3 KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE STRATEGY

Planning a D-2-C proposition?

These are your 3 key considerations. 

All 3 need to work together to successfully sustain growth, or you could end up . . .

Scenario 1: Scaling up digital marketing without considering operation strain.

= Late deliveries.  Overwhelmed customer service.  Poor customer experience.

Scenario 2: Creating a great proposition, great website but no digital marketing (and therefore no traffic!)

= Lost sales.  Wasted investment.  You haven’t leveraged your proposition to scale.

So, let’s flesh this out a bit more and look at the questions you should be asking.

REASONS TO BUY

(from you)

Do you offer the best product?

SHOUT ABOUT IT. Make it sing across any, and all marketing.

Are you the best value on price?

Make it the heart of your comms and make it clear why.

Is there a unique benefit to buying direct?

Extended product guarantee? Free value add? Make it clear, front and present.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Does your website make it easy for customers to shop your range?

Make sure it is easy to navigate, contrast and compare across your products.

Do you have good marketing assets?

Your ecommerce presence is your digital shelf space.  Your imagery needs to be clean, sharp, relevant. Do you have product videos?  Can you leverage marketing spend to get it?

Is your checkout user friendly?

Consider how intuitive it is to go from purchase decision to purchase completion.  If it is too complicated it could affect not just that sale, but future sales too.

Are you listening to what your customers are telling you?

Pay close attention to reviews, listen to customer feedback and address any objections or misconceptions in your marketing and your website.

Do you have the operational capacity to grow?

There will be an increased requirement for customer support – emails / calls / chat will all need to be ready to react.

TRAFFIC

What is the goal?

Are you looking to drive awareness?  Traffic? Conversion?  Your tactics need to be geared towards driving high quality, relevant traffic (dependent on your goal).

What type of traffic is currently coming to your website?

Is it all organic search or is it coming directly through ads?

How reliant are you on your ‘Brand’?

There may well be opportunities to broaden your scope into non-brand specific marketing, capturing a previously untapped audience.

What is your SEO position for generic searches?

Think about different ways customers can find your brand / products.  What terms are being searched for most in your market? And then consider if your presence here could be improved?

Are you competing with other re-sellers of your brand?

If you are, there may be opportunity here to outrank them on search with paid ads.

Once you can confidently answer these questions, you will be in a much stronger position to move forward with your Direct-to-Consumer proposition.

If you are worried about your retail relationships check out this article:

https://www.jdsstrategists.co.uk/our-thoughts/posts/managing-potential-d2c-conflict/