Is building an Ecommerce Site More about Technology or Business?

This is a question that IT professionals ask every time the topic surfaces.  Of course the answer is that ecommerce site creation is both about business and technology. Business leaders often start the process of an ecommerce site by tossing the project over the wall to IT.  As IT leaders, we need to guide our business leaders and focus them on work flow, inventory, customer support, and customer issues first.

Very often business decisions have to be made, new workflows, and customer service functions have to be designed.   Thought has to be given to thinking through how to maintain or even enhance the customer experience on ecommerce sites.   Business leaders should be concerned with maintaining customer intimacy and replicating the in-person experience of buying in more traditional venues.

Technology leaders have to think about the resiliency of the site. They need to ensure that their site is designed for ease of use and maintainability.  They think about recoverability in the event of a disaster; is a hot site platform needed? How quickly does the site need to be recovered?  This represents an area where IT and the business need to be in sync.  Too much infrastructure makes the site costly; too little means your firm may be a risk if recovery in a disaster is too difficult or time consuming.

In tackling these issues, it is best to begin with the end customers; the ones that will be using the site.  This is best accomplished through field research. This means getting out in your customers natural habitat and seeing how they operate. Try and visit a customer that uses a competitor site. See what works and what doesn’t work.  If you don’t have this luxury, site visits are still crucial.   In this case, conceptual design models are a good way to test ideas with clients. In the user-experience world story-boards and paper prototypes can be used to determine the viability of your ideas. Site visits and direct customer involvement will also help you develop a site roadmap.  You will begin to get a picture of what features are must haves, and which are not.

Operationally, ecommerce sites bring new challenges. If you traditionally serve your customers through brick and mortar locations as an example, you have to think about how you can replicate the in store experience or the in branch experience of a bank or brokerage office on your web site.  For consumer sites, supply chain challenges need to be dealt with.  How will returns be handled? Will clients want to return products to your physical locations?  Will you pay for return shipping if they send the item back via USPS or FedEx.

Bottom-line, building a successful ecommerce site must be orchestrated where both business and technology requirements are discussed in concert.  When contemplating a business case for developing a site, make sure all of the relevant start-up costs, on-going support costs (including software maintenance, hosting fees, incremental staff, etc), and benefits are taken into account.  Benefits may take the form of new revenue, revenue loss prevention and soft benefits (e.g. better customer service).

As with many projects, building ecommerce sites is a blend of both solid business and technology requirements.  Work with your business partners to make sure they know what is needed to succeed.  Get the right project management and team resources in place and don’t skip the field research.  If you do these things, your ecommerce project will be successful.  

For more in-depth information or how-too's, contact Northfield Technology for a consulation.