Choosing the right agency for you ecommerce partner can make a real difference to your business getting it wrong can lead to legal disputes and prove very costly for the business while further impacting on staff morale. This article presented by Chris Barling CEO of Actinic is part of a series of 3 offering insight into the process and considerations of selecting an ecommerce agency  followed by further articles.on Preparation and Channel Integration. .

Last year, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), more than £46.6 billion was spent online in the UK, a 54% advance on 2008. Moreover, online sales accounted for around 15% of all retail spend.

However according to a recent survey by Foviance/RXPerience, although online retailers are using a wide range of strategies, in only a few cases were the online and offline channels truly integrated.

In addition, potential customers are now familiar with the web and are unwilling to act as guinea pigs. Consequently it’s important to choose the right ecommerce partner from the beginning, so choosing the right agency has never been more important.

Gone are the days when an agency simply created a website. Today, a good agency can advise you on selecting the right tools to power your web shop, help choose the best payment partner, create a successful ecommerce strategy, and help market your website via search engines, as well as building the site for you and training your staff in using and maintaining it. If you like an agency, but it doesn’t have the resources to provide a full service, it should at least be able to recommend other tried and tested agencies that can help fill any gaps.

Being on the same wavelenght
To get the best out of an agency, you need one that understands your ideas and aspirations. They should be as enthusiastic about your business as you are, and come to you with good ideas that will give you an edge. Always talk to previous clients and look at their websites. Decide which features you like and ask them who came up with the ideas for them. If they were mostly from the agency then you can be confident that you are on the same wavelength.

Size Matters
The agency you choose should be the right size for your business. A big agency may impress with its ‘A-team’ sales people, but unless you’re one of its big customers, the team you are assigned may well be fresh out of college and have zero experience. On the other hand, if the agency is too small it may not be able to cope with your needs. Look at the client list on their website; are there any businesses similar in size and sector to your own? If not, then try elsewhere.

Dedication
You should have a dedicated person or persons within the agency to manage your project. The project manager should be brought in at the start, not after the initial negotiations and signing of contracts, and should provide weekly progress updates.

Technical specification
Once the agency has been retained, concentrate on the technical specifications for the website, and establish upfront just who owns what. Most problems occur over the design rights, the imagery used, the intellectual property rights for the site, the hosting of the site, who maintains the site and the regularity of maintenance. If your agency should fold you don’t want your website to disappear, so make sure that every eventuality is thought through and contingencies covered in the contract.

Businesses tend not to realise quite what the web is capable of and may under-specify, while agencies may either over-specify on functions, or go for a restricted set of functions that doesn’t stretch them. This bores the designers and may exclude features that end-users want. Ask the agency early on what they would do if their budget were as big as they wanted. While you may not be able to afford – or even want – all the functionality, this approach will give you a clear idea of what’s possible, and you can feed the results into the technical specification. In the meantime, keep looking at the web and if you see something you like, add it to the list.

Solution choices
The technology an agency uses to create the website shouldn’t influence your choice of agency. But if the agency should go under or your relationship with them fail, will another agency be able to understand the code they produced? There are no industry standards in website building, but if your agency uses a well-known tool with a long history then you are less likely to have any worries if you have to move to a new agency or web host.

In the past the web development choice has usually been a case of proprietary or boxed-product, however things have progressed, there’s now two additional choices: Open Source or Software as a Service (SaaS).

Proprietary solutions are still a big part of the IT market, but there are many drawbacks. While a proprietary solution can fit businesses requirements you’re then tied to the agency for support, and you have to rely on the ingenuity and the deep pockets of the agency to keep innovating.

You should also factor in the agency’s ability to make changes for legislation and new software features. Changes such as adding new features in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Internet Information Server 7.0, or those needed to comply with legislation like Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) which is causing industry-wide headaches are unlikely to happen overnight with a proprietary solution.

Non-proprietary boxed allow you to leverage a large team of developers. Many of them are employed for specific specialist skills such as ASP.Net, Ajax Web 2.0 technologies, and PCI DSS that a proprietary solutions business would struggle with. They also tend to have big third-party developer communities that can pick up on, and run with, someone else’s work., Unlike proprietary solutions, you also tend to have a development road map so you can plan your next steps.

Open Source-based systems that use Apache as a server, or make use of open source ecommerce platforms and content management software are to be found everywhere. If you choose an agency that runs with Open Source then, just as with boxed-products look for an open source system with a big developer community that has enough functionality to diversify your businesses website from any others in the sector.

Lastly SaaS solutions where the software is held on a central server are starting to take a foothold in the ecommerce market, however it’s still early days yet and there are issues over who owns the data and the intellectual property for your website.        

Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is the big buzzword in the web industry at the moment. But while much of the Web 2.0 technology is based on industry standards, there are still issues with the technology. AJAX technology – the foundation technology of most Web 2.0 - is tried and tested. However there are still few developers that are confident in its execution.

If ticking the Web 2.0 box is part of your plans for your next site, it would be good to check exactly what the agency’s definition of Web 2.0 is first. Many agencies regard blogs, forums and user-feedback as Web 2.0, while others would regard a smattering of video as Web 2.0. True Web 2.0 applications like Google’s Gmail, where the page is constantly refreshed and you’re not transferred from one page to another, are still few and far between. While it’s good to show that your site is advancing, it’s unwise to make a jump to a new technology unless it’s for sound economic reasons.

Multi-channel
Multi-channel sites require more than just a new front-end. The real key to multi-channel is where a customer can choose the route to your business rather than you forcing them into an internet silo, or a mail order silo, or a telephone silo. Ideally a customer wants to be able to buy online, then pick up in store, or research online and see stock levels in local stores. To do this your back-end has to be open,  ubiquitous and real-time before the agency can start to add the web front-end.

Web marketing
Marketing your site online is an essential part of building any website. In the past, optimising your website for search engines was often a separate bolt-on project after the website was created, but today search-engine optimisation should be considered from the start. A website must be easy to read by all the search engines, without recourse to tricks or workarounds.

If the agency claims that it can get you to the top of the search engines, be very suspicious. Similarly, if your agency suggests using hidden text or builds special home pages for specific search engines then beware. If a search engine such as Google decides to exclude you from its searches because it suspects cheating, you’re effectively switching off up to 70% of your new customer traffic.     

Project management
It is also up to you to make sure that the client-agency relationship works. Ideally, appoint a dedicated internal project manager to liaise with the agency. All staff should understand that requests from the agency should be acted on promptly, and they should either pass these on to the project manager or cc them into the communications. The internal project manager should have enough seniority to get things moving and make decisions quickly.    

Fitting in
Finally, think carefully about how your website will fit into the company. If you treat it as a standalone trading arm then you may be missing a trick. By integrating your site with the rest of your business and creating a multi-channel view for your customers, you can create a much better experience. Customers should get the same options and level of service whether they buy online, in-store or over the phone. According to research from BT Global Services, customers using two channels spend 114% more than single-channel shoppers, while consumers using three channels are 48% more profitable than those using just two. Now that’s something to think about!

Agency interrogation:
Some searching questions to ask the agency:

• What are your weak points? No agency can realistically offer expertise in every area, so it’s better to know its weak points up front.
• Have you worked with companies of the same size and in the same industry? Big companies look good on the client list, but have different ways of working and deeper pockets.
• What will I learn from you? Will there be on-site training, full documentation and collaboration with your teams?
• Why do they want to work with you and do they see it as a long-term relationship?
• Do you have partnerships with any vendors? Make sure that the agency is working with the best tools for the job, rather than ones that pay the most commission, or are the cheapest.
• Who will be working on my account? The top-flight designer and ecommerce expert making the pitch may not be the ones working for you. What are the credentials and expertise of the people who will do the work? If they are not present at the pitch, who will be the project manager?
• What happens if I’m not satisfied at the end of the project? Avoid agencies that talk about giving money back!
• Who will be supporting your site after the system is implemented? How will they deal with it if things go wrong?
• Will you have to pay for every subsequent change to the site
• What are the ongoing costs likely to be?

Bells and whistles?
Some Web 2.0 features, such as blogs and user-feedback, are simple to implement and are becoming common place on retail websites. But many businesses are wary of exposing their employees to the web, and even warier of letting customers tell other customers what they think of the products. So if you do want to add these features, then set up rules internally for your bloggers and make it very obvious what you will and won’t tolerate as a comment.  

If that sounds extreme then there are less cutting-edge ways of adding a little something extra. Most websites consist of just words and pictures, and haven’t changed much in the last 7-10 years, but you don’t have to be so limited. Add video: many clothing e-tailers are adding catwalks to their warehouses, so that they can unpack and video clothes as soon as the new stock arrives. In addition, if you add the video to a site like YouTube you get your message over to an even bigger audience.

Lastly, adding audio via podcasts may not suit every business but they can be a great way of explaining and informing customers about new products and services.