Every brand has unique needs and goals. When for some the goal is to become a global brand and expand all over the world, for another the focus might be a single market; some brands have a multibrand business model, others B2B2C organization. Commerce Leaders and directors always have a challenge to structure their business and team for commerce success.
Digital-First Leadership is an important part of the commercial success
Every brand needs Digital-First leadership, brands, retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers and multibrand global enterprises. Clear commerce ownership helps brands oversight of the digital business and the teams. Digital-first leadership creates a structure that enables faster growth, and allows teams to operate more efficiently.
Different models to operate digital commerce
Typically companies use some of these models to operate their eCommerce: Centralized, Distributed, Center of Excellence or a Hybrid model.
Centralized Model
Small businesses typically use centralized model, where one dedicated team coordinates all commercial activities, for example merchandising, marketing, SEO, analytics, and development. Usually this model is ideal for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Start-ups, they can launch ecommerce faster, but at the same time it’s more difficult to scale and expand to new markets.
Distributed Model
In a distributed model, each business unit typically manages their own activities. For example a brand manufacturer who has their own Direct-to-Consumer business model, and Wholesale for business customers. The distributed model gives freedom for business units to manage their own UX design, features, and integrations. But it can be challenging for brands to manage strategy across business units.
Center of Excellence Model
Center of Excellence is a core team of digital specialists who test, deploy, and manage eCommerce technologies. The Team focuses on creating guidelines and best practices for all business lines of the organisation. Their main goal is to improve Customer Experience and gain competitive advantage. Usually the Center of Excellence Model helps brands to grow faster and to expand to new markets.
Hybrid Model
A hybrid model approach combines independence of the distributed model with the oversight and general guidance of a centre of excellence model. Hybrid models build an organisation structure that allow separate business units to have unique experiences, while they follow the best practices set by a centralised team of experts.
Strategy unifies the team together
Whether you’re a start-up Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brand or you are an enterprise organisation, the key roles of commerce are the same.
All starts with your strategy and goals, including the technology roadmap and your product and marketing initiatives. Once your development team or commerce partner deploy the new feature or capabilities, your User Experience (UX) and design team ensure that everything is easy for your customers. Marketing and Merchandising strategies drive customers to your online store, and help drive loyalty. Development team/partner ensures that platform, order management and third-party applications are streamlined and as efficient as possible.
Key roles of a successful eCommerce team
As Creg Selkoe (Founder of Karmaloop) said, three pillars for success are team, team, and team. Every successful brand needs a group of individuals that fits the team. Successful ecommerce businesses need marketers who drive high quality traffic to your online store, merchandisers who make your products shine, and a User Experience Designer to build customer experiences and loyalty.
Marketing
Traffic and high conversion rate is not an accident, they are the result of a marketing strategy that works. Brand KPIs should include everything, from email marketing to optimised product detail pages and product discovery. Marketing contains many activities and Commerce leaders have to determine who is the right person to be responsible for them or whether you need to open new roles.
Typical Marketing Activities includes:
- Customer Acquisition
- Content Management
- Performance Marketing
- Customer Data Management
Merchandising
Merchandisers have deep knowledge of buyer personas, industry trends, and product details. A talented digital merchandiser can optimise the storefront to drive more sales. A digital merchandiser ensures that buyers find what they are looking for and the storefront shows the right product recommendations for the right customers.
Typical Merchandising Activities Includes:
- Product Images and Descriptions
- Inventory Planning
- Personalization
- Product Search and Discoverability
UX Design
Nearly ninety percent of consumers agree that the customer experience a brand provides is just as important as its product or service. UX design is a key to ecommerce success.
UX Design activities includes:
- Customer Experience
- User research and Planning
- Customer Journey optimization
Storefront Development
Your frontend development team or partner improve customer experience by way of JavaScript, HTML, React and CSS. Developers are responsible to keep brands storefront performing efficiently as possible, deploy and integrate solutions from brands technology roadmap.
Day-to-Day Development activities includes:
- Code review
- Technical requirements
- Third-party applications
- Operational Support
- QA testing
Digital Commerce Advisor is a full-service commerce consulting partner, with capabilities that include consulting, commerce application implementation, systems integration, technology services, and managed services.
Digital Commerce Advisor combines extensive industry experience, deep technical expertise, and know-how in the B2C and B2B commerce, to create customer experiences that engage and convert customers.