Avoiding the pitfalls and headaches of moving to e-commerce

Setting up an e-commerce website involves lots of different processes and several decisions have to be made. Many organisations are considering an e-commerce website but are not really sure about where and how to start and who can blame them?

Moving business online needs streamlining- Kristoff Zammit Ciantar

There are a number of most important aspects to consider when setting up an e-commerce website many of which can mean the difference between success and failure for your project.

Besides choosing the right provider and designing an e-commerce site that is easy and intuitive to use and provides you with the right amount of flexibility to manage your content, set prices, run special offers and other such initiatives, you also need to ensure that it’s simple for you to update products and prices and pick up and manage orders. You need to have a system in place that alerts you when new orders are received too.

It is this phase of product data consolidation and migration that many projects stall and in some cases fail. Data migration can range from mildly challenging to arduous. A key component is how easy it is to move your data from one system to the other. Ideally, you can export your product details, images and orders into a simple comma-delimited or tab-delimited format and then import the data into the new system.

The more complex your products are, the more difficult it will be to import your data, particularly if you have complex product options. Most e-commerce systems will provide some explanations or charts of their database structures however this may be double-dutch to someone non-technical. It is important to engage a supplier that will handhold and guide you at this stage of the project in order to avoid the pitfall of many.

Many organisations move full steam ahead with their project and become engrossed in the design and functional specifications of the e-commerce site, only to have the website ready to go live and the product data nowhere near ready to be uploaded!

Moving your business online usually requires streamlining and automating business processes. Research how your new platform could integrate with your stock system, your accounting systems, and payment processes. Consider that the more your business matures the more fine-tuned your needs could become. You may also wish to confirm that the new solution you are building will be able to offer reports and certain customisation to suit your business. Integration with your core systems will allow you to avoid the arduous time-consuming data double entry process, it will allow you to keep your site updated in real-time and remove the stress of managing the site on an on-going basis as the business grows.

Technology integrations are one of the biggest headaches of e-commerce. They can account for up to 50 per cent of the overall time and cost of a typical ecommerce implementation and can be a barrier to the adoption of available technologies. However tackling this upfront, choosing the right provider and platform that will grow with you and provide you with enough flexibility is crucial. It is what can spell the success or failure of your e-commerce project.

www.infusionmalta.com

Mr Zammit Ciantar is a director at InFusion Solutions, a local provider of custom-made web solutions.