Retailers don’t need to be told that they exist in an ultra fast-paced, quickly evolving, and insanely competitive space. There is no time to be complacent and those who aren’t leading are probably lagging. When it comes to e-Commerce, the curve is even more exponential. Each day a retailer slips behind the competition equates to more effort and resources required to catch up than the previous day.
The Reality Of First-Mover Advantage
Savvy retailers know that when it comes to new sales channels and technology, quick action is often rewarded. With generally low barriers to entry, engaging with new online sales and marketing avenues often and early almost always pays off.
Consider the retailers that sell products through Amazon. Many of these businesses are netting millions of dollars through this rather simple integration, but the deck is stacked against those who were late to the party. And retailers that are not selling on Amazon today may find challenges to enter because several product categories like apparel and footwear are saturated and new retailers might not be accepted.
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The same idea applies to eBay. Any retailer can join any time, but competition from PowerSellers that have tens of thousands of positive buyer ratings is fierce. In an environment that exists to commoditize merchandise, service ratings and price are the primary competitive factors. Late entrants on eBay are forced to compete on price, driving margins down.
Retailers that were first-movers on Amazon and eBay enjoy significant competitive advantage today. Fortunately, e-Commerce is still young and opportunities to lead instead of lag continue to be created.
Responding To Emerging Commerce Channels
Mobile technology is changing the shopping experience the way e-Commerce did 15 years ago. Despite the record number of consumers using mobile devices to shop, they still convert on desktop computers almost three times more than on smartphones. Experts attribute that differential to lackluster user experience on mobile devices; the clunky, glitchy, and inconsistent UX often seen in the mobile space inhibits conversion.
The easiest way to tap into the exploding mobile market is to incorporate responsive design into e-Commerce sites so they display properly on any screen, whether it is desktop, tablet, or smartphone. This can be done easily on new builds, but existing sites can also be retrofitted to display responsively.
According to the Aberdeen Group, responsive design boosts conversion rates by an average of 10.9%, company revenue by 19.7%, and brand awareness by 34.7%. The benefit of responsive design quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as the increased SEO it provides feeds more shoppers in the sales funnel, they convert, resulting in even higher rankings. Coupled with the explosion in consumers turning to mobile devices for commerce, the result quickly becomes exponential.
Service And Retargeting
Consumers’ expectations for integration and consistency across shopping channels also applies to service level. Successful retailers are well versed in best practices for helping confused customers in stores and recognizing when there is a problem and correcting it. E-Commerce has evolved as a self-guided shopping experience, but consumers are increasingly expecting higher levels of service online.
Leaders are jumping on this opportunity by implementing capabilities like live cart tracking, where service representatives can directly access digital shopping carts. This gives them the ability to directly add or remove merchandise at a customer’s request, or apply shipping discounts or other incentives as a make good for service recovery. It’s the online version of empowering employees to satisfy customer needs.
Not every customer who needs help asks for it, and cart abandonment rates are staggering. Less than 40% of the customers who put items in their digital shopping carts actually complete transactions — this is the biggest problem online retailers face. Many of those lost conversions are recoverable using software that automatically emails owners of abandoned carts, offering them discount codes, expedited shipping, or some other incentive.
Getting Social To Stay Relevant
Opportunities to get noticed in social media are everywhere, and change virtually every day. Integrating content from these channels into ecommerce sites and pushing things like gift registries back to them can pay large dividends. Every social media platform has its own personality, so targeting the most appropriate communities is the best strategy.
Social media is the fastest shifting space on the internet with new channels exploding in popularity while yesterday’s stars fizzle. Success on social media enables the most powerful marketing in existence: word of mouth. While it may be a challenge to keep track of every new emerging platform, there are virtually no barriers to entry and early adopters enjoy the biggest footprints for the least investment.
Is first-mover advantage in e-Commerce real? Even if you don’t believe that the answer is yes, the price of lagging behind cannot be denied. The e-Commerce space is still in its infancy and provides many new opportunities to lead, even for retailers without rich histories of doing so. Just remember: What seems progressive and experimental today becomes old hat and expected tomorrow. That gap narrows a little more each day.
Ian Goldman, President and CEO of Celerant Technology, is an expert software engineer and entrepreneurial enthusiast with an extensive knowledge of Point of Sale systems, CRM, and inventory management.
