Written on 30 December 1999
The eCommerce Iceberg
In the first phase of the ecommerce all you needed to do to qualify as a leading ecommerce site, was place a few products and add a mechanism for clearing fund via a credit card.
The front end of the web site may have become slicker and prettier and contain more adverts, but it is fundamentally still the same thing. The big difference today is on what’s going on in the background. As ecommerce becomes a mature channel of distribution, the emphasis is on controlled profitability all the way down the line.
If you take our web site Fish4Flies as an example, the front-end enables you to buy fishing flies in the UK and have it delivered to any destination in the world. The basic functionality of this front end has barely changed in ten years. However, here is a list of some of the features that enables us to manage the site profitably.
Updating of pattern information
- New fly fishing patterns can be submitted by users of the site, as well as the admin.
- Patterns can be placed up for sale, or if demand becomes too low, placed in a library for future reference.
- Prices can differ based upon the patterns attribute. For example a fly might be tied to a Brass or Tungsten bead which can significantly alter the cost.
Sales reporting
- Details on every order are available to administrators immediately.
- Reports on failed orders to identify possible causes or improvements which can be made to the site.
- Admin screens enabled phone and online chat to assist users directly with completing an order.
- Monthly reports to show how well sales are doing, and specific flies types which could need improving.
- And of course we have full tracking of all visitors to the website through the statistical information store.
New facilities
- Fly fishermen can now request library patterns to be tied up, and be notified by browser, mobile or email notifications once they arrive in stock.
- Targeted emailing lets you target individual customers about flies which they are interested in, rather than emailing the entire user database. This enables several newsletters to be sent every week without exausting the newsletter list.
This is very typical of any serious business site. A single page that enables you to take an order, is probably backed up by ten pages of administration that enables you to be flexible enough to do a good selling job.
What has enabled this explosion of interconnection between websites and existing back office services, is the availability of standard processes that enable different types of software to talk to each other and exchange information using ‘web services’.
Related to The eCommerce Iceberg
Trading with the EU is more difficult now that we are no longer members of the EU.
Some of the things that you might need to take into account
It is quite common now to have separate domain names for each country or for separate white label sites; but it can lead to problems with running security log-in systems that enable your clients or admin managers, to run a single log in across all the domains. That is when you need Multidomain login which enables the ‘user state’ to be carried across transparently between them.
Can you do better that the Covid Test and trace task force?
Last month it was admitted that the COVID 19 Test and trace task force had ‘temporarily mislaid’ some 16,000 test results because ‘they were using an old version of Excel’. But before you laugh too loud at the mistakes they made, it might be a good idea to look closer to home.
A website to showcase the services that Waterflow, the sewer maintenance, inspection, repair, renovation & civil engineering company provide
Every time you pick up a newspaper or magazine there is an article about the Internet and how it is a strategic issue, not just an IT or Marketing issue.