Keep it simple and think like a customer if you want to succeed in eCommerce.
That was the advice of Deirdre McGettrick, co-founder and CEO of ufurnish.com, who was talking on a panel hosted by 老九品茶Cloud at Manchester Digital鈥檚 eCommerce Conference on Thursday.
Ufurnish.com is the UK鈥檚 No 1 search and discovery platform for home furniture and furnishings and recently announced 拢3.4m in seed funding as it looks to scale.
McGettrick, a former investment banker, was joined on the panel 鈥� entitled 鈥楾he platforms optimising online retail鈥� 鈥� by Rebecca Worsley, founder and CEO of Rainy City Agency and Adam Pritchard, founder and CEO of Shopit.
Ufurnish.com has been described as the 鈥楽kyscanner for furniture鈥� and brings more than 110 furniture retailers across the market onto one website to make furniture search easy for consumers.
Asked for her secrets for a successful eCommerce business, McGettrick said: 鈥淣umber one is keep it simple. So many people complicate it. You should be able to break it down so that a five-year-old can really understand it.
eCommerce Conference 2023 – The platforms optimising online retail
鈥淣umber two is think about everything from the consumer鈥檚 point of view. Who is your customer and is your product solving that first?
鈥淲hoever your customer is you should be skewing your website towards them. If it鈥檚 18-25 year-olds you should be skewing it towards how they shop, if it鈥檚 35+ it should be skewed in a different way.
鈥淚t could be skewed towards gender, age聽 or interests etc. Whatever it is, you need to make it as optimised as possible.鈥�
She said in the case of Ufurnish.com, 85 per cent of the purchasing decisions for furniture are made by women so the website reflects that.
鈥淚t鈥檚 primarily females who would like to see all the options in market before actually making a decision,鈥� she said.
鈥淭he vision for Ufurnish.com is to be the UK鈥檚 first choice search and discovery platform for home furniture and furnishings.
鈥淲e want to own the category of search for furniture in the UK, akin to how Auto Trader and Rightmove manage it for their respective sectors.鈥�
Rebecca Worsley, founder and CEO of Rainy City Agency, said the best looking websites aren鈥檛 always the most successful.
鈥淎s an agency the first thing that we look to do is an audit of someone鈥檚 website,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat will be from a user experience (UX) point of view but also from a conversion point of view.
鈥淭he work that we do isn鈥檛 just about making people鈥檚 websites look pretty, it鈥檚 about how we can optimise it for increasing conversion rate, average order value and look at the customer lifetime value as well.鈥�
Adam Pritchard is the founder and CEO of pay-as-you-grow eCommerce platform Shopit and is on a mission to make technology accessible from as little as 拢10 a month.
鈥淭he idea is that businesses sign up to the platform and it鈥檚 for them to manage themselves,鈥� he explained. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a shared success model so it doesn鈥檛 cost us anything if they don鈥檛 use the system and it stays at 拢10-a-month.
鈥淲e know that merchants want to grow to do 拢500k, 拢3m and 拢10m and as they do that our bills go up.
鈥淭here鈥檚 loads of conversations about augmented reality and AI, which is very exciting but I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 accessible from a cost point of view.
鈥渆Commerce is all for the rich people at the moment. That鈥檚 fine but they stay as the big brands. We鈥檙e there for the masses. They might not have the budgets but still have the 聽talent, hard work and energy to want to do it.鈥�
The panel was hosted by 老九品茶Cloud executive editor Chris Maguire.