 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Recover and Rise. This is our fifth webinar in the series I'm really pleased to welcome you today especially those people who have met this morning at the business exhibition that's fantastic. My name is Cheryl Tipton, I'm here on behalf of Freedom Works as you can see on my banner behind who are one of the companies involved in this brilliant series but before we carry on and I introduce our speaker and we talk about the series I'm just going to pop you over to Nikita who's going to just talk us through the Remo platform for anybody who has not used this platform before. So Nikita are you there? Hello. Hope you're all doing well so I'm just going to run through a few housekeeping points for Remo this is your first time using it so to move table you simply double click the table and it will move you around there and then to turn your camera and microphone in the toolbar along the bottom of the page and to refresh your page if you have any problems if you have any issues with your camera and microphone and you can also use the tile view button in the bottom of the toolbar to make people larger on screen and double click the help desk if you need any technical support myself will be based over there so come over there if you have any questions any problems and I'll be able to help. If you also have any questions you can also put them in the Q&A area just on the right hand side of your screen so you can just post them in there if you have any questions during the event. All right guys take care. Thanks ever so much Nikita so I've just got a couple of slides to share with you before we start if you just bear with me one moment share my screen with you. So here we are recovery and rise and activating your online presence we're on series one getting online but bookings are being taken for series two for customers and marketing by creative bloom and then systems and productivity and growth and expansion by always possible so if you have enjoyed this series and I'm sure you have please make sure you book on for this series that follow this and the series that follow that and so keep going with us because it's all really good information so today we're talking about e-commerce with Malcolm Duffett Malcolm is absolutely brilliant e-commerce specialist who's been in the industry for 25 plus years he's also one of our digital champions so he's got lots of hints and tips today about how you can improve or how you can start selling online and then also how you can improve and get more customers which is absolutely fab so without further ado I'm going to invite Malcolm up onto the stage with me and hopefully pass over here he is Malcolm brilliant welcome good afternoon good afternoon good afternoon hello everybody uh welcome to uh to the session today shall I shall I put the deck yeah I shall I shall love and leave you all right thank you right so hello everybody um and again welcome to today's uh a webinar on e-commerce as part of recovery and rise for West Sussex County Council um I'm going to jump straight into a little bit of background about myself um as Cheryl just said I've got 20 odd years now in e-commerce and digital I've worked agency side helping e-commerce businesses grow and develop websites I've worked client side as head of e-commerce in food and drink brands um and I'm now an independent consultant and I work with a range of different clients and help them grow uh e-commerce channel and and sell more to consumers um and as Cheryl also mentioned I'm a digital champion part of the Coaster Capital uh a champion group supporting local businesses uh to do better online um what I actually do uh is I help businesses uh understand identify and understand and then deliver against their e-commerce goals um so I help with strategy I help with understanding uh existing performance uh historic or or current um troubleshoot um I help with on-site customer journey um strategy um marketing so customer acquisition and then customer conversion and retention um and also work a lot with their internal teams and hopefully transfer a little bit of knowledge if I can to their teams to help them uh improve as they go forward um anyway enough about me on to the more interesting part of today's discussion which is all about e-commerce um which I think looks a bit like this um for me it's a big world it's complex um it is about selling your products and services but there's a whole load of other things behind the scenes it's not just about design it's not just about technology um it is about marketing there's a lot of metrics it's about your your traffic it's about social media it's about getting customer loyalty it's about payment platforms it's about a lot of things um and a mature e-commerce business is likely to be monitoring all of the things on screen plus probably a whole bunch more at the same time um but today it's more about sort of starting off beginning and maybe what to do once you've got an e-commerce site or service up and running so today's talk we're going to talk through a few uh following four points um it's focused on uh a little bit on customer expectations and what consumers might be expecting from you whether you're a product or service-based business doing e-commerce um we'll take a walk through some of the considerations that you might need to go through to begin uh embarking on an e-commerce journey uh we're going to look at how you might approach building a new e-commerce website and then for anybody who's already got an existing e-commerce site um I'll talk a little bit about some of the ideas for growth and where that comes from uh when running e-commerce so whilst I mean the majority of my background is product focused e-commerce but a lot of things that we'll talk about is uh extremely relevant seal to service-based e-commerce bookings travel etc um so let's get started with the first slide which is consumer expectations so I would imagine that we are all at some point of whether we're in business or we've got our consumer heads on we are all customers we're all consumers we all buy things online and and is and is very simplest we've got some fairly minimal expectations uh these days um for the products and services that we buy online so whether you're buying well regardless of where you're buying from if you're buying a product uh on the web um there's a very minimum as a consumer you you want the price you pay to be fair uh or the one that you're willing to pay for that product and you want the quality of the product that you've purchased to be as advertised and you would expect that the delivery uh service that has been sold to you is also as advertised so if the company says that um uh the product's gonna your order is going to arrive in two days you you will expect it to arrive in two days um and I think beyond those and suddenly our our our interpretation our feeling of that that particular brand or product will will diminish for everything that you fall outside of those expectations and then from a service-based e-commerce level whether you're doing like software as a service or you've got membership or booking systems so if you're delivering service-based e-commerce then minimum expectations these days is that there's a frictionless setup so if you're booking to come on a training course it's easy and very simple um and then once you've paid for that service e-commerce then using it is very easy as well so if you're running online training courses that you can access them at any time um that there's limited or no technical issues um that there's an element of self-service so again with service-based e-commerce I want to be able to log in I want to be able to do the training as and when I as and when I want to suit me and then also that I've got an element of control over the service that that I've been purchasing so whether it's on a subscription whether that software or product based subscription I want to be able to pause and cancel that or stop or upgrade um or within usually my control um and often this always needs technology to support all of these functions and features and then lastly um modern e-commerce is all about being cross-device so whether you're selling products that are being physically shipped to consumers or whether you've got um a training platform expect that your customers are going to be coming to you on mobile and on desktop and on tablet or potentially other or maybe even on their tv screens so we live in a cross-device world so whatever your service or product offering you want to try and make sure that the experience is as similar as it can be across all devices um so my first a bit of advice for this first slide really is to be your own consumer um what would you expect from your business in terms of its delivery mechanics or its its quality its products and your pricing um because if you think that your customers are likely to think that and probably a little bit more so be your own customer first um before you begin then setting up your own world of e-commerce um moving on to the next point about some business considerations to um think about when embarking on e-commerce um there's a number of points to get through so um what are your business targets for running e-commerce so um it's easy to say global domination of course um but i think a more realistic approach would be um if you're already in existing product-based business and you're looking to start selling those products online what amount of revenue do you do you expect to come from that channel um is it 100 percent is it just 10 percent if you're a more of a B2B style of business and you're looking to embark on e-commerce for the for the first time maybe you're you're trying to reach a new audience or it's now you've got to focus on how to sell to consumers as opposed to business if you're maybe doing trade business so um set something up even if it's just you want to add 10 percent of overall revenue to come from a new e-commerce channel that's a great target as well but set some targets set some business ambitions for your first 12 months um one of the things i'll talk about a little bit later is about measurement of performance so if you don't know what you're aiming for you'll never know how to measure against whether you've been successful at that or close to it or far from it um secondly who are your markets or where are your markets um where do you think you're going to be servicing people so if you're selling products are you looking to uh just the region just locally even is it just to service um Sussex-based customers is it regional or national are you looking at Europe or even international customers um if you are looking at sort of European and international obviously in the days in the current climate shipping delivery uh taxation um you know delivery times all need to be considered as part of where you're going to reach and if you're starting out in e-commerce particularly product-based e-commerce um you're also going to have to look at facilities to get your products to all of those markets um if you're delivering stuff online so you're doing digital e-commerce so whether that's training or memberships of some sort or bookings of any sort um again you've got potentially global reach but to the next point who's your actual audience so if you're if you're running a um a restaurant in Brighton and you're taking booklets you're unlikely to have an audience a huge audience appeal in Australia or or America for example so who actually are your audience and then from a product-based perspective um you know uh again who's your real customer um I've worked with quite a few clients who said well everybody's a potential customer and whilst obviously it's true um it's not the case of of of most businesses most businesses have a particular profile of customer that they try and reach through their marketing because that's who their products and services are designed for um next up is a a point about products and services so what are you offering your audience once you know who they are um what is the range of products or service that you've got available um what is the what is your npd or what's your new product development cycle like what new products are you bringing out to service that audience um what sort of bundles or tiers or grouped products or services might you be able to offer and again and if you're again if you're in product-based e-commerce um what sort of gifting options or even are you a giftable you know product um you know do you work in that um at space or marketplace where maybe you're going to be affected by peak seasons like Christmas or Easter or um Valentine's or any other peaks through the year um and also look at the price points um I think coming back to bundling and pricing is quite an interesting one when you're looking at service-based e-commerce we've probably all visited websites or looked at service offerings where they've had a tiered structure of services available there could be free model there could be like a bronze silver and gold tier package all of which have got different bolt-ons or added features or added extras and they're all set at different prices and all of those are to help hone in um you know I guess the best the best value to the consumer is usually the best value to the business as well in terms of profit or price point so make sure that we are working um you're giving options to your visitors um if you're selling one product at a fixed price it's usually a harder sell so I would say if you have got one product at a fixed price or one service try and build a couple of tiers around it because if that's your best model you might be able to get a slightly reduced option for some for some customers as an entry point or you could have a super premium version of that same model at a slightly higher price point um from a uh I guess from a couple of practical points of view doing e-commerce you have to consider as a business how you're going to service um customers um when you start selling online you will have pre and post sales inquiries particularly on product based businesses people do ask questions whether you've got a live chat box on your website or people or just an email or a phone number people will ask questions they like to ask questions in some ways it's a way to test um a brand that there's somebody there behind the screen you know let's not forget that the world of digital is all screen based you know you can't speak to somebody on the phone or it's harder to speak to people uh when dealing um digitally so consider who would service any customer service inquiries and that then also includes things like returns or cancellations or even dare I say refunds if needed um there's a little bit of customer service around all aspects of e-commerce that's going to need somebody um to to handle all of those inquiries um when looking at fulfillment um again this is more product e-commerce um than service based but um once your orders have started to come in who's going to pick them how are they going to get packed what sort of packaging what sort of protection might be needed for to send your products out um and who's going to send it which courier services which delivery services um will support your business and get all of your products to the customers that have placed their orders and talking about delivery um you then need to think about uh choosing uh delivery partners um delivery methods uh maybe looking at offering free delivery either for certain products or maybe even for certain order value types um and that's all part of this as you're making process for the consumer to to work out whether or not they're willing to pay a price point so just because you're being charged for example six pounds fifty for a courier uh by the courier it may be that your customer base isn't ready to pay six pounds fifty so you might want to uh you know put a more palatable delivery price in for your customers paying online and actually build a little bit that into your pricing and your margin um overall but um all of these are if you like pre considerations that I would ask you to look at um before then going into the process of building e-commerce uh which actually is the next slide so um looking at building e-commerce today's webinar is mostly focused on owned e-commerce so this is where you run your own uh e-commerce website you're getting traffic to it you're trying to sell you're trying to convert all of that traffic into customers um but I'm going to talk you through a couple of platform options or some uh platform options as well as a couple of other spaces that you may want to consider um but an important factor for me about owned e-commerce is when you run your own website and you're doing transactions on your own website selling services or products to that audience or that or that traffic it's you are building up an audience you're talking to them you're building up a relationship hopefully you're signing them up to email marketing and things like that there are other aspects of selling online where maybe you don't get to build that relationship up um so this talk or this next slide is based on having really running from owned e-commerce um so I'm going to talk a little bit about a few um platforms um that we can look at when selling online again most of this is around um product based e-commerce um they all have pros and cons um so the logos on screen represent a number of different platforms that are reasonably well known for running e-commerce sites we've got things like Shopify, Regento, WooCommerce, Wix and BigCommerce to name a few now not all e-commerce platforms are created equal and they will have different benefits obviously some different feature sets and actually different costs associated with them as well so running through a couple of examples things like Shopify, BigCommerce and Wix are all um reasonably self-service reasonably low cost but software as a service so you'll pay monthly for a subscription to access most of the features maybe with a couple of premium updates here and there um they'll be hosted so you're really paying a rental fee for um you know the platform in in its entirety and it'll enable you to run your e-commerce website kind of from from start to finish really um like a platforms like Regento and WooCommerce WooCommerce is actually a plugin for WordPress you may have already have a word existing WordPress site WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin for WordPress um and if you are running a WordPress site you'll probably be aware that you have a specific set of hosting requirements um you may need some technical support from maybe a third party or an agency who may have designed your website in the first place um so Regento is also another platform that would require a specific set of hosting requirements um and therefore usually with specific hosting requirements often but not always comes additional support needs um you know service updates technical and security updates so um on the next slide I'm going to be talking about kind of some of the features you'll want to think about and when I when I talk to clients about starting or embarking on e-commerce I normally ask a business to set out what you would like first and then find a platform to match that don't try and match what you want to do to a specific platform that's out there um so build your requirements first and then have a look at what's out there that can fulfill that so um alongside owned e-commerce there are other options um for selling online um we could look at setting up social shopping so you can have a store on facebook uh instagram now has shoppable instagram uh shoppable posts and actually an instagram store that you can create in your social media accounts um and there's also marketplace selling marketplace selling place like amazon not on the high street friends of jewels even ebay is considered the marketplace uh environment um and marketplaces can be really great actually um for certain products they can access an audience that pre-exists so all of those all of those companies that I've mentioned they already have a you know an existing audience that's coming to those websites all day every day uh whereas if you've got your own website on your own domain and running your own e-commerce store you may not have that in inbound traffic immediately um the flip side to running marketplace sales is that unlike owned e-commerce you don't get to have that relationship with your customers so you may be selling products um but you don't necessarily you won't be getting necessarily email signups or having any any means to engage with those customers and often those uh those marketplaces may well be fulfilling to the customer at the same time and there will be other fees as well um but they are they can be great for brand awareness as a saying for getting some immediate um customer reach um from those marketplace areas um I guess the next slide is really then about how you consider or how you can approach in-house or outsourced versions of building your new e-commerce website um there are obviously clear pros and cons with each and it's going to depend on um you know budgets um in-house resource uh in-house skills um if we're looking at in-house building then it's going to be lower cost but it's going to be longer time to deliver probably depending on your own background and skill sets um what's great about a lot of existing e-commerce platforms are out there including the ones that I've mentioned that there's a lot of really good kind of best practice standard pre-built themes that you can go in and change a few colors in and suddenly it looks like it's your own you know your own brand and once you've added your logo it's a great starting point for doing sort of fairly low cost and quite easy uh setups um it's likely to be a longer lead time if you're building in-house and it will depending on again your team size or your again skill sets in-house it's going to be a steeper learning curve than getting it outsourced but if budget is a key factor then there are plenty of options to be able to start and do e-commerce you know relatively quickly and relatively painlessly um and in fact at the end of the uh of this presentation today I'll take you through a little bit of a case study where that's actually been the case um with you're doing it in-house you may have to consider what the support and hosting features are for any of the e-commerce platforms that I've already discussed whether it's something that you're going to need extra technical support on or whether it's kind of bundled in as part of a service like Shopify or BigCommerce. If you're looking at outsourcing then there will be a higher cost obviously but with higher cost does usually come a shorter lead time so if you really want to get to market let's say by middle of October so you can take advantage of this this this Christmas season then perhaps you know investing is a wise move um you'll get experience and know how that maybe you don't have in-house and you will also get access to um you know skills and experience that will that will get some bespoke design or some bespoke features that might be more applicable to your business and that you may not be able to get out of the box um again then maybe you see an additional cost for any support or hosting requirements that that may be needed but I think my overarching I guess comment about deciding on how you might approach building e-commerce is one really of well when we're talking about costs is think of your e-commerce channel it is a revenue generator so in much as the same way if I was selling shirts in a store I'd have to invest in a store uh rent rates uh staff fit out stock all of these things it would cost me a good sum of money to set up a physical retail store here in in Brighton um so why wouldn't I invest some money in creating a a digital storefront to sell my goods as well um so um yeah whilst there are lots of low cost options consider what might be the best fit for your business um alluding to what I said earlier about kind of approaching um an e-commerce build project uh with a scope first rather than trying to fit it to a platform um the next couple of slides I just wanted to talk through some of the thought processes you might want to go through uh to sort of build that scope whether you're doing it internally it's good to have a bit of a project scope to know that you want to try and fit to and if also if you're going outsourced to a third party to build your e-commerce website then at least you've got a bit of a scoping document to pass them and discuss um so of course one of the key elements is going to be around design what's the site going to look like how's that going to get built which product categories might you want to be adding to the store how our customer's going to navigate through the store what are the content contact information or even product FAQs or support materials might you need to tell the story of your business and of your products and services again as previously said getting your products right and the pricing right is really key for me but once we're beyond the pricing and maybe uh points what else do we need to put together to sell our products well we need some really compelling photography um particularly in a product e-commerce environment um so we might want you know classic on white product charts but we might want some products in use we might want what we call lifestyle image uh we may want to have some supporting videos or description if you're selling training or our business services like instructional videos or little info videos or gifts could be really great to show you what's available you know behind the movership paywall um what other features does your website potentially need to uh either attract well not to attract but to convert customers once they're there do you want to be able to offer discount coupons do you want to be able to sell gift cards so people can buy cash equivalents to give to somebody else to come back to buy on your website um features to help you upsell and cross sell products um do you need to have a subscription um feature on your website to take money on on a monthly basis for either for access or for repeat purchase of a product like i know a tea or coffee subscription for example um or do you need a membership area that needs a paywall in front of it to then access an area for other content or training or materials that you're that you're offering as your as your service or a booking system um it's always great to add some proof points i find to uh to any website but certainly to a site that you are looking to sell a product you want to convince your audience that your products or services are worth buying um and then the thing that that gives you that credibility is is really important particularly if i'm a new customer not really i've only just heard about your product or service and i'm coming to your website for the first time so things like awards any accreditations any endorsements perhaps you've been covered in local or even national media and you can you can leverage that press coverage either with press logos or the article itself um and then other trust points as we call them for consumers to know that uh well proof points are things that other people say about your business whereas trust points are things that you say about your products or service so you might want to offer things like well very openly a money back guarantee or or some sort of or warranty levels you're adding in customer reviews or you're talking about your own sustainability or your supply chain to build up credibility and maybe even authentic authenticity for your products and services and then the final point on this slide is is you have to consider again based on your market where you're selling maybe even currencies um you know any tax implications for for selling and how that's going to be recorded or even leadied within your store um in today's world of privacy and gdpr we want to make sure that we're covering in terms of a good privacy policy terms of service that's going to include things like um say warranty periods returns periods even more information on delivery make sure you've got a useful set of terms of terms of service for your business um and then continuing on to uh uh the next slide and payment options now for customers is a huge part of doing e-commerce online in terms of flexibility you know back in the day uh when when we were first doing e-commerce 20-odd years ago credit cards were pretty credit and debit cards were pretty much the only way of paying online um now we've got paypal we've got we want mobile payments we want to buy on credit pay for like clana uh maybe recharge and subscription space services so again think of the payment types that uh that customers are likely to be wanting to pay with and make sure that they're included in your scope um we've already talked a little bit about shipping but go through them what's it actually going to cost how are you going to be charging for for shipping to your consumers is it by the amount of money that they've spent on your website is it based on the weight of the order if you've got maybe particularly heavy items um making sure that you capture email sign up um for customers visiting your store whether maybe not but maybe a checkout but also on other pages of your website talked about it earlier about having a mobile friendly website so uh in the modern day um well i might be browsing on my mobile but i might come and buy on your desktop site so my experience on both has to be very very similar so make sure whether it's uh your own platform or you're going um to a third party that you're talking about mobile friendliness um very important and then finally um in terms of a measurement and performance um understanding make sure you've got something like google analytics installed um so you can confirm the tracking well and confirm that it's tracking your purchases and revenue through the site as your data builds up on the website you'll be able to see behaviors and you would you'll be able to see patterns um which will then help you grow the business forward um getting that measured in the first place is the key part though getting it installed and just making sure it's tracking all that data um and now just to the final section are really about growing e-commerce um in order if you've got well if you've just built a website or and you're looking to understand how to grow e-commerce we're going to talk about that in a sec but if you just built a new website as well um there's a couple of key things for me to um to go through uh before we get to the issue of growing sales online one's the marketing funnel just very brief introduction to that um having a look at some core e-commerce metrics and then understanding the levers for growth and and how those metrics kind of inter intertwine or combine um so first of all you may have seen this before which is called the marketing funnel um if you're starting out with a brand new website and you've just launched it on your own domain who's going to come um you maybe you've got an existing customer base that you can leverage that's great um but otherwise you will have to embark on some form of marketing activities to generate interest to generate awareness and generate traffic to the site so at the top of final as we call it is that the awareness phase so this is making people aware of your brand or of your products and services bringing them to the website and maybe or maybe them getting them to uh sign up for email is is part of their consideration phase or they're looking at products on your pay or maybe even you know sorry looking at a few products on your website and actually uh uh engaging with your website is that during their consideration phase we ultimately want to get them to the conversion phase and they become a customer um if we can get them to repeat buy from us then they hopefully become a loyal customer and then if we can get them to repeat purchase and talk about your business and product and customer and services sorry to their own peers then we get them into a phase of what's called advocacy but understanding that there's a lot of work to bring customers through the door is quite important and that may well segue into the next series of talks through the recovery and rise program about customer marketing but if we can if you can remember this funnel shape this is all the work that's ahead of any business embarking on generating sales online um for me there are the five core e-commerce metrics um there are a bunch of metrics and performance analysis tools that we might use to kind of look at a mature e-commerce business but at its fundamental base conversion rate is the most important one for me so out of every hundred customers three people are placing an order so that's three out of a hundred or a three percent conversion rate so we need to understand how many people of the traffic we're getting are placing an order um the average order value is another great one we can use that as a lever as we'll talk about in the next few slides um but how much people are spending per transaction on average on your website we also want to keep a track on traffic or sessions so the number of users that are coming through our website and we can find that in google analytics and keeping a track of order volume for me is really key um it's not a performance metric as such but what it will tell me is how how how much resource we need in our warehouse or fulfillment centers to be able to meet the the expected volume so keeping an eye on the actual number of orders coming through is really important for me and of course our revenue uh we always want to be tracking on a monthly basis uh typically a monthly basis how much revenue the the website is generating over time that will build up a seasonal picture possibly it'll appear at at least it'll build up a picture of what your monthly revenues look like um there's a few slides to finish on um which leads me to the the question that I most often asked um probably in the history of everything ever which is how do we increase my uh how do we increase our online sales um it is the question that everybody asks so there are only three ways to grow online sales that I know of which is to increase customers so that means getting more customers through the door or at least traffic to your website in this instance the second way is to increase the average order spend so great we're getting customers to the site they look like they're ready to buy but how do we get them to either split to spend more um and the third way to increase repeats so it's great we can bring a customer to the website and they can buy once from us excellent but what about coming back to buy how do we get that to happen um do we even have a product that is or a service that is you know a repeatable product or service um high value high quality furniture sales don't have a very high repeat rate typically uh whereas food and drink sector coffees and teas you would expect people to become about quite a lot even fast fashion can be high repeats so those are for me the three areas to be uh to be understanding um I'm going to quickly look through each of them so I can see the clock's slightly ticking now but increasing customers um there's a handful of ways to do it um I always say to um uh my clients or I like to establish first what their conversion rate is at the moment and if it's um below an expected average then we need to do work on that first there's no point in spending a lot of money or time or effort bringing loads more people to your website if you're not already converting the traffic that you're getting so raising that conversion rate to an acceptable level is one great way to just increase customers and you don't even have to increase any traffic to this website as a result um next up would then be to increase the the traffic that we're getting to the website both free via free channels as well as paid channels um but also improving the traffic quality to your website super important so um maybe a cheesy example but let's say I sell apples um if a customer is looking for oranges um and I'm kind of advertising that I sell oranges but I really only sell apples then the quality of traffic that's coming to my website isn't very high because I've got customers expecting oranges where I'm really selling apples um I could be marketing that I'm a fruit seller which is great that's also going to bring bring me fruit interested customers but if I only sell apples I'm still not going to make as many sales as trying to target the people that I only know want to buy apples so bringing the traffic quality up is really important to a website and if we're lucky enough to have a good product or service and a good customer base that wants to um well that become advocates they will start to refer and that's another way to generate more traffic to your website if I'm really happy with a product or service I will tell my friends and family and they potentially then might become customers of uh of your of your business um looking at increasing average spend um they do say that the most profitable question of all time belongs to mcdonald's which of course is would you like fries with that um increasing average spend on a website is very important um we can get a customer to the point of purchase um but at that point they're probably that they're at their most prime to spend more and buy more we've all done it ourselves at the till buying the the snack but or the little gizmo at the till when we're making our first purchase and it's exactly the same idea here so can we upgrade or upsell them at the time that they're ready to make their purchase can we either incentivize in some way with an extra value add spend an extra 10 pounds to get something else or to receive this on top or to get the upgraded version it's all to do with merchandising and pricing on the site um do we have a good pipeline a new product development pipeline um that's consistently maybe all regularly bringing out new products that's going to make me uh you know want to buy those and then finally looking at increasing repeat purchase rates um this is uh uh uh i'd say this is uh the harder one of all because this requires converting the customer first and then expecting them or hoping that they're going to come back to buy so at the very basic level you need great products and great service to keep customers happy and to keep them coming back so for me that's kind of one of the you know the number one priority um not having a great product in the first place does not engender me to come back and make another purchase from that business so having a great product getting it delivered on time as Brett said at the very the very top of this talk is really important anything that's going to elevate my perception of of this business and its products will likely mean you're fairly high in my mindset when i want to come back and buy that type of product again um having a positive new product development cycle is really important i've already said you know it's new news you know if i've already bought the red jumper from you then i might be interested in the blue jumper when it comes out next month um so tell me about the new jumper bring me back and email marketing is is the perfect medium for bringing back um existing customers um and again sophisticated email marketing programs are well are exactly that they're very uh sophisticated they work on lots of different flows and understanding of consumer and purchase behaviors to bring you hopefully back at the right time um and all of these things hopefully means that you're building what i call brand love and therefore advocacy and advocacy is going to raise repeat rates and also introduce as well as introducing in fact new customers to your business um and my final uh slide on this is there is actually a compound effect you can uh you can see um again going back to this first uh topic areas first question about how do i increase more sales most people come at it with the idea that i need to double my traffic i need to i need to get 10 times the traffic through the doors to increase my sales so i can definitely counter that with the following um performance is that i know and this has been measured and count is very easy to calculate yourselves but if you if you were to increase traffic just by 20 percent and if you managed to get your conversion rate up by 20 percent and your average spend up by 20 percent you would generate an additional 73 percent of revenue um so it's not just about pushing everything down one channel of let's say traffic growth it's about multiple plate spinning eventually uh ultimately i think to to increase across the board to really raise um the levels of revenue um super quick uh there um um a little case study of the client that i work with so i'm based in brighton um and i've been working with brighton gin now for last three years i think uh two and a half three years anyway um if you've not tried them already by the way they really uh they do have a great gin or a great set of gins um but a little bit of background about them um their business started in 2014 and they've got a great reputation in sort of the on-trade hospitality retail you know pubs restaurants um uh background and been running for like seven eight years now um they had at the time of me starting work with them you know good social engagement uh engagement good you know really strong brand appeal and a really authentic story all about quality of ingredients you know um or everything's hand made um everything's hand labeled hand waxed it's a really great uh authentic story in that sense um originally they had a wordpress website and they bolted on in-house woo commerce as a plug-in and that was around 2017 um and at the time i started working with them in 2018 um they had i mean for the industry anyway a below average conversion rate of about one one point nine percent um they had a small team and you know they're still a small and hard grafting team to this day um so there was an element of a lack of um you know they didn't have a large budget and that's to be fair and they didn't have a large resource and there was also this element of well we don't know what we don't know we've got e-commerce we're doing e-commerce but we don't know what good looks like we're not sure you know and we'd like to do more we'd like to sell more online um so there's an appetite to learn and grow um whilst their products are great it was reasonably limited you know a couple of gins some glasses a couple of bits of bar friendly merchandise like bar runners and bits and pieces so you know a nice kind of small a nice but small selection of products um and of course like a lot of small businesses they needed organic or low budget growth really to sort of take them to the next phase so um i started working with them in 2018 um and still work with them today and we worked very hard and done a lot of things um and the results are as follows so when i went in there um they couldn't afford a new website or to do things kind of completely different and there was no no no room for a full sort for a full revamp so i went in and we i had took a look at their original website and their original journey um we made some improvements to the user journey we made quite a few improvements to the mobile navigation experience which improved things quite dramatically for their audience did some work with SEO um their email marketing was fairly limited so we increased and improved their email marketing activities and that generated quite a good amount of um repeat rates um i also got them to invest a little bit in expanding their range we put some gift packs together in a nice box a few different bundles at different price points and price tiers to kind of um especially at gifting times of year to appeal to everybody along the price range um and actually in that first 12 months we managed to increase the conversion rate by just over 100 so we took it up to 3.9 from 1.9 um and that on the next bullet point that actually enabled us it doubled the revenue but from no extra traffic so we doubled the conversion rate and suddenly we didn't need to go and get any more traffic we were already double our revenue which is a great story for for one year's worth of work um but like all businesses you know that that's only one step forward where they want us to grow progress change get get even better so having kind of improved um on that level we were able to what are we now 21 so last year 2020 uh we managed to finally kind of re-platform to um Shopify in fact so there's two two two platforms that I've discussed today have both been used by Brighton Gin um so we've got a much more e-commerce oriented rather than an old brochure website with e-commerce tacked on we've now inverted it to it's an e-commerce website with brand bits tacked on if that makes sense um so it's much more mobile friendly um there was a new design done we added things like mobile payments as well uh to really help the mobile audience get to grips uh but also at the same time we took a look at kind of some of their production processes and accounting and order processing um and managed to build in some apps and connectivity into things like accounting systems you know um plugging in label um label apps that goes that send all the orders straight out to their dispatch partners to print all of the labels and the barcodes that do that and suddenly we've not just increased profit a bit you know sales and revenue but we've also increased uh you know the time cost savings in order processing dispatch and accounting at the same time um and that's what over the last probably 12 to 15 months now that's enabled some of the profits that have been generated from the growth over the last um two and a half to three years to now be focused on okay now let's increase traffic so we've got all these good things we've taken all the right steps you know we've generated we've improved repeats we've improved our customer base we've improved our product um offering now now's the time to us to start um you know layering up the traffic so we've been investing in that um and we're now i mean year to date um what have we now september so year to date we're now conversion rates over five percent so considering three two and our three years ago is 1.9 percent so it's a significant increase and the revenue for this year is now forecasted to be six times that of 2018 so it's it's i think it's worth i think these are great results i know the business is happy with them but i think it's worth mentioning that it is not instant you know it has taken two and a half to three years it's taken the work of me and the founder owners and the team in house to all kind of come along the journey to understand it to understand the steps that are needed to grow in this way um but it's proof that it can be done organically as well um you know um apart from the last year um all of that's been organic activity um so um hopefully it's a good testament to you know to to them and their appetite for growth uh and to show that it can be done finally uh just a very quick summary then so today we've talked about the considerations for e-commerce both product and service-based an approach to building e-commerce from planning it out and looking a little bit at different platforms and then a bit of an intro to uh growth on e-commerce um thank you very much for listening today and for your time i know you're all very busy um that's the end of my presentation brilliant thank you ever so much Malcolm if you just take your slides down for me that would be great yeah thank you oops that was a real whistle stop through e-commerce that was brilliant thank you so much there's obviously a lot to pack in there so um the slides will be available afterwards for anybody who would like them because there was a lot of information there um and so much to take in it's such a huge huge subject and we have got absolutely massive questions but that's very little short on time i just wonder if we could maybe do some of the popular ones and then perhaps pick up the rest of the network concession if that's okay with you um are you can you see those q and a sorry do you want me oh no i and i don't that's fine um no let's have a look first one um is it essential to have a chatbot if you're an e-commerce business and if so a chatbot sort of a live chat i think and if so which one would you recommend okay so i'm usually quite agnostic in terms of recommendations of things but in terms of is it essential um in some ways it depends what you're selling and i don't want that to be an evasive answer so chatbots are great if they're really well if you're talking about the bot so an ai version of it as long as they're well programmed to kind of understand and determine what the customer's asking you can take them through a journey to get them to the answer i like chatboxes in general um and i probably prefer them when they're staffed by humans but that might be me being slightly old school about it i don't know um there's nothing worse though than having a chatbox or a chatbot on site that is kind of doesn't get me the outcome that i want as a consumer and there isn't anybody to answer my question as a result so i think i really like them i i i i love them whether they're essential i could argue i'd probably either way but i don't i don't dislike them at all i think they're great but as long as they're well set up or well structured with their with the with the with the like the faqs that are inside or if they're manned okay brilliant um actually this is a really interesting one how easy is it to set up social shopping so shopping on facebook shopping on instagram all these different channels how how easy is that to do your to do yourself i know a few businesses in our audience are new businesses so how easy is it to actually hop online and do that well so i can only talk with any any form of experience about facebook rather than instagram in terms of the shop and it's very easy if you're the if you're the facebook um manager if you're or if you can get administrative rights uh on the facebook side of things it's very easy to go into facebook and set up the store i think it's just one of the left hand menu links literally go in and add all of your products and prices if you work with a platform though some i mean for example Shopify there's also a facebook feed so if you do have an actual e-commerce store you can just take a couple of boxes in Shopify to say add all my products to facebook as well connect your facebook account in fact find your instagram account and it will push it all out there um so uh very straightforward is my is my quick answer to that brilliant no absolutely um i'm wondering whether i should try to fulfill my own orders or use a partner like amazon what question should i ask myself when making the decision volume of orders okay so how how busy are you so if you've got you know there's there's usually going to be a tipping point or a sweet spot where do you know what it's just not kind it's not just it's not time cost effective for us to be doing this in house anymore so and and i don't know you'll be i don't know what you're sending or what what how it costs to fulfill your products at the moment maybe as a general rule you know up to sort of 20 30 orders a day kind of 30 orders a day is an often cited sort of you know tipping point for some people because you know that could potentially be two plus hours per day of somebody's time or two or three hours but is it more cost effective to have them doing something else or you if you if you're doing it yourself um obviously the third party is going to cost you uh you know you know more um so i think it's more of a question it's a volume based question rather than a you know than anything else for me and what works for your business may be slightly different for for some yeah of course it's going to depend on your business and last one if i may um can you recommend any e-commerce sites that have a high conversion rate oh that's a tricky one um well i don't i'm not i don't have access to um all e-commerce websites out there so i don't know but i mean by industry there are some interesting stats um you know so for example um a lot of fashion and fast fashion sites have quite low conversion rates industry wide it's about one and a half percent oddly things like a lot of insurance and financial services are quite high like five to ten percent mostly because that's about people are actively searching for things like insurance and business services that they know they want to buy so that their intent is probably higher to purchase than fast fashion that's much more browse behavior based and i might like it i might go back down i might buy it i might not so again it's kind of very industry specific um i in my former one of my former roles in a coffee brand we had conversion rates of seven percent and that was for coffee and that was on repeat rates that was very high you know but i've seen i've seen low you know again there's no one there's no kind of single answer and there's no there's no best industry either you know if you want to get into something new there's no kind of best industry to choose for me it's always about having a great product and great service and you should always still get you know very healthy conversion rates um to finish on a point there there is a very well um there's a very well shared set of metrics for conversion rates across e-commerce that is if you can hit between two and a half and three and a half percent you're doing fine you know anything lower than that is usually needs improvement and everything above three and a half to five is is usually then good and then you've got the real high flyers that are sort of five percent upwards so there is a range if you like or a tolerance of of conversion rate um but i think as long as this for me all metrics are there to be improved whatever they are we can always do better sure brilliant okay i'm going to stop the questions there because i'm conscious of those people who do need to fly off at one o'clock but we have got a networking session open networking for 30 minutes so if you want to stay on talk to Malcolm get the rest of these questions answered then i know Malcolm you're happy to hang out with us on you so absolutely and also shame this part Malcolm's also one of our digital champions oh yes so um i know i'll come on to that in a minute um but um so Malcolm's also i'm going to say available for one-to-one support that sort of makes you but um if you go through the coast of capital link you can actually sign up to get some more advice and support from Malcolm or any of our digital champions but for now i'll just say okay thank you and we'll see you shortly thank you thanks everyone thank you but if you could just turn your camera off for me for a minute Malcolm that would be brilliant thank and your mike if you can but you might thank you brilliant thank you very much now i know time's kicking on and i know everybody's really busy and i know especially those who need to get back to the business expo that's going on in wording today but just very quickly can i draw your attention to what's happening next week because we've actually got a really um i'm just going to sort of quickly risk through these to so next week next Tuesday uh september 28th we've got a workshop on the visitor economy support we've got three brilliant speakers joe is coming from experience west Sussex um mardi is coming from a very few wines and mike the video bubble who was with us at the beginning of the series is coming back and they're all talking about the visitor economy and how you can work more with the visitor economy and how you can use your digital tools to get online and improve your business so that is next Tuesday and then also very quickly i want to signpost you to these three brilliant business grants uh business hot house which is grant funding and gareth from the business hot house is actually going to be with us a week on thursday um to talk about the grants then we've got low case um which is all about eu funding and um low carbon and climate change promotion opportunities and rise and i'm aware that i'm talking really really quickly um but just to finish off um just to talk about our digital champions these these are um digital experts that you will have support from or you can have support from all you need to do is to click on that little link there cdcbusiness.org.uk which is coastal capital and you can chat to one of the growth advisors and organize yourself some business funding and some business specialist support our growth champions i will um just quickly sorry just quickly um stop sharing my screen and pop that to you our growth champions are here our digital champions are here um but i think because of time we'll pop into a networking room and you can connect with them there i'm just very very aware that we're running a little bit over so i will say goodbye to you if you stay on with us and you want to stay networking we just stay where you are as soon as i turn my screen off you'll pop back into the remote room and um you can click around the tables from there and have a good chat with Malcolm a good chat with Andrew who's one of our digital champions with Susan and with Rob who are all here so thank you for your time today thank you for your patience with us for running a little bit over and we look forward to seeing you all next time thanks ever so much