It’s hard to believe that the majority of our goods would be available online in a few decades. You can find everything online, from groceries to readymade garments to footwear to mobile phones, gift items and spare parts to shoes, so you don’t have to worry about finding something.

Online businesses have an incredible opportunity to expand and grow into successful ventures that customers love.

It can be difficult to manage online businesses of any size or type, even though online retail’s potential value is expected to reach $4.5 trillion by 2021. You’ll have trouble staying afloat if your online retail business isn’t able to keep up with the competition.

E-commerce accounts for 14% currently of all retail sales globally and is growing rapidly.

It is impossible to sit back and watch your success in this dynamic ecommerce environment. It will be difficult to keep up with the growth. One of the keys to your success is to master your project management.

Let’s start with the basics before we get into E-commerce project Management.

What is E-commerce Project Management?

Management is more than having a clear strategy that includes establishing scope, quality, budget, deadlines, and deadlines. It can be difficult to apply all of this to an ecommerce project. A project manager is essential for managing an e-commerce project. A project manager can organize and motivate the team to meet the deadlines and ensure that the budget is met. It’s not easy to do.

The Challenges Without E-commerce Project Management

Online retailers often find it difficult to manage their online business because they don’t pay enough attention to current trends, who to cooperate with, or the cutting-edge technologies being used in today’s marketplace. Some online retailers struggle to get high organic traffic and generate good sales figures because they don’t know where their ecommerce should go. With proper planning, you can overcome all of these problems.

Apart from the above-mentioned challenges, online business owners should be prepared to face such issues as:

• Falling behind schedules
• Steps to misaligned workflow
• Low sales
• Low profits
• Complete shutdown

What are the most popular methods of project management?

E-commerce entrepreneurs need to make investments in the best project management methods to overcome these problems. Below are five popular ways to manage your ecommerce business.

It can be difficult to implement a project management method in your business. One or more PM methods may be required or you might need to modify certain rules to suit your business needs. Here is some information about these methods to help you make your decision.

1. Agile Project Management

Agile uses iterative methodologies in which smaller parts of the final project are created each cycle. Instead of following a rigid plan, you respond to changes and innovations in the workflow.

Agile’s greatest benefit is the ability to get customer feedback for every feature that is implemented. This contributes greatly towards continuous development. This project approach can make it harder to predict the final product.

2. Lean Project Management

Lean project management involves a continuous workflow that keeps roadblocks and delays at bay, and brings about constant improvement. Each stage brings new improvements and changes to the final product. This management structure was created to provide value for the client.

Lean management is about identifying the key features of each stage. This allows you to save valuable time and energy, which can otherwise be used for redoing. Lean methodology is focused on the most important features and avoids unnecessary meetings and tasks.

Lean project management, which is a way to measure the efficiency of each stage of work rather than long-term planning, replaces long-term implementation planning. But focusing on quality over value can have its downsides. Lean methodologies don’t pay enough attention to meetings and training.

3. Waterfall Project Management

The oldest PM methodology is waterfall project management. It is now outdated and out of style. This is a good choice if you have a small team that wants to see the final product.

The entire project is planned at the start of your project.

This could include everything from Research and Development to product design to introducing the product to market and finally launching it. This PM method has a downside: it can be slow and inefficient.

4. Scrum

Scrum is a method that encourages teams to combine their knowledge and work together to create and deliver high-quality projects. The process begins with a discussion about the client’s main objectives and requirements. Scrum uses sprints. Each sprint creates a ready to use product which is then improved in the subsequent sprints.

Daily meetings are held for a short time (up to 15 min) to review the progress and discuss the issues. Because teamwork is a major focus, it is important that each member of the team has sufficient experience and can quickly respond to any challenges.

5. Kanban

Although Kanban is similar to Scrum’s project management methodology, it is more flexible. Kanban PM methodology lets you categorize tasks into ‘To do’ or ‘In progress’. This allows you to make changes at any point in the sprint.

Kanban is focused on shorter life cycles and smaller sprints. Tasks can be tracked using a project management app or by sticking sticky notes to a whiteboard. Kanban’s main function is to continuously make changes and update tasks to improve their overall progress.

How to plan your e-commerce projects wisely 

Once you have chosen a project management method for your online business, it is time to plan your ecommerce projects.

How can you manage your projects effectively? We are here to assist you.

Let’s look at some simple project management tips every digital business should use:

1. Analyze of Competitors

Online businesses need to be aware of their competition and their marketing strategies. Market research and competitor analysis can provide valuable insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. This will help you understand why a brand is so successful, and which brands have failed to capitalize on that success.

You can learn from mistakes made by online competitors before you start to create your ecommerce business plan. It’s all about avoiding costly mistakes and adopting best practices. 

2. Gripping Metrics Make It Easy to Set Clear Goals

While it is obvious that every e-commerce company wants to sell more products, and make good profits, it’s not unusual for them to neglect setting clear goals.

E-commerce is no exception. Every business requires clear goals that can be tracked easily. An influencer marketing campaign might seek to directly generate 200% ROI via sales through custom URLs.

It might also be trying to build and create positive brand mentions via social media. The project could be looking to generate 100 mentions in a matter of days using new hashtags created for the influencer.

Log metrics that you can use within Google Analytics and ensure that all data is recorded as a conversion goal with an associated value.

3. Laying out a Workflow Process

To ensure that your team can deliver the flow seamlessly, it is important to clarify all stages and processes. Begin by discussing the details of the project with your team. This will give you an overview of the work required and provide data for planning, budget estimation, and time estimation.

The accumulated data should then be broken down into sprints and the tasks should be divided among team members. To see the steps, visualize them. Regular meetings, whether they are scheduled daily, weekly or after every sprint are essential to identify and check for changes.

4. Time tracking

Time is a valuable resource and waste of it can cause problems for businesses. If you don’t have the right data about where and when your team members are spending their time, it can be difficult to manage remote teams effectively.

This is where time tracking or management software can be a crucial part. Time tracking and work tracking applications allow individuals and groups to make the most of their time by tracking time, identifying areas where time is being wasted, and then cutting back.

This software can be used to track how long each member of your team works on the task. This data can be used to determine if the numbers are meeting your expectations. This data can also be used to determine if certain tasks take longer than expected.

5. Cost Management

The portal must have more features than its competitors when it comes to E-commerce projects. It should provide maximum value and have minimal defects. It should have a low maintenance cost. The project manager must accept that software development involves rework and bug fixing.

This will ensure that you don’t have to face a cost rerun. If a project is well planned, the cost of rework will decrease with each iteration instead of ballooning like in the waterfall approach.

6. Use The Best E-commerce Business Software

Digital systems and even the cloud are used for most of an online business’s operations. It is therefore crucial that your online business utilizes the best tools available today.

You can scale your business easily, keep your staff happy, and reduce unnecessary costs by using the most up-to-date tools.

Every e-commerce company would use simple, scalable and flexible project management software. To improve collaboration and simplify project management, it would use tools such as video conferencing software and time tracking.

7. Continuous Testing and Iterating

E-commerce is an entirely different industry. Only a few projects are ever completed here. Rather, they’re iterated. It is possible to plan website updates, then draft them. Once they are tested, you can return to planning.

It is vital to keep testing and iterating because there is no perfect product listing, perfect store or perfect checkout. There is always room to improve. You have every reason to continue making improvements and not stop because of the dynamic nature of e-commerce.

Conclusion

You’ve now learned the best e-commerce project management techniques. Now it’s time to put these tips to use to your advantage. If you have the right strategies and tools, it is possible to launch and manage an online business.

It is essential to use a reliable, scalable and affordable project management tool in order to get your clients, team members, and stakeholders on the same page and simplify project management.