Bob Williams

Practical advice for educating employees about your eCommerce platform

February 3rd, 2012 | Leave a comment | Tags: , , , , ,

There are two groups of people in your eCommerce organization that are on the front-line of dealing directly with customers each day: the help desk and the call center.  Yet when we think about the software development release cycle, it’s easy to focus all of our attention on the planning, development, and testing cycles for release management  and forget about the people who provide operational support.

The work to keep the help desk and call center in the know is not difficult, but it does require periodic and intentionally focused effort. There are a few things I’ve learned over the years to help keep the front line up-to-date.

1. Make …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Customer surveys as voice of the customer

February 7th, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: , , ,

Using online surveys to talk to your eCommerce customers can be a rewarding as well as painful experience. Painful in the sense that customers will tell you your weaknesses or where your site falls short of their expectations. Yet isn’t that a reward as well?

There are an abundance of online survey tool options available today. The tools make it easy to create, deploy, and analyze results. Yet the value for eCommerce product owners is opening the door to hear the voice of the customer. This concept is so import that customer surveys are a product owner responsibility on the eCommerce organization mind map.

Getting results real-time brings more attention …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

What web analytics really provides

January 21st, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: , ,

If you ask eCommerce professionals what role analtyics plays in their organization you’ll undoubtedly receive many answers that concern numbers, charts, and graphs. The Wikipedia community has defined web analytics as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.” This is a good definition because it touches on a purpose of analytics as an optimization process.

Are you using analytics to make your vision clearer?

But web analytics is so much more than numbers, charts, and graphs. It’s certainly useful for more than optimizing web usage. Web analytics has a role in the eCommerce organization because it is an activity …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Rethink competitive analysis

January 5th, 2011 | Leave a comment | Tags: , , ,

Solution owners have the responsibility of performing a competitive analysis for an eCommerce team. It’s the process of knowing exactly how your site compares to the competition. We define if we are ahead, behind, or on par with key features that the industry and customers require. I’ve seen projects justified in the name of competitive alignment and at a larger scale entire strategies formulated in order to copy the competition.

But who says the competition is right? Are they right because they are your competitor? If a competitor has an eCommerce site with a certain feature does that mean that my site must have it also? The answer is maybe. …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Strategic alignment – an eCommerce pillar

November 29th, 2010 | Leave a comment | Tags: ,

One of my fundamental working habits is to make sure that activities and work produced from my eCommerce organization are aligned to the strategic plan of the business.  I define eCommerce strategic alignment as the condition when work output supports or satisfies items listed in the annual business plan and company mission statement. Strategic alignment cannot be treated with lip service or discussed at the outset of a project and never mentioned again. To do so reduces the importance and significance of the strategic plan. There are valuable practical benefits to alignment that make this course of action a no-brainer for those in leadership or management positions.

Practical benefits of …Continue reading >>

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