How to Get the Most out of an Ecommerce Store without an In-house IT Department
According to Statista, in 2019, there were nearly 2 billion online buyers around the world, and DigitalCommerce360 claims there are between 12 to 24 million online shops.
According to Statista, in 2019, there were nearly 2 billion online buyers around the world, and DigitalCommerce360 claims there are between 12 to 24 million online shops. Click To TweetCustomers’ purchasing habits demand an online and mobile presence of retailers.
At the same time, only 2.86% of ecommerce website visitors convert into buyers. It all means that ecommerce owners work in an extremely competitive environment and must make every effort to increase their website’s visibility, improve customer experience and increase conversion rate.
It is not always obvious, but ecommerce business requires countless months of programming, testing, and optimization. Does it mean that every ecommerce owner needs to hire a large IT department?
Not necessarily.
In this post, we’re going to explain how to get the best results without having an in-house IT team.
Ecommerce business owners don’t need to be computer scientists to build an attention-grabbing and user-friendly online store. In fact, they rarely are. Smaller businesses tend to opt for outsourcing or choosing cloud-based solutions that do all the work for them and offer ready-to-use beautiful templates.
It’s usually a perfect choice for those without coding and design skills. In a highly competitive ecommerce market, online shops have to be nicely designed, look great and (be!) trustworthy, mobile-friendly and fast as lightning. Achieving all of that is not a walk in the park, and it definitely takes a lot of talents to make it work.
In a highly competitive ecommerce market, online shops have to be nicely designed, look great and (be!) trustworthy, mobile-friendly and fast as lightning. Achieving all of that is not a walk in the park, and it definitely takes a lot… Click To Tweet
Luckily for those lacking skills or resources in these areas, there are numerous hosted and self-hosted platforms that will help with setting up fully-functional online stores in a couple of days, with myriads of features including:
They’re usually scalable and let you grow from a small online shop with a couple of products to an ecommerce giant with a wide range of products, making millions of euros or dollars. On top of that, they offer customer support, sometimes even 24/7, in case of any problems. The pricing model is usually a pay-as-you-go monthly or yearly subscription.
Another significant advantage of using third-party platforms is that they help to automate various tasks and make the work of owners and salespeople much more efficient. They allow for:
When working on legacy software, each automation would require countless hours of IT departments. At the same time, there are ecommerce business owners that are not afraid of it, and in fact, they prefer to have full control over design, user experience and making edits whenever needed. Sometimes, especially when ecommerce is big and complex, solutions that are available on the market don’t meet their needs. In both cases, they prefer having their own in-house IT departments.
However, their work doesn’t end with building or even the maintenance of the service. In order to get the best results, it’s necessary to keep optimizing your website. At the same time, many owners and managers claim that all their development and UX resources focus on maintenance and international expansion, leaving little time for improvements that may not be necessary for the service to work correctly, but they’re needed to achieve the best results possible.
In fact, in such a competitive market like ecommerce, you can’t just leave your product and hope for the best. On the contrary, it requires spending hours on testing and optimization. Even the biggest and most popular online shops sometimes fail to do that. In fact, the bigger the company is, the more difficult it is to apply significant edits and improvements.
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Reserved, one of the most popular clothing brands in Poland, faced a similar issue with their online store when they started working with Growcode. Together, we decided to try A/B and multi-dimensional tests instead of making radical changes. It was also crucial not to interrupt the priorities of their own IT department that worked with numerous projects. Luckily, it was all possible and in just a few weeks, Reserved increased the conversion rate by 4.6%, which converted to an additional $46,000 revenue every month.
Read the full Reserved case study to learn more.
Luckily, ecommerce optimization can also be done through third-party services, just like in the case of ready-to-use ecommerce platforms. Business owners usually have plenty of good ideas on how to develop their shops and increase revenue. However, they often lack time and resources not only to test and optimize them but also to deal with the higher traffic that comes thanks to these efforts. Similarly to the ecommerce platforms, ecommerce optimization services have industry-leading resources with specific skills that guarantee top-quality service, expertise and results. At least, when you choose Growcode.
Another common situation when ecommerce service needs help in optimization is soon after a significant redesign of the website or the mobile app. In such a case, in-house IT departments are usually entirely focused on building and fixing the product, and there is not much room left for CRO.
At Growcode, we’ve already helped clients whose revenues dropped after a redesign to increase them above the level preceding the redesign. It was the case of Grene, a leading technical supplier for farming, whose conversion rates and user satisfaction decreased after a major redesign. Growcode has found a reason behind it and a solution that eventually led to an 11.5% conversion rate increase in a single optimization sprint.
Read Grene’s case study to learn how we did it.
In short, it is possible to run even a sophisticated ecommerce platform, with thousands of products and users, without having an in-house IT department. The platform itself can be bought from one of many cloud-based ecommerce providers such as Shopify, Prestashop, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and many more.
It is possible to run even a sophisticated ecommerce platform, with thousands of products and users, without having an in-house IT department. The platform itself can be bought from one of many cloud-based ecommerce providers such as… Click To TweetIt is also possible to have your own IT department and to cooperate with third-party services with additional or specific expertise without overlapping roadmaps and priorities of both teams.
Growcode is a good example because we’re experts in CRO (conversion rate optimization), but unlike other CRO consultants, we offer more comprehensive services and optimize the website’s user experience to reduce the customer acquisition cost, increase the average purchase value and grow your lifetime profit per customer. On top of that, we’re fast. An optimization circle takes four weeks – from idea to collecting and analyzing data, design, implementation and testing. It can bypass the development roadmap and optimize the service without interrupting it and interfering with the source code.
Contact us if you want to improve your website’s user experience without hiring (more) developers. Growcode guarantees reducing cart abandonment, increasing cross-selling and upselling, growing average order values and finally increasing revenues and customer satisfaction. All of that in just a couple of weeks, without any involvement from your IT department if you have one.
💡 At Growcode, we develop and maintain online shops and B2B ecommerce on Magento!
