3 ways to grow your ecommerce business beyond website builders

Popular ecommerce platforms are a great way to kick-start your business. Rob Crutchington shows how to build on that success by using innovative payment solutions that deliver a superior checkout experience with additional security and cost benefits.

Ecommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix offer an attractive business proposition for budding entrepreneurs and they are extremely popular. From facilitating the checkout process to managing payments and inventory, they effortlessly take away the headaches involved in setting up an online store leaving sellers free to focus 100% on finding customers and keeping them happy. Globally, when assessing the top one million ecommerce sites by traffic numbers, Shopify takes the lead with 24% market share(i). Closer to home in the UK – the 3rd biggest online market in the world with 1.2 million ecommerce websites – WooCommerce has the largest market share (at 22%)(ii), just beating Shopify, which also has 22% but there are around 4,000 more WooCommerce stores across the nation.

How much is it costing to be successful? Is it time to re-think?

Once a business is up and running, seasoned ecommerce professionals often feel they are losing control, restrained by a specific marketplace or platform fees but how do they know when to take their business to the next level? Here are the telltale signs to look out for:

Dip in profitability

Profit margins provide vital capital to grow a business so monitor them carefully. Remember, ecommerce platforms typically charge for every sale for example Shopify quotes anything from 1.5% – 2% of the purchase price for processing payments plus a flat rate of around 25p per transaction(iii). This is often on top of monthly fees that can run into hundreds of pounds. Do the maths, if ecommerce platform fees are eating into revenues and impacting profits, it is time to move on.

Uninspiring branding

Customers recognise and choose to buy from brands by how clearly they communicate and differentiate themselves from other stores. Ecommerce platform branding templates can be limiting, minimising the impact of future marketing campaigns – and profits.

When International is only in English

Most ecommerce platforms are tailored to US and UK markets where English dominates. Businesses that are serious about international growth need processes that are truly localised and take into account the taxes, currencies and language of customers throughout the world.

Limited control over SEO rankings

High Google rankings are important for any business and yet many ecommerce builders are unable to provide search engines with enough ‘microdata’ to gain top position. Businesses that operate their own websites have complete control over their SEO efforts.

Concerns over security

With fraud and cybercrime on the rise, consumers are more security-conscious than ever before. The fact that most ecommerce platforms don’t offer a dedicated SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate as standard – the digital file that verifies a website’s identity and encrypts the connection between a browser and a web server – is very worrying, especially for online payments.

3 ways to grow your ecommerce business to the next level

Recognise any of these signs and it’s time to do things differently. The next step for sellers might be to open their own online store or they could expand onto multiple, worldwide platforms like Amazon – arguably the most popular and certainly the most widely used with 197 million users every month(iv). Whatever the chosen route, consider focusing on the critical payments side of the business. The latest tech is designed to deliver the same great check-out experience as Shopify, WooCommerce or Wix while enabling ecommerce professionals to source the best acquiring partner for their business:

1. Brilliant tech for a brilliant business

Payment Orchestration takes ecommerce to the next level and is perfect for international expansion, providing a simple, low-cost way to drive global growth and support. Easy to integrate with other business and CRM systems, this latest tech hero is an all-in-one dynamic and secure platform for managing the entire payment process, irrespective of gateway payment provider or acquirer. Powerful least cost acquiring functionality means payments are routed in real-time to the most cost-effective merchant service provider to reduce payment costs. For businesses such as utilities or the wine industry, this can translate into savings of up to 90%.

2. Superior customer service

The philosophy of pioneering payment service providers like Encoded is to blend expert knowledge with technology to meet individual business and CX goals. Cloud solutions focus on a ‘payments your way’ approach so consumers can make the most of Alternative Payment Methods (APMs) like Apple Pay and Google Pay as well as traditional debit and credit card methods quickly and securely. While innovations such as tokenisation mean returning customers are not required to enter their card details multiple times, vastly reducing customer effort and improving customer satisfaction.

3. Highest levels of security guaranteed

Choose a partner that is recognised for meeting industry best-practice security standards while offering a range of advanced reporting and automated tools for facilitating real-time monitoring and response to security incidents. As one of the first fully accredited Level 1 payment service providers in the payment card industry, Encoded combines deep industry experience with technical know-how. For example, Encoded supports the latest EMV 3DS standard to increase the security of e-comm payments.

Rob Crutchington is CEO of Encoded

(i). Builtwith.com – https://trends.builtwith.com/shop
(ii). Ecommerce-gold.com – https://www.ecommerce-gold.com/most-popular-ecommerce-platforms/#ecommerce-platform-market-share-uk
(iii). Shopify Quote – anything from 1.5%-2% of the purchase price for processing payments plus a flat rate of around 25p per transaction
(iv). Techjury.net – https://techjury.net/blog/amazon-statistics/#gref

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