Over the course of my current career with ATG, I've had the privilege of talking to a lot of companies -big and small - about their eCommerce strategy. One of the things that continues to amaze me is the number of companies that over-think the execution of their online presence. The concept of eCommerce seems so enourmous to some, and as a result they never leave the starting blocks.
When you distill eCommerce down to it's most basic form, it's pretty simple: You are asking people to pay you for goods or services. Yes, it's important that they find your web site, and whatever your selling needs to be easy to find. But in the end, the weeks and months that you can spend trying to wrap your head around SEO, usability analysis and Google Analytics is a poor excuse for not getting started. Call it "throwing the baby out with the bathwater", or whatever lame analogy you want to use, but it all comes down to lost revenue opportunities.
I was reminded of this recently, when my friends at FormSpring announced their new integrated payment features. For the uneducated, FormSpring simplifies the tedious and often time-consuming process of building online forms. It seems that many of their customers were using their forms as a gateway to an eCommerce transaction with PayPal or Google Checkout. Unfortunately, those services force the user away from the site where the forms are hosted, so FormSpring decided to integrate several different payments types into their product in order to streamline the transaction process.
FormSpring is one of those little gems that can help companies impliment what I call "Quick Commerce", and it's impossible to overthink! You can go from concept to execution in a matter of hours, and begin accepting real transactions immediately. This is not only a great tool for the budding retailer or entrepreneur where time-to-market is critical, but also for larger corporations that need to get a proof-of-concept out the door with limited resources.
Using the right tool for the right job is essential, and marketers shouldn't overlook tools like FormSpring when it comes time to stop thinking about something, and start transacting.
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