According to UK webhost review, 380 new websites are created every minute, highlighting just how saturated the online market space is becoming and how delivering extra value within your web development service could be what gives you and your clients a competitive edge.
As a web developer, you may be at the top of your game, creating websites that attract increased traffic and achieve increased conversions for your clients. Whilst this achieves the objectives of their web build project, what impact does the website’s success have on their other systems, processes, and overall resources?
It is crucial as a web developer to be aware and make use of new technologies, so we believe that web developers should be taking a more holistic view in their approach to ecommerce web projects – adding even more value, impressing at pitches and increasing client ‘stickiness’ to their services.
Businesses that successfully take increasing orders via their websites can experience the knock on effect of more invoicing, more transaction data entry, more stock level checks, more customer data entry – keying information in to the website itself, as well as accounting systems, customer relationship management systems (CRMs) and more. This can cause many problems such as increased fulfilment times, damaging even the most stellar of customer service ratings.
Often when putting together an ecommerce web project brief a client is so focused on achieving the objectives of the website, that they don’t consider the effects that a successful website will have on the rest of their business!
Web developers are up against ever increasing competition for business. By proactively addressing the issue of disparate systems in a pitch situation or with an existing client, you can stand out from the competition, inspiring confidence by pre-empting this headache for the client.
Adding a flexible system integration product to your offering is one way to achieve this with no additional development days that can ramp up your proposal’s cost. One solution to consider is Cloud Data Exchange. A really simple way to add extra value to your services.
Our Cloud-based integration solution offers off the shelf connectors for many common ecommerce platforms – Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce etc. – with our team continually developing new connectors, particularly for web developers with a proprietary ecommerce system.
How does it work?
Let’s take a client that uses the ever-popular Sage 50 for their accounts, as an example. Cloud Data Exchange allows the client to integrate crucial information such as invoices, stock and more with Sage, synchronising their key accounts data, saving valuable time, and having their systems in sync with no additional effort or resources, and no big integration project costs.
If you could add to your pitch that the client could save hundreds of hours in time, as well as reducing manual errors across their systems, there’s no doubt it would help you stand out.
Other off the shelf Cloud Data Exchange financial systems connectors include NetSuite, Xero, QuickBooks and, of course, Sage 200. And let’s not stop at accounting systems. Crucial to an effective ecommerce operation is an up-to-date CRM. Cloud Data Exchange also integrates with all the big names, – Salesforce and NetSuite among them – automatically syncing orders, account information and more.
While our focus here has been on adding value for your customers by offering an integration tool within your product portfolio, there can also be financial gains for you over and above that, with our partner referral programme, offering a referral fee for every customer signed up. A win-win for you and your client!
A website, especially a slick ecommerce one, clearly does not stand alone. Understanding this and proactively addressing it holistically with current and potential clients of all sizes – in a way that achieves integration functionality without making your proposal unaffordable – adds to the level of customer service you provide and could be a key way to keep your services ‘sticky’ in comparison to your competition, over and above your outstanding design.
For more information on our partner programme visit our page – https://www.clouddataexchange.com/partnerships/ or get in touch via our contact form.