Audit
E-commerce
Are you experiencing a problem with your e-commerce site?
Contact us for a free analysis! We'll offer you a no-obligation solution.
Whatever the nature of your problem, the Smotly team offers you a free thirty-minute chat to try and find answers to your questions.
Here are some examples of frequently encountered needs:
Calculating delivery costs
The notion of shipping costs can be a difficult one for e-tailers. Indeed, shipping goods is not easy when you have little or no knowledge of logistics. What's more, the additional cost of shipping can be a deterrent when it comes to validating the shopping cart and proceeding to checkout.
The carrier's shipping costs are not the only costs that come into play when calculating the cost of shipping. There are many factors to take into account when determining your final shipping costs.
These include: the purchase of packaging, the packing of parcels, the preparation of your orders, the choice of shipping zones, the charges imposed by the carrier, and so on.
Returns management
The management of product returns is also an essential point to consider. French law imposes a fourteen-day retraction period, during which you cannot refuse the return of your products. It is therefore important to have a returns management policy and a means of managing returns. As a result, returns can quickly become very costly. Without a means of managing returns, you'll not only be losing money, but also time that could be spent elsewhere.
It's therefore advisable to put in place several strategies to reduce the time spent dealing with returns, in particular by implementing software directly linked to your e-commerce site that will make it easier for you to return products, thus saving you working time.
Promotional codes and discounts
We know that creating and managing coupon codes and discounts can seem complex. However, this type of marketing event is a very specific way of attracting and seducing new customers, as well as retaining existing ones. What's more, it's a proven fact that using coupon codes and other discounts will help you increase your sales. In fact, the average shopping basket is higher when it involves the use of targeted promotions.
Good management of coupon codes and discounts will enable your e-commerce site to generate more traffic, more sales and therefore higher turnover.
B2B - Customized rates
B2B (Business to Business) accounts imply customer-specific rates. Customers negotiate their prices with you beforehand, so they need to find these prices directly on your e-commerce site, so as not to lose their advantages.
To achieve this, there are a number of ways to manage personalized pricing: by customer, by customer group, by item family, by quantity, etc. Some solutions on the market, such as BigCommerce, now offer this functionality.
ERP and CRM interfaces
Price collection can be facilitated by integrating an ERP interface directly into your e-commerce site. In effect, your two interfaces will be connected together, and all your ERP data will be transmitted directly to your e-commerce site.
Synchronizing your ERP with the B2B customer account will enable you to group together a wide range of information on your customer, such as company details, purchasing habits, prices and personalized promotions for your B2B customer. This synchronization is made possible by the use of APIs.
Generally speaking, connectors between your e-commerce solution and third-party applications such as ERP, CRM, Order Management, etc., will save you a huge amount of time, speed up your internal processes and make the data in your information and management systems more reliable.
Flat file vs. API
Your applications can communicate in a number of different ways: flat files or APIs. Before APIs existed, flat files were the most common way of exchanging data. These files contain tabular information (csv, xml or Excel files) that is exported from one application and imported into another. Although more restrictive, flat files are still the only way to exchange data if your applications don't have an API.
APIs enable you to automate these data exchanges between the various applications you use, in real time. More reliable and much smoother, APIs are becoming increasingly essential, and are present in the latest generation of applications.
Some e-commerce solutions on the market feature very open APIs, enabling the implementation of so-called "headless" architectures. In this way, the back-office is totally decoupled from the front-office(s), enabling you to adapt all your online store's distribution channels to your specific needs.
Writing content
Writing content for your e-commerce site is important if you want to grow your business. Content marketing involves the creation and publication of editorial content (articles, videos, photos...). However, content writing remains a complex task in order to achieve good referencing and thus good visibility on search engines and social networks.
It is therefore important to know all the tricks of the trade in order to create a good content strategy. Whether it's identifying buyer personas, choosing content types according to the buying process, or creating interesting and appropriate content. SEO techniques, link acquisition strategies and social network publications will all help to increase your visibility and drive traffic to your e-commerce site.
Don't hesitate to make an appointment now to speak with one of the experts on the Smotly team, who will put their skills and knowledge to work for you.
