Ecommerce ProcessBlueport.com

E-commerce 1.0 = World Wide Web (only):  Typical e-commerce does not accurately reflect how multi-channel chain retailing is done in-store.  Just as “all politics is local,” all big ticket chain store retail is local, too.  Through local selection, local prices and local promotions, stores battle local competitors for local customers.  Most e-commerce solutions aren’t built for localization – one site offers the same thing to every visitor, regardless of where a customer resides.   Retailers who adopt this approach for big ticket e-commerce hamper both their online efforts and their stores.

Big Ticket E-commerce = Localize!  Remember that e-commerce supports your overall multichannel retail strategy and your websites should be as localized as your stores.   Some big ticket retailers have hundreds of localized, micro-branded sites with content that resonates with local consumers.   Others use IP mapping to localize prices, offers and product selection, directing customers to local stores with products on display.  All have checkout processes that reflect that delivery times may be 48 hours in one area, two weeks in another.  Make sure your e-commerce platform embraces the complexity of local e-commerce – when done correctly it’s a powerful sales tool online and in your stores.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

E-commerce 1.0 = Duplication:  Stranded on E-commerce Island, e-commerce teams often build redundant staff, processes and infrastructure.   Perhaps through lack of understanding of a chain’s existing processes or thinking they have a better way, they create new e-commerce processes and strategies for critical multichannel retail operations.   For first wave categories, this may not be so bad – the processes are simple and the risk of customers seeing multichannel inconsistencies minimal.  Capturing the potential of big ticket e-commerce, on the other hand, requires an integrated rather than duplicative approach.

Big Ticket E-commerce = Integration:  Leverage existing people and their retail expertise wherever possible for your big ticket e-commerce strategy.  Use the same data and processes as the rest of the retail chain, simplifying coordination.  Once you’ve identified existing assets, then (and only then) evaluate and augment these assets, adding resources only as needed to fill e-commerce-specific gaps.

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
 

Many retailers believe that in order to implement successful online commerce solutions, they need to build them from the ground up, which can be a logistical nightmare. That’s not necessarily the case, as some solutions have the ability to easily integrate into your existing infrastructure, simplifying the entire process. 

Blueport Commerce knows big-ticket businesses are, by definition, complex and unique. We strive to match our technology platform and services to your particular business model, rather than trying to fit it into a commodity-focused, inflexible platform that doesn't meet your needs. At Blueport, we aim to simplify ecommerce logistics and integrate your e-commerce with a complete multi-channel strategy.

Our platform is the beginning, not the end, of bringing your unique business online. As a comprehensive solution, it allows us to focus on what we do best — tailoring it to your unique needs, processes and peculiarities. Each of our integrations is a structured process, designed to marry our online technology and expertise with your understanding of your market and your business.

Continuing with our ecommerce email marketing efforts, as we move the consumer from inspiration to purchase, here are a few ideas for content that will keep them on this path.

Localize: The importance of localized content in your email marketing cannot be underestimated for ‘big ticket' purchases.  Give your ecommerce customers an option to get more information about the product, drive traffic into stores, and provide reassurance that their order will be handled by a local store team available for assistance if needed.

Cost: Product cost comparison invariably plays a critical role in the decision making process for big ticket items, so don't forget to highlight any promotions or offers in your email marketing that may be available for customers at this point. 

Purchase: Finally, use your ecommerce email marketing to entice the customer in the final steps of the buying cycle by offering a discount, coupon or incentive to bring the sale in. 

Beyond relevance, giving customers a wide variety of meaningful and interesting email content can be key to guiding them through the sale and establishing a deeper relationship.  With this approach, email marketing quickly becomes an integral component of a holistic sales cycle and not just the closer.
 

Email marketing can be a big-ticket retailer's best friend. In the first few weeks of the buying cycle, email content that inspires and educates is key. Creating an email marketing sequence that guides a potental customer through the decision-making process, whether they ultimately complete the transaction online or offline, is a valuable ecommerce marketing strategy.

Inspiration:  Similar to the way a customer might visit a bricks and mortar store to check out new or seasonal merchandise, use ‘what's new' content in your email marketing to emphasize new products, top sellers or trends that will inspire the customer to make a purchase.  

Research: Particularly in the case of ‘big ticket' items, once inspired, customers typically set out to do more research before making the purchase.  Use ecommerce email marketing to highlight why your product is better and why the customer should purchase it from you.  The email content here should not be saturated with marketing language, but rather be clever, surprising and creative.

Advice: In using email marketing to make the sale, I often see big-ticket retailers forgetting to use this opportunity to educate the customer and establish a deeper relationship.  Sending an email offering customers ‘how to' tips might not necessarily translate in to an immediate ecommerce purchase, but it will build a longer term relationship that will no doubt contribute to conversion down the road. 

Blueport Commerce approaches technology with the wisdom of maturity.  The Blueport technology team has experience in the e-commerce space dating back to the 1990s and has experienced firsthand the full panoply of technology hype from that era and since.  With this experience we conservatively maintain loyalty to cost effective e-commerce applications while aggressively adopting proven new technologies.

Our core infrastructure is based on products from Microsoft, Adobe, HP, Cisco, F5, and Akamai.  We utilize Microsoft’s .Net software development platform and SQL Server database engine as the foundation for our proprietary e-commerce platform.   Visually engaging client side e-commerce applications are built with Adobe Flash.  We implement secure connectivity with a range of Cisco IOS products.  Our server farms are principally made up of HP servers running Microsoft Windows.  We manage demand for our client web portals with F5 load balancers.  Akamai provides us with geographic edge caching of content.  None of these technology partners were born after Y2K but all are excellent with proven staying power.

Our e-commerce platform, shared by all of our clients, represents 10 years of evolution shaped by the unique requirements of “big ticket” e-commerce - from local branding, regional product availability, regional pricing and sale events, coupons, consumer financing, variable lead times, and the CRM and CMS systems to support them.  With this library of processes and functionalities available to us, we can focus on the unique requirements of our clients rather than reinventing these complex processes or trying to repurpose an “off the shelf” e-commerce platform designed for simpler transactions.

Our custom platform can also adapt easily to partner systems.   The long service technologies making up our core have naturally evolved integration pathways with most other competitive products.  We leverage these to work freely with partner systems rooted in Oracle, IBM, and other, less well known companies.
 

There’s no shortage of e-commerce conventional wisdom - sweeping pronouncements that online is growing at a certain rate. That one tactic works, another doesn’t.   That a multi-channel strategy is increasingly important. 

I love such analysis and opinion – back in the day, as a consultant at McKinsey, I performed and provided my fair share.    However, I will point out the need to dig deeper. What is loosely called “e-commerce” is dramatically different in its application depending on what you are selling. 

A few things to keep in mind as you digest the latest e-commerce wisdom or evaluate a vendor:
 

E-commerce expertise correlates with where money has been made to date, not where it will be made.

Well known e-commerce experts, agencies and technology companies become so because they’ve been doing it for a while and have been well paid for their work. As such, their experience tends to be in those categories that went online early and successfully, yielding enthusiastic clients and customers who could pay.

There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you are also in those categories. If not, think about whether what you are being told makes sense for your business.

One example: It’s been said that 65% of e-commerce keyword searches include a manufacture name and/or model number. Most online agencies build keyword strategies around that fact. And, it works well in those categories that have dominated e-commerce in the past.

But, say you’re a furniture retailer. 

Most of your prospective customers have no idea who manufactured the sofa they already own, much less the one they are thinking about buying.   Model number? Forget it. Conventional wisdom is out the window - how will your agency react to not being able to rely a favorite approach?
 

Beware sweeping pronouncements and general statistics. Dig for what’s happening in your market.

I’m an e-com stat addict. There are outstanding analysts out there providing the pulse of e-commerce on a regular and accurate basis. That said, it’s important to pull apart e-commerce statistics and trends to find those that apply to what you do. 

Some recent examples:

E-Commerce Growth Statistics

Pundits seem to be in general agreement that in 2009, e-commerce grew or shrank by single digit percentage points. In the face of brick and mortar declines, this is touted as strength – ecommerce holding its own despite significant economic headwinds.

All true – but there’s more to the story. Big ticket online took off in 2009. 

Big ticket (think things that cost more and can’t ship via UPS…consumer durables like furniture, appliances, flooring) is 45% of the US Retail Economy, $550B in annual retail sales.  It’s never done much online – until now.

Consumers are online and big ticket retailers are now meeting them there. Forrester reports customers feeling comfortable buying furniture and appliances online just in the last 18 months. Big ticket players Blueport works with are seeing monstrous comp increases for online sales and even bigger benefits in stores. 

If you happen to be in big ticket markets, this is an opportunity you can’t miss…but easily could, if you just look at broader online growth stats.

E-Commerce by Channel Statistics

Similarly, stats show roughly 45% of e-commerce transacted by Web-only players and catalogers (i.e. pure plays), 15% by manufacturers, and 40% by retailers.

Beneath this stat is a dramatic big ticket vs. small ticket schism in who is winning in e-commerce. 

For traditional (small ticket) e-commerce, pure plays have tremendous cost advantages. With no store costs, they can price low. Their products are well known, approaching commodity status, and the shipping is fast, cheap and risk free. In categories from books to shoes, pure plays are cleaning up.

Not so in big ticket. Here, consumers know less about the product. They want to touch and feel in a store. They look for trusted brands – not only for the product, but for the retailer who can deliver and service it. And, they are highly focused on delivery times and costs. Here, retail chains, with trusted brands, local stores and fast, cheap local delivery have the upper hand. 

Combine these advantages with the growth noted above, and it’s a good time to be going online if you’re a big ticker player. And, if you’re a retailer in these categories, there’s certainly more than 40% of the online marketplace available to you.

The Importance of Cross-Channel Commerce

There’s significant recent buzz about “multi-channel” or “cross-channel” commerce as the next big thing. We couldn’t agree more – with emphasis on the “big”.

For small ticket items, I don’t think cross channel is that important. Anyone think that opening Zappos bricks and mortar stores is on any of the whiteboards at Amazon?

Conversely, in big ticket, cross channel is critical. The key differentiating factors in big ticket online are store based. Big ticket online and offline channels must be synchronized, as consumers move between them constantly. 

This is why we’ve architected our platform to be localized. Big ticket commerce comes down to the local relationship between a consumer, a store, and the inventory in her area. If you’re in big ticket and you’re not reflecting this reality online, you’re missing the point.
 

Balance online conventional wisdom against what you know about your customers. 

Ultimately, e-commerce comes down to a combination of persuading and enabling consumers to buy, using the internet.

Here again, how your consumers do this may not be the same as in “traditional” e-commerce categories.

To grossly over simplify traditional e-commerce shopping, it comes down to finding a product and deciding you like it. After that, the assumption is that UPS takes it from there - you will have your product cheaply, quickly, and some nice brown-shirted gentleman will take it back if things go awry.

As such, most e-commerce wisdom is focused on search and merchandising, helping consumers to find and buy (maybe getting a deal).

These areas are critical (and unique) in big ticket as well, but there’s more to the story – specifically, the part of the story that UPS takes care of in traditional, small ticket e-commerce.

With a sofa or a fridge, more goes into the shopping process than features and price. Customers want to touch and feel in a store. They may want to speak to an expert. They want to know how fast they can get something, and that delivery is as cheap as it can be. They may want financing options. They want to be sure the product can be serviced, and that, worst case it can be returned.

If these are questions your consumer is likely to ask, be sure to push beyond UPS-based ecom conventional wisdom. If you’re a retailer, you’ve got some of the best possible answers to these questions – be sure your online presence takes full advantage (see localization above).

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As consumers look to buy more products online, and e-commerce pushes beyond the simple, UPSable products that were the first wave of e-commerce, the importance of disaggregating e-commerce increases. The opportunities online have changed. E-commerce conventional wisdom soon will too.

• 80 percent of online consumers indicated they will likely research their next kitchen appliance online, and 30 percent said they will likely make their purchase online as well
• 77 percent of online consumers will likely research online their next laundry home appliance and 26 percent will likely purchase that appliance online
• Overall, 65 percent of consumers will research big-ticket home furniture purchases online as well

In big-ticket retail, purchase decisions take longer for a variety of reasons: products tend to have higher price tags, customization is part of the process, and often the input of another party is sought before making a final decision.

Retailers in this space need ecommerce CRM and email marketing tools to help them actively persuade customers during the decision-making process, by finding the combination of personalized content and offers that drive a customer to buy. These same tools assist retailers in making sure a first-time customer becomes a customer for life.

With a robust ecommerce CRM database solution retailers can capture customers' online shopping behaviors, account information and satisfaction scores. Store information can be cross-referenced for a complete picture of a customer's online and offline activity, which is key for big-ticket ecommerce.

 

While other e-commerce providers avoid the unique challenges of franchise retail models, Blueport Commerce embraces franchises.  We are the only e-commerce solution designed to handle the complexity of putting a distributed, localized franchise retail model online.

In this franchise retail model, the parent brand handles the "heavy lifting" of content development, catalog development and maintenance, overall marketing strategy, payment processing and technology management. Centralizing these functions guarantees a high quality e-commerce experience that is both highly valuable and affordable for their franchise's membership. Dealers then “localize” the e-commerce experience in their region, refining selection, pricing, promotions and delivery options. 

The independent franchise dealers reap the benefit of a fully functional e-commerce website they could not afford alone, but retain local control of online store content, local marketing, pricing and fulfillment of local orders. More than 900 independently owned and operated dealers use Blueport Commerce to offer their local customers a best in class franchise retail experience online.
 

Fulfillment and customer service should be a priority for every e-commerce transaction – however all ecommerce solutions are not created equal. Fulfillment becomes even more complicated for big ticket retail, or those retailers whose products do not easily fit into a UPS box.

E-commerce can't succeed in a category like big-ticket retail without a specialized technology provider. One with an e-commerce platform that’s able to process your product from order to delivery — and make it as easy as calling UPS. 

How is an online order fulfilled?

Ecommerce solutions should make the process a closed loop that begins and ends with your existing systems. A platform should be able to extract your SKUs from your system, and return orders to your system in a format identical to an order written in your stores. Whether you have a home grown system or a major commercial package, the end result should be that e-commerce orders that are no different to fulfill than store orders.

Additionally, it’s important to ensure that your website only features products you can fulfill, and provides accurate local delivery dates. Dropped or discontinued products should be removed from your site automatically. Customers should be shown the same delivery dates they would get in a store, based on local stock, purchase orders or inter-store transfers.

The result is e-commerce volume that, from a service and fulfillment standpoint, is the same as store orders. Your team will know how to fulfill an e-commerce order from day one — just like a store order.