Dydacomp Survey Sheds Light on SMB eCommerce Trends and Challenges

PARSIPPANY, NJ, June 21, 2012 - Dydacomp, a leading provider of business technology platforms for small and mid-sized eCommerce and multichannel merchants, today announced the results of a survey highlighting emerging industry trends and challenges. Interestingly, while respondents overwhelmingly had not yet considered a SaaS-based solution for their business (63 percent), they clearly saw the benefits of the SaaS model. Furthermore, despite an increase in consumer spending, the majority (more than 50 percent) of SMBs still cite attracting new customers as their number-one goal.

The survey was conducted at Dydacomp’s annual User Conference, held on June 4, 2012 in Chicago. Dydacomp clients, representing all major vertical industries, gathered to discuss best practices and industry insights to enable small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to get the most out of their Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) and SiteLINK eCommerce solutions and drive revenue growth. Highlights from the conference included panel discussions with Dydacomp customers and a keynote speech by Tim Parry, Senior Content Manager at Multichannel Merchant, who addressed why direct merchants need to embrace cross-channel marketing and how retailers can connect those channels to provide a seamless customer experience.

At the conference, Dydacomp conducted a survey of attendees to understand what is of top concern to today’s SMBs as well as their opinions on SaaS-based solutions. The survey revealed interesting insight into what SMBs are looking for in technology solutions, as well as challenges they face. Key survey findings included:

• Given current economic conditions, attracting new customers remains a top challenge for SMB retailers, with more than 50 percent citing it as their number one concern.
• 23 percent responded that deploying a technology infrastructure to manage online stores and orders is a significant challenge, underscoring the importance of order management solutions.
• Emerging channels are hot topics in the industry. Nearly 50 percent of respondents are interested in leveraging mobile and more than 25 percent want to understand how to use social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, to attract new customers. However, respondents reported minimal interest in leveraging QR codes.
• A majority of respondents said that the most important factor for their customers when shopping is the ability to easily find products.
• In examining what aspect of an order management system is most important to their customers, respondents ranked order processing as the most important factor.
• While SaaS offers many benefits for the SMB market, more than 6o percent of respondents said they have not yet evaluated any SaaS solutions for their business.
• However, the benefits respondents equated with SaaS are significant with 38 percent identifying the ability to integrate multiple systems, such as Webstore, payment processing, shipping and accounting as a positive. Another 38 percent cited having someone else manage infrastructure as a major benefit of SaaS.

“This year’s user conference was a huge success, and we are looking forward to growing the event next year,” said Fred Lizza, CEO, Dydacomp. “The data we acquired from our customers during the conference is invaluable; it revealed that today’s SMBs are open to leveraging new channels to attract customers and that they are beginning to see the benefits of SaaS solutions – even though they have yet to evaluate the solutions themselves. This opens up significant opportunity as we continue to grow and innovate our offerings and the company.”