In a new report from CloudCraze, which works with B2B and B2C companies on Salesforce, only about half of business owners see ecommerce as important to their profitability, even though 70 percent spent more than $1 million on their ecommerce site.
The report surveyed 300 marketing and IT professionals to find out what was important in running an ecommerce site, and the challenges they face. “The challenge for brands is continuously adapting their ecommerce offerings to meet the changing needs of buyers. For B2B brands in particular, business buyers demand a purchasing experience on par with popular B2C brands, with customized ordering capabilities, personalized product recommendations, and user-friendly sites,” said the report. “Companies looking to grow digital revenue must meet these specific customer needs, while implementing back-end capabilities essential to success, or risk losing business to more nimble competitors.”
The major challenges of running a competitive ecommerce operation were cost, speed to market, and flexibility. It took 44 percent of companies longer than a year to implement their site — for the largest companies (making more than $25 million in revenue), this number jumped to 73 percent. At the same time, quickly updating to the customer, scaling to the changing market, and their company’s evolving needs were cited as major pain points.
“Too many brands proceed with solution providers offering legacy systems without considering all factors, resulting in inflexible technology that costs millions of dollars to implement and maintain, and worse, fails to meet customer needs,” said the report.
The full report is available here.
