09 May Ecommerce Thought Leader Panel – Melbourne Knowledge Week

It was really fun to go to the Melbourne Knowledge Week Ecommerce Thought Leader Panel, held at CLIK Collective in Kensington, Melbourne last night. The first thing that you need to know is that CLIK Collective is a coworking space for ecommerce businesses.

They have the space to hold your stock and have a dispatch facility as well as a photography studio if you need it for your ecommerce store. It was so inspiring to be there, and the red wine and cheese was much appreciated.

Take away ecommerce tips

The main take away message that I got from the talk is that it is an exciting time to start an ecommerce business. If you are clear about who your target audience is and what they need, you have a good opportunity to reinvent yourself or your career, if that is what you want to do. When you are passionate about your product and know the audience who you are selling to, you resonate with your audience and they will get excited about your product too.

So, dream about what you want your product to be. Do you want to build a community? Do you want to build an Amazon business? Do you want to make progress towards your values. When you know what you you want to achieve you will find customers who love what you do.

Data – how much do you need?

From the very beginning of your business, it is helpful to collect data wherever you can. At the start, when you are in the trenches of your business, this might be through chatting to your customers face to face, on the phone or in online chat, and this can be invaluable for insights into who your audience is, and what they need from you.

Data can help you to get your customer better than anyone, that is what will help your business to succeed. It will tell you what keeps customers coming back and what to continue to do, or to refine in your processes.

What are the biggest tech innovations coming in ecommerce?

There was discussion about VR technology that would let you see what a certain lamp or piece of furniture would look like in your house by uploading photos. There was also talk about a kind of distribution network that predicted what areas of Australia would buy certain products in the next week and shipping products to those areas, before the purchase had even been made, to cut down on shipping times.

The biggest takeaway point was that you don’t need to jump in headfirst to the latest technology for ecommerce. A lot of what will be happening in the next 12 – 24 months is building efficiencies or improving on processes that are existing in your ecommerce store.

Same day delivery is going to be a reality within a couple of years, so it is good to have a plan for this, and if you are planning to sell overseas, it is recommended that you have a distribution centre located in those areas, due to the inefficiencies with shipping and lead times when shipping from Australia.

What do the most successful businesses do?

The most successful businesses experiment and build on campaigns that work for them. These are the businesses that are scaling the fastest. They are not afraid to continually send out experimental campaigns and measuring how effective they are.

They test landing pages, campaigns, advertising opportunities and anything else that can give them a good return on their investment, and they put their money in those initiatives that worked the best.

Why does mobile convert less effectively than desktop?

The basic fact of the matter is that people on mobile are browsing. They are reading the news, they are floating around a few social channels, they are distracted. Although mobile visitors account for 50 % of site traffic to ecommerce stores, they only account for 30 % of transactions.

This is because the intent is different on mobile, and because people are more trusting on desktops generally. In terms of mobile user experience and conversion, you basically want to get the sale as quickly as possible, so it is best to design your site accordingly.

There is new technology that is allowing people to buy directly from social media such as Facebook and Instagram, and things like Apple or Google Pay allow customers to buy with a single click in a dynamic checkout which can help to increase conversion on mobile.

Exciting times to be in ecommerce

The best piece of advice I got from this very informative panel was to have fun. It is supposed to be fun, and your customers will love you, if you are authentic and show them your personality.

It is a great time to be in ecommerce. The future is bright.

Get in touch if you need any help with the design or development of your ecommerce website.