E-handelsimplementationens fem P:n. Du känner säkert till 4P inom marknadsföring, Produkt, Pris, Promotion och Plats. De är absolut lika relevanta för e-handel också, men innan de kan bli relevanta så måste du ha en effektiv e-handelsplattform på plats. Att komma dit kan bli en utmaning, vilket många företag ännu inte gjort.
Plattform
Partner
Planering
Process
Phases (faser)
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Just let us quickly investigate what that means
Platform
Even if you have a vision of what you want to do, things will change. Your business model, your budget, external systems, technologies, etc. You possibly cannot plan for all changes ahead, and the only way to embrace the changes is to have a solid platform. A good platform will give you new updates, you can focus on strategic development and changes can often be solved with minor customization instead of major redevelopment and refactor. We will happily assist you in your selection of platforms and explain all the pros and cons.
Partner
Second of all, you need to find a partner, specialisted in the platform you have chosen. Since there is some platforms that is somehow equal, it might even be a more important choice to find a partner than a platform, and choose the platform your partner is most experienced in. If your partner is not truly an expert in the platform, you will end up with a second grade solution.
We might not know eachother yet, but in generally speaking we consider us to be a great partner for all online business and especially the e-commerce part. Please read more under our services to see what we can do for you and drop us a message.
Planning
Planning is the most important step to avoid building a tree house (read more about tree house in another topic). We are not a fan of never ending big corporate processes with all its documentation intended for the archive and templates that never seem to fit this project. But none the less, some planning must be done, not too much but not too little. When the implementation start, you must at least have wireframes and an estimated backlog for the first phase. All integrations don’t need to be specified in details, but at least on high level.
If you do this work from scratch, it will take hundreds or even thousands of hours. If you choose an experience partner (such as us), we already have most of this material prepared, that can be slightly modified. Don’t reinvent to wheel if you don’t have to.
Process
With a good partner and platform, you are know a great step towards success. But to succeed with the implementation, there must be a good development process. This is actually fairly easy. If you are experienced in IT, you maybe already have an online development process which can be followed. If not, your partner should have one. If not, you need to bo back to step 2 and look for another one. Without a process, you project might very well be 2-3 times more expensive, the maintenance might be even worse, and worst of all is the confusion and feeling that you don’t know what is happening anymore.
Our e-commerce process is fairly simple but well established and proven, it have been used for more than 6 years and tens of projects. The process itself is just adopted from the agile methods like Scrum, together with some best practices in design, requirements, maintenance. If you are interested, we would be happy to share this with you in our 2 h presentation.
Phases
E-commerce is a journey, and there is yet much to discover. Both during implementation and after release, it is important to plan and work according to phases. If you are replacing your platform, it is a great opportunity to prioritize and think what is really important for you, and try to get rid of the backpack of old functionality that wasn’t very useful anyway. Two parallell solutions is expensive and confusing for your organization. Rather release few key functionalities with great quality, than everything with poor, and then extend it by each phase.
Another important aspect is that the rest of the organization will likely not keep up with all the possibilities and new features emerged from the new solution. Just because you now can offer thousands different discounts, it is not sure how this will be beneficial for you business, how to communicate it to your customer, align with other sales channels etc. Phases must therefore take all organization into consideration.
This content is also available in: Engelska
