[eCommerce Africa] Before you even think of marketing...

Rast was the keynote speaker before lunch on day two of the eCommerce Africa conference at the CTICC. His presentation was centred around 'the hardest thing about starting an online business'.

With most of the conference attendees involved in e-commerce in some way, Rast announced that starting an online business is actually not difficult, and that you can literally have a business idea today, get your website live tomorrow and be operational in a week. The difficult thing is making it successful.

Rast listed five layers to consider in your e-commerce business success. These are: business economics, the culture and team to put in place, the customer you're selling to, the product you're selling and the marketing.

Glean customer understanding from Google

© Faithie – 123RF.com

Rast pointed out that a business plan is not something important to present to your investors but also crucial for you to understand what you're getting into and the actual costs of running an e-commerce business. He suggests you always plan from the bottom up not top down, in order to avoid making assumptions that can prove fatal. He suggests you look to Google for actual search queries related to what you're offering online, for a more realistic and accurate view.

Next, Rast pointed out that customer acquisition and retention are of huge importance. However, he cautions that there's high focus on customer acquisition in the media, but to be profitable you need to focus more on customer retention once you've reeled them in.

This needs to be part of your company culture of failing fast and learning from your mistakes, coupled with skill development and bootstrapping. Rast says you need to be creative and smart to build something, and you'll succeed with a corporate culture that fosters thinking that's based on multidisciplinary teams, with boosted drive and fun.

That said, don't forget you need a strong retail focus, and that getting people to consider buying from websites over physical stores is actually the first hurdle to overcome.

Getting consumers to want and stick around for your online offering

Africa problem - convincing consumers to buy online ON TOP of convincing them to buy your product @zando_co_za #eComConfex

- IT Leaders Africa (@ITLeadersAfrica) February 4, 2015

Three e-commerce targets that'll help you retain customers

He suggests you invest in catalogue sorting on your website, as well as enhancing its search functionality and the user interface in order to simplify the 'online discovery' obstacle.

Once your product offering is superb you can focus on the marketing of the product. Rast says that marketing runs from paid-for to free, and what you can control through exposure and discovery through to what the customer controls based on the user experience, which eventually leads to retention.

You can have effective marketing through automation, from clean data tracking and analytics, and naming conventions from data to actions, content and communication are determined by this. Many preach big data, but you can't just be a glorified data capturer. To do that, you sit down and see what people are doing on your site - who are they, and what do they want from you?

Rast concluded that email marketing may not be cool any more, but is still valuable if you do it the right way - don't overdo it, and use big data to guide what and when you send out. There's no denying above-the-line has the best name for getting your message out there to raise awareness, but once you have that you need to focus on retention, and the best way to do so is to move to direct marketing as it's more personal and relationship-based.