The e-commerce market in Poland - what should modern e-commerce be like?

No one needs convincing that the e-commerce market has conquered Polish business. If anyone is still unconvinced, they may be persuaded by the data published by the Statista Digital Market Outloook portal: Poles will spend as much as PLN 150 billion on online shopping in 2019 ! Not only that - Poland ranks 13th in a list of the world's fastest growing e-commerce markets . As the reports show, The market is still expected to grow by almost $5.5 million between 2019 and 2022 . As you can see, the potential is huge, so the task facing online shops is to make use of this

E-commercial cake to take the biggest slice possible for themselves.

This task is by no means easy, as the profile of the online shopper has changed strongly over the past few years. The measure of success is no longer about winning him over for a one-off transaction - it's about keeping his attention and building loyalty. ć. The key, therefore, is not only the price of the product, but the Quality of service , simple navigation and UX-orientation in shop design, the cost of delivery and product return, the use of new technologies, personalisation, the mobile channel, the choice of payment options and, finally, shop promotion, marketing and automation. As you can see, the elements that make up the potential success of an e-commerce shop are many. All of these elements need to work together to make the customer's overall shopping experience positive and to make them want to order from a particular shop again. Shop owners need to be vigilant and relentless in their search for the most appropriate tools to improve their effectiveness and be aware that the competition is not sleeping.

The basics - how do you choose an e-commerce platform?

The backbone of any online shop, regardless of its size or the products offered, is the e-commerce platform. According to a report prepared by Idea Force, the most successful is the Magento It is chosen primarily by those customers who need to manage a large shop and at the same time be sure that the platform can handle a huge number of products and will not crash if it has to process several hundred orders in one minute. It has the advantage of a range of advanced promotional tools, which owners of SaaS e-commerce platforms such as Shoper, Shoplo or IAI-Shop can only dream of. But these too have many advantages - they are low maintenance and can easily support shops that do not have a very extensive number of products. However, you have to reckon with the fact that this is the so-called economic option, so these platforms have a limited possibility of integration with external systems and limited functionality. The migration of a shop to other solutions also causes a lot of problems.

Regardless of the platform, the key to sales is to make the shop responsive on mobile devices, shorten the product purchase process, take care of sales conversions and have good performance. According to the E-commerce 2019 report by Interaktywnie.com, a checklist of a good e-commerce system for 2019 would look like this: attention to UX, mobile (website accessibility for mobile devices, mobile payments, mobile CMS management), PWA (Progressive Web App), analytics, AI, chatbots, marketing automation, expandability to b2b, customer loyalty tools .

Logistics is the key

Why is logistics so important? Even if the shop is brilliantly designed and the customer has bought a product that suits their needs, the shop will still be judged negatively if they have to pay dearly for shipping or have to wait a long time for it. This is why the so-called last mile is a real challenge for all shops - The success or failure of a particular online shop depends on the choice of multiple delivery options.

Among the most popular delivery options in first place is courier . Courier deliveries are usually chosen for their convenience and door-to-door delivery options, but - as seen in Gemius' 2018 report - it is Parcel Machines that are the second most popular delivery option for online shopping. Parcel Machine delivery is already chosen by 48% of shoppers. As Rafał Brzoska, CEO of InPost, comments - Internet users have given a strong signal for Polish e-commerce -. the lack of Parcel Machine® delivery options on offer means that up to 55% of online shoppers may be looking for an alternative shop offering this option . Parcel machines, with their low price and convenient way of collecting parcels, have become an alternative to courier services, although it is important to note the fact that InPost courier is in third place as the most popular carrier.

There are more benefits for the e-commers themselves - by offering a parcel machine delivery method, the shop can quickly integrate with the InPost system via an API that automates delivery processes. It can also join the Quick Returns programme, which will simplify the return of goods by the customer to a minimum.

As you can see, shops need to ensure that trends and changes in logistics go hand in hand with the development of the shop and always remember to keep delivery costs low enough not to exceed the value of the product. Rationalising logistics costs is one of the biggest tasks facing all e-commerce retailers.

Marketing and promotion of shops

There are many ways to promote e-commerce shops. The most common promotional tools are Google Ads in Facebook Ads. They allow not only the promotion of the shop in question, but also its individual products and available discounts. It is also not insignificant to be able to collect sales leads that go into the sales funnel with the hope of conversion. SEO is a separate issue. As most e-commerce reports point out, SEO has been a key issue for several years now, and a high position in search results is almost a 'holy grail' . In times of huge competition, good SEO is the next be or not be for many shops. Often marketing agencies are hired for this purpose, which comprehensively deal with both positioning, content and UX. Among the promotion tools mentioned by e-commerce owners themselves, there is also marketing automation. Among the recommended solutions, Edrone, SalesManago and GetResponse appear most frequently.

Online trading is a huge opportunity and challenge, requiring us to keep abreast not only of consumer trends, but also of technological, logistical and marketing ones. However, even an in-depth market analysis does not give 100 per cent certainty of success, as the market and consumer behaviour are often unpredictable. That is why determination, belief in your product and your skills are so important.