Our latest research report explores the challenges faced by ecommerce leaders and how they are overcoming them to adapt to the digital world. Some key themes to appear from the research report include:
- Technical Debt
- Return on Investment
- eCommerce Platforms
- Data & Insights (User Experience)
Technical debt – creating a real barrier to growth for ecommerce leaders
As the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe, impacting almost every industry and changing the way most consumers lived their lives, brands had to adapt quickly to these changes and as such looked to new ecommerce investments as a means to reach rapidly shifting digital behaviours to bridge gaps in revenue and retain customer loyalty.
Many brands are now facing the fact that shortcuts and compromises taken at the start of the pandemic to implement new technologies and tools quickly, are now building technical debt which is beginning to compromise the performance, experience, security and scalability of their systems.
Technical debt can quickly amass during a period of change and our recent research study found that 88% of ecommerce leaders were concerned about their ecommerce investments creating technical debt (Box UK, Rethinking Ecommerce 2022) and what the impact of that debt would be on their ability to be more agile and innovative in the future.
Data & Insights: The Key to Optimising ecommerce and consumer experience
Having the right tools in place to measure and assess the performance of ecommerce assets is the first hurdle in accessing and understanding truly actionable insights to take across your platforms. It’s therefore no surprise that 74% of ecommerce leaders say their current ecommerce infrastructure and applications make it easy to extract data and insights (Box UK, Rethinking Ecommerce 2022). But armed with the data and statistics, how exactly are ecommerce leaders interpreting and applying the insight to create actionable outcomes aligned with reaching the goals and aims of the site itself?
Traditional ecommerce platforms holding brands back from improving their user experience?
Being able to respond and react to change is vital for any ecommerce brand to be successful and take advantage of new innovations within the market. With only 33% of ecommerce leaders confident that their ecommerce platforms allow them to respond to the needs of the business in the timescale they require (Box UK, Rethinking Ecommerce 2022), the vast majority of brands feel they cannot respond quickly enough.
Many ecommerce leaders (72%) are frustrated with the speed and agility with which they are able to make enhancements and changes to their ecommerce platforms, such as adding new functionality or creating custom integrations with third party services. 90% of ecommerce leaders agree that deploying new technologies simultaneously across numerous geographical locations is a challenge which further outlines the lack of capability traditional ecommerce platforms provide.
Where are ecommerce leaders investing for greater ROI?
The many organisations that directed significant investment into ecommerce at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic as a panacea to accelerate digital transformation are now counting the costs of their reactionary approach. Our latest research reveals that ecommerce businesses are losing at least 10% in revenue due to downtime and website performance issues, and it doesn’t stop there…
So with these investments yet to deliver their expected value and benefits, what approaches are ecommerce leaders taking to shift the dial?
