Page 290 - E-Bussiness and E-Commerce Management Strategy, Implementation, and Practice

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Chapter 5 E-business strategy 257

Building the model, we combine existing business and brand strategies with
primary and secondary customer research, competitor audits and innovation trends.
The customer research covers online attitudes and behaviours and cross-channel
preferences and needs. The competitor audit includes a SWOT analysis of our own site
and an evaluation against business objectives and user expectations.
Q. Someone said the evolution to digital is ‘a bit like global warming’ – we all
know it’s happening but fixed goalposts or yardsticks are hard to find. What ref-
erences and benchmarks can you use for targets and comparisons?
Sharon Shaw, Standard Life: The boon with digital is that it is so measurable. As
such, setting financial targets and comparisons is easier than in traditional media. ROI
stands out as the most obvious measure for individual projects, varying for brand
campaigns and e-commerce builds (but always positive!).
Overall, we like to look at the percentage contribution digital makes to total sales
volumes and we can set a benchmark target of around 15% for a mature multi-channel
retail business.
Strategically, the aim is to reference the customer experience online and across chan-
nels to make sure it is consistent and mutually constructive. This can be measured through
online and offline surveys, and increasingly through ‘buzz’ metrics on the social web.
Standard Life is considering using services like eBenchmarkers to compare site
performance with competitors. It provides metrics for our site in comparison to aggre-
gated scores across all their registered sites.
Q. What are the key success metrics and what reliable data is out there to com-
pare ‘like with like’
Sharon Shaw, Standard Life: Ultimately, success in e-commerce is measured through
improved profits across sales and marketing activity.
Conversion rates and basket value are therefore the most important numbers for
the site, followed by (and related to) campaign ROI and/or CPA. Natural and paid
search performance are key traffic generation metrics.
Other measures include dwell time to evaluate customer engagement with rich
media, and a recency-frequency model to score customer loyalty. For reliable data, we
refer to the IMRG, Hitwise, comScore, Mintel, eMarketer and TGI.
Q. What are the challenges and opportunities of moving towards multi-channel
measurement and integration?

Sharon Shaw, Standard Life: Both the biggest opportunities and biggest challenges
lie in the integration of online and offline systems and databases.
We know that allowing each channel the same view of the customer and their trans-
actional history can drive KPIs up, through delivering a consistent and personalised
customer experience at every touchpoint.
But it is rare that such integration can happen easily as most organisations have
developed their online and offline architectures in isolation.
Which leads us nicely on to the other key challenge – getting the budget, staff and
(most importantly) board level buy-in to undertake the large-scale business change
needed to deliver an effective multi-channel proposition.
Q. Where should e-commerce fit into the overall budget – should it have its own
P&L, or is it a cost centre for other business units?
Sharon Shaw, Standard Life: It really depends on the organisation, its objectives and
how far it has already gone with e-commerce.
A dedicated P&L is great for new e-commerce ventures that don’t rely too much on
other channels. The autonomy and flexibility of financial control allow the channel to
change and grow at pace.