Building a business for your online sales.

An E-commerce website is a business first and foremost; the website is merely the commerce delivery channel. An effective e-commerce site begins by understanding and defining the business strategy, goals and metrics for the site, and then crafting a website that is tailored to meet those site objectives.

Start with the 5 Ps: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

You wouldn’t build a house without an architect and a blueprint, and you shouldn’t build a website without a digital equivalent. If you want your digital ‘house’ to crumble, the surest way to ensure failure online and waste untold time and money is to skip proper planning and jump blindly into implementation.

Since our inception in 2002, Oakland County Technologies has helped several businesses of all types succeed online by following our proven strategy and planning techniques. We use this process because it works!

Avoid

• Weak or inconsistent branding
• Cart abandonment
• Bad User Experience and usability
• Poor navigation
• Slow performance
• Slow or limited site search
• Inability to make changes quickly
• Poor Performance with search engines

Achieve real Economic Benefits for Your Business

What will you gain through proper strategy and planning? A successful e-commerce business that delivers real economic value, including:

• Attracting New Customers: By planning and implementing a search-engine friendly architecture from the start, your e-commerce site gains relevant and targeted traffic
• Increasing Sales: By streamlining the sales process and improving the shopping experience we increase the conversion rate and the average ticket price
• Increasing Customer Loyalty and Retention: An enhanced, usable, and pleasing e-commerce experience generates greater user satisfaction and trust which translates into returning customers
• Providing Superior Customer Service and Communications: Help your customers to communicate, engage and ultimately identify themselves with your business through e-commerce tools, user communities, online support, and by providing them with comprehensive and timely product information
• Reducing Operating Costs and Increasing Efficiency: Reduce your customer acquisition, customer service and fulfillment costs by leveraging the website for client communications and process automation
• Promoting Your Brand and Enhancing Your Brand Image: We ensure you display a consistent corporate identity online with a professional style guide. Moreover, our Online Marketing offerings promote your products to the right audience, resulting in enhanced Brand Recognition and demand
• Preparing for Future Needs: With proper planning and a scalable architecture, your e-commerce site can accommodate additional requirements, features and functionality in the future

Measure your Success

How will you know if your e-commerce site is successful at meeting your business needs? The key success metrics for e-commerce sites include:

• Traffic: The number of visitors that are coming to your site
• Stickiness: The amount of time users spend on the site and the number of pages they view
• Conversion: The percent of visitors who become customers and the size of the average sales ticket
• Customer Retention: The number of customers who return to your site and the frequency of their purchases

Implement our Techniques & Methodology

A thorough understanding of your business goals alone is not enough to ensure a flawless execution that delivers results. While it takes only one mediocre designer or developer to ruin a website, it takes a highly skilled and professionally managed team to produce a successful e-commerce site, including:

• A Project Manager
• An e-commerce Business Analyst (to conduct the research, plan strategy, find out what your competitors are doing that may be worth mimicking, and find the “opportunities” that those competitors are not taking advantage of)
• A Search Engine Optimization Specialist (to ensure search-engine friendliness is incorporated into the site architecture)
• An Information Architect
• A User-Experience Specialist
• An Art Director (to create the design style guide and give directions to the designers)
• A Developer (for site development and technical specifications)
• A Quality Assurance Specialist

The E-Commerce Needs Result (ENR)

We approach your e-commerce site requirements by applying a proven, step-by-step methodology we call the E-commerce Needs Result (ENR). The ENR represents a summation of industry best practices and our extensive experience in Internet development, dating back to 2002. The ENR is a valuable, comprehensive and flexible planning tool.

The ENR consists of three stages:

1Research & Strategy:

• Customer Interview
• Understanding of Target Audience
• Competitive Analysis
• SEO Keyword research

2Managing Objectives & Client expectations:

• The foundation of a successful site is a clearly articulated strategy. Knowing what we want to accomplish, both for your business and for your users, informs the decisions we make about every aspect of your site.

The outcome of this phase is a clear sense of what the e-commerce site is about and what the users want.

3Planning:

Prioritization of target audience & creation of personas

• User / Functional Requirements
• Search & Content Requirements
• Technical Requirements
• Landing Pages

User Experience

• Translating the needs of the users and the objectives of the e-commerce site into specific requirememnts for the content and functionality of the site.

The outcome of this phase is a list of requirements that outline the scope of the final product.

Information & Architecture

• Navigation Tree
• Labeling & Thematic Architecture
• Detailed Functional Design
• User Experience Guidelines
• OCT Price Proposal

The fitting together of all requirements and development of a functional design for the e-commerce site. The functional design gives shape to the mass of requirements, identifying specific aspects of interface, navigation, and information design. The outcome enables us to present a clear visual prototype of the e-commerce site as a method to communicate with the client, visual designers, content creators, and developers. 

The complete ENR documentation provides any Design and Development team with the necessary blueprints and guidelines to implement and deliver an e-commerce site that generates real economic results and continuously exceeds your expectations.