The Power of eCommerce – Beware of Ordering Systems (Part 2)
Founder + Partner + CEO
Published Friday, May 19, 2020
Marketing product company stores are all the rage. Plenty of promotional product companies make the claim and oversell their capabilities on providing a “free” web-based experience to make it easy for you, your employees, and your customers to order products. Please be cautious when exploring this frontier. We have had a number of customers come to us after being promised a ton of bells and whistles for their company store all of which the provider simply couldn’t provide. I’ve done homework to find out why we are seeing this so often. It turns out, most places are selling you on an eCommerce store but are only able to provide an online ordering system, which sounds similar, but there is a huge difference between the two. Let me explain.
An online ordering system (or an order management system) is simply an internet-based platform that allows you to order a product. Some systems will allow you to pay for it online, but most are an ordering mechanism that sends the order details to an email account and the order is manually processed. (I should mention, sometimes that is all you need). These types of systems are great if you are trying to collect the sizes of a product from a number of people or have a few items and transactions that make them easy to process. It is possible to manipulate an ordering system to allow a number of features like discount codes, password-protected products, and manage inventory. Almost always, these systems run into a limitation making it very hard to scale because offering these features is a manual process.
An eCommerce system is much more robust, with a number of features, and primarily built around the checkout process. Since it is built with the checkout in mind, an eCommerce system can easily offer gift cards and discounts, allow profit-sharing, offer secondary approvals, capture analytics and data, centralize orders, integrate with email platforms, and much more. ECommerce systems can be used for a variety of purposes - such as a selling products as a retail facing online store (like Amazon), centralizing brand-approved products for employees, providing incentive products to customers for making a big purchase, selling items for a fundraiser, password protect sections for different levels of users, and much more. Since they are more robust, usually, the eCommerce system build-outs come with a small fee. If there isn’t a fee, you should ask why. The answer you’ll likely find is that you are getting a templated ordering system or the bill will come along down the road when you need to add the features to get the system to do what you need it too.
At ScreenBroidery we build true eCommerce systems and develop them in-house so we can control the functionality, interface, and integrations… and we have been doing so for a while. We have also built processes around our products and eCommerce systems that allow for on-demand production which limits the amount of inventory you may need to buy upfront. We also have integrations that feed into our fulfillment operation (which I’ll talk more about next week) and into our accounting systems. We use the data provided through our systems to help better consult with you. We study user behaviors, product clicks, bounce rates, and consumer demographics all in an effort to improve your eCommerce platform. With enough data, we can begin to predict trends, price points, product selections, inventory levels, and marketing needs. When all of this combines it creates a true eCommerce system that is just simply done better.
So, beware of the ordering systems that are being marketed as eCommerce sites. Make sure you know what you are getting and that what you are getting is what you need. Our team at ScreenBroidery has developed a few questions for you to help:
What is the cost of the build-out and how do you make money?
Can I offer gift cards and discount codes?
Do I have to buy inventory upfront?
If I buy inventory, how do you keep track of it?
How long does it take to ship products out?
How does the checkout process work?
Can I offer marketing items, business cards, signage, and employee gear in the same system?
Can products and sections be password protected?
Can I mark items up so I can earn a profit on them?