Website development for a fast growing E-com site
When you're the head of a fast growing business there will always be important questions that need to be answered. For brick-and-mortar most of these steps are fairly regulated since these types of businesses have been around for ages. In that meantime all the people that come before you will have gone through a series of troubles and you can learn from these issues. After all life is too short to make all mistakes for yourself if you want to be succesful, it's necessary to learn from others on how to do business.
However in the case of e-commerce we're talking about a sector that is still in its first steps of growth. And therefor there aren't as many examples you can follow or people you can learn from, it's new to nearly everybody not just to you. E-commerce brings with it a certain set of parameters that differentiaties it from a normal shop. There's the wider demographic and reach of your business, but also it's simply easier to get to people and market your ideas as long as they have an internet connection with whichever device they prefer.
First of all it's important to know which kind of service or product you're offering. Are you doing something completely new or trying to emulate the succes of something that you saw abroad or something you saw locally? This can be important to know which steps to take to differentiate yourself from your competitor. Because in the country of e-commerce that's a very important concept, being unique. In today's world everybody wants to be special and different from the next person, this means that you as a company need to play in on this need. And if you can fullfil this first need in a fast, easy and customer friendly way then you're well on your way to have a succesful e-com site.
You need to be aware of what's present within your company do you have to capacity to grow from within or do you need outside help in terms of strategy, development, marketing or making your e-com presence more efficient. If you have the capabilities I would say that an in-house development is always something positive, this allows you to evolve the company in a way that you personally see fit without doing anything that you aren't comfortable with. Keeping this in mind there is no shame in asking help from outside, if you don't posses the necessary saviness you might aswell ask help from outside as long as the vision remains your own. But if you wish to attain maximum possibilities with your work you should always accept help from outside even if only to look at things from a different perspective. This help should help you dodge some initial problems that you would otherwise have to fix yourself or weren't aware of. Off course this will increase your costs immensely as you not only have to pay for the solution or expansion, but for the knowledge of the experts and as we all know knowledge doesn't come cheap in the business world. If you plan to use consultants you have an easy cost increase of nearly €5.000 on a montly basis for wages alone.
Depending on which strategy of development you're going for the extra costs can be even higher. Do you want to create an app for an even easier user-interface? This will give you development costs and a time period to develop this in (timewise this can take up to half a year or shorter if you wish to outsource is but for a cost of easily €20.000 depending on wages). Do you want to go international? This means that you'll have to adjust your service to different languages and market your product in a different way depending on the country of operation. Next to that you'll also have to work together with international business so you can guarantee the same service you already offer on a much bigger scale. A cost that can easily run up to €100.000 as you need to research and develop your situation (possible using third-party people which will again increase your costs.
What I'm trying to say here is that it's important not to run before you can walk. Be sure you have a strong inhouse operation before you start developing future projects and reach for your possibilities. It's vital that you have strong fundamentals on which you can build your business, this decreases the risks you have to take and increases the things you can do yourself as opposed to something you have to outsource. This kind of growth will be steadier, but safer as you meticulously cover each and every option through research. This will not work for everybody or for every business as some business will thrive due to the big advances and steps they make during development, but it will be the safe option where the consistency of your company remains. Make sure you have a strong brand, before you go out and risk everything you have.
However in the case of e-commerce we're talking about a sector that is still in its first steps of growth. And therefor there aren't as many examples you can follow or people you can learn from, it's new to nearly everybody not just to you. E-commerce brings with it a certain set of parameters that differentiaties it from a normal shop. There's the wider demographic and reach of your business, but also it's simply easier to get to people and market your ideas as long as they have an internet connection with whichever device they prefer.
First of all it's important to know which kind of service or product you're offering. Are you doing something completely new or trying to emulate the succes of something that you saw abroad or something you saw locally? This can be important to know which steps to take to differentiate yourself from your competitor. Because in the country of e-commerce that's a very important concept, being unique. In today's world everybody wants to be special and different from the next person, this means that you as a company need to play in on this need. And if you can fullfil this first need in a fast, easy and customer friendly way then you're well on your way to have a succesful e-com site.
You need to be aware of what's present within your company do you have to capacity to grow from within or do you need outside help in terms of strategy, development, marketing or making your e-com presence more efficient. If you have the capabilities I would say that an in-house development is always something positive, this allows you to evolve the company in a way that you personally see fit without doing anything that you aren't comfortable with. Keeping this in mind there is no shame in asking help from outside, if you don't posses the necessary saviness you might aswell ask help from outside as long as the vision remains your own. But if you wish to attain maximum possibilities with your work you should always accept help from outside even if only to look at things from a different perspective. This help should help you dodge some initial problems that you would otherwise have to fix yourself or weren't aware of. Off course this will increase your costs immensely as you not only have to pay for the solution or expansion, but for the knowledge of the experts and as we all know knowledge doesn't come cheap in the business world. If you plan to use consultants you have an easy cost increase of nearly €5.000 on a montly basis for wages alone.
Depending on which strategy of development you're going for the extra costs can be even higher. Do you want to create an app for an even easier user-interface? This will give you development costs and a time period to develop this in (timewise this can take up to half a year or shorter if you wish to outsource is but for a cost of easily €20.000 depending on wages). Do you want to go international? This means that you'll have to adjust your service to different languages and market your product in a different way depending on the country of operation. Next to that you'll also have to work together with international business so you can guarantee the same service you already offer on a much bigger scale. A cost that can easily run up to €100.000 as you need to research and develop your situation (possible using third-party people which will again increase your costs.
What I'm trying to say here is that it's important not to run before you can walk. Be sure you have a strong inhouse operation before you start developing future projects and reach for your possibilities. It's vital that you have strong fundamentals on which you can build your business, this decreases the risks you have to take and increases the things you can do yourself as opposed to something you have to outsource. This kind of growth will be steadier, but safer as you meticulously cover each and every option through research. This will not work for everybody or for every business as some business will thrive due to the big advances and steps they make during development, but it will be the safe option where the consistency of your company remains. Make sure you have a strong brand, before you go out and risk everything you have.