LCG eCommerce Blog

5 Tips to Ensure Your Successful eCommerce Site Launch

eCommerce projects can be challenging for a variety of reasons, mainly because there are so many moving parts. It’s possible to have upwards of six different service providers involved, depending on who is handling site design and usability, the platform selection and implementation, the back-end system integration and the hosting. Not to mention the partners providing search, product photography, and personalization support.

Here are five tips for ensuring your next implementation is a success:

Discovery – Your team knows your current systems inside and out, but don’t assume your service providers do. Plan for a full discovery phase before the project kicks off to document all of the business processes (front and back-end), plus the features/functionality tied to those processes so there are no surprises once the project is underway. This will also help your implementation team provide accurate cost and time estimates.

Pragmatic Design - Too often, the design and implementation teams don’t meet, and the site’s functionality ends up being weighed down by an over-designed site, which leads to project delays and worse, a site with poor usability. Take a pragmatic approach to design – get these teams communicating early and often to ensure that your site is the perfect balance of form and functionality.

Integration – Integration issues are one of the most common reasons for launch delays. The front end gets all the attention – of course everyone wants a beautifully designed, feature-rich site – but the truly challenging part is making everything work seamlessly with your backend and third party systems. Choose a service provider with the exact experience you need to connect your platform and your back-end systems. Because they’ve done it before, they will know the right questions to ask. More importantly, they will understand the specific challenges related to integrating your entire system, saving you time, money and frustration.

Customizations – This can be another “gotcha” area. It’s critical to be clear on any customizations that need to be built and how they will be handled. This really speaks to having clear requirements up front and ensuring that any customizations do not limit the ability to upgrade your eCommerce platform in the future. In other words, you will need to upgrade your platform eventually, so the customization needs to be designed with that in mind.

Project Portal - It’s not enough to have good people on your project, they need to communicate regularly and in meaningful ways. An online project portal or wiki is a great way to keep everyone connected, speaking the same language, and on task. A project portal provides built-in accountability, allowing team members to report on their progress and identify any challenges before they become major roadblocks to the launch.

The user rules: Why you should consider a UX assessment

Regardless of your views on global warming, one thing is certain: paper is dead.

When was the last time a vendor – one that you’d actually consider working with – sent you a printed brochure? Better still, when was the last time you actually read a printed brochure?

We now get most of our information from the Internet. It’s quick, easy and doesn’t kill any trees. Making sure your customers and prospects can find your Web site and get what they need from it should be the single most important part of your strategy for growing your business.

Search Engine Optimization

It’s a sad fact, but the gross majority of companies are not leveraging search engine optimization (SEO) to draw traffic to their Web sites, according to Armen Tatevosian of NetZone Consulting. SEO, he explains, is designed to grow traffic organically versus paid advertising like with Google AdWords. “It’s widely known that the majority of traffic doesn’t result from paid links,” Tatevosian said. “Only around 30 percent of traffic happens via paid links in the business-to-consumer (B2C) world and often less than 10 percent in the business-to-business (B2B) world.”

A good SEO firm will provide a summary from a detailed analysis of 50 to 150 variables on your site to make sure your target audience can find you via the top search engines. They’ll know that Google made no less than 400 changes to its algorithms in the past 12 months.

While some were very minor, some could have a significant impact on how people find your business online.

Your SEO expert will tell you that content needs to be simple yet descriptive and in context. They’ll also tell you that placing multimedia like video or podcasts on your site is a good way to improve your ranking right now. Because Google is constantly updating the way crawlers prioritize sites, though, this may not be the case in six months.

While SEO experts are seemingly abundant, the reality is most of them get fired within the first year for not delivering. A good SEO firm will provide significant results in two to three months and should be delighting you with solid conversion rates in no more than six months after each change.

The User Experience (UX) Assessment

Once you’ve made certain that your prospects are finding your Web site, it’s critical to give them what they need. A user experience (UX) assessment is a great way to make sure your site is working for you and not against you in this regard. A UX assessment is an exhaustive examination of the experience that a typical user would have in interacting with your site. Usability experts evaluate a Web site based on site goals, brand attributes and user definitions and tasks.

The assessment process begins with user analytics. Where are visitors going on your site? How long are they staying? Where are they jumping off? Next, the UX assessment answers key questions. Are visitors to your site getting what they need? What areas are they finding most useful? Does your current site reinforce your brand?

If you’re operating an e-commerce site, there’s a whole slew of other data to consider. What’s your conversion rate as compared to industry standards? How many visitors to your site actually purchase from you? What’s your average order value?

How can features like automatic suggestions on search and in-cart up-sells or cross-sells encourage shoppers to spend more?

Why Should You Consider a UX Assessment?

Research by User Interface Engineering shows that people can’t find the information they seek on Web sites about 60 percent of the time. By evaluating your Web site, you can quickly determine areas to improve the user experience and prioritize in the near term versus future enhancements. A UX assessment can help you determine new features and functionality to add to your site.

It can also help you define your brand experience online and simplify the user experience to encourage repeat traffic.

The SEO and UX assessment strategy is ultimately a win-win-win scenario. A solid SEO strategy makes it easier for your prospects to find you. A thorough UX assessment makes it easier for you to turn prospects into customers. Growing your business via an effective online strategy is also good for the environment.

Originally published in the Illinois Technology Association newsletter here.