The Life Cycle of an E-Commerce Merchant

Beginning Baby Steps

This may be a startup with a need for a new website or a business adding e-commerce to an existing website. Maybe a brick and mortar business adding e-commerce for the first time to offer customers another way to buy from you.

Speed-to-Market — How Text Connects Can Help

Cost and time-to-market are crucial at this early stage. This may be a “proof of concept” that could lead to an explosion of growth in a new channel. Waiting doesn’t make sense. Selecting a theme, providing a turnkey solution with Shopify, and store setup are in order.

The Teen Years

Requirements are more demanding at this stage (no surprise!). Whether a new venture or a site upgrade, branding is key. Shipping, payment systems,and in-store POS begin to matter more. Customer experience and service become much more important. Competition is a concern now.

Cost-Effective Customization — How Text Connects Can Help

Cohesive branding across channels may require custom theming. No need for more costly custom integrations or apps. Most can come from the Shopify ecosystem. That said, how customers experience your brand, from checkout to refunds (refunds!) needs attention. We can help you make the right choices.

Graduation

Sales volume is growing. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Being able to easily add products, offer sales promos, discount codes, and custom bundles needs to be easy to do (and undo). New markets such as Canada may look enticing, but that brings up a host of issues from shipping and returns, to exchange rates, and provincial taxes. Similar challenges are on the horizon for any new geographical market you target.

Strategic Scale-Up — How Text Connects Can Help

Growth is a good thing. Whether a Shopify store or not, most of the solutions you’ll need are readily available and we may only need to tinker a bit, but you’ll want experienced tinkers. We can guide you in an international strategy. And train your team to tackle new ideas from marketing--and new demands from the warehouse.

Time to Accelerate

Your online storefront is growing in sophistication and SKUs. Your customers--and the search engines--care a lot about the speed of your site, content in its broadest sense, and ease-of-use. And you can be penalized if your store is not keeping pace in the ever-demanding online world. Page speed, search ranking, content, and SEO impact each other.

Performance Tune Ups (& Overhauls) — How Text Connects Can Help

Your internal metrics of sales, customer service complaints, out-of-stocks, etc., are all trending well. You have a LOT to be proud of today. Time to get under the hood and make sure page speed and indexing, and more are also at their best. Some sites just need small changes to improve page speed, a tune up, some may need an overhaul. We focus on the choices with the best ROI..

Working in Teams

Single location? Single warehouse? Single channel? Not anymore. Success means more stores (online and off?). A single warehouse may not cut it. You need multiple warehouses that need to work together in real time. Social e-commerce, standalone shopping apps, and mobile e-commerce each come with their own challenges. What marketing wants has impacts all the way to the delivery truck. Time to invest in a robust fulfillment/warehouse system.

Taming the Alphabet Soup — How Text Connects Can Help

Maybe you didn’t start this e-commerce journey with a vocabulary of 3PL, CRM, EDI, ERP, WMS, and kitting. Success means you have to learn fast and make investment decisions that will have a long term impact. We take a 360-degree view of the applications and integrations you may need to add. And we have as much experience in custom application development and systems integrations as we do in building stores. We’re truly a one-stop shop.

The Golden Years

Awesome, if you have arrived here. Few do. Success like this doesn’t mean you can rest though. Category competition, corporate demands, even new business models, and more, don’t go away. Vertical integration, supply chain optimization, and constantly improving the customer experience are also part of the mix. Legacy systems and thinking may not be enough to sustain your competitive advantage. Like a shark, if you’re not moving forward in the water, you’re as good as dead.

Right Investments, RIght Now — How Text Connects Can Help

At this size and scale small enhancements can have large and profitable impacts. Advanced checkout options, user-configurable discounting rules, and the advanced accounting that goes along with multi-currency options can be home runs. So can large scale logistics and systems changes, manufacturing process integrations, and knitting together multiple warehouses. Text Connects has deep experience in delivering these kinds of solutions.