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Contents
• Welcome 03
Intelligence
• The march to 04–05
real-time trading
11
eCommera
eCommera is a specialist
retail-focused ecommerce
product and services
business.
Or visit www.ecommera.com
eCommera
03
www.ecommera.com
The march to real-time trading
Michael Ross – co-founder and director, eCommera
michael.ross@ecommera.com
Highlights
• The impact of technology on ecommerce will be profound.
• The march to real-time trading is driven by retailer scale, increased
competition and the economics of ecommerce.
• Trading real-time demands re-thinking retailing basics.
eCommera
The Trading Intelligence Quarterly. The march to real time trading 04–05
www.ecommera.com
Ecommerce performance and priorities:
early findings indicate route to success
Highlights
• Reporting lines are critical. Higher growth ecommerce operations report
to the CEO/board; lower growth operations report to the CMO or CIO.
• Retailers are prioritising new customer acquisition over satisfaction and
retention – potentially a short term strategy.
• Few retailers are actively monitoring their lost profit from products that
are viewed but not bought.
Growth rate
Over 100% 3%
81-100% 3%
61-80% 4%
41-60% 6%
21-40% 19%
1-20% 29%
Decreased 13%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
eCommera
The Trading Intelligence Quarterly. Ecommerce performance and priorities 06–07
8%
What are the greatest concerns...
The CIO
The CMO 9%
Engaging social
The CFO 10% 5%
media channels
Managing
technology 16%
innovation
Finding the
25%
right staff
Retaining existing
customers/clients 31%
Improving
online marketing 38%
effectiveness
Attracting new
customers/clients 40%
to the site
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
www.ecommera.com
Trading Intelligence Quarterly. Ecommerce performance and priorities
At an overall
33%
stock level
How regularly is profit from
the website measured At a product
35%
level
We do it annually 4%
Weighted by
35%
We do it quarterly 12% customer demand
We do it daily 28%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
eCommera
The Trading Intelligence Quarterly. Ecommerce performance and priorities 08–09
Measuring performance
Perhaps most surprising of all is how few
organisations are measuring a complete set
of ecommerce KPIs. Only 59% of the
respondents measure customer satisfaction,
despite it being critical given the delayed
gratification of online retail.
Lost demand
caused by
20%
inefficient order
processing?
Lost profit
21%
through fraud?
Lost demand
caused by lack 24%
of inventory
We track lost
demand from
customers we 25%
have declined and/
or charge backs
Return on
28%
inventory
Lost demand
due to customer 29%
cancellations?
Gross profit
36%
per order
Conversion 48%
Average order
50%
value
Customer
satisfaction 59%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
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Sir Martin Sorrell:
rewriting the rules of retail
eCommera
10–11
CEOs need to take their online sales channel just Sir Tom Hunter, Chairman, West Coast Capital
as seriously as their offline one, but equally they
need to treat it differently as a channel in and of as marketing or technology because it is in some
itself. For that you need to understand the sum way specialist – a niche, a fiefdom. But it’s not. It is
of the parts – finance, marketing and technology mainstream and vital to the success of the business.
are three components of a successful ecommerce
operation but they are only components. The CEO The CEO must understand the metrics, the trends
must make it his or her priority to pull together all and the priorities of successful ecommerce and
those components and get the bigger picture. hold those component parts of their business
accountable. And unlike physical retail the CEO
Sadly I suspect, despite the importance to the must gain this understanding because they cannot
business, many CEOs over the age of 49(!!!) dodge walk through the store and see with their own
discussions on the web through a cultural or fear eyes the successes and failures. They must dig
perspective – it’s a different beast from a store deeper to understand when, why and how their
you can walk through. Put simply, some believe business is succeeding or failing online.
they don’t, can’t and shouldn’t have to ‘get’ the
web. Either that, or they have bought the line that Only then can they push the envelope to secure
ecommerce must report into a line of business such significant and increasing profitable sales from
a multi-channel business.
www.ecommera.com
Ecommerce performance:
putting the K back into KPI
Michael Ross – co-founder and director, eCommera
michael.ross@ecommera.com
Highlights
• You can’t run an online business on gut feel.
• Growing an online business demands a command of the data.
• Ecommerce KPIs must be aligned to profit and must drive behaviour.
eCommera
The Trading Intelligence Quarterly. Ecommerce performance 12–13
So what makes a good suite of KPIs? The challenge is that no-one can agree on the
Overall, the set of KPIs should be: right KPIs. For example, many online retailers
use these KPIs:
• Holistic – KPIs must cover everything good,
bad and ugly that can happen in the enterprise. • Conversion rate and average order value
There should be nowhere to hide; and (AOV), missing the point that a free delivery
• Hierarchical – from the CEO to the coal face, offer will increase AOV and conversion but
all KPIs should roll-up with no more than at the cost of profitability.
3-5 KPIs at any level. More than this leads • Web analytics, learning nothing about profit,
to paralysis. inventory or the end-to-end customer experience.
• Over-generalised averages that miss, for example,
At an individual level, a KPI should be: the distribution of customer service response
times to emails.
• Aligned with profit – an improvement in
a KPI should increase profit (all other things The five ecommerce KPIs
being equal); and The ecommerce industry is still at an early stage
• Actionable – KPIs must drive behaviour. of its evolution so the definitive list of KPIs is yet
Specifically, this means that they should to be set in stone. Based on my 15 years in the
be non-financial. While P&L/balance sheet industry, I believe that the following five are
metrics are good measures of historical a good starting point.
performance, KPIs need to be indicators
of current and future performance. 1. Number of orders.
The number of orders placed on the website.
Why ecommerce KPIs are hard to define In due course, as retailers better understand
For the past 10 years, the rapid growth of cross-channel behaviour, this will also include the
ecommerce has masked a lot of poor online offline purchases influenced by online browsing.
retailing. Many online retailers have watched
sales grow without needing to do anything 2. Profit per order.
clever. But times are changing: ecommerce The key to growing an online business
growth has slowed; online has become much profitably is to understand the trade-off
more competitive as all retailers have looked between order volume and profit per order.
online for growth; and online retailers are Online retailers have lots of levers to pull
focused increasingly on driving profit. In this new – increasing marketing spend, personalised
environment, tracking the right KPIs moves from offers, flexing free delivery thresholds as well
being a “nice to have” to being fundamental to as the traditional retail toolbox of prices and
online success. promotions. The challenge is that flexing these
levers independently gives no insight into their
overall impact on profit.
www.ecommera.com
The Trading Intelligence Quarterly. Ecommerce performance
eCommera
14–15
Spotlight on Amazon
Amazon is the grandmaster of We’ve been using this same annual process for
ecommerce – the largest online many years. For 2010, we have 452 detailed
goals with owners, deliverables, and targeted
retailer in the world with sales completion dates. These are not the only goals
of $24.5bn. It is the competitive our teams set for themselves, but they are the
benchmark every online retailer ones we feel are most important to monitor.
aspires to. None of these goals are easy and many will not
be achieved without invention. We review the
This regular feature will highlight different status of each of these goals several times per
aspects of its business model to learn from what year among our senior leadership team and
it does well… and where it may have potential add, remove, and modify goals as we proceed.
weaknesses. A review of our current goals reveals some
interesting statistics:
Amazon does many things exceptionally well • 360 of the 452 goals will have a direct impact
but at its core is a unique metric-driven approach on customer experience.
to trading. • The word revenue is used eight times
and free cash flow is used only four times.
Extract from Jeff Bezos’s letter to shareholders, • In the 452 goals, the terms net income,
April 2010: gross profit or margin, and operating profit
are not used once.
Senior leaders that are new to Amazon are often
surprised by how little time we spend discussing We lose count of the number of trading meetings
actual financial results or debating projected we’ve observed where people debate why – as an
financial outputs. To be clear, we take these example – average order value (an ‘output’)
financial outputs seriously, but we believe that went down last week, triggering a flurry of in-
focusing our energy on the controllable inputs meeting opinions and post-meeting analysis to
to our business is the most effective way to hunt the culprit. By the time an answer is found,
maximize financial outputs over time. it is typically too late to take action and was the
Our annual goal setting process begins in the wrong question in the first place!
fall, and concludes early in the new year after
we’ve completed our peak holiday quarter. Retailers need to understand the drivers of
Our goal setting sessions are lengthy, spirited, their business and the pertinent input measures.
and detail oriented. We have a high bar for the They should then focus their trading meetings
experience our customers deserve and a sense discussing and making decisions on the things
of urgency to improve that experience. that are actionable.
www.ecommera.com
eCommera is a pioneering provider of intelligent
ecommerce trading solutions, enabling brand
owners and retailers to sell efficiently and
intelligently across multiple channels.
eCommera Limited
Design by Lloyd Northover.
1st floor
84-86 Great Portland Street
London W1W 7NR
www.ecommera.com
Tel: +44 (0)207 2915800
Email: info@ecommera.com
eCommera