When evaluating the return on investment of your B2B ecommerce operation, it’s more than simply revenue and costs. It’s vital to take a holistic approach to understand where you can optimize and innovate.
Evaluating Your Ecommerce Expenses
This part is pretty straightforward: add up the costs of your ecommerce operation.
That may include:
- Licensing and implementation fees for your ecommerce platform and other software
- Retainer fees for your ecommerce agency partner
- Any in-house ecommerce employees
- Digital marketing spend
Calculating Your Return
When calculating your return, your ecommerce sales are just the first consideration. A modern, holistic ecommerce operation will offer a wide variety of valuable advantages for your company beyond the on-site, add-to-cart transaction.
- A percentage of offline sales: It’s not uncommon for a customer to research and build out an order on your website but then reach out to your sales team to actually place the order. As such, your ecommerce operation should receive an appropriate attribution for the sale.
- Other self-service events: The right ecommerce operation will also offer additional opportunities for your customers to purchase from you digitally, like automated subscription purchases and punchout. These sales should be counted towards your ecommerce ROI. When they self-serve in other ways – like tracking their order or paying their invoice online – it can also provide significant value to your organization.
- Internal efficiency: One of the biggest values of a well-executed ecommerce operation for B2B organizations is the internal efficiency. When your customers can self-serve, your employees can focus on initiatives that drive your business forward. You’ll need to calculate this newfound efficiency and include it in your total ROI.
- Increased customer retention: Offering an assortment of digital channels that empower your customers to purchase and self-service in the manner that is most convenient for them can help increase your customer retention. Your ecommerce operation can provide a wide variety of tools, content, rewards, and education that help your customers do their jobs easier, faster, and cheaper – all of which can help them choose you over the competition.
- Improved brand visibility: Launching a new or improved website experience should improve your brand’s visibility online. When built correctly, your site will make it easier for your customers and prospects to find your products and your company online.
Each of these factors will require their own metrics to measure and track their value to your organization over time.
Optimize and Innovate
Sometimes, especially in the early years of establishing your ecommerce operation, you may find that the numbers are not working in your favor. It can take time to establish your operation within your market, grow internal and external adoption, and iron out any significant roadblocks in your buyer journey.
So, what do you do? Do you throw your hands up and scrap the whole ecommerce operation? No, of course not. But it is a great opportunity to identify areas for optimization and innovation.
Here are some things to consider:
- Are your platforms the right fit? Your ecommerce technology will represent a significant portion of your ecommerce investment, so it’s vital to make sure it’s actually the right fit for your organization at this time. A top-of-the-line platform may be more than you need at this point in your ecommerce journey.
- Is your ecommerce agency partner delivering what you need? Your agency partner will have a huge impact on your operation’s success. If they’re not helping you optimize and innovate, they may not be the right fit to help you grow.
- How can you increase adoption? If your customers haven’t taken to your ecommerce offerings, it’s important to understand why. Are there roadblocks that make it difficult for them to find what they’re looking for? Does your competition offer something that you don’t? Do they just find it easier to call up your sales team? One of the ways your agency partner can help you innovate is by finding ways to help make your customers' jobs easier. You might also want to consider a rewards program that encourages customers to purchase online. You may also need to consider increasing internal adoption. It’s not unusual to face resistance to new systems internally, so it’s important to speak with your teams and find out why they’re not using your ecommerce operation.
Get Your Free Ecommerce Assessment
If you’re struggling to achieve an appropriate return on your ecommerce investment, the experts at Xngage are here to help. With our free ecommerce assessment, our team will evaluate your technology, analytics, goals, and challenges to offer custom recommendations on how you can optimize and innovate.