12 golden rules for designing e-commerce operation tools

Although the tool itself is not easy to share, it is also rare to see methodological articles on the design of operation tools . The author is willing to be a pioneer and strive to share the essence of operation tool design. Let’s take a look at the article~

Operation is the core of e-commerce , and corresponding to it are of course various operational tools. Every company has its own operating tools, but few stand out and can share them with other companies.

The reason for this is that, on the one hand, each company's specific business is different, and the tools may not be universal; on the other hand, many e-commerce companies compete with each other to varying degrees, and good operating tools are bound to become part of the competitive advantage , so even if there are good tools, they may not be willing to share them.

Although the tool itself is not easy to share, it is also rare to see methodological articles on the design of operation tools. The author is willing to be a pioneer and strive to share the essence of operation tool design.

1. Easy to operate

For any tool designer, convenience is the top priority. Clear and friendly field prompts, graphic and text instructions for using functions, as many operational capabilities as possible, etc. are all key points.

2. Operation verification

E-commerce data often contains a lot of sensitive content, such as product prices, inventory, discounts, etc. The operations on these sensitive data must be confirmed repeatedly, and there must be clear operation logs. When calculating data, one should be more careful and cautious to avoid misoperation and calculation errors.

For data that changes in real time, since the underlying data has changed when you stay in the operation interface, you must save the increment when saving, rather than directly saving the modified data.

3. Permission Control

Operations personnel often need to allocate different operating permissions according to specific business. Permission control is an essential function of all management backends, so there is no need to explain it in detail.

4. Release Preview

There is a lot of freedom in publishing previews, and multiple previews can be made according to different businesses. When an operator modifies certain business data, the system should provide a preview that is as close to the published version as possible. However, due to various environmental and data limitations, perfection may not always be achieved.

5. Abnormal monitoring

Abnormal monitoring includes release verification, abnormal data monitoring, etc. Monitor key operations and key data that may affect the business in a formal environment. In addition, activity-based businesses are often prone to cheating, and corresponding cheating monitoring and blacklist mechanisms are also required.

6. Remediation function

Any anomalies need to be remedied, and manual verification after release is essential. If there are any problems, remedy them as soon as possible. Some program bugs or user cheating behaviors will damage the interests of users. For example, it will cause the user's points/money not to be credited to the account. In this case, it is necessary to prepare emergency remedial plans and customer service scripts.

7. Cold Start

All activities that need to be promoted require a cold start process. We all know that people tend to follow the crowd, so often activities, games , lotteries, etc. already have some data at the moment of release, otherwise it is difficult to create a warm atmosphere.

This cold start technology is no longer a secret in the Internet industry.

8. Cost Control

The cost control mentioned here does not refer to the cost control of the entire operating system, but only the small part that can be controlled by the operating tools themselves. For example, in a lottery of various valuable items, if someone cheats and the valuable items are consumed very quickly, there must be a switch to temporarily shut down the consumption of the valuable items, and use other technical means to prevent cheating.

The probability of winning, game thresholds, etc. have similar requirements. Things based on pure probability are often exploited by hackers, so things that spend money must require human intervention, which does not affect fairness. Human intervention to eliminate robot cheating is the best way to improve fairness.

9. Timing/Automation

Go online and offline at regular intervals, publish at regular intervals, and display at regular intervals. Automatic execution, conditional triggering, etc., for example: automatic distribution of gift packages on members’ birthdays, automatic reminders of promotional activities, etc.

Of course, these functions may not all be performed by the operation tools themselves. Most of them may be executed by scheduled scripts, but the operation tools need to consider such management capabilities.

10. Information Query

User information, product information, activity records, processes, user behavior , lottery results, etc. When customer service encounters a complaint, if there is no detailed record in the operation tool, the developers can only check the database and logs, and may not be able to determine what the user’s problem is. There is also the possibility of false complaints that are deliberately made to find fault. If the problem cannot be confirmed after half a day, a lot of good time will be wasted.

11. Statistical requirements

Statistical requirements refer to various data, reports, etc., which can also be called report requirements. Reports are divided into real-time or delayed statistics. For some high-concurrency and high-visit activities, it is necessary to provide real-time data. It does not necessarily need to be a complete report. It is only necessary to provide real-time data that meets the operational requirements as much as possible. Wait until the peak is over, or export the complete activity data report on a daily basis.

12. Audit requirements

Larger companies often have an audit every year to identify problems in the company's workflow and provide suggestions for improvement. During the audit process, some sensitive information is often required to be recorded, such as: how much money was given out during the event, to whom it was given, whether it was a real user, etc. Which employee performed the manual reissue? This must be clearly recorded, otherwise it will be difficult to explain.

To sum up, there are still many details involved in a good operation tool, and the business needs of different e-commerce businesses may be very different. Therefore, I have tried to list only the general parts here without going into too much detail. If you have any questions about the details, you can leave a message to communicate with me.