eCommerce operations play a big part in eCommerce business but most people assume eCommerce as just to set up the quick online store and start dropshipping on a various available eCommerce platform, Custom eCommerce or the opposite spectrum of behemoths like Amazon, Wayfair, and Walmart.

The eCommerce giants like Amazon, Wayfair, Walmart, etc. are nothing but operation- driven businesses. The fact is if you want to have a successful eCommerce, you have to accept that it's an operation play and not marketing and branding. The reason eCommerce is successful that you can optimize an infrastructure to sell to a vast audience base efficiently at low or high prices. If the operations are sound, it becomes extremely convenient for customers as well. All this can be achievable with nothing but excellent operation management.  

Here are the main important points of eCommerce operations

Shipping & Fulfillment:

You must need some shipping and fulfillment strategy to run eCommerce site unless you sell any digital products. Think of how you will handle this? With the third party, with your warehouse? What shipping carriers are you using? Right shipping process allows you to deliver your orders seamlessly.

Multi Warehouse:

It is difficult to only ship efficiently from one warehouse. To move products fasters, are you managing from multiple warehouses? Also, how do you optimize this? Have a centralized warehouse management system to keep track of stock in your warehouses and prevent overselling or underselling.

Payment Methods:

How you will manage and take the payments. Do you have specific payment terms for different customer type? Set the right payment parameters to account your orders easily.

Customer Service, Returns, & Orders:

It's unlikely that every order will go right.  You will have customer queries, returns, and many other issues with orders to manage. Excellent customer service helps companies to not only increases sales and profits but stand out in the marketplaces too.

Inventory Management:

How you manage inventory and keeping up with fulfilling inventory on multiple channels? Inventory management is the most crucial part of running a successful eCommerce operations. Implement the robust inventory management system to manage your every inventory at one place.

See 5 Key Benefits of Inventory Management System

Accounting tools:

eCommerce often results in many small or large transactions. Thus, it requires a good integration with a financial tool (QuickBooks, Xero, etc.) to prevent much manual adjustment of orders.

Omnichannel:

Nowadays, most eCommerce businesses sell products not only on their website but in-store, and marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc. Such companies require complex operations and utilizing platforms like Channel Advisor to manage efficiently.

Catalog & Content:

What is eCommerce without attractive product page, or category page? You need a great process for delivering the qualitative content over product, category, and other content pages. You may require integrating with product systems like a PIM or other ways of aggregating content.

Great User Experience:

Excellent user experience is the end goal for any eCommerce business but doesn't misinterpret with attractive design. It doesn't matter, but I think the focus on functional design is more important. How quick and easy for the customer to buy they want makes all the sense at the end.

Selling International:

If you are selling globally, then your eCommerce can become an operational nightmare. There is a lot to take care like multi-currency, multi-language, multiple websites, different ways of shipping and payment, and so on.

Taxes:

To manage the complexity of state and local taxes you can use application like Avalara.

Marketing:

It's easy to market which has a great value than something that isn't. Your site has to provide value via a great product, easy shopping experience, cost-effective shipping/delivery, and exceptional customer service. We have seen many websites that have no real value proposition versus buying on Amazon etc.

Third-party Integrations:

There is no such eCommerce platform which comes in full package and has everything you need. Most sites require many different integrations through third party systems for payment, shipping, reviews, rewards, etc. specific to your business.

Custom Development:

Managing operations through eCommerce often requires quite a bit of custom development to scale effectively. Having a great software team is all about operations around managing tasks, managing development operations effectively, and other operational tasks. It's an operations business in the end.

Know more about hiring a team.