Ecommerce Management: A Complete Guide To Running A Killer Storefront
Avoid Design Disasters: Poor website design can drive customers away. Ensuring your ecommerce site is visually appealing and user-friendly is crucial for retaining shoppers.
Marketing Magic: Effective marketing strategies are key to attracting and retaining customers. Avoid ineffective tactics that waste resources and fail to drive sales.
Inventory Insights: Messy inventory management can result in lost sales. Implement streamlined processes to keep track of stock and meet customer demand efficiently.
Sales Success: Addressing these common challenges can prevent unnecessary loss in sales, driving better performance and customer satisfaction for your ecommerce business.
Managing an ecommerce storefront involves challenges like steering away from poor website design, ineffective marketing, and messy inventory management, which leads to an unnecessary loss in sales.
Without strong ecommerce management, these issues can escalate and branch. I want to show you how to avoid that.
Here, you will find an overview of ecommerce management and how to integrate it into your business to ditch common ecommerce problems.
Together, we’ll discuss the common pitfalls of ecommerce management and how to work around them. We'll also look toward the future of ecommerce management and what to get excited about.
What is Ecommerce Management?
Ecommerce management is the process of overseeing all aspects of your online business. From your ecommerce platform and inventory management to excellent user experience and a darn good marketing strategy, ecommerce management covers it all.
Ecommerce management irons out each step of the conversion funnel—all that gets your product to your shopper’s doorstep.
Good ecommerce management means smooth operations and sustainable growth for your online business while maintaining a competitive edge—and more, of course!
It’s a lot of work, but it pays off if done right. So let’s get into that.
Why is Ecommerce Management Important For Online Stores?
Ecommerce management touches every aspect of a store—inventory management, order management, warehouse management marketing, website design, and more.
This means that the benefits of polished ecommerce management flow from all of these distinct tasks.
You uncover new levels of efficiency
Ecommerce managers employ management software to streamline various processes in your online business, increasing productivity while saving you time.
Many components of your operations—inventory, warehouse, order fulfillment, and more—just get that much simpler. Automated processes enable you, the ecommerce manager, to scale your business to new heights when daily tasks are painless to manage.
The list of beneficial ecommerce software systems is endless. We’ll discuss those in more detail below.
You get better insights with data-driven decisions
Ecommerce management includes implementing management software that simplifies the job, including analytics software.
Analytics software provides valuable data from your business's overall operations to gauge how your business is performing and make changes accordingly.
You deliver an elevated customer experience
An ecommerce manager will oversee how your business operations are performing in terms of UX.
Key metrics and KPIs (discussed below) will show you where your website and marketing are lacking. Insights show businesses can grow revenues between 4% and 8% above their market when prioritizing better customer service experience.
Using your KPI results to pivot your strategy to focus on providing a user-friendly storefront leads to more conversions and happy customers.
You build strong credibility that leads to retention
Ecommerce management involves customer acquisition and retention, building your brand’s audience.
Through this role, you can employ CRM systems and prompt CX feedback to see how your business can further cater to your customers.
This way, you create a positive reputation for your business through tools like personalized experiences, loyalty and VIP programs, and prompt customer support—which retains customers and encourages repeat purchases by roughly 8%.
Key Components Of Ecommerce Management
To show you exactly how ecommerce management mixes into a business… Let's create our own!
Imagine a business in one of today’s booming industries: skincare.
Our imaginary skincare company—The Skincare Manager—is an online retailer focusing on cruelty-free skincare products with clean and natural ingredients: cleansers, moisturizers, toners, and more.
Here are some relevant components of ecommerce management implemented in The Skincare Manager’s business.
Inventory management
Inventory management systems oversee real-time inventory tracking across one or multiple warehouses and sales channels.
This component often includes implementing inventory management software to streamline operations like ordering, storing, and using inventory, reducing manual errors and saving time.
For The Skincare Manager, this means accurately tracking moisturizer stock levels to understand the most popular products and how to plan for seasonal promotions.
Order management
Order management involves an efficient order processing system built by automating order processes, post-purchase triggers, order notifications, and customer data compiling.
For The Skincare Manager, this may look like automatically entering order data into an ecommerce ERP system when a customer orders your newest cleanser product.
That way, your warehouse team avoids re-entering customer delivery details. After the order is packaged and shipped, an automated order processing system also involves compiling customer information and post-purchase triggers.
Like a post-purchase email to skincare-avid customers with a 15% discount code for their next order of face wash.
Product management
Offer product listings like cleansers, moisturizers, face masks, and more, with compelling product descriptions and detailed product attributes—like their clean ingredients list, environmentally friendly packaging, and cruelty-free processes.
Product management also enables product categorization so that The Skincare Manager customers can easily find what they’re looking for from the navigation menu.
Warehouse management
This component eases managing one or more warehouses by working with warehouse management software.
This allows you to streamline warehouse operations like storage, packing, warehouse design, and quality control for accurate order fulfillment.
Warehouse management can lead to an increase in warehouse efficiency and productivity. That way, The Skincare Manager’s customers get the skincare products they paid for in a timely fashion.
Payment processing
People want their skincare, but not everyone pays the same way. Payment processing focuses on reliable and secure payment methods for a seamless checkout experience.
The Skincare Manager may consider offering customers alternative payment options, such as Apple Pay, PayPal, and BNPL so that customers can choose the method that best suits their needs.
To do this, our skincare brand will need to:
- Plan the integration of the alternative payment gateway
- Design the payment integration
- Select the best integration techs and tools stack for your payment gateway
- Implement the online payment gateway and start testing
- Monitor, assess results, and improve
That way, skincare lovers can buy what they like the way they like.
Customer service management
This process highlights the importance of conversational marketing, like customer support chatbots, live chats, and responsive customer support via email.
For The Skincare Manager, this may look like going the extra mile and implementing chat programs that support questions about an individual’s skin type and needs.
A good idea could be creating personalized skincare quizzes that answer those questions for you to strengthen your CRM!
Your CRM aims to observe customer behaviors throughout multiple sales channels to understand customer demographics, needs, and specific goals.
Personalizing customer service is a great way to empower your CRM because it records unique buyer information to generate customized recommendations and results.
It doesn’t end there. Research shows that 80% of customers are more likely to buy from brands that offer personalized shopping experiences—which shows that getting personal works.
Marketing and advertising
If you have your skincare brand, you want customers to know about your new products and advice—starting with building the sales funnel for your business.
A sales funnel will differ from brand to brand, but overall, the funnel includes key components to secure your leads:
- Define your goals, your target audience, and your product offering
- Create awareness through preliminary information to gain prospect leads
- Use marketing tactics like SEO, channel segmentation, or geographical targeting to reach specific leads bound to show interest in your business.
- Create desire for your qualified leads through a well-designed website, personalized shopping experiences, and prompted deals
- Secure the deal
- Nurture new customers through customer retention strategies, such as post-purchase follow-ups, VIP and loyalty programs, feedback prompts, and more
This process differs between brands of different sizes.
An ecommerce manager may handle marketing strategy and sales funnel for SMEs, but larger enterprises will have separate ecommerce marketers.
Here’s what building out the sales funnel may look like for The Skincare Manager:
Mobile commerce
Offering a refined, mobile-friendly shopping experience can help you stand out among competitors.
Mobile-first design principles integrated into a mobile site or app that offers easy purchasing and browsing are essential practices to elevate a customer's shopping experience.
For our skincare brand, this may mean implementing a mobile view on our website to allow customers to shop wherever they are, right from their pocket.
What Challenges Do Ecommerce Managers Face?
Of course, ecommerce managers also face obstacles in overseeing ecommerce operations. Let’s dive into a few as the ecommerce manager for our newly created skincare brand:
Supply chain issues
Ecommerce managers sometimes face disruptions in the supply chain, such as material scarcity, increased freight costs, inflation, and delays—like shortages from aloe vera suppliers that slow down the production of moisturizer.
Lucky for you, there’s a way to mitigate supply chain risks!
- Diversify suppliers. Whether it’s a supplier or geographical diversification, collecting materials from multiple sources is a good idea to prevent dependence on a sole supplier.
- Contingency plan for resistance. Plan! Establish a safety stock or emergency protocol for supply chain disruptions.
- Build business-to-supplier relationships. Establish regular communication between you and your suppliers. Staying updated on demand forecasts and potential disruptions can help you plan.
Inventory problems
When managing inventory, you want to avoid overstock and stockout—ensuring we have enough stock of our best-selling cleanser while preventing a surplus of our slower-going toners.
To avoid these common problems:
- Data analysis. Use sales data to forecast demands and market trends. Tools like ERP software can provide real-time visibility into business operations, easing resource management.
- Get creative with deals. Clearance sales or promotional deals can help target overstock issues of slower-selling products.
- Back up stock. To tackle stockout issues, establish a reorder point that triggers an automatic refill of particular stock before it runs out.
Order fulfillment
Conflicts can occur when getting a customer’s purchased moisturizer order from point A to point B—scaling orders, order processing delays, and shipping issues can all occur unexpectedly.
Order fulfillment can get tricky… which is why ecommerce managers opt for outsourcing fulfillment partners. Here’s why:
- Easily manage order spikes. Outsourcing a third-party partner brings you resources that can help scale order management processes and handle spikes in order volume.
- Stable shipping process. Your partner will have a network of fulfillment center locations, which will cut shipping times and costs nicely.
- More time for the business. Now that order fulfillment is covered, you have some extra time to stabilize or grow other business sectors, such as product offerings, CX, and inventory management.
Customer acquisition and retention
What is The Skincare Manager without its customers?
Ecommerce managers often search for ways to grow their customer base while maintaining customer relations to create a loyal audience.
Here’s how you can get people buying and repurchasing:
- A strong marketing strategy. First, know who you want to reach and how. Social media strategy? Email marketing? Direct mail? Use data analytics to understand your target audience and the best ways to reach them.
- CRM systems. This software system manages customer data and interactions to map out customers' needs and buying behaviours, improving B2C relationships.
- “CX is King”. To target retention, give customers a memorable shopping experience with personalized product recommendations, regular engagement, and transparent communication to have ‘em return.
6 Tips For Effective Ecommerce Management
These are our best practices for effective ecommerce management for your ecommerce journey.
Use the best ecommerce platform.
Ecommerce platforms have various features and tools that simplify your management processes. Many ecommerce platforms are cost-friendly or completely free. Platforms often provide:
- Order processing and inventory management for a seamless customer experience no matter the sales volume.
- SEO tools that optimize technical SEO for increased SERP visibility.
- Performance analysis with advanced segmentation that gives you detailed insights on what’s working and what needs improvement.
- Cater to your specific wants. The choices in ecommerce platforms are endless, and many are for particular businesses, such as SMEs and SaaS businesses.
And more!
Want to know the best ecommerce platforms? We've got you covered.
Build a beautiful and user-friendly website
There’s power in design.
94% of first impressions are design-related, meaning a well-designed and user-friendly website is a great way to create a memorable shopping experience for your customers.
When designing your website, there are key factors to keep in mind:
- Secure at first sight. Users will form an opinion on your website in 0.05 seconds, meaning your initial landing page must grab the customer's attention immediately. This calls for speedy load times, a clean and to-date website layout, and promised outcomes from the SERP meta description.
- Keep your branding consistent. Your ecommerce website is an excellent outlet for expressing your brand identity visually. Harness your brand's goals and intentions through pleasant images, colour schemes, and inciting CTAs. This will help your brand create a reputation and brand image that customers will recognize.
- Easy navigation. 89% of consumers will turn to a competitor because of a poor customer experience, showing that user experience is crucial. Make buying your products easy with a simple but efficient website layout with bold headings and organized subheadings. That way, customers can find what they want and don’t need to go elsewhere.
Need some help from experienced website builders? We know a few.
Assemble a best-in-class tech stack
Take advantage of the tools available that can make the job easier.
Your ecommerce platforms host many tools that ecommerce managers use to perform at their best.
To start, ecommerce platforms feature tools like inventory management, order management, product management, customer relationship management, payment processing, and more.
To elevate your tech stack, employ dependable software systems that continue to ease ecommerce management processes. Software solutions are abundant for tasks like:
- CRM. Great CRM systems are abundant. Choose a system that meets your business goals and can scale to your business’s growth.
- PIM. PIM systems are great for managing marketing and sales data all in one place. Because PIM systems can look different from one another, it’s a good idea to compare them to find what works best for your business.
- Inventory management. Choosing an inventory management system that meets your needs can be challenging. Evaluate which systems on this list of the best inventory management systems are right for you.
- Warehouse management. Turn the chaos of manual warehouse management into a smooth, streamlined process using great software picked from our expert scoring system that ranked some of the best warehouse management systems.
- Payment Processing. Software that supports payment processing is key for avoiding silly mistakes that will cost you. We compiled a list of the best payment processing solutions out there using our ecommerce expertise to help you avoid high-stress payement situations.
- SRM. SRM systems are a great tool to relieve the tedious process of evaluating, selecting, and managing suppliers. You know the drill: we’ve got the guide to choosing a great SRM system for your ecommerce business.
The list is endless! It all depends on the size of your business and what goals you want to achieve.
It’s important to note that as your business grows, finding dedicated software becomes crucial. This is not only to achieve consistency and high levels of expertise, but also to achieve that crucial seamless integration.
Remember that all your tools need to seamlessly integrate with your ecommerce platform to simplify your work as an ecommerce manager. Not only that, but seamless integration enables your business to grow as your tech stack does.
No matter the task, there’s a tech tool to help you.
Ensure customer security
Customers need to trust brands before they buy. It’s up to you to garner a safe-to-shop ecommerce environment. Consider:
- Reputable payment gateways when choosing your payment options.
- Conducting vulnerability assessments to pinpoint weaknesses in your security.
- Performing regular software maintenance to protect your site and third-party partners against vulnerabilities.
Don’t let doubt steer your customers away. Avoid buyers second-guessing the security of your ecommerce store by following the best practices to protect your online store.
Continuously improve with testing and optimization.
Avoid staying static! Set clear goals for your business to grow and improve.
Use ecommerce testing to assess various elements of your ecommerce website. Ecommerce testing is crucial for pinpointing what components of your ecommerce shop need revisiting and refining.
Whether you are testing UX on your website or how well your SEO is performing, testing will reveal your brand’s weaknesses so you know what to fix.
How can I test my ecommerce shop? It’s simple:
- Set the goal. Establish what you want to achieve with testing to guide your testing processes. Is the goal increased conversion rates or improved reported CX?
- Find your testing method. Choose a valid testing method that corresponds to your goal. For instance, A/B ecommerce testing will compare two versions of a single element or heatmaps, which show what areas of your website get the most clicks.
- Leverage your available tools. Use analytic tools, external to your platform or built-in, to spot patterns in user behavior data.
- Monitor and shift. Continuously review the website performance you observe through your testing process. Be ready to make changes to your business based on testing results and pitfalls.
With that, spotting vulnerabilities in your company strategy and operations becomes easy.
Go global with smart internationalization
Many brands reach a certain point where they want to go borderless.
Going global opens your business to new market opportunities, larger customer bases, and sometimes that first-mover advantage.
International expansion comes with its challenges, but here are some ways to ease the process:
- Do your research. Thorough market research is key to understanding where your products are in demand and who your new competitors are. Research also involves understanding the new regulations your business must follow to operate as an ecommerce business.
- Solidify your warehouse and shipping plans. Expanding to new places also means new places to ship to. Consider partnering with 3PL local warehousing and distributors for faster and more stable shipping processes.
- New markets? New marketing. You’re reaching out to a new set of eyes. Do it in a way that actually sells. Optimize your website to cater SEO to the local search engine. And tweak your marketing campaigns to appeal to the local culture and buying behaviors.
- Adapting to the language. You want to make sure your new customer base’s needs are met. Use localization plugin tools to adjust your website's language and content to wherever you sell. As well as, thinking about leveraging AI tools for translation and language interpretation services.
- Not all at once. Think about expanding gradually, with pilot programs acting like a test to observe how this new customer base initially reacts to your business. Adjust your operations and brand to cater to your new customer community.
Smooth international expansion doesn’t have to feel impossible. Smart internationalization is key.
Key Metrics And KPIs For Ecommerce Management
Ecommerce managers can't judge the success of their efforts by sticking their finger in the wind and guessing. They need to use real metrics, build dashboards, and check them to see pretty charts that go up and to the right. Here are some to consider:
- Conversion rate tells you how well your marketing is getting customers to purchase.
- Average order value (AOV) indicates overall customer spending behaviors.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC) tells you how much you spend acquiring a new customer—helping indicate the ROI you receive on your customer acquisition.
- Customer retention rate (CRR) will show how well you retain customers and highlight a potential need for change in retention strategies.
- Customer lifetime value (CLV) shows you the total revenue expected from a returning customer, highlighting the need to retain customers and create long-term relationships.
- Cart abandonment rate indicates the presence of potential pain points in a customer’s checkout process that prevent them from purchasing.
- Bounce rate will tell you if you need to make your website more engaging to increase overall site viewership.
- Unique pageviews (now replaced by Users in GA4) count how many unique users visited a specific page, combining all views from one session into a single count. This helps monitor SEO efforts and user engagement effectively.
- Inventory turnover ratio measures how efficient your inventory management is.
These numbers won’t be handed to you all at once. Ecommerce managers can find these key metrics from various sources like your ecommerce platform, your CRM system, your financials and inventory management software, and analytical tools like Google or Shopify Analytics.
Ecommerce Management Trends To Watch
Just as your business grows… so does the ecommerce industry.
Ecommerce management will always be in flux with future trends affecting its process. These are some trending factors that you should be aware of:
- AI and machine learning. AI is nothing to be scared of. AI and machine learning use algorithmic technology to sort through collected data to generate predicted outcomes or make certain decisions. AI can be applied in many different contexts in ecommerce, depending on your business’s goals.
- AI can enable hyper-personalized shopping experiences and recommendations using customer buying history and shopping behaviors.
- Customer service chatbots can also be developed using natural language processing AI to interpret customers’ queries and redirect them with resolutions.
- AI can be a great asset for your day-to-day operations, such as inventory management. With AI, automating inventory processes like replenishment and demand forecasting has become easier.
- Augmented reality. AR can enable a product visualization before you actually have the product in your hands—a try-before-you-buy experience!
- Voice commerce. More consumers will incorporate voice commands into their behavior, meaning that ecommerce brands must enable voice search queries.
- Sustainability. Consumers are increasingly aware of a company's ethical and environmental positions—making it crucial to be transparent about your company's steps to maintain sustainable practices.
- Omnichannel commerce. Integrate the shopping experience across multiple channels, such as in-store, mobile apps, online sites, and social media.
- Live commerce. Livestreaming culture has skyrocketed in popularity, and ecommerce follows suit. Hosting live commerce events can stir up buzz around promos or build community within your brand.
- Social commerce. Social media is now more than entertainment. Social global sales are projected to reach $8.5 trillion by 2030, highlighting the importance of implementing shopping experiences on social media.
Final Thoughts
Ecommerce management is crucial to overseeing all aspects of your online business for smooth sailing operations and stable growth in your industry.
The right-fitting ecommerce platform, in conjunction with well-integrated ecommerce management systems, will significantly benefit your business.
It’ll tackle tasks like your CRM and streamline challenging processes like inventory management, simplifying your overall day-to-day operations.
An elevated CX, data-driven decision-making, and a marketing strategy that sticks are only the beginning of ecommerce management benefits. As technology and social media continue to develop, so do the opportunities to upscale your business.
There’s a lot to be excited about with today’s ecommerce management.
So get excited! Subscribe to our newsletter, which offers the latest insights from leading ecommerce experts for ecommerce managers.
Ecommerce Management FAQs
As often happens, you get through a post and have more questions. Luckily, we anticipated this. Hopefully, these are the questions you had.
What does an ecommerce manager do?
An ecommerce manager will oversee and coordinate the online presence of a business through various vital components such as:
- Inventory management
- Product management
- Online marketing strategy
- CX management
And more!
How do I choose the right ecommerce platform for my business?
It can take time to choose the right ecommerce platform for your business. But no matter your ecommerce business, there is still a platform for you.
You must know your business’s goals and needs to choose the right platform. As you compare platforms, you can see which ones check the boxes on your list.
Some general factors to consider when choosing a platform are:
- Cost
- Integrations
- SEO functionality
- Efficiency and speed
- CX and security
- Data and analytics
Do I need technical skills to manage an ecommerce store?
Possessing technical skills is very important for effectively managing your online business’s daily operations. It’s not too late to get familiar with them!
Some skills for success as an ecommerce manager include:
- Product knowledge
- Marketing skills
- Analytics and decision-making skills
- Customer service skills
- And creativity!
What are some common mistakes to avoid in ecommerce management?
Ecommerce management can be tricky… Here are some pitfalls to avoid:
- Poor CX due to poor website design, lack of B2C communication, or a hard-to-navigate checkout process.
- Stockouts or overstocks highlight a need to improve inventory management and create contingency plans to mitigate these stock issues.
- Ignoring analytics and trends can lead to inadequate decision-making for your business when you ignore data showing how your business is performing. This can also often lead to losing an opportunity for competitive advantage when ignoring forecasted trends in ecommerce.
