Role of Business Analyst in E-commerce Domain

Internet is home to some of the biggest businesses in the world and e-commerce sales will increase by 20.1% this year to reach $1.500 trillion. There are various reasons behind the mounting popularity of the online shopping stores in the past couple of years.

But nevertheless, of all only 10% of business function properly and remaining 90% fails. It’s very challenging to execute a successful B2C (Business-to-Consumer) transaction as it doesn’t involve only selling of the products / services to the consumer but also includes an effective After Sales Services, Secured Payment Transaction Methods, Refund / Replacement policies and many other additional factors apart from the core operations. For a good and successful e-commerce website it is very necessary and important to understand the online world and the diversity of the business strategies that should be implemented towards it success.

Business Analyst is one such person who can help in formulating strategies and define various parameters that needs to be considered while carving a successful e-commerce business and not mere building of a good GUI website which doesn’t function properly. A business analyst will be involved in the entire E-commerce Development Life Cycle similar to his involvement in any software development projects.

E-commerce Development Life Cycle

Research & Strategy

1. Understand Client Requirements and define Scope, Business Objectives and Business Proposition
2. Understand the Target Audience and accordingly build business branding and pricing module
3. Analysis and understanding of various online platforms (desktop website, mobile website, mobile application)
4. Review current industry trends for analysis of competition in the business domain for effective formulation of go-to market strategy

Business Analyst interacts with the client and after numerous interviews, questioning and brain storming builds a high level scope for the project. After thorough analysis of the market and target audience elicits a go-ahead plan for the client.  It is the job of the business analyst to evaluate the pros and cons of various features to be provided by the business based on the industry trends and facts.

Planning

• Detailed functional flow of the website and the field level requirements
• Setting standards for the website GUI and UX. Website Development Requirements.
• Domain Name and Secured Managed Hosting
• KPI’s and SLA’s for the Website Performance, Customer Acquisition, Lead Conversion and Customer Retention
• Building of various policies like After Sales Support, Refund, Replacement etc.
• Detailing of Inventory Management System
• Integration of Web Analytics tools
• Analysis of various Payment Options and it’s integration depending on the Target Audience and Security Features

• Website Content Management and Website Maintenance
• Defining Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing Strategies and KPI’s
• Optimization of Shopping Cart
• Features for Promotional offers
• Tracking of Goods
• Staffing Requirements

Business Analyst is actively involved in the various stages of planning right from defining the functional flow, wireframes designing, and building of various policies. Identify KPIs and SLAs for both in-house and outsourced services. Business Analyst will not be involved in the budgeting process but providing cost effective solutions is very important. Technical solutions are important but at the same time improvement in the manual operation processes also adds a lot of value. 

Execution & Testing

It is the job of the design and development team to build a website that has a very good GUI, UX and Performance. Testing Team has to ensure that the website is bug free but along with them even the business analysis performs the functional testing  to check if any requirements are missed and the website is working as per the agreed upon KPIs and SLAs.

Deployment & Monitoring

Roll Back Strategy plan and Checking Payment Processing are two very important aspects considering e-commerce deployment activities. Once the website is successfully deployed and regression testing has been performed it the business analyst can start tracking data for various tracking and reporting aspects. Few are listed below

• Create data driven recommendation for website improvements, website conversion optimization and reduced bounce rates.
• Drive data-driven insights on visitor behavior by analyzing website data on traffic patterns, order volume, conversion funnel, navigation behavior, and product selection, etc.
• Use A/B testing to understand page value and promotional effectiveness
• Draw meaningful patterns and insights from multiple data sources
• Daily / Weekly / Monthly / Yearly  reporting on e-commerce sales, traffic and end-user fulfillment
• Historical data trend analysis for user behavior analysis

The huge success of E-commerce in the last five years has already proved that the Brick and Mortar shopping experience is soon going to extinct but the fact the consumers like to build personal behavior still holds true. Building a website is technical task but building relationship through online channels is laying down stone for a successful business.

Neglecting any of the online channels for selling products / services can be risky hence good businessmen should always sell in the market where customers are buying products.

M-commerce is one of the emerging online markets hence building a responsive website is very important going forward.

About Author:

Nikhil Vaishnav is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at nikhil.v@spluspl.com