The Best E-Commerce Service Providers for High-Growth Brands

Available research from the United Kingdom shows that the more a brand spends on e-commerce service providers, the more e-commerce revenue they make. This is especially true for high-growth brands. Brands doing more than ~$100 million in annual e-commerce revenue spend the most on e-commerce service providers while brands doing ~$50 million or less spend the least.

Based on this data and our leadership team’s experience driving e-commerce growth for brands with household names, it’s imperative for brands to seek e-commerce business services if they want to break the hundred-million mark for digital sales. In this article, we’ll explore the service providers that can help brands hit this goal.

E-Commerce Service Provider Offerings

Here are some core offerings to review before deciding on the right e-commerce services provider for your business:

Product management

More than 80% of online shoppers review available choices on various online stores before settling on a particular product to buy. Product management helps e-commerce brands manage their inventory, including adding high-quality product information that streamlines the process of selling products.

Effective product management leads to more potential customers finding your products in search engine results pages (SERPs), improved website navigation for better customer experience, and an enhanced ability to expand product assortment.

Process optimization

The right e-commerce business service provider ensures processes run smoothly to offer your customers an ideal shopping experience. Controlled, well-defined, and regularly optimized processes result in improved organizational agility and performance. Top e-commerce services vendors apply Lean management techniques and tools to reorganize activities, eliminate waste, and, as a result, increase efficiency.

Program definition

The right provider can transform a loose set of e-commerce growth ideas into a practical, actionable plan. Through program definition, the e-commerce service provider will clearly define your online store’s key activities as well as every stakeholder’s responsibilities and roles. Program definition improves your e-commerce’s focus on people, processes, technologies, and change management.

Strategic vision

Work with an e-commerce partner that can leverage their strategic vision capabilities to create a unified experience for your business across every channel your products are available. For example, with fabric digital services (FDS), the advising team has created omnichannel sales strategies for high-growth brands and retailers.

In addition to creating a channel strategy, the right agency will establish a roadmap that aligns all your activities towards a better ROI.

Digital experience

Integrated and unified technology and experiences are hallmarks of the best e-commerce service providers. Work with a provider to help you implement digital platforms that align technology and experiences with your business objectives.

The provider you select should evolve with the changing demands of your e-commerce store(s). Be wary of any provider that does not recommend a headless commerce solution to support custom shopping experiences and a modular backend solution to support technology adoption while reducing technical debt.

Best E-Commerce Service Providers

Here are reputable providers that offer all or some of the services listed above:

FDS

fabric digital services (FDS) is led by Nessa Garcia, an e-commerce veteran who scaled e-commerce programs for Staples, Groupon, and other notable brands. As senior manager of strategy and operations at Staples, she deployed multi-faceted digital product programs including strategic ideation, pilot rollout, measurement, scalability, and post-analysis.

FDS customers include B2B and B2C retailers such as GNC and Vivo Technologies.

To advocate for scalable solutions, the FDS team works mostly with brands who want to adopt a service-oriented e-commerce framework with fabric’s products. However, FDS can also help brands achieve better conversions while migrating to a more robust and flexible e-commerce frontend and backend.

ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft is led by Nikolay Kurayev, who transformed the company two times. As the CEO, he first broadened ScienceSoft’s expertise to software development services. Then, he spearheaded their IT consulting practice, which served as the foundation for their software development outsourcing services.

Their customers are large to mid-sized international companies, such as Walmart, IBM, eBay, and NASA JPL.

ScienceSoft mostly works with brands who are using or want to use Magento to create scalable and high-customized websites. Thus, clients who are not Magento-based would have to look elsewhere. What’s more, its focus on e-commerce development and design seems to be at the expense of clear program definition and process optimization.

Hawke Media

Hawke Media is led by Erik Huberman, a digital marketing expert. As a serial entrepreneur, he previously founded and sold two e-commerce companies. In his current role, he’s transformed Hawke into the fastest-growing marketing consultancy.

Hawke’s customers include brands of various sizes, business models, and industries, like Alibaba, K Swiss, Lorna Jane, and Verizon Wireless.

Challenging marketing agencies, Hawke works mostly with brands who want to outsource their chief marketing officer (CMO). Brands can pick and choose which services they want on a monthly basis, rather than committing to a one-size-fits-all package. However, their product management solutions are limited to Amazon.

First Pier

First Pier is led by Steve Pogson, who founded Helm Digital and started First Pier as the first extension of the company. As a solutions manager at Deloitte and consultant at Accenture, he has led strategic technology efforts worth millions of dollars for companies with household names.

First Pier’s customers are retail stores branching into the world of e-commerce, including Bliss, Hyperlite Mountain Gear, Two Fat Cats Bakery, and Versa Gripps.

With its team of Shopify experts, First Pier mostly works with e-commerce services that are based on Shopify. E-commerce stores that don’t use Shopify have to migrate to use First Pier. To help, they offer a comprehensive platform migration, covering everything from customer history to product descriptions and URL redirects.

Key Takeaways

• Research shows that the more a brand spends on e-commerce service providers, the more e-commerce revenue they make.
• Ensure a service vendor’s solutions speak to improved agility, scalability, and performance across all online sales channels.
• The vendor you choose should turn your vision into a practical, actionable plan that gives your customers a unified experience across every channel on which your products are available.
• You can work with an e-commerce services provider like FDS to achieve better conversions while migrating to a more robust and flexible e-commerce architecture.

Dana Lim

Content marketer @ fabric. Previously marketing @ KHON-TV and Paramount Pictures.