Category: Ecommerce

Smart Guidelines for Planning a Perfect Website for E-commerce Businesses

Posted on by Jignesh Vaghasiya

These days people are finding online shopping very comfortable. They shop and place orders on these sites then they receive the order after some days according to location. This process of buying products and useful items has become an essential part of life.

However, it becomes vital for the site owner to lead and circulate their site rules properly so that people find their site affectionate and surprising.

The trend of E-commerce business is rising day by day, and it has become one of the profitable companies in the world. If you are thinking of producing an online E-commerce site for your customers, then it is one of the best ideas for any business planner.

Therefore, it becomes crucial to decide how to plan a website structure for essential growth?

Planning for E-commerce website

Every owner needs to design the perfect site for customers because customers nowadays require a lot more from online business planners.

It may seem to many business planners that building an online business is challenging; however, it is not much difficult task; you just need to keep some ideas in kind before selling online products.

There is a great importance of website planning because it will help you to understand the necessities of the E-commerce business and customer’s requirements.

Various planners do not have any knowledge; however, you should not worry about anything because below given facts will help you to build your online E-commerce website.

You first have to prepare a proper website planning checklist because it will help you to know about the e-commerce site requirements.

You all know that every business needs new tools and technologies to lead the proper growth of the company.

Thus, you should include website planning features in such a way that the technology involved in the e-commerce site should be new and familiar for customer usage.

Individual steps to organize a proper e-commerce site

Many e-commerce site business planners ask that how to plan a website structure for the best result? Surely, you are going to know the best steps that can help in designing a focused website efficiently.

Let’s discuss some of the listed points that have given below:

The objective of the e-commerce site:

You should never forget the primary goal of your site. You should concentrate on e-commerce product selling and purchasing modes. It will help you in designing a perfect plan for the website.

You should know on which platform you want to consider your website plan because the platform can lead to the correct direction of business growth with time.

Teamwork:

You should start managing the best team that can help you in maintaining a website planning checklist. Every e-commerce site needs a large number of operators because it helps in controlling the whole system of the site properly.

One person can focus on the delivery part, others can concentrate on purchasing a part, and left ones can focus on the website working procedure such as order placements.

Requirements of an audience:

It becomes one of the crucial website planning steps because the growth and productivity of your site belong to the users. More people start using your site more; you grow among other businesses.

Mainly, the audience should understand your site features correctly, and they can efficiently operate those features at any time.

Update versions:

It becomes very crucial for e-commerce business planners that they should keep updating their site after some time. It will help in attracting more users towards the site because they will find more exciting features on the website to go through while purchasing.

It is the importance of website planning that leads the business planner in the correct direction of the growth.

Smart features:

Every business leader needs to plan a perfect site with a large number of features. The website planning checklist must contain this fact that your website should look more attractive to the viewers.

You should include a proper cart box on the site so that people can easily add new items in the box and select the usable items later on. You should try to include every product with natural pictures and videos on the website.

The website should have proper graphic features and various animated designs.

Quality of the product:

Now, the business works on the quality of the products you provide to your customers. Your e-commerce site can grow efficiently, but you have to satisfy the customer needs by offering a smart quality of a product.

You should also provide them special discounts and offers because in this way they will rely more on your site and purchase more goods from your online site rather than from the market place.

Strategy with profit:

You can quickly start gaining advantage with the specially designed website by including the online payment method. It becomes essential to choose every smart technology with the perfect website planning steps in an e-commerce site for the best results.

The online payment method can help you to get ensured about the payment, and you can quickly receive money on time without facing any hurdles.

Also, set the delivery date for the customer because it helps in knowing about the delivery date of the item. Thus it becomes necessary to choose the best delivery team that can help in packaging and delivering the products to your loyal customers.

Conclusion

The e-commerce website planning is not much exhausting work, but it requires proper knowledge and customer satisfaction points. You should build an appropriate site for online business in which users can easily manage their shopping items and place orders.

They can also place their favorite things in the cart so that they can buy them, later on, when comfortable. The importance of website planning also includes that you should update the version of your site after some months so that users find it interesting to use.

You should also include offers and discounts for customers. It will undoubtedly lead to loyal customers, and the productivity of your business increases gradually.

Don’t stop just start planning your smart e-commerce site with amazing and profitable features.

How To Robust eCommerce Store Using WordPress

Posted on by Jay

Ecommerce is poised to become a major player in the global retail market, and the global eCommerce industry may make up as much as 6.7% of all retail sales by 2025.

And it’s not just giants like Amazon or Walmart that contribute to this figure, as the local marketplace features a multitude of stores selling everything online.

One of the best parts about entering the eCommerce world is that it’s easier than ever to do so. There’s a huge array of services that can give you everything you need to set up your online store with only a few clicks. Find a suitable eCommerce platform, you’re off to a good start!

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In our previous article about what you should consider before building an eCommerce store, we covered several of the best eCommerce platforms to choose from. This time, we zero in on building an online store with WordPress, one of the most popular and flexible solutions for eCommerce.

Why Use WordPress?

WordPress is a free-and-open-source content management system that is developed by both a core group of lead developers and a community composed entirely of volunteers.

About one-quarter of all the websites on the Internet have WordPress as their content management system, and for good reason—it combines ease of use that allows it to be applied to even the most basic websites and plugin-based modularity that allows its functionality to be extended to meet virtually any needs.

Its open-source, community-managed nature also ensures that WordPress is constantly up-to-date with security patches and new features. Tutorials and documentation to do just about anything can also be found all over the Web—if you have a question about WordPress, it’s almost certainly been answered already.

WordPress is particularly useful when building an eCommerce website because there are plenty of premade themes suited to an online storefront. It also features plugins that add complete eCommerce functionality to a site, from product display to shopping cart and checkout.

Finally, one of the top reasons to go with WordPress is that it’s a flexible platform that offers you complete control over what your website does and how it appears. On top of your storefront, you can also include a blog, a forum, and any other pages you need.

All this comes without any ongoing fees to make use of the WordPress platform. Your monthly fees come from your hosting company and domain registrar, with WordPress itself being free to use, and certain plugins and themes being one-time purchases.

Planning to create an online store with WordPress? This blog post will help you along every step of the process.

Step 1: Choose Your Domain Name And Hosting Provider.

The first step in WordPress eCommerce setup starts with your domain name. This will become the address of your future website. A domain name is what you enter into the address bar of your browser to access a website.

While WordPress itself is free, you’ll need to pay for your domain name, which starts at US$10 per year. The cost is well worth it, as having your own domain name (i.e. yourbusinessname.com) is far more professional-looking than having your name on someone else’s domain (i.e. yourbusinessname.otherdomain.com)

You will also need a hosting provider, a service that will host your website on the Internet. By having a dedicated hosting provider, you’re assured that your website will load quickly and not suffer from extended periods of downtime.

You have the option of a shared or dedicated host. With a shared host, your website is on the same server as several other websites, which is cheaper, but often provides you with less control over your website as well as potentially smaller storage and bandwidth availability. Meanwhile, a dedicated host is more expensive, but gives your website a whole server exclusively for your use, and gives you a wide degree of control, storage, and bandwidth.

After snagging your domain and host, you can now install WordPress, and there are two ways to go about it:

One-Click Install

In the one-click install, you register your domain name and get your WordPress site hosted from the same provider. WordPress recommends your host supports PHP 7, MySQL v5.6+ or MariaDB v10.0+, and HTTPS.

You can also use hosting providers trusted by WordPress, which will make installation easier and ensure that your chosen host is supported. WordPress itself recommends Pressable, BlueHost, Dreamhost, Flywheel, and Site Ground.

Manual install

With the manual option, you set up a server manually, then install the WordPress platform on your server, and configure it. You’ll need to have an FTP client, a database set up through cPanel or PHPMyAdmin, and access to your web server. As such, this option is recommended only for advanced users. WordPress has extensive documentation that can walk you through the process.

Step 2: Select An ECommerce Plugin.

What will separate your WordPress eCommerce website from a standard WordPress website will be the means by which you sell products directly from your site. There are no native WordPress eCommerce features, so to add this functionality to your website, you’ll need to install an eCommerce plugin.

WooCommerce

Once a mere eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce has now morphed into a whole platform with its own plugin system since it was acquired by Automattic two years ago. It’s a highly customizable platform that gives you total control over your online store. About 30% of all online stores use WooCommerce as their platform; some local stores that use it are Beauty Choice and Green Point Flowers.

WooCommerce features a complete eCommerce backend that helps you build and organize product pages, and provides a shopping cart and checkout process.

Easily manage and track customer discounts with the powerful WooCommerce plugin.

Download Plugin

It’s free to use, but you can extend its functionality even further with various paid and free extensions. Extensions can do anything from serving AI-driven recommendations to customers on product landing pages to providing the option for scheduled group and daily deals that trigger when a predefined number of people purchase an item.

Easy Digital Downloads

While most eCommerce plugins and platforms revolve around the sale of physical products, Easy Digital Downloads or EDD is specifically designed to help you sell digital products.

EDD allows you to create discount codes, place restrictions on downloads, and provides full tracking and data reporting of downloads, sales, and other statistics. You can also add new features to your EDD storefront with extensions, which give you the ability to sell software licenses and subscriptions, add payment processors like PayPal, and more.

EDD is free, with various paid extensions you can purchase.

WP eCommerce

WP eCommerce isn’t quite as fully-featured as WooCommerce, but it’s another popular and robust choice for creating an online store with WordPress.

It has all the basic features, including product pages, shopping cart, and checkout functionality, and comes with excellent data reporting capabilities and inventory management. Like the other plugins, it’s free but provides optional paid and free extensions that can add functionality. It also comes in a paid Gold Cart package option that adds more advanced tools, layouts, and features. You can also purchase premium payment gateways like Stripe and Authorize.net.

Step 3: Install Your eCommerce Plugin.

Once you’ve chosen an eCommerce plugin for your WordPress site, it’s time to install it through your WordPress backend. For convenience’s sake, the following steps assume that you chose the WooCommerce platform:

Log in to your WordPress dashboard.

On the sidebar, go to the Plugins section and click “Add New”.

In the search bar, type “WooCommerce” and hit Enter. Click “Install Now” on WooCommerce by WooThemes.

If you’re still at the stage where you’re looking for a hosting provider, you may want to check out Bluehost’s partnership with WooCommerce. Bluehost offers an all-in-one solution for WordPress eCommerce setup, which includes a domain name, WordPress with WooCommerce pre-installed, and SSL certification to keep your online store secure.

Step 4: Set Up The Product Pages.

Now that you have your plugin set up, it’s time to start adding products and their product pages. Every plugin does things differently, so we’ll cover the steps for doing this in WooCommerce.

At the very least, every product you add must have the following features:

  • Product name
  • Price
  • Image
  • Brief description

Begin by entering your WordPress admin panel, then select “Products” on the sidebar and select “Add Product”. WooCommerce allows you to add both physical and virtual products to your store.

a) Adding Physical Products

You’ll be greeted with an interface very similar to that of publishing a blog post on WordPress. Insert your product name where a post title would normally be, and add a description where post content would be. Then, on the right sidebar, add a product image for your product (analogous to a featured image), and then optionally insert more images in the product gallery.

Next, in the Product Data section, add more details about your product. The first thing to pay attention to is the Product Type drop-down box. The applicable product types for physical products are the following:

Simple: A simple product with no SKU options

Grouped: Multiple related products, which consist of several related “child” products, each of which is a Simple product

Variable: A product with different SKUs, for example, shirts or shoes that have different size options

External/Affiliate: Items sold outside of your store

For now, let’s go with a Simple product.

You’ll also see “Virtual” and “Downloadable” check boxes next to the Product Type. Leave these unchecked for physical products.
Let’s move on to the components on the left of Product Data, and what goes on in each:

The Attributes section is where you can assign special details to each product. You can add as many attribute fields as you like. Just make sure to keep the attribute consistent among similar products being sold.

b) Adding Virtual Products

Virtual products are products that are not sold physically, while downloadable products are downloaded from your store. Some products are both virtual and downloadable, such as eBooks.

Adding virtual products features the same process as physical products for the most part. However, with virtual products, you’ll check the “Virtual” or “Downloadable” boxes next to Product Type. When you select either option, you lose the Shipping tab in Product Data. You should also go to the Inventory tab and uncheck “Manage stock?”

For downloadable products, the General tab gets more options:

Downloadable files: Insert file links here for large files or files you’ve previously uploaded. Alternatively, click the “Choose file” to upload a file.

Download limit: Maximum number of times this file can be downloaded

Download expiry: Buyers can only download the file for a certain number of days.

Other than these changes, the process remains the same for physical products.

After the Product Data part, you’ll find the Product Short Description. This will appear at the top of your product landing page.

Your shoppers will see this short description before the full description that you’ve already written.

Once this is done, click “Update” and the product will be added.

WordPress eCommerce Product Uploading Tips

The following tips ensure that your products are attractive to customers, and can be located easily either from your storefront or through a search engine.

a) Don’t Forget Your Titles!

Your product should always be named in the title bar when you add a product to your store. You should also use SEO tools such as Yoast to determine the best possible title for your product based on SEO.

b) Create Catchy Product Descriptions.

Don’t copy descriptions from the product’s manufacturer. Be unique and creative with your descriptions. Also, use very specific, long-tail keywords that will ensure your product appears in search engine results. Finally, be short—limit descriptions to 150-250 words.

c) Mind The Quality Of Your Images.

Use a square-shaped featured product image to conform to WooCommerce standards. Also, use large, high-quality images to attract more customers.

d) Categorize And Tag Accordingly.

Place your products under categories and tags. The effect is twofold: Customers will have an easier time browsing for them, and Google will also consider them similar to keywords.

Step 5: Payment

Just as it is the last step in the shopping process, both online and offline, the last step in any WordPress eCommerce setup relates to payment. Your eCommerce site needs a means of receiving payments from customers.

Most online retail financial transactions take place over payment gateways, which are services that act as a middleman between you and your customer.

Upon checkout from your site, a customer is directed to the payment gateway’s website, where they input financial information or sign in to their account with the gateway. Money is exchanged securely from the customer to the payment gateway, and then the payment gateway transfers the money into your merchant account. Some payment gateways also host payment accounts as well.

PayPal is one of the leading payment gateways available, but it’s not necessarily everyone’s preference. Thankfully, WooCommerce supports a wide variety of other gateways, and adding them is as easy as a trip to the Payment Gateways section of the WooCommerce Extensions store, from which you can add the gateway of your choice with a single click. Payment gateways come in both free and paid forms.

To make use of most features of payment gateways, you’ll need to have an SSL certificate. This ensures that all transactions, and thus exchanges of financial information, between you and your customer are safe from the prying eyes of hackers. Getting an SSL certificate can usually be achieved through your hosting provider for a fee.

In Singapore, certain payment gateways are favored by both customers and local eCommerce sites. Here are some of the top that is in use:

2Checkout

2Checkout allows eCommerce merchants to accept payments seamlessly from all over the world, whether from mobile or online. eCommerce sites have the option of using 2Checkout as a hosted solution, where buyers are directed to the 2Checkout website to complete payment. More advanced site owners can choose to integrate their storefront directly with the 2Checkout Payment API.

Asia Pay

One of the largest payment gateways in Asia, Asia Pay is also among the top choices for payment processors in Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

Paypal Express

Fast and efficient, PayPal Express lets users check out and pay for their items in three clicks. Users can store their financial information easily within PayPal, making the process quick and easy.

Avoid hidden charges and choose the correct payment gateways for your store.

Considerations when choosing a payment gateway

1. Cost

Every payment gateway charges a certain percentage fee per transaction. Check out the service charges for each gateway you plan on using. Sometimes, a higher fee is justifiable if a gateway has excellent service.

2. eCommerce Compatibility

Not all payment gateways are supported by every eCommerce plugin. Ensure that your payment gateway of choice is included in the list of extensions of your eCommerce plugin.

3. Financial Information Input

Payment gateways will offer two options for receiving financial information from customers. One is the hosted page, which redirects customers to the payment gateway’s website after checkout, where they enter their information. This is the most secure method, but it’s also a little unwieldy and is not likely to match your store’s visual theme.

The other method is integration, where customers input their financial information in a series of fields directly on your website, which will then be sent to your payment gateway. This method is much more seamless and convenient but is less secure.

4. Mobile compatibility

More and more online transactions are taking place over mobile devices. It’s imperative that users be allowed to purchase and pay for items from your store even if they’re using their smartphones. Choose a payment gateway that not only supports transactions over mobile but also has an optimized mobile experience with a good UI.

5. Security And Support

Few things are as important as the safety of your customers’ information. To ensure this, make sure that your payment gateway features encryption, support for SSL certificates, and anything else to do with the protection of data.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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You should also be able to respond to problems with payment, refunds, and other concerns about transactions. Your payment processor of choice should have efficient and timely support that responds to your needs effectively.

For more information about setting up a payment gateway with WooCommerce, check out this detailed guide.

Conclusion

This article is a WordPress eCommerce how-to guide that has walked you through every step of building your own online store on one of the biggest platforms on the Web. You’ve learned how to choose your hosting provider, decide what plugin to use, install your plugin of choice, add your very first product, and set up a payment gateway for your site.

Want to launch your own eCommerce Store? Let’s Discuss!

How to Recognize a True Partner Among Web Development Agencies?

Posted on by Jay

Looking for the right website development agency can be very difficult. Although there are some handy tips when searching for the right eCommerce web development agency, one of the most underrated questions is: How to recognize an agency that wants to be a partner?

Let’s explain why this question is essential.

There are two types of agencies in the world. First is the one that tries to do the job you agreed upon. The second wants to go beyond that.

An agency that wants to be your partner wants to think about results that are above their “scope of work.” In simple words, they are always having in mind your broader business objective. Having that common goal allows for a deeper connection between an agency and the client that results in the best possible outcome.

How to recognize that agency?

In this post, you can find useful information on how you can recognize an eCommerce website agency that wants to become your business partner.

How to Recognize a True Partner Among Web Development Agencies?

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How about you? What is your approach to conversations about eCommerce development costs? Would you like to share some of your tricks of the trade?

Let’s learn from each other, and we may even influence the way some of our future clients approach us.

How To Build An eCommerce Marketing Plan?

Posted on by Nicol Garrison

Running an eCommerce website means you’re fighting for your piece of the market with some seriously strong competitors. Regardless of what you’re selling, you’re bound to face the competition and realize you need to up your game if you want to stand out. This is why you need to invest your efforts in developing a strong marketing plan.

Your marketing plan will help you achieve your goals. You’ll be able to raise brand awareness, increase sales, and earn your place on the market. If you’re not sure how to write a marketing plan for your eCommerce, just keep reading.

We’ll walk you through each step.

Walk Each Step

Source: Pexels

1. Analyze Your Competitors

The first thing you need to do before you start developing your marketing strategy is to detect your biggest competition.
You’re not doing this to copy what they’re doing. On the contrary. You’re doing this to be able to stand out from them.

So, make sure that you:

  • analyze the market
  • detect your direct competition
  • analyze their marketing efforts, strategies, customer relationship, and tools they’re using

Once you do this, you’ll be able to see a pattern and think outside the box to avoid becoming just another eCommerce.

2. Use Content Marketing

Content Marketing is the building block of your marketing strategy. Content marketing is about creating useful, informative, or entertaining content to draw attention to your brand.

The key steps of content marketing are the following:

  • Keyword Research

Find specific keywords your target audience might be interested in. Choose those that are easy to rank and avoid general keywords.

  • Content Creation & Blogging

A blog is the center of your content marketing strategy. There, you’ll publish blog posts covering topics your target audience is interested in. Your blog posts need to; answer questions, solve problems, provide guidance, inform, teach, provide value, cover trending topics.

  • Promoting Your Content

Your blog is not the only place where you promote your content. Use social media such as Instagram and Facebook to further boost your content engagement.

Content marketing will help you raise brand awareness and reach those people who don’t even know your eCommerce exists.

3. Use Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest, yet most effective marketing strategies.

Email marketing gives you a chance to connect to your current and potential customers and make sure they become loyal to your brand.

Using email marketing, you can send emails such as:

  • Welcome emails
  • abandoned cart reminder
  • special offer note
  • coupons
  • birthday cards and discounts
  • sale notifications
  • recommended products that just arrived

Email marketing is closely related to personalization since you’ll be using personalized data about each customer to create those special offers and specific emails.

Email Marketing

Source: Gmail printscreen

4. Use Instagram Product Tagging

Instagram

Did you know that Instagram has more than 1 billion active users globally? This social media platform is absolutely essential for your eCommerce marketing and here’s why.

Instagram offers you the option of using product tagging. It’s a quick and effective way to get your customers from your social media post to your website and a shopping bag.

Here’s how it works:

  • you post an image of your products on Instagram
  • you tag each product on the image
  • the tag shows the name of the product as well as the price
  • if the customer is interested in buying, all the have to do is click the tag
  • the tag takes them directly to the product they choose, on your eCommerce website

They don’t have to search for it and waste time during which they might even give up on the sale.

Instagram product tagging is a brilliant strategy you need to use.

5. Use Videos

Videos are an extremely popular form of content. This is because more and more people are instantly bored when they see huge chunks of text and like to be provided with this form of instant information that videos offer.

You can create different types of videos, test them, and see what resonates best with your audience. We strongly recommend:

  • product videos showing how a product is used
  • how-to-videos giving advice on how to use the product properly
  • interviews with influencers or experts in your niche
  • “behind the scene” videos showing your offices, team members, or the process of creating a product
  • educational videos providing information your target audience might be interested in

“Videos are great because they are visual, entertaining, and attention-grabbing. Every eCommerce should invest in creating videos as one of the primary forms of content they share,” says Daniel Faber, a digital marketing specialist and writer at Studicus.

Share your videos on your blog, IGTV, YouTube Channel and all the other platforms you’re using.

6. Show Product Reviews

It’s one thing when you promote your brand, but it’s a whole other thing when your customers do it for you.

People who are shopping online like to check how other customers felt about the product before they make the purchase. In fact, nearly 95%of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase.

This is why you need to ensure you have other people:

  • leaving reviews
  • leaving comments
  • leaving images of the product they’ve received

Product review

Source: Romwe

This way, you’ll encourage other customers to trust your eCommerce and go on with their initial shopping intentions.

Final Thoughts

Building an eCommerce marketing plan requires doing proper market analysis, and using several different strategies and tools. With some effort and dedication, you’ll be able to create a unique and effective marketing plan for your eCommerce.
Use the advice provided above and start working on your new marketing plan.

How To Boost eCommerce Sale During Covid19 Pandemic

Posted on by Jay

Since the last few years, COVID-19 has made the most unexpected impacts worldwide. As of December, 2021, COVID-19 has affected millions of people worldwide with many deaths.

As with the New variants of Covid-19, the Omicron variant is emerging again, creating a major impact on millions of lives and to the economic sector.

As for the impact on the global business, we can’t say the industry like eCommerce is experiencing the complete fallout. The online sale has taken the hit but it is not completely down.

It’s clear that moving forward, choosing between online sales and brick-and-mortar stores won’t be the answer — instead, “offering a compelling Omni channel experience…is a requirement for survival,” says McKinsey analysts.

The drastic E-commerce growth amid movement restrictions induced by Covid-19 has increased the online Retail sales from 16% to 27.6% in 2021.

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According to a report by UNCTAD, online retail sales have grown in many countries, with the Republic of korea holding a large number of  shares at 25.9% by 2021, up from 20.8% the year before.

This pandemic has spread to over 100+ countries now. But as an eCommerce vendor, it is also time to deliver to their customer despite the circumstances.

Actually, it is very important to handle every step along the way with safety as paramount.

Despite this “post- Covid” era, the situation is constantly changing. With retail and E-commerce business has begun to observe behavioural shifts in the shopping habits , along with many new behavioural shifts observed in the shopping habits.

Online Shopping Increases By Demographic:

A report by BigCommerce has shown that in the Covid-19  various gender and age-groups have adopted E-commerce in varying degrees.

According to a survey it was observed that in the UK and US, 96% of millennials and GenZ are worried about the pandemic which has affected the economy. The widespread worry was  observed that this age group differentiate their behaviours  more noticeably in comparison to other generations.

Agility PR has reported that 30% of millennials has done more Online shopping during pandemic. In contrast 20% of Gen X, 24% of Gen Z and 8% of Baby boomers. 

More data has shown that 24% of boomers and 34% of GenZ have seen Covid-19 has created an impact on the items they are purchasing, compared to nearly half of millennials. These effects might include the cutting back on spending, carrying certain items  and spending less on the experiences.

There is also much disparity observed between genders, with 24% of men found to be online shopping in the pandemic, in comparison to 18% of women. Also, one third of men, in comparison to 25% of women, said that Covid-19 has created more impact on how much they spend on products.

Here I have drafted some safety measures that you should adopt to make your selling experience more effective.

Sanitize Every Place That You Work

For the safety measures, you need to do this at shipment centres, inventories, warehouses, and all the workspaces of your organisation where works are made out. This is the top priority for included people, especially those in the eCommerce sector, considering the far-reaching geographical capabilities of the industry.

Here are some precaution checkpoints of sanitization that you can undertake:

  • Screening the warehouse personnel regularly
  • Instant sanitization of the warehouse
  • Minimizing the working resources and maintain the social distance
  • maintain heavy caution on entry and exit points
  • An emergency phone line to contact the hospital or police station, if required
  • Maintain the manual register for all visitors
  • Contactless delivery

By setting as an example India with1.3 billion people shut down, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said “India’s COVID fight could make or break the global war. WHO said India has a tremendous capacity to deal with the pandemic as it has experience of eradicating smallpox and polio”.

With the contactless initiative, customers can ask the delivery guy to leave their order package in a secure location, from where the end-user can pick it up.

“It can go a long way in containing the spread of COVID-19 and protects both your courier partner and the end customer.”

Winners On The E-Commerce Shift:

Big commerce has reported that month over month, the food and beverage has increased. The impact of E-commerce on emerging markets has grown to 18.8% and also shows a big growth in the downloads of  mobile applications. It has allowed people to hire personal shoppers to prepare and also in some cases they deliver the goods.

The rise of E-commerce popularity was observed as many of us were quarantined  at home, usinging Netflix, Disney+ and all the gaming subscribers has observed growth at an unprecedented rate in Q1 2021.

Provide Training On Sanitization

In these testing times, the biggest threat to society is perhaps, ignorance.

Ignorance, perhaps this is the biggest threat to society. It is so important that each and every single person is well informed about the basics to fight effectively.

Government officials of many countries have adopted epidemic training and awareness procedures for staying safe.

This includes;

  • how to wash your hands
  • how to wear a mask
  • how to stay away from infected surfaces
  • how to deliver using contactless delivery

Collaborate With Shipping Aggregators

The most advantageous outcome of partnering with a shipping partner is to reduce the workload of your internal team and make sure a clean, hygienic shipping process end-to-end.

There are many vendors using this workflow, so you will be able to choose an alternate courier partner without wasting any time.

Keep Customer Support Paramount

To ensure customer satisfaction and general peace amongst customers, make sure that customer support is available round the clock.

Customer service at whim can make sure that the customer and the seller are constantly in touch.

Okay. These are the safety measure for online vendors to ensure the safety of packing to deliver the goods to end-users.

But can we see this lockdown period as an opportunity to boost your eCommerce sale?

As people are willing to stay at their homes these days and they need their daily life stuff also.

So, the answer is YES!

Strategies To Boost Online Sales

It is very obvious that the consumers are spending more time on the internet as they are social distancing and IT professionals are working from home.

So, our recommendation would be to consider your online presence of the online store. This depends on the eCommerce platform you use. Various eCommerce platforms have different limitations.

Example; The core features of Magento, WordPress, are pretty much search engine friendly.

If everything is OKAY.. then revisit your marketing spend and improve the effectiveness of your virtual communications.

1. Reach Out To Your High-Value Customers

Analytica says, “20% of your customers contribute 80% of your total revenue”. Considering this you need to prioritize the high-value customers ensuring their lifetime loyalty.

eCommerce Stats
Source: Squarespace

Applications like Wakeupsales, (cloud-based Salesforce Automation tool) act like the customer relationship solution and contacting platform all in one.

Through this, your marketing staff can stay in touch with the prioritized high-value customers remotely.

So, you can send personalized recommendations that include links to purchase online.

2. Adapt Your Marketing Messaging

During this sensitive period, you also need to rethink your marketing strategy.

However, brands should be cautious of pivoting too far away from their core brand messaging, or worse yet, coming off as opportunistic.

Below are some examples of brands that made simple adjustments to their messaging to “read the cultural room” while remaining authentic.

3. Create “Social Experiences” On Social Media

Staying home means surfing the internet and social media. So the brand needs to get creative about how they leverage their social media presence.

The brand can create problem-solving social media campaigns to gain more reach of your brand or product.

Also, consider the campaign must make aware of your brand and how your brand gets to solve the daily life requirement.

This helps to acquire loyal customers.

4. Offer Free Shipping Or Local Pickup And Delivery

Shipping cost is always a barrier for online users. So if possible, you can consider offering free shipping.

There is another option available “curbside pickup”.

This term of delivery is actually, a customer ordered a product online and can pick it up fro your local store.

It decreases the hassle of the delivery process. And for customers, it also cut the waiting time.

Still, you need to integrate the whole setup on your eCommerce website. This is not a big development process. You can integrate this delivery set up by hiring an eCommerce developer remotely.

5. Extend Your Return And Exchange Policy

“Extending your return and exchange policy in acknowledgment of the current climate could alleviate buyer doubt and incentivize online sales.”

So, changing the return policy can bring some sighs to your customers. As on the lockdown period, the delivery time and pick up time could be delayed. So, extending the return period could help to gain some loyal customers too.

6. Use Retargeting Ads To Reach Your Customers

Paid advertising can help you to reach such people which you cannot go with organic campaigns. And doing it smartly would help you to regain such visitors who were at your store before.

Technically, we called this a Retargeting campaign.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Through it, your ads or product can be displayed to those users who visited your website recently.

The various ads managers like Facebook, Google, etc have the algorithm to perform such methods.

Conclusion:

Developing and delivering the fruitful content display will always have the high-end stuff for your eCommerce website too.

So, before adopting all these methods and strategies, you need to ‘consider your existing website performance and capabilities.

When we come to the point of COVID-19, there is no ETA on when this crisis is going to end. But it is heartwarming to see all people coming together to fight this pandemic.

As the new Covid Variant, Omicron is growing gradually, therefore it is important to take all the necessary steps and grow your business gradually. Develop your E-commerce application now with Andolasoft. 

Our experts, App developers, will guide you with this path, by developing your desired eCommerce Application.

We at Andolasoft also urged the merchant to follow the guideline and secure every touchpoint.

Is your eCommerce site fully integrated to fight this situation? Let’s Discuss.

6 Trends And Future Of eCommerce In Upcoming Years

Posted on by Naman Modi

Keeping an eye on the eCommerce trends should be a hobby since the year is coming to an end, and the business partners want future growth in eCommerce.

Several future eCommerce trends that retailers should pay attention to are the eCommerce techniques. In they need positive growth in their organization are discussed in this article.

Online-Offline Linkages:Online-offline linkages

Both the online and offline shopping options are believed to be the key trends that are believed in shaping future eCommerce regarding how businesses can increase their sales.

Borrowing from the online giant market, Amazon, the process of coming up with physical stores, allows people to interact with the products that may have come across or ordered online.

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Similarly, the retail businesses have noted the importance of offering their digital experiences to younger customers as they seem to spend most of their time online and social media, making purchase decisions.

Thus, it is very logical predicting the eCommerce landscape of 2020 to be either a physical or digital presence.

Multi-Channel Engagement and Buying:

Having many people spend their time on social media, retail businesses have the opportunity of communicating and engaging with their target audiences through various channels.

For example, one may come across a picture of a friend carrying a trendy handbag on Instagram or any social media hurdle.

It will be obvious for the person to inquire about the brand of the bag, its cost, and of course, where she bought it.

After acquiring this information, the person will surely log into the brand’s website or other pages that are selling to make their purchase.

Therefore, multi-channel engagement can be said to be one of the eCommerce future trends that have already begun yielding fruits for retailers.

The multi-channel trend is good news for all businesses as the research clearly shows that most shoppers spend more than those individuals who restrict shopping to a certain channel.

However, it is wrong to rule out that the drivers of eCommerce in the future have changed their availability, utility to the personalized product.

Native Social-Selling

About 18.2% of people say they are comfortable transacting through the social media pages of the prevalent brands.

Although it is still a niche where buying and selling can take place, this group of early adopters will only grow in the near future.

“For example, Instagram has more than a billion active users who spend most of their time on the site messaging and doing other stuff but only get interested in shopping whenever they find something that catches their eye or rather recommended by the influencers.”

Famous Apps & We

The same case is happening to the Facebook brands where their shops on Facebook attract heavy traffic with an increasing number of buyers if they have unique goods.

In the near future, the large brands with a global presence are not going to ignore the native-selling since their target audience will be doing the bulk of the product they admire on social media platforms.

Markedly, it will be an interesting development since eCommerce space will no longer be liable to restricted to the online businesses’ well-known brands as they are probably going to set up their brands on social media.

Automated Operations

None of the future trends will get fruits until their business get automation of their prevalent processes.

That is, ranging from inventory management, invoicing, billing, delivery, and even handling refunds and returns of the firms.

This is because, like in the multi-channel, eCommerce will only be possible if the retailer has general information concerning the stock levels for their various products at the time of shipping.

If there will be an automated inventory, then it will be safe, fast, and customer satisfying since there will be no need for mastering every particular product.

Lack of this information in the app and the websites will continue accepting new orders for their products without customer’s knowledge.

Research shows that enhancing customer satisfaction is a vital factor in influencing loyalty and repeat purchases in the future of eCommerce.

In case deliveries are at any time-delayed or orders are canceled, then the reputation will take a hit.

Mobile CommerceMobile commerce

Almost everyone owns a smartphone, and there is rapid penetration of the same, even in the developing countries for middle-class persons.

The mobile commerce emerging trend results from the rise of using smartphones, which shows mobile commerce in the near future will hit a higher note.

However, retailers and customers have been taking full advantage of their smartphones, but now it important the phones are made being mobile-friendly.

Hence the purchases are simplified. In essence, many people are not going to navigate multiple fill-in forms and pages before completing any transaction.

With that in mind, eCommerce will be required to start looking beyond America and its markets in the coming years.

This is because of the emerging economies like in China, North Africa, and South Asia, where smartphone penetration is the rise but still below global expectations.

For retailers who are in a position to develop mobile apps can be easily downloaded and used without using too much bandwidth in finding themselves a significant advantage where the internet connections are slow or of limited ranges.

Social Media eCommerceSocial media commerce

Many eCommerce analysts believe that online shopping and social media as a natural fit.

They argue that most people spend most of their time on Facebook and Twitter, browsing different products, and asking for recommendations.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Recently, businesses and customer research show that this shift in the behavior of consumers is taking hold, especially the youths who are considered as the primary target audience in the future of eCommerce.

Many young people have begun using social media to find products and other services that fulfill their needs.

As well they seek to get feedback from individuals within their online circles who might have used the same product before.

Conclusion

For a prosperous future of eCommerce, businesses will have to work with the technology and data firms.

As well the social media platforms will need to ensure the information is always safeguarded for the transaction to take place.

We featured as Top Magento Developers at eCommerceCompanies.

Data leakage is common nowadays which has become a norm for social media hurdles leading to customers remaining top extra cautious with their information online.