General mistakes and suggestions for eCommerce project planning

Nowadays, more and more business are focusing on the online market, which makes the word "eCommerce" more popular, comparing to the eCommerce market 5 to 7 years ago, nowadays, more  onlinestores are developed, and the channels for the leads generation also increased with the HOT social media sites coming into everyone's life.

As a project manager working in this digital industry for almost 9 years, I have been managed 50+ eCommerce projects since 2005 for different size business, from small projects like a 2-3 months project for entreprenuer and startup company to 1-2 years project for clients such as Nike, Dell, Johnnie Walker, working as a PM whose responsibility is to convert the marketing strategies and plan into real working products,  I experienced every detail changes happening to the industry.

With more and more people realize the importance of the user experience design in the eCommerce industry, the business transformation from the past that customer is looking for products from the sellers where sellers doesn't have to spend much effort on marketing their products and services, to now where the sellers have to actively do the marketing and win back the customers with whatever they need to do, is good for the customers, as they could compare the same product from different suppliers and make their decision to buy.

For sellers, I saw so many mistakes they made for their online marketing strategy for eCommerce projects, below is a list summarized, hope this list would help any eCommerce starters during their planning:

1. Less environmental scan before the strategy development, there are a lot consultants in the industry who claims that they are experts in eCommerce, they are holding a "system" which they believe will work for any clients no matter which industry they came from and no matter which countries or culture environment the project would be deployed to. My suggestion to the business owners is think about it twice by yourself, asking for the real environment analysis report for the strategy they developed.
2. Not realistic plan, a lot consulting companies could give you a huge budgeting plan but without giving you any KPI, remember to ask for a KPI when they are sending you the proposal, and if you want, check if they could provide you the ROI 
3. Study your own products and services, focusing on the functions or features of the product would give you the skeleton for the strategy to be developed.
4. Let people remember the name, an effective eCommerce strategy is not only about leads generation or conversion rates, one of the indicator is how many customer could remember your name after the 1st purchase.
5. No "Post sale customer service", a lot companies developed their eCommerce strategy without the "post sale customer service", that's why the loyalty program nowadays become more and more popular, if you want your customer come back for the 2nd, 3rd purchase, you must know how to draw them back.
6. if you don't know, whether a customer decides to come back to your online place most depends on their "feelings" when they receiving your product, what you could do to make them feel happy when getting your product is something you might want to think about.
7. Social channels, there are a lot articles regarding the social media marketing for eCommerce projects, everyone knows social media is important, but do you really know how to plan the social media channel for your business? I will come back to this in another blog.

Hope these points above could serve as spur to your eCommerce strategy development, for more articles, please visit my blog