The road to e-commerce excellence Intrepid Group Asia

Follow four key steps to successful online store management strategy. By

Thailand is on course to have the second-largest internet economy in Southeast Asia, with an expected value of US$53 billion by 2025, according to the “e-Conomy SEA 2021” report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co.

In such an intense competitive landscape, how can brands stand out? The answer lies in creating a strong online store management strategy. As we welcome 2022, it’s time to revisit your planning to ensure optimal store management strategy, starting with these four key areas:

Optimise inventory management: With 9 million new digital consumers in Thailand from the start of the pandemic in 2020 up to the first half of 2021, rapid growth of online consumers highlights the imperative need for a more strategic and systematic approach to inventory management. This way, brands can ensure that they don’t miss out on conversion opportunities and continue to stay ahead of the pack.

To avoid a potential crisis from too much dependency on manual processes in managing stores across multiple platforms including social commerce, brands need to invest in innovative management solutions. The goal is to achieve unified inventory stock syncing as well as to streamline store operations for more consistent and efficient outcomes.

Make data work for your e-commerce benefit: As important as it is to observe consumer behaviour and trends when building a consumer focused e-commerce strategy, it is also imperative to understand what competitors in similar categories are doing to improve their business and grow online sales.

If anything, it is high time to invest in innovative solutions to track competitor insights. This can provide you with a better perspective of where your brand currently stands against competitors and in which areas you can bring added value to the game and set yourself apart, to be more appealing to consumers.

Smarter store management strategy: There is no cookie-cutter approach to impactful store management strategy. The earlier we address this, the better. Brands may have all the right promotional ingredients from bundling, vouchers and discounted shipping rates to flash sales, but the fact is there is no one-size-fits-all combination template for commercial success.

A brand’s store management success is dependent on a variety of factors, from taking into account consumer behaviour and nuances to duration and time period for specific sale events. You can benefit from the insights of a regionally focussed team of e-commerce experts who engage in cross-market learning and exchange market knowledge for local teams to adapt and improve, providing only the best results for brand partners.

Elevate the customer experience: Customer loyalty is the very essence of brand success, more so within a highly competitive and rapidly growing industry such as the e-commerce ecosystem. Taking a leaf out of the Tesco Lotus (now Lotus’s) playbook, customer loyalty has always been at the core of business success.

Brands cannot underestimate the value of a seamless consumer purchasing journey. In fact, every little bit counts, from the attractive, user-friendly visuals and smooth navigation through the landing page to the checkout page. By bridging the gap between commerce and digital assets, brands can not only maximise visibility and gain better traffic and leads but also avoid potential cart abandonment.

But it doesn’t end there. Seamless customer engagement and rapid response rate to queries, supported by data security, can further seal the deal in sales conversions.

In a nutshell, Thailand’s e-commerce industry is full of potential. However, the key to reaping maximum benefit from the market truly lies in ensuring your e-commerce business is built on a rock-solid foundation and not a house of cards. It’s high time to start looking inward and improving the basics to emerge victorious in this e-commerce race.

‘‘ Brands cannot underestimate the value of a seamless consumer purchasing journey.