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Your Guide to Choosing the Best eCommerce Solution
DynamicWeb
Is your business exploring implementing eCommerce? Beyond growing your sales revenue and opening new channels, there are lots of benefits to offering an eCommerce purchasing option for your customers, and including increased efficiencies.
eCommerce brings huge benefits to both customers and sellers in B2C and B2B industries alike. If you haven’t explored eCommerce for your business yet, you may be wondering how you can introduce digital purchasing options to keep up with today’s customer expectations—and stay ahead of your competitors. Should your business implement eCommerce? What are the advantages? What is the real ROI of an eCommerce solution?
This article is an excellent start with helpful information on how to choose the best eCommerce software with the greatest returns for your business, complete with a free eCommerce ROI calculator below!
Your eCommerce ROI Checklist
Calculating return on investment (ROI) for any technology initiative can be tricky. Some benefits are obvious like increased sales and customer satisfaction ratings. But digital transformation projects can also bring many other extended benefits such as increased efficiencies as a result of automation. Let’s take a closer look at some key ROI factors to include in your check list.
✔ Increased sales revenue
eCommerce opens your business to new sales channels and customers, boosts your online presence and capabilities, and increases your sales bandwidth without adding manual effort. Your existing customers have new ways to interact with you and, in turn, you have new ways to find potential customers.
With a digital storefront, your customers aren’t limited by physical distance and can buy from you entirely at their convenience, 24/7. All this adds up to the obvious benefit of increased revenue.
✔ Increased profit margins and more “perfect orders”
eCommerce helps you automate sales from website to fulfillment which means less time is spent creating and entering sales orders. The result is fewer order errors, substantial time savings, and a boost in customer satisfaction. eCommerce also allows you to automate upsell and cross-sell activities such as personalized product recommendations and free shipping offers for larger purchases.
✔ Reduced selling costs, better customer relationships
eCommerce enables self-service quoting which leads to faster sales and increased quote conversion rates—without having to talk to a sales rep during office hours. When standard sales are automated, sales teams spend less time entering and correcting basic orders and more time building relationships with high-value customers and prospects. This will reduce your overall cost per sale and is a more strategic use of your company’s time and talent. (Pro tip: earn internal buy-in from your sales teams by including them in compensation and incentive plans for online sales).
✔ Reduced administrative costs
Behind every successful product are numerous roles working behind the scenes to make it all happen. Beyond sales reps, this includes everyone from brand managers and product owners, to engineers and designers, to marketers and web developers. With connected tools and centralized data, the most time-consuming tasks can be automated and streamlined. For example, with an integrated Product Information Management (PIM) solution, product owners can manage product data in one place and publish everywhere, including the eCommerce site, product catalogs, vendors, suppliers, and third-party marketplaces. Say goodbye to spreadsheets and duplicate data entry!
The ROI of a complete eCommerce Suite vs. an online shopping cart
To get the best ROI from your eCommerce solution, you must think beyond a basic shopping cart. After all, your customer experience doesn’t begin or end with a cart. That’s what sets Dynamicweb apart—we provide a complete eCommerce Suite that powers your entire digital sales strategy.
Our platform is designed for both B2B and B2C scenarios, with expanded features and capabilities that add more value and greater returns than typical eCommerce solutions.
So, what should you look for in your eCommerce solution? As an example, here are 5 powerful benefits native to Dynamicweb’s digital platform:
1. Integrated Product Information Management (PIM)
Product Information Management (PIM) is a vital ingredient in your overall eCommerce strategy. It is important to provide rich product details and experiences online to increase customer confidence and conversions. You also need a solution that can manage your product information across all channels and third-party marketplaces, such as Amazon, so you can take advantage of true omnichannel selling.
With Dynamicweb, PIM is integrated with both your CMS and eCommerce, letting you automate the production of content like product catalogs, factsheets, and more. Simply design the template and your content is populated with up-to-date, structured product information available anytime for download, print, email, etc.
2. Integrated Digital Marketing
Because of its digital nature, eCommerce introduces rich data that can be used for hyper-focused marketing automation. With built-in digital marketing, you can easily take action on all kinds of new insights across website and purchasing behavior, customer data, as well as ERP and CRM data. This enables you to provide your customers with personalized experiences at scale, helping your marketing teams be more efficient and effective.
3. Integrated Content Management System (CMS)
If your eCommerce solution can’t help you increase conversion rates, you aren’t getting the ROI you need. With eCommerce integrated with your CMS, you can provide personalized website experiences and content in real-time based on your users' previous behaviors, such as a dynamic promotion on your homepage that only shows to visitors that have purchased a certain product. Plus, with built-in SEO optimization and A/B testing, you can ensure your webpages are reaching the largest audience possible and maximizing conversions across your entire eCommerce site.
4. User-Friendly Design
Unless you are a fan of spending lots of time and money creating webpages, it is essential to look for an eCommerce platform with a user-friendly visual editor and design features. For example, Dynamicweb has a no-code/low-code development platform with drag-and-drop design tools that let you create sophisticated, elegant websites and product pages in minutes.
5. Seamless Integration with ERP and CRM
An integrated eCommerce platform creates symbiosis between the eCommerce site and back-end systems such as ERP and CRM. This enables you to automate and connect your complete sales order process from website to financials to fulfillment. Automation mean fewer errors and higher data integrity, not to mention the time savings.
When it comes to integrated eCommerce solutions, note that integrations can vary widely from vendor to vendor. Dynamicweb’s open API framework makes it much easier and cost-effective to connect with external data sources and applications. Beware of eCommerce solutions that are embedded in your ERP system. This can require extensive coding and changes that can break with upgrades and restrict you from easily changing vendors in the future.
Ready to Know Your eCommerce ROI? Go Get it Right Now!
Dynamicweb offers a free, interactive eCommerce ROI calculator to help you see the impact of an integrated eCommerce Suite for yourself.
Before making a decision, we encourage you to also take advantage of a Digital Strategy Session with our team that can help you dive deeper into your eCommerce requirements. Planning for an eCommerce implementation involves a thorough analysis and understanding of your business processes, current technology, unique trends in your industry, and long-term goals.
We are here to help you throughout your eCommerce digital transformation.
Contact us to get started.