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Many brands have already invested significantly in the Customer Experience and marketing on their existing platform without e-commerce functionality. Building a completely new site with e-commerce (replatforming, for example through composable commerce) is often not an option in the short term. Yet there is a need to add a ‘buy button’, for example to:
Improve the customer experience for visitors who are currently referred to other channels: a true omni-channel approach;
Explore new markets, such as direct-to-consumer (D2C) for brands or to support sales in other countries;
Develop new forms of sales, such as offering subscriptions to app users;
Reduce sales costs by making (better) use of the digital channel;
Digitise offline processes in the customer journey, as is often the case with B2B transactions.
A practical example is the Louwman Group. Each brand in the Louwman portfolio, such as Suzuki, Toyota and Lexus, offers customers an intuitive online experience to view all details of available models and accessories. Customers can put together a vehicle, watch product videos, book a test drive and request a quote. The only thing that customers could not yet do online is purchase through the site itself because all questions and potential purchases are forwarded to a local dealer. By adding a purchase button to the existing website, Suzuki now also offers customers the opportunity to purchase accessories online.
You don’t just add a buy button… Or do you?
Big brands understand the importance of a good brand experience. Setting up a separate webshop in addition to your existing website is possible with Shopify, for example, which allows you to quickly launch an online storefront. A disadvantage is that established brands quickly see this as negative impact to their brand experience. An exception could be when something like a ‘trial balloon’ can be launched. If it works, you can then look at a more future-proof solution. For Suzuki, for example, the solution was to add e-commerce to the existing content website without significantly changing the existing pages, structures and system connections.
Regardless of the solution, adding e-commerce is a complex process that involves several areas. It is not only about expanding the customer interface, but also about adding all kinds of information flows and processes. This brings new challenges, especially at an organisational level.
Sander Heijdemann, Motorcycles & Marine Manager at Suzuki, says about their process: “Adding the buy button will cause major changes both internally in the organisation and at our dealers. It is important to include everyone from the start. The most important step is to inform and enthuse, then the why and the goal you are jointly pursuing is clear and you can start building step by step.”
Setting up e-commerce has an impact on a number of areas. These can be divided into: e-commerce as a project, as a new business process and as a new business. We explain the most important aspects for each sub-area below.
E-commerce as a project
In terms of technology, everything is possible. The most complex part of the entire process is everything surrounding it: e-commerce must match the business objectives, the current turnover flows and the wishes and expectations of the various stakeholders.
Business case — Clarify internally why you want to do e-commerce and how this contributes to the goals. Is it to develop a new revenue stream, offer a unified-commerce customer experience or enter new markets? Measuring progress becomes easier when you have clear goals.
Attribution — This is especially relevant for businesses with physical locations and perhaps even franchisees. Local customers will soon also be able to opt for a new webshop. Will it compete or collaborate with the dealers and branches? Is referring to the webshop rewarded or does it lead to a loss of turnover?
Ownership and stakeholder management — Create a team that is responsible for the entire process. Identify which departments will be affected by e-commerce, such as marketing, sales, customer service, finance, fulfillment and logistics… but perhaps also legal, production and purchasing. Make roles and responsibilities clear to prevent conflicts and create support. Expectation and change management are essential.
commerce as a new process
With e-commerce you not only extend the customer journey, you add all kinds of touchpoints with the various departments that are usually internally focused.
Product information — To sell online, complete and accurate product information is essential. This must be structured in a database — such as a product information management (PIM) system or a CMS — if you want to be able to link it to your webshop.
Fulfillment and logistics — Shipping products for e-commerce can have a significant impact, especially if you don’t normally serve consumers. You will then have to deal with smaller order quantities and packaging, but in much larger volumes. E-fulfilment (pick & pack) must be able to exist in or alongside your existing structure, with different working hours. And the expectations surrounding e-commerce orders require attention to branding and return information upon delivery. For shipping you are often dependent on a logistics service provider, which in turn also has processes that you must take into account, such as: collection time, communication regarding delivery, exceptions (complaints or breakage), but also holidays and peak times.
Stock and prices — Being able to display current stock information and prices requires logic and integration between the back-end and the front-end. Additional business logic is often necessary: what do you do if there is no stock but you expect to be able to deliver within a certain period? Do certain orders have priority and do you want to set stock aside for this? Should it be possible to choose a delivery day and what is the impact of this on your process?
Finance — Determining the financial aspects can be a challenge, especially in larger companies with multiple locations and holding companies. The first question is which P&L e-commerce is reflected in the books. Then comes reconciliation to align the books: where do you generate the invoices? You prefer to do this in the existing financial system so that the accounting is immediately correct. The choice of logistics service provider and payment platforms with specific payment methods can also lead to discussions: do you calculate the extra costs, for example?
E-commerce as a new business
Being good at sales, purchasing, branding or marketing does not mean you are automatically good at e-commerce. This is a new way of conducting transactions with your customers.
Product management — What exactly will the online range be? What prices will you charge for this new channel? How do you deal with discounts, offline versus online? Here you need an e-commerce manager who sets out and directs the commercial line.
Digital Marketing — This is perhaps the most important: once your new e-commerce platform is up and running, you need to make it successful. Is there also a solid marketing plan behind it? How do you generate online traffic and sales? How do you monitor the margin in this?
Customer service — Ideally, you manage all customer data and customer interactions in one central place, such as in a CRM system. This information is then accessible to customers via a ‘my environment’ and to customer service or office staff when a customer calls or emails. The challenge is that you do not build a new silo, but rather build on what is already present.
Legal — Especially when deploying e-commerce outside borders, there are additional rules to take into account. For example, when hosting customer data in the cloud, you must take into account compliance with the GDPR, where a country such as Denmark, for example, has additional requirements.
E-commerce shifts the focus to the customer
In essence, e-commerce is about meeting current digital customer expectations as a brand. Nowadays it is technically easy to add e-commerce to your existing website thanks to headless commerce platforms such as commercetools and Commerce Layer.
The real complexity lies much more in the area of organisation and processes, because adding e-commerce affects many things within a company. For brands considering taking this step, e-commerce can be an enabler to work cross-functionally and embrace product thinking. This places the Customer Experience at the center of the organisation, with different departments working together to continuously improve the customer experience.