We are coming back from the E-Commerce Forum, the national event dedicated to electronic commerce promoted by the Netcomm Consortium, which was held in Milan on April 21st, 2015.
This is a very specialized conference that caters professionals, particularly managers or directly entrepreneurs. As a design and development agency, we are increasingly dealing with the ecommerce. In recent years, the demand for these products are steadily increasing. This is why we felt important to be present, to better understand a world which is far from trivial.
During the day, various thematic tracks were available, starting from the classic, more focused on the technologies, and going from Marketing with the necessary "conversions increase" topic, to dealing with Logistics, Payments and Customer Care. This branching helps understanding the degree of specialization that is necessary for the management of an electronic shop and with a new management approach, which is completely different from the traditional sales.
With pleasure we witnessed the case of PriviteGriffe, brand we have worked for in the client side development with AngularJS. Ivo Mosca, CTO for PrivateGriffe, reported the experience of integration of the platform with FACT-Finder, service specializing in the optimization of the search for products with advanced filters.
The initial keynotes were focused on the overview of the market in terms of volume sales/transactions for 2015 and the expected data for 2016 which are of substantial growth in the sector. But despite this, the scope for inclusion in the market is limited, or at least to be carefully analyzed:
- We do not have just the logic of the (lowest) price
- You need to have an active analytical measurement of sales data, and * necessarily, you have to learn how to interpret them correctly.
- Even a small company has to adapt to the standards of the big sales platforms.
- Treating delivery processes as part of the overall process.
- Have customer care services.
Among all these issues, the one that had more attention was related to the care of the delivery processes as a key for the user loyalty. Often, this process is considered as a mere sideline to outsource. Instead, the emphasis was on a very important point: in fact, the delivery is the only physical iteration between vendor and user. It is not a coincidence that the Zalando ads, now national icon of the ecommerce sector, have always focused all the emotions on two aspects: the returns and the delivery of the package as hallmarks.
And always in the delivery sector, Roberto Fumarola presented the Florentine startup QAPLA' which is specialized in offering these services right. QAPLA' provides an intuitive system for tracking the shipment multichannel, useful both for the support staff and for the individual user.
Finally, one final bit of Florentine pride, was the closing keynote with host Andrea Panconesi, CEO for Luisa via Roma, where he explained the exceptional success of the company, established itself in the World in the field of high fashion.
What did we bring back?
Starting and managing an e-commerce from the company point of view, certainly requires a strong determination, both in terms of budget to be allocated and for the internal procedures because, although the market is growing, the required skills and competitors, are top notch.
An approach to an evolved and complex development allows to offer the right customization, both in the checkout process and in the product presentations. In some cases you can evaluate and integrate solutions that offer third party service facilities in the management of some processes.Clearly there may also be markets and/or particular situations rather than niche logic.
But be careful: we think they are a lot less than what you would initially think!But we do not want to discourage you in your business project; we suggest, in cases where you do not have a full knowledge of the domain, to apply a multiple approach to startup on the project, to experience every hypothesis with tools to mitigate risks, according to logical MVP.
For those wishing to verify the sustainability of an e-commerce and make a test, it could be useful, as an example, the use of products like Shopify, Software solutions as a Service good to start when you have most of the key processes, with the inevitable limitations.
