Insights

Sep 17, 2021

Design your ecommerce business around data

Design your ecommerce business around data

Every company deserves an ecommerce site that supports their business. Building an ecommerce that is based on actual customer needs, supports achieving business objectives and aligns with current strategy improves the likelihood of a successful ecommerce business. How to get it right the first time?

1. Taking your business online

Most of us have gotten used to ordering online more often during the pandemic. Ecommerce’s share of total sales took a massive leap during the global pandemic, especially in retail where its share of global retail trade grew from 14% to 17% during 2020. For these industries, the role of ecommerce changed from “nice-to-have” to necessity within weeks. 

Although this change was more drastic for some industries than others, ecommerce has permanently taken a bigger role regardless of industry as the essential F2F-meetings came to an abrupt halt. Nonetheless, we find that every business, whether you're selling one of the most known mobile phones (CASE HMD) or accessories for mans’ best friend (CASE NPC) should have an ecommerce site that aligns with current business operations and supports business objectives. During our many ecommerce projects of 2020 we even found out you can sell ice-breaker solutions online!

2. Getting the ball rolling

Achieving a great ecommerce business requires laying the groundwork. This starts by creating a strategy which provides direction and support in future decision making. A digital strategy should be based on actual customer needs, align with current business objectives and be effective in communicating its value propositions clearly and concisely. Putting in the hours to create a clear and lean strategy is not only cost-effective in the longer run, but also allows faster setup of ecommerce operations, ensuring a nimble time-to-market while ensuring high quality. However, where to get customer insight to base your digital strategy on?

Luckily, ecommerce stores create a constant flow of user interaction, marketing and shopping behaviour data showing traces of how users currently find their way to the website, how they interact with it and what products they are interested in. Our analytics expertise provides a basis for creating a digital strategy, but also presents actionable insight to boost an existing ecommerce store - guiding what should be done to strengthen your ecom revenue stream. These findings also give an understanding on how to link your online business to underlying - and potentially underserver - customer needs.

3. Finding the winning recipe

The basic principles of ecom are simple and can be boiled down to six cognitive biases, which can be leveraged to tip the scales in your favour to win and defend customer preferences from competitors. However, ecommerce solutions are not “one-size-fits-all” as each industry is affected by various factors and trends. However, the dynamics of digital sales are constantly shifting. Hence, running an ecommerce store also consists of updating it. This naturally requires resources and know-how. Things change constantly, and we as professionals are up-to-date with the latest trends in development.

Rather than making educated guesses in choosing the “hows” and “whats” of developing your online business, one should always opt for running real-life tests to find areas of development. This type of A/B- or multivariable testing hypotheses is not merely the only robust way for developing one’s ecommerce, it’s also the most cost-effective. After a business has already started running, adopting a model of continuous testing helps online businesses to keep up with the latest changes in customer behaviour, providing development insight for marketing, design or product development.

Working with us you’ll stay up to date with the latest trends in ecommerce, get insight on how to profitably develop your online business and align it with business goals.

Please contact Mikko to kick off your ecommerce journey

Mikko Mantila Photo

Mikko Mantila

Chief Executive Officer