Today, the DigitalMakers team wants to share with you a case of success that we are very satisfied with. We explain the accompanying process that we carried out in 2017 with an e-commerce to multiply its turnover by 3 times compared to the previous year.

Our goal is to make known the relevant points that we believe can add value to those managers or marketing managers interested in increasing the billing of their own e-commerce. The idea is to provide practical information that is useful and that you can start using immediately.

In order to give the maximum details, we have chosen to maintain the anonymity of e-commerce, calling it SWUZZ.

New challenges

At the beginning of 2016 SWUZZ was in low hours, in fact 90% of the purchases made in the e-commerce were made by telephone and by historical customers. That is, who bought SWUZZ were customers who had been acquired by non-digital channels (probably commercial face-to-face) and that in the same way executed the purchase by non-digital channels (telephone).

In February of the same year SWUZZ hired DigitalMakers because it needed help in the technical maintenance of the web (basically updates of the web platform, at that time implemented in Joomla) and to occasionally, support in some tasks equally technical, updating articles, photographs, etc.

Soon SWUZZ put on the table a new challenge, a new project approach. They no longer had enough that DigitalMakers took the technical maintenance of the web, because only with that they did not advance in any concrete direction.

The new challenge posed by SWUZZ was to ensure that 90% of the purchases made at that time by the telephone channel (expensive and difficult to scale channel), were channeled via the e-commerce platform (channel with many possibilities to improve the final customer service and very scalable).

This was a change of focus that SWUZZ and DigitalMakers faced in two phases:

• First phase (April 2016 – June 2016). Update the technology so that it was flexible and could respond to the business needs that we started to prioritize.
• Second phase (July 2016 – December 2016). Tuning period (tuning). The tuning phase, in reality, is an iterative task that never ends. But it is also true that after a migration to a new technology, the tuning phase requires a special focus. We mainly work on:
  • Habituate the team to a new model of work and relationship.
  • Habituate the team to the new technology.
  • Review the availability of product references.
  • Review contents of the web, mainly the descriptions of the products both from the point of view of providing all the necessary information to the client, such as reviewing the product files so that Google could index them properly and therefore be found by whoever searches for them.

After the tuning phase, we started the execution phase, in which we focus on this article and which describes the key points of how SWUZZ went from billing € 12,913 in 2016, to invoicing more than € 40,000 during the year 2017.

The period described in this article runs from January 1 to December 31, 2017.

Human team

One of the keys of the project was to understand that the human team of DigitalMakers should be part of the human team of SWUZZ. That is, we created a work team where no difference was made by company, but each one developed a role in the team, regardless of the company to which it belonged.

The important thing was to gain SWUZZ customer satisfaction and grow e-commerce.

In the attached chart we differentiate the professionals who participate from each company, so that they can appreciate the functions carried out by each one.

Optimum relationship model and effective work method

The relationship model and work method established between SWUZZ and DigitalMakers was as follows:

• Contractual relationship. At the beginning of the project, DigitalMakers, based on the client’s requirements, establishes a dimensioning regarding the effort that must be carried out. In this way we define a 12-month contract with a “flat rate revisable” regime. We establish a duration of 12 months, because it is a good time to obtain results. And we do it with a regime of “revisable flat rate” because in this way the whole team focuses on executing what is needed to reach the objective (it does not worry if it has to ask for extra budgets). He is the project manager who periodically reviews the consumption of effort versus the forecast and, where appropriate, every 3 or 6 months, manages the possible difference with the client.
• Periodic meetings. We establish the following levels of periodic meetings:
  • Every Monday, a 15-minute skype meeting is held between the digital consultant and the marketing manager to review and coordinate the week’s tasks. Basically we review which tasks to perform and if there is any impediment to carry them out.
  • Every fifteen days we hold a face-to-face meeting with the entire team.
  • We hold a monthly metrics review meeting between the digital consultant and the marketing manager.
  • Quarterly or half-yearly. Review of the dimensioning of the service, between the marketing manager and the project manager.
• Knowledge sharing. Transparency and knowledge sharing have been key throughout the project. DigitalMakers explains and forms with everything necessary to the SWUZZ team, probably more from a technical or digital business knowledge point of view; and conversely, the SWUZZ team shares all traditional business knowledge with DigitalMakers. The sharing of knowledge has been very important to bring the project to a successful conclusion.
• Agile methodology. DigitalMakers proposed to SWUZZ to establish an agile work methodology. Basically it is an approximation to SCRUM. The whole team shares boards in the Trello tool with the columns (backlog; in process; done; agreements).
• Metrics. Decision making based on metrics has also been key to deciding where to focus efforts.

Strategic lines of the project

The main strategic lines have been:

• Make the references “searchable” in Google (SEO).
• Complement the SEO strategy with the SEM strategy. In SEM we have mainly focused on Adwords and Google Shopping.
• Enrich the descriptions of the products to solve the maximum of doubts to the client.
• Gain knowledge of the client. At this point we still have a long way to go, but now we have a year of visits in Google Analytics and, during this time we have been able to collect the opinion of the client in different areas (product, delivery, customer service) from surveys.
• Push existing customers via mailing, informing them of promotional campaigns every 15 days approximately.

Relevant metrics to improve results

In the field of e-commerce there are many metrics, but we have decided to pay special attention to the following:

• Number of visits to the web.
  We have managed to multiply by 3 the turnover with very few visits in the year 2017, some 25,000 visits, little more than 2,000 monthly visits. Clearly this is an identified point of improvement.
• Number of visits to the web / Number of sales.
  This is a very relevant metric, since it indicates how many visits you have to have to get a single sale. In our case, about 43 visits. Knowing this fact opens us lines of improvement, such as reducing the number of visits necessary to obtain a sale.
• Sales amount / Number of sales.
  It tells us the average ticket.

Technology used based on the objectives

In this phase, the architecture and software used are very basic, specifically:

• Prestashop for the e-commerce platform.
• MailChimp for the mailing platform.

Learned lessons

The telephone channel must continue to exist but not to execute the sale administratively (this task is already done by the web platform), but to:

• Make advisory sales to the client: advise you in all those doubts that may arise.
• And, at the same time, collect all these doubts or concerns and give them answers on the web so that the next clients that arrive will find them solved. Whether it’s enriching product descriptions, adding a frequent question, etc.

The key to success according to DigitalMakers

All resources and all knowledge would be of no use if it were not for the secret ingredient that makes everything work: people.

Success would not be possible without the ideas that people bring, their attitude of dealing with unforeseen events and the intention of continuous improvement.

For us, the will and involvement of people is the key to success.

Work well done and good results

In conclusion, paying attention to the strategic lines implemented, we can say that this first year of 2017 we have exclusively ordered the platform and we have executed the basic points that make common sense and digital knowledge. We have achieved very good results.

Now the challenge will be to maintain the good course set without stopping doing what we know works and beginning to apply new techniques that correspond to this new point of maturation.

Our next objective: continuous improvement

For 2018, the main challenge we have set ourselves is to be able to multiply by 3 the turnover achieved in 2017.

To make sure we must focus on:

• Do not abandon those processes already initiated.
• Eliminate barriers to purchase
• Increase traffic (increasing the number of references, frequency of the most targeted campaigns to the specific segment, SEM budget, etc).

And we will have to assess if the time has already come to attack other points such as:

• Response time.
• CRM / ERP integration.
• More knowledge of the client and offer more what and how you need it.
• Cross-Selling.
• Content strategy.
• Use of the social network.
• Logistics.
• New markets (internationalization).
• Improved usability focused on the customer experience.

At DigitalMakers we are proud to have accompanied this e-commerce in its billing growth. The work well done and the good results are the reasons why we work day after day. Thanks for joining us.