FAQ: All

Question 1

What analytics tools should an online store have?

Accepted Answer

Analytics tools are programs that, via tracking codes placed on the site, collect and forward information about user behavior on our store. The market offers several analytics tools — Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica, Adobe Analytics, Facebook Pixel, plus those that primarily provide qualitative data such as Hotjar or Fullstory. All of them aim to fulfil the same purpose: collect information that's useful to us about what's happening on our online store — which products users browse, what they add to the cart, how long they spend on the site, which channels they arrive from. Which tools you pick for your store should depend on your business needs. Web analytics should support business processes and complement sales data, which is why it's so important for the need to implement a particular solution to be justified and to serve the verification of assumptions (about customer segments, product interest, ad performance) or to spark new optimization ideas.
More on effective e-commerce analytics in the article on our blog!

Question 2

What is the role of cookies in e-commerce?

Accepted Answer

Cookies are small text files stored in the browser's directory or in the user's data folder. They are information that helps identify the user on the site. In e-commerce they let us identify users and serve them marketing messages, or store data about products added to the cart: when the customer returns, the products from the previous visit will still be there. Cookies also play a role in ads served across the web — by identifying recipients, advertised content is matched to their internet activity history.

Question 3

What does the structure of online ad campaigns look like?

Accepted Answer

The campaign structure on platforms like Facebook or Google is typically 3 levels, top-down it looks like this:

campaign,
ad set,
ad.

At the campaign level we decide what the advertising goal is: a transaction, or perhaps reach. The choice of goal will also drive the way you pay the ad platform. Once the campaign goal is set you create ad sets: for each one you set the target audience, the budget, and where on the site the ads inside it should run. An ad in turn is a specific creative (graphic, video, or product catalog) inside that ad set.

Question 4

What is an A/B test?

Accepted Answer

An A/B test lets you investigate the popularity of one of two alternatives. For e-commerce stores it consists, for example, of preparing two versions of the store interface — with a given modification and without it — and then routing user traffic 50/50 to each version to check which is preferred and therefore better from a user-experience standpoint. For A/B test results to be valuable, you need to ensure their statistical significance — a measure of the probability that the result reflects reality and that you can draw rational conclusions from it. In other words, you need to rule out that the result is the product of chance from running the study on a sample that is too small or unrepresentative.

Question 5

How to estimate an e-commerce implementation budget?

Accepted Answer

Today's variety of solutions lets you build a platform on your own from a few hundred — sometimes only a few dozen — złotys per month. On the other hand, all of us have heard about multimillion-złoty implementations.
To make budget estimation easier, it's worth taking a cost-based approach. Start by setting a budget range, defining your 'must have' and 'nice to have' requirements for the store, mapping key processes — and only then approach agencies. This will significantly improve the conversation, because it will rest on a solid foundation. It's also worth asking for advice on forums and social media, describing the boundary conditions (limits you cannot cross), otherwise the answers may end up far from the realities of your business.
Also important: technology is not everything. You need to factor in product content (because that's what drives sales), the cost of producing terms of service, privacy policy, and GDPR-compliant legal notes.
If you have extra budget it's worth getting help from a UX and UI specialist; if you don't have the budget for that, don't experiment — go with the standards offered by SaaS or open-source solutions.

Question 6

What is USP?

Accepted Answer

USP — unique selling point (sometimes proposition) — describes the features that set your e-commerce apart from the competition and the benefits the customer gets by shopping with you. A well-crafted USP should be expressible in a single sentence or take the form of short, evocative slogans, e.g. same-day delivery, professional product advice, or free returns. The benefits you present to your customers should respond to their needs, which is why they should be built on data about your target audience and competitive analysis. Bear in mind that a USP is not just an advertising slogan but a promise you can keep: a well-designed one lets you compete on more than just price. Today's e-commerce environment is increasingly competitive, so achieving a unique competitive edge is hard. That's why it pays off to also use the concept of VP (value proposition) — a specially curated set of benefits that addresses the most important customer needs or their biggest pain points.

Question 7

What is dropshipping?

Accepted Answer

Dropshipping is an increasingly popular business model in which the online store owner can sell without having their own warehouse — they only forward orders to a supplier (a wholesaler or manufacturer), who fulfils them and ships directly to the end customer. Even though the process doesn't take place at the store's premises, the e-commerce owner retains full control over transactional documents and the look of shipments.

Dropshipping has many pros and cons, but in terms of the main differentiator, it provides store owners with a low barrier to entry into online sales or a lower cost of acquiring inventory. Manufacturers and wholesalers, in turn, get the chance to expand their business with order-fulfilment services and to win a new source of customers.

Question 8

What is omnichannel?

Accepted Answer

Omnichannel is a sales strategy based on cooperation between all available customer-reach and customer-service channels (online store, mobile app, traditional showroom, social media, etc.). The customer, regardless of the lifecycle stage they're in, encounters consistent communication that meets their needs. This increases their satisfaction with the store and their positive associations with it. That in turn translates into greater engagement with the content the store sends them, and as a result — into greater customer loyalty and a higher CLV (customer lifetime value), the total value to your business across the customer's lifecycle.

Question 9

What competencies do I need in my e-commerce team?

Accepted Answer

Online sales is becoming more complex, and most people already realize that one manager handling everything from A to Z is not enough to comprehensively cover all e-commerce topics.

A good e-commerce must run each of the following functions (besides basics like accounting, finance, or legal) at a sufficiently high level:
 product function — choosing the right products, watching purchase prices and selling prices to keep margins satisfactory,
 operations function — managing logistics, fast shipping, automated billing and returns,
 technology function — selecting the right technologies for the sales system: store engine, ERP, WMS or accounting software, 
 marketing function — valuable, high-quality on-site content, well-optimized SEO, ad copy and social media handling — without quality content you won't get anywhere, even with well-coordinated performance activities (those focused on results), 
 performance function — well-optimized product feeds, ROAS analysis, optimizing for minimum margin, the ability to set the right campaign KPIs, results orientation,
 analytics function — a critical approach to information, understanding the technology to deliver the highest-quality data, the ability to evaluate advanced metrics — e.g. customer retention metrics like CLV,
UX / UI function — keeping visual coherence and intuitive navigation (extremely important now that more and more e-commerce sessions come from mobile, where there is less screen to work with), and the ability to collaborate with developers, who on their own won't plan the look and functionality of the store as well,
 PM function — defining tasks and prioritizing them, managing the work of multiple people, watching deadlines, ensuring effective communication within the team and between the team and external partners.

When specialists own these areas, each of them focuses on maximum optimization of their area. The e-commerce manager, backed by their expert knowledge, is then able to plan and manage the store's strategy better.

Question 10

Why does e-commerce need a Project Manager?

Accepted Answer

Every growing business is increasingly drowning in operational, day-to-day work that it can't function without, and people tend to silo themselves and look only at their slice of the work. Many ideas surface in a company about optimizing existing activities and starting new initiatives, but few of them get done. A good Project Manager is the person who makes sure that what comes up in conversations and emails as loose ideas gets defined and made specific. On top of that, they give those ideas a measurable scope and help shape a team of specialists in a way that achieves the set goals, which may exceed what individual team members can deliver. If you want your online store to keep balance between day-to-day work and growth, and want better execution on the ideas that pop up along the way, your e-commerce definitely needs a Project Manager.

Ecommerce, Magento 2 and AI concepts explained