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Screen Pages designs, builds, integrates, runs and markets best practice e-commerce websites. Its e-commerce development experience is derived from over 150 websites built since 1997.
Mail order and catalogue businesses can now deliver a full range of Amazon-style services through their websites for minimal incremental outlay, as solution providers embrace new technologies and package them up at attractive prices. Full e-commerce development - once the preserve of the very big, put together in partnership with major IT companies - is now easily within the grasp of catalogue companies.
Imagine this as a dream ticket: you attract visitors to the web site without having to send out a catalogue, recognise your customer when they arrive and offer them targeted, relevant products that are available from stock, up-sell or cross sell during the purchase, based on their or other known customer preferences, then allow them to choose and buy their products with the minimum of clicks from actual inventory, and to be encouraged to come back soon. Then all your orders are automatically transferred into the sales order processing system, and your online stock levels are automatically updated. On top of this, you can use emails to invite targeted customers back to take a look at new products that you know will hit their sweet spots. Better, by carefully analysing customer preferences and purchasing patterns, you are able to manage your inventory and promotions.
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Personalised online shopping experience.
These things are now possible as the inevitable plethora of new buzzwords testifies: personalisation, profiling, customer relationship management, predictive marketing and back office integration. Personalisation is simply the idea of making your catalogue directly relevant to your customer by recognising them, understanding and remembering their preferences through one-to-one marketing, where you build up a direct relationship with your customers. Your customer is identified when they arrive at your website and their address, shipping and payment information is automatically retrieved from encrypted databases. All this is designed to make your customers feel welcome, offering up relevant products and make the buying process easier and more convenient.
You can encourage customers to register, enter their personal information - along with any preferences - once and forever, and your e-commerce software can take care of the rest using this profile, even down to sending out targeted email broadcasts, including links to specific pages in your catalogue. |
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Targeted marketing and content
Analysis shows that some companies are enjoying response rates on targeted emails of over 70%. Next generation websites can offer much more by way of sophisticated promotions. Suddenly, cross-selling and up-selling are in your grasp. Like the shirt? Buy the cufflinks that match. Using predictive tools, you know that many customers who order these trousers also purchase this matching belt. Using state-of-the-art catalogue management software, you can create themed 'virtual' catalogues (e.g. 'summer specials'), offering bundles and special discounts without the need for expensive programmers.
Perhaps the biggest bugbear is all that re-keying and manual processing associated with your first website. Creating software interfaces to your fulfillment and order processing systems has become a routine task taking no more than a few days to set-up. This means your website knows inventory levels, updates itself as often as you want and posts orders directly into your systems with fully validated credit card information. Simply by calculating the people costs associated with doing this manually, you can assure yourself of significant cost-savings. |
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Measurement and analysis
It is this ability to analyse and measure that will set the winners apart. According to the DTI, only9% of retailers conduct any form of metrics on their e-commerce operations. Successful mail order companies are now beginning to analyse visitor activity in more ways than counting hits: real business intelligence is being applied to analyse who browses what, what goes into the shopping basket, which products can be easily sold or up-sold, what promotions work and what don't. After all, you manage what you measure.
The next generation of e-commerce is well and truly here. Technology has moved on immeasurably and online sellers should expect to see 50% gains in the amount of online business, with 20 - 40% of their overall business being transacted via their web site. As well as increasing sales, you can gain significant improvements in efficiency and lower costs associated with order processing. |
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