E-shop

Growth of Czech e-commerce despite record turnover of 135 billion is slowing down in percentage terms, and according to statistical forecasts, world e-commerce will decline in the following year. However, this will in no way jeopardize the further strengthening of online sales in commodities such as food. According to Globus statistics, the average customer spends 44 minutes in a hypermarket, but wants to save this time. While Czech agencies build e-shops on their own solutions in 78.9 % cases, foreign companies mostly use rented platforms. These and other facts were heard on February 7 at the Eshopista event of the Acomware company, during which leading domestic experts gave lectures on the latest technological trends.

Current data show that Czech e-commerce grew in percentage terms by 17 % in 2018. In percentage terms, this is a decrease of 1 % in terms of growth compared to last year. Compared to Europe, however, the Czech Republic is still at the top. Nevertheless, global macroeconomic data warn of a possible change. "According to statistical estimates, global e-commerce is likely to decline in 2019. The question is how it will affect the Czech market," added Jan Mayer from DATAWEPS. According to the estimate of the Association for Electronic Commerce, domestic e-commerce will also grow by approximately 15 % this year.

The change in behavior, when Czechs increasingly prefer shopping on the Internet, is also slowly changing the attitude of sellers of fast-moving goods. According to Globus statistics, the average customer spends 44 minutes in a hypermarket and wants to save this time. There has been a big change in preferences over the last 3 years. Today, customers no longer want to commute anywhere, they don't want to go to large hypermarkets, and they prefer to save time and shop quickly. "Today, people prefer shopping close to home without having to commute anywhere. That's why Globus started working on its activities in the online environment to be closer to customers and maintain their loyalty." admitted Petr Toupal from Globus. However, for a retailer with established processes, this is a very demanding process, as it has to radically change the entire infrastructure.

The seasonal rush is still a risk for logistics, as it brings the risk of significant delays in picking goods. Fortunately, technology today offers solutions to not only solve problems, but also to prevent them in time. The online perfumery Notino, for example, uses a solution in the form of Power BI. She can filter the data and hand it over to the warehouse managers in an understandable manner so that they can predict the approaching rush of demand in time. According to Petr Štěpán, the e-shop today is thanks to this technology can handle up to 75,000 orders per day.

In connection with the functioning of e-shops, the Eshopista program also brought up the background of their development. Research by EXEC magazine brought useful data on this topic. He researched 242 Czech and Slovak agencies that specialize in the creation of e-shops. Most often, electronic stores are created within one to three months (38 % companies contacted). The price of e-commerce development ranges from 80,000 to 10 million crowns, with the most common companies charging 100,000 to 300,000 crowns per order (38 % companies contacted). At the same time, up to 78.9 % of the surveyed agencies use their own platform for e-shop development. Matěj Kapošváry also put the results into a foreign context: "Abroad, the trend is completely opposite. There, most agencies build their e-shop on a third-party solution, and the use of their own platform is not so widely represented due to high costs," Kapošváry added.

Electronic stores were also addressed by representatives of development companies as part of a panel discussion. Clients often face concerns that developers will misuse the industry know-how acquired during work on the order and offer it to competitors. This leads them to want to sign industry exclusivity contracts, where the development firm is not allowed to work with other companies in the same industry for a certain period of time. But the participants agreed that this is often an unnecessary concern. "It would totally damage our credibility as a company if we allowed ourselves to transfer functions from one e-shop to another," mentioned, for example, Lukáš Havlásek from Shopsys.

The participants also discussed the approach to technological development. In the world, new technical solutions and tools are created in certain periods. Developers and e-shop owners need to take this trend into account. "The age of custom-made e-shops is roughly between three and five years, when a transition to another technological solution must then take place. Even during this time, however, the source code is regularly refactored," Eliška Flasarová from oXyShop clarified the situation.

With technological development, the participants of the discussion also touched on the issue of cloud-based e-shop solutions, which are very popular abroad. However, some Czech customers are still resisting this option because it is economically more expensive. However, the discussants agreed that within five years or so, e-shops will normally operate in a cloud infrastructure that offers compared to "individual" servers much higher reliability.

The question of what technologies the e-shop should offer at its core and what technologies it should only make available to users via third-party tools also sparked a great discussion. Most of the discussants confirmed that the e-shop should mainly play the role of a solid core that allows the connection of other tools. "Resources are often limited and you can't do everything. It pays to focus on one thing we can do really well. Today, even in the development of technologies, it is evident that the player who focuses on his specialization wins on the market in the long term," explained Radek Hudák from Shoptet. However, this approach is not suitable for all components of the e-shop. "I still think that perfect search and perfect personalization should be part of the core of the e-shop. Otherwise, the client pays a lot of money to third parties and never knows what they are getting from whom. This way, according to the contract, he knows exactly what he is getting for his money." added Pavel Kramný from Programia.

The last part of the panel discussion talked about the possible future of e-shops. Among the predictions were the linking of the online and offline worlds, better data evaluation or the influence of virtual reality. "Virtual reality has been talked about for a long time, but it is slowly coming and some e-shop solutions are already starting to try it," mentioned Daniel Lupinski of NetDirect. The participants also touched on the payment system, which will undergo a major change this year. "From September of this year, the new European Union legislation on two-factor authentication is coming, because the current system of entering the payment card number and subsequent SMS is no longer sufficient. Therefore, all payment channels and all banks will change their payment channels to the binomial sensor on mobile,” added Lukáš Havlásek.

The program was also closed by a unique case study on the topic of technological partner and client. Štefan Polgári, managing partner of the Dognet affiliate network, presented the results of the affiliate campaign for the 4home e-shop. He emphasized that this marketing channel can open up new sources of traffic. But it's not just about her. "Affiliate networks in the Czech Republic and Slovakia alone generate an estimated 12-15,000 conversions per day," explained Polgári. He was followed by Juraj Giacko, Head of Ecommerce at EXIsport. He brought up the results of cooperation with the Luigi's Box tool, which increased the conversion rate from e-shop searches by 31 %. Analyzing internal search brings considerable benefits. "Search analysis shows what people want and what we should expand our range with," Giacko concluded.