Sustaining eCommerce Growth with the eCommerce Perfect Store Framework

e-Commerce channel execution for Brands needs ongoing attention. It’s not just for the Holidays.

The holiday season, which already seems like a lifetime ago, is a busy time for e-commerce; and 2019 was no exception with new online sales records broken in markets around the world. According to market research firm eMarketer, US e-commerce sales in the 2019 holiday season were set to increase by 13.2% to $135.35 billion – a growth rate that would see e-commerce representing 13.4% of all holiday retail sales for the period. Similar growth was seen across Europe, despite testing economic conditions in some of the bigger markets.

I’m sure many e-commerce and online account managers were hoping to take a bit of a break this month, after the end of year and holiday season mayhem. However, we can’t rest for too long. e-Commerce will grow again in 2020 and ensuring your products benefit from the rising tide will require ongoing effort from brand, marketing and account teams.

Better e-Commerce Tactics for 2020

e-Commerce is not just for the holidays. It’s here to stay. Online growth has seen product manufacturers adopting new tactics to cope with the evolving needs of retailers, and changing shopper expectations. Sometimes these tactics have been ad hoc, or little more than add-ons to tradition retail channel programs. However, the online channel is a new world that requires radial new thinking, new skills and new tools.

To continue to succeed in the coming years brand owners need to adopt new strategies, design and build better toolkits for retailers, and monitor their products’ execution in relevant online stores to identify issues and opportunities.

e-Commerce Perfect Store

To help brands navigate the online environment eStoreMedia developed the e-Commerce Perfect Store framework. The framework includes a methodology to help brands improve their e-commerce strategies and tactics, as well tools and services to drive execution, performance and growth. It's all explained in our latest eBook, 'How to Succeed in the e-commerce Channel'.

The e-Commerce Perfect Store Framework borrows heavily from lean start-up, and strategic planning models such as OGSM (objectives, goals, strategies, & measures – the strategic planning process adopted by numerous Fortune 500 companies). At its heart it’s about enabling brands to identify, implement, monitor and improve effective tactics to ensure their products are easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to buy in key online retailers.

The five steps of the framework are:

Strategy

Establish the key success drivers in your product categories. Getting the strategy right is the essential first step and it includes making decisions on choice of online stores, assortment, price & promotions, rating & reviews, search optimization and iMedia planning, as outlined in our e-Commerce Perfect Store strategy.

Design

Shape the plan including, assets, success criteria and targets. Once you have clarity on the key e-commerce drivers for your brands, you can get more into the detail about how your team will actually create your online channel assets and how to monitor progress.

Delivery

Provide your retailers with in-depth guidelines and all the necessary assets. This is where having tools for e-commerce content management and syndication can help. You want to be able to standardize and automate as much as possible of the process.

Measure

Monitor your online retail partners to ensure they implement you guidelines, and to identify competitive treats and opportunities. This is where you identify gaps in distribution, content execution, pricing, search ranking and more to identify where improvements are needed.

Close Gaps

Iterate to improve your presence and performance in online retailers, and further improve your online sales in collaboration with key online retailer partners.

To find out more about the e-Commerce Perfect Store Framework, and how it will help your brands to succeed in the online channel in 2020 and beyond, download our latest e-Book – How to Succeed in the e-Commerce Channel.