximising the benefit from inbound marketing software?

If you've invested in marketing automation software then that is the first step to making a huge difference to your marketing.  But what activities make the most difference and where should you spend your time at the start to maximise your return?

Once you have run a successful webstore for a few years, you might well come to the point when you need to replace your current e-commerce platform for something that will cope better with a higher level of traffic, something more functional.  Most entry-level systems can tolerate a certain level of activity.  But, beyond that, the system finds it difficult to cope and the user experience starts to quickly deteriorate.  Pages are served more slowly.  There is little chance to integrate other systems.  The fact is that you've outgrown your platform and you need something better.  Something that will cope with more traffic. 

Here at ITQ Solutions, for larger scale web-stores we use the Magento platform, which is a platform for supporting e-commerce retail requiring a greater level of functionality and robustness.  SAP Business One is an online enterprise resource planning software package which is functionally-rich for medium to large sized businesses and is the preferred platform that we integrate Magento to most frequently.

SAP Business One integration to Magento would generally be our preferred recommendation for online integration projects.  In our opinion, it delivers the best combination e-commerce strategy and performance together.

For most reasonably sized ERP systems, there are some simple indicators that an enterprise resource planning system is becoming overloaded.  Once you've started to notice these symptoms, there are a few actions you can take.  However, generally speaking, it is never a good thing to let such an important business system get to this point in the first place.

What are the important characteristics of Christmas shopping which e-business owners should understand and plan for?  Getting your e-business strategy right during this important period will increase sales at an important time.  As more and more business is conducted online, then getting your ecommerce strategy right is both an opportunity and a threat.

Take that from some ecommerce consultants...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2848108/We-ll-spend-1m-three-minutes-Black-Friday.html

The Cost of Customer Acquisition (CoCA) is an incredibly important metric in a e-commerce business.  Ideally, it is one that is low and is kept low.  However, this - in conjunction with your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) are crucially important to you overall business success.

As an operator of an online store you are under constant commercial pressure to keep the visitor numbers sufficiently high.  That is the way to keep sales on track.  However, online retailing can be extremely difficult when there are the likes of Amazon operating in your sector: their traffic is so large and their operations so cost effective that they can undercut your prices whenever they want.  Therefore, the question is: how can you survive and thrive in a market where the race to the bottom is always a threat?

If easy ecommerce is so simple and easy, then why doesn't everyone get it right?

Eccommerce is complicated because it is dependant on so many factors, the majority of which we cannot control but only influence.  Many sites are highly dependant on pay per click campaigns to drive traffic but purchasing is done by auction and there is no real long term stablilty on prices.  Plus your competitors could start tracking and bidding on your terms (or even start clicking but never purchasing to undermine your marketing budget).  It is a minefield...