Selection of the e-commerce software

Year after year, the turnover figures in online retail know only one direction: upwards! In 2019, 72.6 billion euros were turned over in e-commerce in this country. This corresponds to a plus of 11.6 percent compared to the previous year. For 2020, the industry predicted an increase of 10 percent – and that was still “before Corona”, which has once again turned the structure of trade upside down worldwide.

Most sales are generated in the entertainment category, followed by clothing, furnishings and leisure. Products of daily use generated the lowest turnover with 4,896 million euros annually, but with 14.1 percent this is the largest growth market. Food in particular is increasingly being ordered online. And again, these are the figures as calculated for a time without a virus pandemic. A forecast by statista shows: If current shopping habits were to remain as they are, around 16 billion euros more turnover would be made online in future with hygiene products, food and pet food alone.

Selling online - there's no way around it for retailers

Looking at the figures, it quickly becomes clear: for retailers, the sales channel is indispensable. And anyone who operates or is planning an online shop needs an appropriate shop system, payment and marketing tools as well as other software.

Choosing the right shop system for e-commerce

To display the range of goods online, you first need a shop system. Software as a Service (SaaS), open source or on-premise solutions? There is a huge selection of systems available in each category, so the decision is not exactly easy.

The initial situation is decisive for the decision: small traders have different requirements than large companies or corporations that operate internationally. In order to choose the right shop system, the requirements must first be defined:

How many products are to be sold?
What turnover is currently generated / planned?
Should individual adjustments be possible?
Are sales planned regionally, nationally or internationally?
Are there e-commerce competencies in-house or budget for an agency?

As soon as the catalogue of requirements has been created, the different shop systems must be compared and a ranking list drawn up.

With the size of the online shop, the complexity increases and with it the costs:

Size of the online shop	small	medium	large
Complexity	low	medium	high
Features	E-commerce website builder, small range of functions, no link to other systems.	Software is provided in the cloud, large range of functions, interfaces possible.	Omnichannel: Links all systems (ERP, CMS, CRM) and automatically records customers, orders, products and adjusts inventory.
Estimated implementation time	a few days, depending on the number of products	a few weeks	several weeks or months
Costs	approx. 10 € – 50 € / month	approx. 25 € -300 € month	High installation and development costs as well as several thousand euros in licence fees
Examples of shop systems	Squarespace, weebly	shopify, lightspeed	Magento, intershop, SAP Commerce Cloud

The overview clearly shows the differences. A small shop can be set up quickly. This is due to the simple operation, which even inexperienced users can quickly familiarise themselves with. However, the system is limited to the basic functions. There are usually several templates to choose from for the layout of the online shop, but individual programming is not possible. This is the optimal solution for a regional club that wants to offer jerseys or other merchandise for sale.

For online shops that are aiming for growth and a certain scalability, a larger shop system is already suitable. It offers significantly more functions, integrations and customisations. Operation is not quite as intuitive. For this reason, familiarisation is more time-consuming.

Implementing complex online shops is a comparatively large project that cannot be realised without technical expertise. It is software that is installed itself and not provided in the cloud as in the previous examples. This has the advantage that the online shop can be strongly individualised and adapted to all requirements through programming. However, this individual programming takes time and causes costs. The more that needs to be adapted, the longer the implementation takes and the more expensive the project becomes. Complex online shops are therefore only suitable for companies that make up for the costs with their sales.

Payment Service Provider: Purchase on account, direct debit, Paypal and Co.

Almost as important as choosing the right shop system is offering the payment methods desired by the user. According to the PPRO study on the online shopping behaviour of Germans, two thirds have already abandoned a purchase because the preferred payment method was not available (39.8 percent), the payment process was too complicated (14.2 percent), the process did not work (9.1 percent) or the payment method was not trusted (3.6 percent).

One payment method alone is not enough. Because everyone prefers a different payment method. Only those who offer all of them can avoid shopping cart abandonment and increase sales. The most popular payment method is invoice (41 per cent), closely followed by Paypal (35 per cent) and far behind in third place is payment by direct debit (8 per cent).

The more payment methods are offered, the more customer-oriented the online shop appears. Nevertheless, all payment methods should not be offered indiscriminately, as this quickly appears haphazard and overwhelms the buyer. When considering the payment mix, the fees of the payment methods should also be taken into account. If the fees are too high, the payment method may not be profitable.

A payment service provider supports the technical connection of online payment methods such as PayPal or credit cards to the online shop. The most common provider on the German market is probably Klarna. With the help of the payment service provider, there is no need for a contract agreement with each individual online payment system. Another advantage: if an invoice is not paid or a direct debit is reversed, the risk of non-payment lies with the payment service provider and not with the online shop, because the payment service provider acts as a contractual partner to the customer.

Optimise the online shop with tracking and increase sales

Nowadays, anyone can put an online shop on the web, but the success of the shop is crucial. Tracking tools are needed to find out which traffic source generates the most sales, which marketing measures lead to increased sales, which search queries lead to the shop, or simply to analyse user behaviour on the site to identify optimisation potential. Most tools work with cookies. Google offers several tools and enables everything from tracking and A/B tests to the creation of individual reports: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console and Google Data Studio.

However, there are many other free and paid tools that can be used instead of Google, such as Econda or Matomo. Mouseflow, on the other hand, summarises user behaviour in heat maps: Where do visitors click? When do they scroll? Where do they focus their attention? This quickly reveals what works in the online shop and where optimisation is still needed.

Online shop needs good pre-planning

The go-live of an online shop cannot be realised overnight. Planning involves a lot of preliminary work. Not only the concretisation of the requirements, the selection of the shop system, the integration of suitable payment methods and protection in case of non-payment and analysis through tracking; also procedures and processes behind the online shop must be planned and implemented: