What are the biggest issues that e-commerce businesses face in 2021? To name just a few, these are fluctuating demand, unpredictable situations on the market, the need for scaling up and down, and performance issues. Also, e-commerce companies need to optimize their spending and gain better insights into their operations. One of the ways to solve these problems is cloud adoption.
In this article, we will gently guide you through all the pros of using cloud computing for e-commerce purposes.
E-commerce in the Cloud: Brief Market Overview
As Fortune Business Insight states in their report, the global commerce cloud market size was $12.32 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $55.67 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 20.8 % during the forecast period.
According to the Future of Retail 2021 report, the e-commerce market surged almost 34% in 2020 due to the pandemic. However, e-commerce sales are expected to grow by 14% in 2021.
The largest e-commerce markets in the world are China, the US, and Japan. In Europe, the top three countries by the volume of e-commerce sales are the UK, Germany, and France.
Moreover, 47% of retail executives believe that the global pandemic accelerated the cloud adoption process in their companies. Forrester experts believe that the cloud will power the overall recovery of both e-commerce and retail industries.
Key Reasons Why Cloud Solutions Are Perfect for E-commerce
While the cloud itself is not a new thing, some companies are still hesitant about the cloud adoption and its integration into the company's processes. So, here are the top five benefits of e-commerce cloud services.
But let’s dig deeper into the advantages of the cloud for e-commerce and name them more precisely, so you can clearly see their value.
Research and development
Research and development are two strong pillars behind a successful business. An effective research of the latest trends can lead your company to new heights. In the modern era, fashion trends and consumer preferences are changing very rapidly, so it’s essential for e-commerce businesses to understand these changes and produce innovative ideas to satisfy the consumer’s needs. Cloud computing is very helpful in the effective research and development of the company.
Stability in the competitive market
To survive in the competition, it’s crucial to be capable of making the right decision at the right time, as well as establishing a strong resource management. By using cloud computing technologies, you can achieve both goals.
Cost-Efficiency
Cost efficiency is the most beneficial feature of cloud computing. You can easily occupy the space you require according to the upward and downward demand in the business. Also, if you are setting up a separate department to handle and maintain data, it can be quite expensive. Cloud computing allows avoiding these expenses by addressing a large portion of data management tasks for you. Moreover, as there is a service provider team to organize and sustain your data, you can easily concentrate on the other resources of your business.
Security
Cloud-based approaches are known to be very secure and effective. And while the security issue is the major problem faced by the e-commerce industry, cloud technology can be seen as both high-tech and a protected path for data management. Cloud service providers like your fellow Emerline have security experts in their team, who manage the security option in the cloud applications. These professionals are always ready to reinforce your IT department. So the cloud-based technology is more trustworthy for data management than maintaining it yourself.
Adaptability
One of the best features of cloud computing is its flexibility. By using this technology you don’t need to block your resources and capital for purchasing and storing a huge space for your data. You can easily boost or reduce the space according to the customer’s demand. For example, in the festive season, the customer demand increases, so you can easily scale up or down the resources to cope up with the high and low demand.
Speed
The speed of a site or its mobile app matters. It’s very difficult to ensure a good speed of a website with millions of users accessing it at the same time. The truth is that companies have to spend a lot of money to deliver this kind of infrastructure. However, with the use of the cloud, a business can ensure significant savings while offering fast service to their users.
Slow load time and downtime are the main issues of e-commerce industries, which can be reduced drastically with the help of cloud-based technology. And when it comes to cloud solutions, data gets uploaded to the vendor’s data center in real-time.
High Availability
In the past, people would rely on the physical availability of data. However, things have changed with cloud computing that provides unlimited access to crucial information from anywhere. This technology adds to the accessibility of data. What’s more, in the modern era, accessing data with the use of the Internet connection is one of the most reliable and efficient options.
Smooth Resource Management
Cloud computing makes resource management very easy and painless. As you are outsourcing this service to a third-party vendor, you don’t need to do anything to manage your data. A well-prepared team is handling, maintaining, and upgrading your data for you.
Quick Response to New Market Challenges
Cloud-based e-commerce applications allow you to quickly react to new market challenges and opportunities. By understanding the customer’s reviews you can accordingly deal with them.
Recovery Backups
In the e-commerce industry, most activities are based on servers. Interrupting power supply and such unpredictable issues as physical damage in the workplace can lead to data collapse and heavy revenue losses. However, if you are using cloud-based technology, you can relax and free your head from this pain, as all of your data is safe in the cloud, and you can run your business in the usual manner.
Premium Customers
Cloud computing is helpful in finding premium customers. By tracking the visits to the various products, you can find the perfect taste of your customers and adjust your products to their requirements.
Increase in Revenue
Cloud computing unleashes incredible growth in revenue for the company. As it’s very cost-effective, the overall cost of the solution will save your business a lot of money. There is no need to block the excess capital for data maintenance issues but instead, bring that money to other areas of your business growth.
Globalization of Business
Cloud computing is very useful for the expansion of business at the global level. By using the internet, you can easily target customers worldwide. It is an effective and comparatively cheap way of business development. Customers from any area of the world can easily access the cloud.
Collaboration Effectiveness
Cloud computing allows your business to communicate with your employees across the world. A common data, file, or information can be accessed by various people in different locations at the same time. Also, you can use cloud computing to share the information with your investors, suppliers, advisors, and accountants.
Automatic Updates
Cloud computing companies go hand in hand with the latest technologies. So when your data management takes place in the cloud, the system gets updated automatically, and you don’t have to worry about the upgrade issues.
Infrastructure Support
In e-commerce, data analysis plays a crucial role in understanding the customer’s needs. Millions of users search for various items daily, so picking up the trend and interest of the user is a tricky issue. Cloud computing services together with modern data analyzing techniques can easily solve these issues.
Despite having numerous benefits, cloud transformation may be a tricky process. It is essential to have in-depth visibility into cloud use across the organization and provide ongoing oversight. Only then would you be able to manage costs and achieve the full potential. However, beware of adopting the cloud for the sake of tech advancement. By pushing a cloud-first approach without a proper plan and actual need, you can increase costs, diminish value, and end up with an oversized infrastructure. So how do you make the most out of the e-commerce cloud?
5 Steps to Ensure Successful Cloud Implementation
There are multiple cloud adoption frameworks, and a lot of things depend on the business needs. However, a typical cloud transformation journey can be reduced to five major steps: visualization, strategy, planning, execution, and optimization. Each step is made up of several questions you have to answer to make the best decisions and act accordingly.
1. Visualization
You have to understand where you are and where you want to be: it’s a crucial part of the process.
- What are your primary reasons for considering the cloud?
- Are you looking to unlock new opportunities?
- Do you need more flexibility and scalability?
2. Strategy
In order to execute everything properly, examine your resources, infrastructure, and architecture.
- Evaluate out-of-the-box SaaS solutions
- Consider IaaS and PaaS options
- Decide whether you are heading to in-house or outsource development
3. Planning
Understanding what needs to be done, when, and how, is critical for successful cloud implementation. Make sure to:
- Define the scope of work
- Discover cross-system dependencies
- Set clear acceptance criteria
4. Execution
Whether you are setting in infrastructure, moving your application to the cloud, or redeveloping your legacy product, remember:
- Iterate according to the plan
- Stick to acceptance criteria
- Share results with your users to make adjustments if needed
5. Optimization
Cloud adoption does not end with the deployment to the cloud, so make sure to:
- Create operational dashboards
- Keep your logs handy
- Keep in mind DevOps services
Here at Emerline, we help clients develop the best cloud strategy for their business case, create a roadmap, and develop a solution that best fits their business needs. Having rich expertise with various cloud solutions, whether it’s the Amazon Cloud, SaaS, Google Cloud, and others, we are capable of finding the right technology for your business and implementing it with professionalism, in a fault-free manner. Whether they need cloud readiness assessment or infrastructure setup, architecture redesign, migration, and maintenance, we are here to help at every step of the way.
