By Anna Samkova, Group GM for Digital @ PAS Group & Lisa Powell, Head of Retail Practice @ Amblique
We found that as our digital marketing strategies became heavily targeted and personalised our existing site struggled to keep up. Our goal in choosing Salesforce Commerce Cloud was to enable us to service our customers with the same level of exclusivity and personalisation that a store staff would in one of our stores.
Finding the best SI was on my radar way before I started to consider the platform. I was invited to various events, used my network to gather feedback on various SIs and stayed in regular contact with the SI teams i had quietly shortlisted to understand how they worked.
Key challenges that our team worked through during the initial discovery process were visualising what is, what will be, and what we want. A lot of planning was based off our current site, which at the time was in the midst of some major projects.
These challenges were overcome through resilient teamwork and agile thinking. People who historically had not worked on our eCommerce sites were pulled into workshops to help us resolve and improve on existing processes to ensure the new sites integrations were well considered.
Once the project kicks off everything is timed to perfection and the process didn’t really accommodate brainstorming ideas, rather it focussed on executing what had already been agreed on. We found during discovery workshops you often find alternative solutions or come up with fantastic ideas that cause scope creep and/or are raised too late in the process to action, although these easily fit in your post launch development projects.
Tips for anyone embarking on the same journey:
To launch a new site that offers new functionality and improved processes requires back end business changes, rather than a few UX updates. Don’t discount this thought. Ensure that the teams allocated to the project represent all departments eg: logistics, merchandise planners, marketing, retail staff. You will be surprised at what changes can be made when the right people are in the room and how all departments can actually contribute the the success of your eCommerce offering.
Amblique is Australia’s industry leader in ecommerce and digital consulting, providing omni-channel strategies, retail practice and site optimisation services to help retailers and brand owners SELL MORE.
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