e-commerce Sales Life Cycle (ESLC) Model

E-Commerce sales life cycle includes the following stages:

Pre-sale:

Online promotions are done to create excitement about the products that are being sold through online advertisements.

Transaction:

The customers place their order for the products. The process should be user-friendly and secure.

Delivery:

This stage involves delivering the product to the consumer. Care should be taken in delivery with proper packaging and speedy delivery to make the customer happy.

After sales:

This stage involves following up with the customer to let him know that the product has been delivered or if he is satisfied. The feedbacks from the customer can be furthers used in improving services by the company.

Stages

Stage 1: Start-up & fast growth

Most ecommerce businesses go through an initial period of fast and in some cases unexpected growth. This is usually to do with the popularity of the product they sell or market demand rather than the implementation of their ecommerce platforms. Many businesses will choose platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopify or Magento. It’s important that your business stays agile and responds quickly to change.

You don’t want to get caught up in complicated systems or handcuffed by too much process. Brands often enjoy quick impact in this honeymoon period, before growth slows down and progression is halted by a kind of invisible ceiling. This sees businesses moving into the second stage of the ecommerce lifecycle, which is a growth plateau.

Stage 2: Plateauing growth or consolidation

Businesses reaching this second stage of the ecommerce lifecycle tend to panic and look for quick-fix solutions to perceived issues. You need to understand that it’s natural for there to be a levelling off of growth after the early spike. Once your business has gained traction, brand awareness and initial momentum, it’s time to reflect on your progress, analyse your data and gain key insights to make measured and strategic changes to your ecommerce website and your marketing.

It’s important for business owners to assign ample time and resources to research, to systemise and strategise to work out the best ways to move to the next level and start achieving renewed growth.

Stage 3: Renewed growth

Many business owners think that the solution to the issue of plateauing growth is a quick fix or a swift change of direction, which can be an ecommerce platform move or, perhaps, the recruitment of a new ecommerce manager.

This is not necessarily thinking strategically. A replatforming project might indeed be the answer perhaps to a more advanced or modern ecommerce platform, like BigCommerce but you need to make a clear business case (including extensive research and risk assessments) before deciding to migrate platforms. Check out Space 48’s golden rules of replatforming blog to learn more.

In this third stage of the ecommerce lifecycle, the attempts to reinvigorate your company’s momentum and growth should always be strategic. In my experience, the solution to plateauing growth may only require realigning your business goals with changing customer trends, keeping up-to-date with new technology and channel strategies.

Research and analysis is required to optimise processes and improve customer experience. This will steer your strategy. Research may reveal issues and you might find you need to replatform, but there needs to be sound reasoning behind decisions to implement technology and tools.