Ecommerce Entrepreneur: You Can Be the Next “Amazon”

As an Entrepreneur, you know e-commerce has shifted the marketplace and changed customer expectations about the shopping experience. As a graduate student of Integrated Marketing Communications at Medill, Northwestern University I have been investigating e-commerce for startups and have found two articles you will find interesting and helpful.

           Ecommerce is a bear, written by Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn, shows current viable ecommerce strategies and lists out real successful example. Why is bear? Think about Amazon! It is like a bear in this industry – it’s fearless and it’s fierce. The authors observed four strategies in the marketplace to deal with Amazon’s incumbency: proprietary pricing, proprietary selection, proprietary experience, and proprietary merchandise.

(source: bearlegend.com)

           Nowadays everybody is talking about big data. The article “9 Data Sets Every Ecommerce Company Should Measure” written by Scott Gerber gives you the perfect answer about what specific dataset an ecommerce business should focus and analyze. Knowing the strategies of making a good ecommerce business, we need to understand what are the most efficient and effective ways to measure the success. Have a closer look at what user acquisition costs, abandoned carts and ROI are and tweet with your comments!

In reviewing these two articles, I have found three action items you should consider taking.  They are:

• Customer feedback is fundamental and crucial  - Not only does customer feedback help businesses evolve and perfect their product or platform, listening to customers can also have a "juggernaut" effect when it comes to building a business.

• Invest in mobile  - Remember this is a trend. Research shows that 80% of smartphone users use their devices to shop online. In the meanwhile, it’s easy to track customer’s behavior over mobile devices and it is also a better way to communicate with the customers.

• Take advantage of social media   - Building up good networks on social media sites can help you drive traffic and target your customers. What is more powerful is that this is the best way to create word-of-mouth buzz for ecommerce business.

         All in all, customer is always the key to start and improve your business. Try to think and act from the perspective of the customers will always give you a bigger possibility to win the advantages and eventually win the market in ecommerce.

Joshua Chen is an MS candidate in Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. He has previously worked as marketing specialist at a consulting firm in Australia and a law firm in China. Follow Joshua’s Twitter @joshuaaachennn

Database Managers: Think Big Data or Perish.

As a tech manager, you know big data is hot issue. But some of you still struggle with it and don’t really know what it can do for the organization. As a graduate student at Northwestern, I have found two big data articles that highlight the key issues you need to consider.

How Corporate Departments Totally Mishandle Big Data by Jeff Jonas talks about isolation that exists between departments. Segregation prevents a company to develop new business strategies and efficiently maintain current resources sometimes at the expense of customers. This is especially true when it comes to new technology and its implementation. In most cases, technology is not the barrier of  knowledge sharing, but a solution. 

Source: Acumenmd.com

Chief Data Officers Blaze Uncharted Corporate Frontier by Randy Bean highlights the role and responsibly of Chief Data Officer. The position that only recently became mainstream, is responsible for implementing new technologies, educating executives and main company's players and facilitate collaboration between executives, various departments and vendors. The position has become so popular in recent years that in fact 65% of CDO positions have been created only within last three years.

After reviewing the two articles there are three action items you need to integrate into your database organization:

Assign a Responsibility - The person needs to “live and breathe” the technology and act as a mentor to other users. The goal for that person is to educate everyone on the system and its capabilities and see the opportunities to merge and consolidate data within different divisions of the company.

Be on the Look Out for New Trends - Data management companies constantly improve their products and there are some things that are not mentioned on the weekly check-in call. Make sure that you spend money on training in order to keep a grasp on the trends.

Endorse the Product - Once the system is implemented in other departments, it would be easier to merge all the data and therefore see a bigger picture for the entire company.

All companies recognize the need for holistic approach, benefit of adapting new technologies and delivering the most efficient results. The data management systems are great, but they are not cheap. So, if your company has decided to purchase one or already did, there is a great hidden potential that lies within each system. You just need to know where to look.

Kate Lichnerska is an IMC graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications where she is pursuing a concentration in Digital and Interactive Marketing. She is an experienced email marketer and photographer and enjoys biking and practicing yoga. Connect with her on Twitter @Kate_Lichnerska and LinkedIn.