Lack of skill poses a threat to ecommerce

There's a major problem facing ecommerce, says Martin Newman, the founder and CEO of ecommerce consultancy firm Practicology: many people just don't know enough about it.

"ECommerce is the fastest growing industry and yet there still appears to be very few courses available at college or university level to study [it]," writes Newman in an article for Drapers Online. "And where there are courses available, they tend to be bolted on to another core topic, such as computing."

The problem, as Newman sees it, is threefold. First, educators need to offer more courses to help entrepreneurs and business owners keep up-to-date on the best ways to run their ecommerce portals and to train a new generation of business people to operate in an online space. Second, partially due to the first issue, there is a lack of talent available in the online shopping world for retailers who are interested in getting into ecommerce. And finally, many companies are not getting the most out of their online efforts due to the aforementioned problems.

Luckily, there are many resources available to retailers interested in getting into online sales. It is important that these merchants study up on how to launch a successful online portal, partner with a trustworthy ecommerce payments provider and design a site that is easy and intuitive to navigate.