The eCommerce market has reached an inflection point. The introduction of Amazon into the Australian market and the proliferation of social selling on Facebook and Instagram has drastically changed the way consumers search for and purchase products. Consumers demand convenience, and retailers are responding with offerings like same day delivery and “buy now, pay later” options, creating serious competition within the market. While it may be easier and more cost-effective than ever to start up an eCommerce business, surviving and thriving has never been more difficult.
You must take these changes in consumer expectations into consideration when growing an eCommerce business. You need to create holistic solutions that set you (and your customers) up for success to provide you with the best chance of surviving in the long term.
It is this shift in consumer behaviour and the subsequent evolution of the eCommerce space that acted as a catalyst for us at RANDEM to up the ante in our service offering. We felt that it was our responsibility to equip small businesses with the tools they need to succeed in the midst of a constantly evolving retail environment. To achieve this we needed to partner with a like-minded organisation that would help us put our customers first across all touchpoints.
This is when we discovered HubSpot and the inbound methodology, which is a method of attracting, engaging, and delighting people to grow a business that provides value and builds trust. As technology shifts, inbound guides a company to do business in a human and helpful way, with the customer’s best interest at heart. HubSpot’s philosophy resonated with our own, and we felt they deeply understood the need for growing e-commerce businesses to modernise the customer experience. It wasn’t just lip service, they were investing in educating these businesses on exactly how to transform their go-to-market to be more customer-centric.
Since joining HubSpot’s Partner Program, we have helped retailers streamline their internal processes, as well as our own. For example, many of our customers now use their Conversations Tool, which includes free tools for live chat, team email, and bots, plus a universal inbox that gives sales, marketing, and customer service teams one place to view, manage, and reply to all customer conversations — regardless of the channel they came from. Tools like this enable these businesses to provide a frictionless, efficient shopping experience for their customers.
In empowering our customers to create a more well-rounded eCommerce experience, we’ve experienced solid growth. Since joining the HubSpot Partner Program, we have grown to over $55m in client managed revenue, and have been able to create substantial growth for our clients by pairing their software with the inbound methodology to really improve the way these e-commerce companies execute their go-to-market strategies.
The eCommerce space is in constant evolution characterised by the growth of marketplaces like Amazon, the merging of bricks-and-mortar with e-commerce and the development of more social selling capabilities on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. To compete against larger retailers and survive, you need to adopt strategies that will help you get your products in front of the right customers. This means making your products available across more channels, and delivering a seamless customer experience, from the browsing stage right through to purchase and delivery. We attribute a strong proportion of our ability to deliver well-rounded design solutions to our customers to our partnership – both the education and the software they provide. It’s proof that when like-minded businesses join forces, they can better serve small businesses and help them to succeed.
Alan Moore, Director, RANDEM Group
