E-commerce

A somewhat recent addition to our repoirtoire, we’re finding that the hard won skills we’ve gained in agile web 2.0 application development and search engine optimisation are hugely beneficial to online commerce today, primarily because 1) ecommerce is all about conversion rates, therefore constant testing and optimisation is essential; and 2) ecommerce benefits hugely from both organic and paid for search, and is scalable once conversion rate trends are established.

Clients should benefit from our experience now and in the future
We’re not supply chain or retail experts, but we are agile web experts, so we partner with clients who want the benefit of an external team who’s interests are aligned with theirs for the long term, leaving the client to focus on retailing.

To explain, generally speaking an agency will deliver a project and then move onto the next one, using ad hoc requests or support and maintenance agreements to get ongoing or additional work done. If the agency implements something that increases traffic or conversion rates on another project (for example, from an A/B test), the client has to pay to benefit from that knowledge, but only if the agency follows up and makes it happen! From what our new clients tell us, this seldom ever happens…

Our position is that this doesn’t make sense if project infrastructure is done in the right way, and there is an incentive to enable all clients to benefit from testing, optimisation and discovery on other projects.

Alignment of interests is essential
So, for each project we first look to understand what options there are for aligning interests before we start, so that the client is safe in the knowledge they are not being left to stagnate, and we’re safe in the knowledge that our constant testing, optimisation and thinking for clients is going to benefit us.

Practically, this means that once the ecommerce platform and data is deployed our task becomes increasing traffic, enhancing usability specific to the target audience and constantly working on conversion funnel optimisation, so that we benefit as well as the client. We’ve found that our clients have enjoyed that breath of fresh air…