In today’s article, I’d like to discuss this in more detail. When are some of the situations where it’s possible to create standard procedures and even automate some tasks?
And what are the moments where improvisation reigns, and how to deal with them?
We’ll discuss all of this throughout the text. Ready to get started?
What are the Organizational Structures of E-commerce?
Throughout this text, we will discuss two distinct types of e-commerce operations: sales only on our own e-commerce sites and sales on marketplaces, c level contact list whether or not they have their own e-commerce site.
But you’ll notice that e-commerce management, despite being different for these two modalities, still follows a well-defined pattern.
Understanding this structure is very important because many store owners end up falling into a major e-commerce trap: focusing too much on buying and selling, and focusing too little on other fundamental activities.
In fact, other activities that require much more work and are, in some cases, much more complex.
Understanding the organizational structure of e-commerce will help you develop your own e-commerce management style, as each online store has its own unique characteristics.
What we’ll show here is a basic example of e-commerce organizational structures, consisting of:
- Commercial area: product purchase, this suv is a visual statement of its performance capabilities product registration, product sales, after-sales and strategic planning;
- Logistics: receiving, storage, dispatch, inventory ;
- Financial: accounts payable and receivable;
- Administrative: notes and HR management;
- Fiscal: financial planning and control, accounting organization;
- Marketing: specific to each operation.
Let’s briefly discuss each of these points now to understand the organizational prerequisites necessary for effective e-commerce management.
Let’s go together:
Commercial Area: Planning, Purchasing, Sales and After-sales
Among the e-commerce structures, the best known is certainly the commercial area .
This is where the most obvious e-commerce activities take place: searching for suppliers, purchasing products, registering those products on the website , and selling them, including setting up payment gateways and anti-fraud systems.
All of this happens based on a very well-defined strategic plan.
This strategic planning, which can be done as often as the retailer deems necessary, is what determines key points in e-commerce, such as:
- The profit margin;
- Stock sizing;
- Delivery areas (based on your logistics partnerships);
- The marketplaces where you will sell;
- The advertising budget and strategy;
And other specific questions for each e-commerce site. It’s through this planning that you determine how much you want and can sell, and what actions are lithuania phone number necessary to achieve these goals.
Purchasing products is constantly evolving. It’s important to build your supplier list and expand it as much as possible, seeking lower prices and better delivery conditions.
All of this is reflected in the price of your products and your ability to create promotions.
Sales and after-sales work closely with marketing. You’ll need to understand advertising strategies and post-sales support, including product exchanges, email requests for reviews, and more.
But we’ll discuss this point in more detail in the dedicated marketing section. For now, let’s move on to the second organizational area of e-commerce management:
Logistics
Well, logistics is the complement to the common sense that e-commerce management is about tracking purchases, sales, and delivery, and nothing more.
Of course, that’s not quite the case, and we’re seeing here in practice how all the organizational structures of e-commerce work together.
Logistics work is the most specialized of all. Thinking on a more superficial level, organizing logistics involves:
- Create partnerships with carriers;
- Understand the postal service shipping methods;
- Register shipping spreadsheets in e-commerce automation;
- Packaging and packaging of products;
- Creation of automatic emails to monitor delivery;
- Exchange and return management.
This is e-commerce logistics when we think about it in a more general, less specific way. It can be much more complex and complicated than that.
Each of these points holds significant potential upside or downside. Good shipping companies make shipping more expensive, but at the same time, they improve the shopping experience, for example.
Financial, Administrative and Tax
One of the most important aspects of e-commerce management is organizing your finances.
Here, we’re mainly talking about organizing what you need to pay your suppliers and closely and continuously monitoring your e-commerce revenue.
Typically, this finance work is handled by a dedicated person. Retailers have many responsibilities and must be more attuned to sales and marketing.
Administrative matters follow the same pattern. Managing people, invoices, and taxes—keeping in mind that states have different sales regulations—is crucial to the smooth running of your operation.
Retailers can choose between dedicated management, carried out by hired specialists, or outsourced management, carried out through platforms such as TOTVS.
Marketing
Now for a moment of personal opinion here, coming from the author who was an e-commerce analyst for many years: marketing is where the retailer’s focus should be.
Marketing is the lifeblood of e-commerce. It’s how you maintain your sales base and expand it month after month, year after year.
This expansion is crucial for e-commerce businesses, as it’s what keeps operations profitable and profitable.
Typically, e-commerce businesses operate on three different fronts in digital marketing, all at the same time:
- Inbound Marketing: SEO initiatives on websites and blogs. Lead generation and creation of specific pipelines for top, middle, and bottom-of-the-funnel leads.
- Outbound Marketing: This is the main marketing strategy for e-commerce. It usually involves advertising on Google Ads or Social Ads .
- Social Media Marketing: This is the work done on social media, not including advertising. Influencer marketing also falls under this category. Generally, Instagram profiles of e-commerce businesses are the best fit for this. Those who sell exclusively on marketplaces can also work with SMM, but in different ways.
The links we provide throughout the points will help you better understand each strategy. They’re a must-read if you’re not yet familiar with digital marketing.
Most direct investments in e-commerce — that is, those not related to its normal operation — should go to marketing.
In fact, it’s quite common to find e-commerce businesses that invest much more than their usual margins, even directing 15% to 20% of their gross revenue back to marketing.
The Day-to-Day of E-commerce Management
So we understand that e-commerce management is a job done according to the organizational structures of e-commerce, right?
And also a little more than that: e-commerce management needs to take into account both commerce and E .
We need to constantly remember that e-commerce is a website on the internet, and that with that there are some issues related to the internet itself and its existence on it.
In fact, we can even create a quick, formalized definition along these lines:
“E-commerce management is the application and monitoring of specific aspects of a company’s organizational structures, combined with monitoring the specific needs of e-commerce as a website on the internet.”
But now I think we’re done with theory, don’t you think? Can we move on to practice?
In this topic, we’ll understand what actually happens in each of these areas in the day-to-day management of an e-commerce business. Starting with the main one: