Tips for Making it Big with E-Commerce

DIGITAL STRATEGY

Getting rich with hard work is the American dream. Kids born in the late 1970s and early 1980s may have started college with the prerogative of studying finance, finding a job on Wall Street, toiling for seven to ten  years, then BOOM- millions come rolling in.  However, with the financial crisis, many young people are considering career switches out of finance as layoffs, technology and lower payouts have become the new norm. Many more college students are not even considering finance at all. This brings to question: what is the new American dream for young, ambitious, smart young adults? Technology. Specifically, technology that can be monetized through web-based and socially enhanced commerce.

The quintessential industry movie Wall Street, has been effectively replaced by, The Social Network. Many 20 something are now wondering, how can the American dream be achieved in the digital commerce instead? A website is key. However, not all websites are created equal- especially in the case of marketing, the lifeblood of sales. There are a few key elements when building, designing and launching a website intended for e-commerce:

Analytics are key. One must never settle for basic, static analytics. Instead, go for the slight extra premium to discover real time metrics such as:

·      See how often people clicked on contact info

•  Identify how often people clicked on videos on the site
•  Assess contest and voting participation
•  See how far people scroll down each page
• Once a website is launched- after much sweat and tears- it then becomes essential to gather,  categorize and prioritize feedback. There will be bugs on the site and areas to improve- it’s  natural, don’t take offense. The mandate at this point is to find solutions. Specifically:
•  Categorize user feedback versus internal

·   At this point, prioritization is key. Everyone within the web marketing team will have different view 

ppoints on what’s important. As an executive, one must decide what will be key drivers of user 

eexperience, and, in turn, revenue.

BBuilding, designing and launching a website will not be easy; especially if the intent is for it to be used

aas a platform for a big e-commerce idea. Nonetheless, it will be the small steps of web development

tthat will be needed to provide for optimal impact on generating interested users, loyal customers and

powerful sales.