How to deliver an e-commerce project successfully?
Delivering an e-commerce project with success is not an easy task. The E-commerce project management is complicated, with many potential challenges involved.
Last couple of years, we worked on several e-commerce projects, and there was always a problem with understanding the complexity on my client’s side.
We had to start with education and some initial planning first.
Very often, we get an inquiry that our potential client wants to have an online shop:
- he has an xxx budget but
- there is no list of requirements – “please tell me what I need and what the best solution is for me.”
- only it should look beautiful and professional.
- it should have this and this payment gateway and this and this shipping method
- it has to be done in 1-2 months
There are some elements you need to consider once you decide to invest your time and money in a new online shop:
- Project planning and resourcing
- Stakeholder support and managing expectations
- Defining requirements
- Supplier selection and service levels of support ( very often missed)
Consumers do not tolerate lousy web experiences anymore. Quite only, you have to do it in the right way.
Small and medium businesses
always have many constraints: time, money, capacity. But small businesses are most flexible and adaptive to any changes in the environment.
The main problem is choosing the best platform and solution. Such medium should be prepared for at least two years of operating.
Why?
- There are hundreds of solutions that can be used here
- The solution should be flexible and adaptable to new conditions, like social media sales, mobile sales
- start-ups simply don’t know what to expect from the solution, what basic features should be implemented
- Because it is difficult to migrate to a new platform from time to time and predict the increase in sales in the next 1-2 years.
Digideo helps with analyzing e-commerce solutions and propose the best one.
The next step is to choose the right supplier. You need to prepare the evaluation list with some points that are important for you: secure, experienced, professional, reliable, registered, no debt, international, local, global, with support 24/7 days or not, etc.
Why is it so important? Our experience shows that there are many unreliable suppliers, freelancers that can hurt your business. Recently we helped our clients to fix security gaps and backdoors left by such developers.
Please remember that it is a really insecure and dangerous situation for your customers, too. Somebody can steal their credit card numbers and personal data.
Client-side professionals can play a significant role in the whole process:
- Find the right supplier for your business
- Manage internal expectations and set realistic expectations
- Deliver on time and on-budget
- Deliver a return on investment – yes, it is a massive investment of time
Now we can start the project:
- collect requirements
- setting a project plan
- managing project
Supplier-side professionals play a crucial role during the whole project:
- Building credibility through a more customer-centric approach
- Reducing client churn, increase customer retention
- Delivering on time and budget
We help with all these steps. Please look at our project management offer.