3 Dos & Don’ts of Setting Up an Online Business!

“I want to have my online business” – is a great thought to have. It is a sign that you have an entrepreneurial psyche. But talk to someone who already has an established online business and they will give you a whole list of things that they wish would not have done. I believe that setting up an online business is not a piece of cake. There are a lot of aspects you need to consider. After all, the decisions that you make initially will have a huge impact on your business at later stages.

So, before you think, “Big deal! I just need to pay $12 for a domain name, choose a free website template, and get going”; consider these dos and don’ts. 

Let us start with the Dos first.

1. Have a business plan

Remember the adage “Look before you leap”? Well, it kind of applies here. Before setting up an online business, you need to understand that a business plan is the blueprint for your business.

2. Know Your Audience

First, you need to define your target audience and conduct a survey to find out how you can meet the needs of your customers.

3. Accept Criticism

Let us say someone advises you to hire a dedicated Magento developer and get your website developed in Magento. With Magento, you get to have all the solutions that an e-shop would need. So, listen to the feedbacks as it will help you understand your customers, offer a better product, and provide better customer services.

Now, let us talk about the don’ts:

1. Do Not Procrastinate the Launch

Practice how to create a product, generate a buzz, set targets, and launch it on time. Approach an ecommerce web development company to help you if you want. Only then, you will start generating revenues.

2. Do Not Have Unrealistic Expectations

There is no such thing as an overnight success. If you think you had misconceptions about certain aspects, rework on your original plans.

3. Do Not Ape Your Competitors

During the initial years after my business launch if someone asked me a question like, “Why should we choose you for Magento Ecommerce Website Development?” I used to give generic answers like “’Coz we’re better than our competitors.” But later, I realized that such generic reasons do not work anymore. It is very important to stand out from your competitors and offer them with something unique each time.

Winding up:

One needs to ensure that one indulges into best practices before launching a business. So, conduct R&D about your industry, try to know about your competitors, come up with a fantastic business plan and above all, know what not to do when setting up an online business.

The above-mentioned dos and don’ts are stemming out of my experiences. It does not mean what works for you will work for me.


View original Source: https://www.biztechcs.com/blog/dos-donts-setting-online-business/

A Perfect Guide to Lessen Shopping Cart Abandonments on Your Ecommerce Store

Losses are written in our destiny. Be it things or people. Some, we take for granted and some, we overlook. Despite of the fact that they have offered us moments to cherish and have added great value to our lives! For ecommerce store owners, Cart Abandonments are same. Often overlooked, unaddressed and ignored.

According to eMarketer, if you look at the combined e-commerce sales of $738 billion in the EU and US, the potential for a 35.26% increase in conversion rate translates to $260 billion worth of lost orders! Isn’t that as huge as an elephant? If you are an ecommerce store owner undergoing a daily Cart Abandonment Saga, it’s time for you to address this elephant.

How?

Well, first you need to understand why people chuck shopping carts. It can be anything in your case. Payment Security concerns, prolonged Checkout Process or unexpected Shipping Costs. The sooner you figure it out, the better. And for the business owners who are looking forward to obtain Magento Shopping Cart Development services, it’s important to offer a better checkout flow and design.

In 2017 and for many more years to come, it will become mandatory for estore owners to offer an impeccable and one-step checkout experience. We are here with a perfect guideline to help you lessen the amount of cart abandonments. Here’s how you bid goodbye to them:

Reliable Information Forms

Trust is a huge factor. Especially when it comes to providing private information about oneself. Think about the last time you filled a form while shopping online. Were you comfortable providing your personal information? If yes, was there a percentage of skepticism to it?

A research by Baymard Institute proved that whenever customers are asked for unnecessary personal information while checking out, it scares the daylights out of them! This can be anything. A phone number, email ids or other information which is asked for without giving any explanation.

The World Wide Web is full of companies that coax customers into buying and never deliver the products. So, your goal is to help your customers get over this kind of anxiety. Remember, when you ask for information that is ‘seemingly unwanted’, back it up by statements like “We might need it for shipping related questions” or “Don’t worry, your information will be secure with us.”

Ask your ecommerce development provider to include these pop-ups along with different fields that ask for sensitive information. Doing so will instill faith in your customers and they wouldn’t mind providing the needed information.

Authenticating with a Logo

If there’s a lack of security certificates on your website or a red strikethrough sign on the “https”, you need to wake up! This might be a sign of a wrongly configured server or an indication that your website is hacked.

A study by Actual Insights proved that 75% of the participants that were a part of their study have not purchased a product as they did not identify the security logo on the website. Some customers rely on the security certificates and use of https if they want to verify whether the images on your website are authentic and trustworthy.

Logos depicting that the website is secure and virus-free can lead buyers to buy fearlessly. The leading three brand logos that customers trust are – PayPal (66%), Verisign (63%) and McAfee (62%). So, make sure your ecommerce website has them. However, logos of recognition are not enough. The testimonials and portfolio present on your website and other forums can also work up to a great extent if they look authentic.

Readily Accessible Shopping Cart

Shopping Cart Motion Sickness. This might sound like a new term to you. But it is utterly irritating to navigate back and forth and recall the items added to the cart before purchasing. If this is what your website does to the customers, they are sure to lose interest!

It might be easy for Magento Development Service providers to build a separate page for shopping carts. However, customers like to access the cart irrespective of the page they’re transacting with. So, here’s what you can do:

• Provide your customers with a viewable chart listing the items on shopping cart.
• You can provide this chart every time they add a new product.
• Make sure that this chart is accessible on every page and is viewable anytime.

The above-mentioned steps will ensure that your Shopping Cart is shopping friendly and free from front and back navigations.

Reach Out through Emails

There are several reasons why people abandon carts. But the question here is, do you follow up? Or try to know why? When people abandon their carts at the last checkout step, you will get their email address. There are two ways to address this issue:

• Setting up an Autoresponder Email: When a customer leaves your cart, they immediately receive an automatic email letting them know about the items they left in the cart.
• Sending a personal email: Don’t always rely on autoresponder emails. You can personally email your customer to find out why they abandoned the cart. Or, ask what you can do to help them.

There are times when coupon codes and discount offers and cart authorizations don’t work. During such situations, getting in touch with your customers personally makes a huge difference. One, it lets them know that they are important. Two, they are sure to come back.

If you can resolve the problem without involving customers; it’s even better. They will feel cared for and appreciate your efforts. Also, lessen the interval of sending emails that address Cart Abandonment. This is because, the customers tend to forget and no longer care if reached out after a long time.

Simplifying navigations, providing diverse payment options and offering progress bars are some of the best ways to reduce cart abandonments. What matters here is, how you address the individualistic issues.

Have there been any Cart Abandonments issues on your website? What did you do to address them? Please feel free to share with us.

View Original Source:

https://www.biztechcs.com/blog/guide-lessen-shopping-cart-abandonments-ecommerce-store/

Challenges That B2C Ecommerce Businesses Must Overcome in 2017

If you are one of the ecommerce business owners who think that there is no need to provide an exceptional and exclusive shopping experience to your customers; you need to wake up. Customers are the nucleus of ecommerce universe. And right from researching about the brand to ordering it online, they are keen on making the most out of omnichannel experience. It goes without saying that people love to use new gadgets and various shopping options being provided to them by the retailers.

Through this article, we intend to acquaint you with some of the challenges ecommerce store owners must overcome if they want to boost their sales and attain success in today’s highly competitive market. We will also provide you with some ecommerce development solutions and how you can improve the value of your brand.

The Navigators of Online Retail 2017

The year 2017 is all about challenging the old, mundane and stereotype business models. Businesses that have gone beyond conventional models have achieved much more success as compared to others. Number of Millennials is growing in the US and the generation is utilizing mobile and wearable technologies to the fullest. Such technologies have given birth to other customer-friendly channels. Moreover, a new innovation is introduced daily, pushing retail businesses to meet with the expectation of customers who one-of-a-kind need experience while fidgeting around with their devices.

People that indulge into shopping while surfing on their devices are known as connected spenders. A Harvard Business review has revealed that the connected spenders contribute to 19% of global population. And this percentage is likely to grow by 37% by the year 2025. So if you want to be one of the frontrunners in alluring your target audience, you need to render some ultra-modern services and build the reliability for your brand.

Millennials – Spearheading the Consumer Movement

As compared to other connected spenders, Millennials spend much more and are leading the consumer movement. They are quite different compared to the former generation as they expect a customized look and feel to the products, indulge into last minute shopping, want same day delivery and seek instant customer support. And to the core of these buying habits, lies the word “convenience”.

So if you want the high percentage of consumers to buy from you, you need to innovate as much as you can and enhance the buying experience by addressing all the pain points. While choosing e-commerce web solutions for your brand, make sure you speak with the professionals and create a website that offers a good buying experience for your customers.

Rendering mobile oriented experiences

Quite clearly, desktop usage has become a passé and mobiles have taken over. It’s time for retailers to create new opportunities by adapting mobile commerce solutions and win the hearts of their customer base. Vendors can partner with reliable fintechs and provide single-tap payment options to the customers. They can also come up with special discounts and mobile-exclusive offers from time to time so that the number of customers buying through mobile devices phone goes up. For the retailers who are unaware, the mobile payment volume is expected to reach $274 billion by the year 2021.

However, there are certain cyber security concerns when it comes to making mobile payments which need to be dealt with. Ecommerce business owners should integrate only those solutions that are reliable and credible. Some if these mobile wallets are Samsung Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay. These companies have secured pins and fingerprint verification so that scams can be kept at bay.

Embracing digital currencies

The term ‘Bitcoin’ is a very well known form of digital currency and isn’t new to hear these days. Right now, it might be difficult to decipher how it works but some years down the line, it might become one of the most majorly accepted ways of payment by millennials. Once bitcoin, and the technology it works on (blockchain) is understood, it might get accepted by ecommerce platforms who intend to cater to a particular audience.

Voice Ordering through Virtual Assistants

Imagine not having to even touch or tap a device in order to shop for the required product! When Amazon’s Alexa was introduced in November 2014, it created quite a stir in the market. The voice operated virtual assistants are always ready to serve and can order for what customers want in no time. Looking into this fad, internet retail brands have to be alert and reachable for their customers as and when they want.

Although, marketing professionals know how to attract potential customers, don’t be surprised if retailers partner with Amazon, Google and Apple to create voice oriented and algorithmic marketing campaigns to promote their brand.

How can ecommerce business owners keep up with the trends?

It might get overwhelming and challenging for the ecommerce brands to cope with the ever-changing demands and trends. But the first and the most crucial step that you must take as a retailer is to study the behavior of customers and connected spenders. A detailed study involving buyers’ shopping patterns will provide you with an understanding of what leads them to buy, what results into abandoned ecommerce shopping carts and what factors influence their purchase decisions.

In a nutshell, today’s ecommerce asks you to strike a perfect balance between digital payments, artificial intelligence, mobile application development, cybersecurity and other aspects. If you want to make this a possibility, you should get in touch with a professional and hardworking ecommerce web design & development team. Hiring marketing professionals, who implement technological collaborations, establish valuable customer relationships and drive the change for your brand is also a good idea. What are your thoughts on innovations that influence the field of ecommerce? How open are you to adapt to these changes? Feel free to share with us.

6 Tips To Grow Your Email Marketing To Boost Ecommerce Sales

The success rate of an ecommerce business depends largely on the marketing techniques being practiced by the company. Of all the popular marketing techniques, email marketing has often been found to be the second most effective marketing channel for e-commerce businesses. But this piece of information is not enough for the implementation of an effective email marketing strategy. It’s been more than two decades that we have the option of e-mailing but today we can personalize it to a significant scale. And it totally depends on how well we are utilizing this leverage and convert the humble email into a powerful marketing weapon.

Let’s have a brief look at the most effective ways in which you can use email marketing to boost ecommerce sales.

1. Customer Relationship Management

Though customer relationship is a much broader term, what we really need to study for efficient email marketing is the customer lifecycle or the different stages in which the customer is in relationship with the seller. Sending out generic emails to all customers barely does the trick. So, you have to personalize the mails according to their life cycle.

A. Abandoned Carts

Potential customers need an extra bit of attention from your end. There are probabilities that a significant part of these customers will abandon the carts after selecting the products of their choice. At this point, you are to study the pattern of abandonment and take steps accordingly. Within half an hour of the abandonment of a cart, a mail should reach them assuring that you are providing quality customer service. The e-mail should be prompting enough to urge them to revert back with their grievances. Even if there is no check out, you would know the shortcomings that led the customer to back out and take measures to fix it at the earliest. You should try at least 2-3 e-mails at appropriate time intervals to convert the abandoned carts into customers.

B. New Customers

An ecommerce business should immediately follow up with a new customer. A welcome mail is mandatory. You should also provide the links of social media portals where they can stay connected with you and get updates about new products and offers. One thing which is really important and should be included in the mail is the story of your business. That definitely helps in establishing a branding with the customer. Further, you can offer discounts for their next purchase and keep them updated about the products they might be interested in.

C. Existing Customers

There should an efficient e-mail campaign for the existing and returning customers. You can send promotion mails which also ask for a feedback and reflects how important their feedback is for you. For your regular customers, there should be a VIP campaign. Meaning, they should get a special treatment now and then. These can be the customers who purchased the most in the last month or have purchased three (or more) times. Let them know that they are one of your best customers and treat them with a discount or free shipping now and then.

D. Previous Customers

These are the customers who didn’t show any purchasing signs since a long time. You can try sending out a polite mail stating that they are missed or work on strategy e-mails to call them back. Study their purchase history and persuade them to check out the latest products which you have for them. You can also provide some incentives to call them back.

2. Reminders

You should always refer to your customer’s purchase list while customizing emails for them. For the products which need replenishments, you can send out reminders to your customers to stock their essentials. It can be beauty products like soap, shampoo, etc, or food essentials like oil, spices, and other home vitals. If someone has a purchase cycle of a month for such products, the e-commerce business should study the pattern and send a marketing e-mail when you can predict the supply might be coming to an end. The mail should be inviting and promoting similar products to the purchase history of the consumer.

3. Product Reviews

Provide incentives to your customers to reply to the feedback mails. Make sure to directly link it to the review section of the product bought by them. A product with reviews definitely gets more preference than the other with no reviews. So you can make your marketing emails a way to lure the customers to leave a review for the product they have purchased.

4. Customize Transactional Emails

The chances of opening a transactional e-mail are around 21% while it stands to only 3% for bulk promotional mails. Optimally utilize the information by promoting your products in the transactional mails. Whenever a customer opens a transactional email, there should be a catchy link that directs him to similar products on the website. You can also try showcasing some handpicked items in the mail, which might be alluring to the prospective customer.

5. E-mail Campaigns on Birthdays and Anniversaries

When a customer signs up as a member, maintain a database of the information about the important dates in their life. It can be their birthday, their spouse’s’ birthday, or their wedding anniversary. Make sure to provide some incentives to your customers on these particular dates. Send an e-mail a few days before along with the expiry date of the offer. You can be selective about the incentives; it can be a ‘free shipping’ thing or a certain percentage off on any particular products (that’s relevant to the specific buyer.)

6. Say no to ‘no-reply’ mails

Many of the e-commerce firms follow a pattern of automated mails where the customer cannot get back to the seller. That’s a strict no. You should always be open to customer enquiries and feedbacks. Keep this platform open and let your customer get in touch with you hassle free by sending the marketing emails from a personalized e-mail id where they can reply back.

The above are some of the basic things you can do to use your e-mail marketing to boost sales. Off course these will be effective only once you have taken care of all the ecommerce storefront development requirements and optimized your store for conversion. There are innumerable innovative ways in which you can call back your existing customers or allure some new ones. You just need to study the patterns and work a bit more when it comes to e-mails.