Understanding eCommerce Users
E-commerce users are those people, enterprises or organisations that are likely to interact with your clients via eCommerce. eCommerce solutions for your clients should be driven by users – by the external business relationships and networks that are important to the enterprise. These networks and relationships can be usefully classified as follows:
Target Audience:
An enterprise will be competing with many other enterprises to reach its customers, offering similar products and services via the web. This highlights the importance of product/service differentiation and careful targeting.
Existing Customers:
Ecommerce allows an enterprise to communicate and interact with customers. The plans of Ecommerce can focus on individual relationships with existing customers. For example, data can be gathered on customer preferences – the ways they prefer to purchase and the specification of products and services. This data can then be collected and analysed to show buying trends.
Potential Customers:
Ecommerce via the Internet can make your clients’ businesses known to numbers of potential customers. Careful marketing of a website can increase ‘traffic’ or ‘hits’ from the right kind of potential customers. Maintaining this marketing activity will ensure that the right people know how to find your clients’ enterprises.
Suppliers:
Sourcing enterprise inputs online can be cheaper than offline. It is not easier to compare costs and availability. An enterprise can get full details of products and services at the touch of a computer key.
Partners and Collaborators:
eCommerce will allow enterprises to establish regular and speedy contact with these partners and with wider business networks. Your clients’ collaborators and business partners, such as distributors or agents, are a key part of their supply chain.
Enterprise Employees:
Computers can liberate staff rather than force them. eCommerce can help automate some routine administrative and communication tasks, leaving employees to carry out more satisfying and cost-effective work such as attending directly to customer service.