Raven Culture™ Blog

If you are already using an e-commerce application I am sure that you have been in a position where you need to do something specific and can not, or the system only provides you with the basics of adding products for sale on your website. Some of the worst offenders of the “e-commerce” application are the ones that are plugins to a CMS. These systems are more commonly referred to as shopping carts, and if you have one of these, you are missing out on the potential of a proper e-commerce system.

First of all some grammatical housekeeping. Is it e-commerce, eCommerce or e-business? Personally I prefer using e-commerce, my reasons for this are simple, the e is short for electronic. Where as eCommerce is like iPod, a meaningless letter at the start of a word with pointless capitalization.

Okay, for this article I am going to take two approaches, firstly, if you are starting an e-commerce store, secondly, if you already have one.

“I am just starting out in the ‘e’ world”

So you have your products, you have drafted your business plan and you are ready to get in the online world. The first thing you should know is the most e-commerce systems only allow you to administer your products and orders. Consider that you are starting an e business not just selling products online. Just being able to sell your products is not enough. Being an e-business it needs to enable you to do business. Without being able to conduct business in all areas of your website you are destined to fail.

A successful e-commerce store will have a system that enables you to market your site, view performance reports, and import and export your data in and out of the system. You need to be able to manage your online business from anywhere at any time. What you are looking for is a business management system, not a shopping cart.

Oh No! I have bought the wrong e-commerce system!

If this is you, I am truly sorry. You probably have a limiting system that is costing you business. It is important to identify if you are in this boat. One of the biggest problems is if you are established in an existing system you need to find out if you can export your data to import into a new system. If this is not possible you, unfortunately, will have to re-enter all of your products and customers into another system.

Another consideration will be to define what your needs are. If you are a retail store, then marketing is something that would be very important to you. A weekly or monthly specials newsletter to your clients is an invaluable tool for generating customer loyalty and returning sales. A good e-commerce system will enable you to market to your clients from within the e-commerce system. If you are not getting the results from your e-store that you want it may be time to cut losses and get a new system that can keep up with you and your business.

What to do now?

So basically, you need to sit down and write up a wish list of things that you need in your e-commerce system. Once you have identified what you need keep looking until you get the system that can handle all of your needs. If you are not able to find a system that does what you need you may need to consider a custom solution. These can be quite expensive, but the up side is you can get exactly what you need.