building scaled ecommerce system

Scaled e-commerce system is a must-to-have in most companies that start their journey with online shopping.

eCommerce changes everything in your company:

1. internal processes – stock management, product management, channels, marketing, digital marketing
2. the type and cost of shipping
3. the cost of customer service by adding a new communication channel like chat, social media
4. sales channels – from local to global
5. pricing policies
6. digital tools usage – we will concentrate on it here
7. marketing tactics
8. data usage
9. and many others

What is it a scalability

Generally, scalability can be defined as “the ease with which a system or component can be modified to fit the

problem area” . A scalable system has three main characteristics, including the following ones:

(i) The system can accommodate an increased usage;

(ii) The system can accommodate an increased data set;

(iii) The system is maintainable and performs with reasonable performances

Source: Improving Performance of e-Commerce Systems by Vertical Scaling (PDF Download Available). 

Scaled e-commerce system is able to maintain or even increase its level of performance or efficiency when exposed to larger service demands. The enhanced scalability means an ability to address and handle larger volumes of content.

Digital tools usage

Online shops currently are multi-software solutions with many integrations, data sharing and marketing automation for faster and better customer experience with purchasing process and overall customer service including shipping and after-sales experience.

The online shop has to take care of the whole purchasing cycle: pre-purchase, purchase, ownership and after-purchase. The situation is more complicated if we take also omi-channel sales, including brick-and-mortar shops and sales on other platforms like Amazon, eBay or industry specifics: Home Depot, Staples, etc.

All these channels should have one layer – the good IT platform, secure network, and IT management that currently can be partially outsourced – SaaS solutions for hosting, IT operations, security monitoring, etc.

These are the typical questions of online shop owners:

• Can my online store be hacked? – yes, please use SSL, secure hosting, antivirus, and monitoring, and add all needed security patches.
• What can I do to make my online store more successful? – great offer, usability, security, marketing tactics, and strategy
• How do I get more visitors to my site?
• How do I increase conversion rates in my e-commerce store?
• How safe is IT outsourcing?
• What are the best checkout optimized eCommerce retail sites?
• What is the best eCommerce solution in terms of stability and scalability?
• What are some examples of growth hacking for eCommerce?
• How to improve eCommerce website performance?
• How to improve the SEO of an eCommerce website?

Scaled eCommerce system’s elements of customer ‘s cycle:

prepurchase

• new potentials are gathered via lead generation tactics: Adwords campaigns, referrals, current newsletter subscribers with marketing automation tools, LinkedIn ads or whitepapers, presentations via SlideShare, blog posts, your offer distributed on other e-commerce portals, price-comprising portals, etc.  But you need to have a very well SEO optimized online shop.
• your shop can get product data from the producer databases or wholesaler databases – typical integration with Icecat, online product database or drop-shipping platforms like Doba.
• the offer personalization for new and current customers via personalization software like Marketizator and many others for example:
  • Barilliance – Saas Personalisation for Ecommerce
  • Pure clarity – E-commerce Personalisation
  • Bunting Website Personalisation
  • Monetate Personalisation Software
  • Rich Relevance
  • ChoiceStream
  • Personyze
  • Apptus
  • Salesmanago e-commerce
• product recommendation tools that recommend most popular products based on previous purchases and other clients visits like Quarticon