Managing an eCommerce is not an easy task. There are lots of tech problems a merchant faces. Solving them will impact the business management time slot and that will lead to a sales drop.
Sales drop itself is a crucial signal that your store needs an eCommerce consulting to keep all technical things on track.
Apart from sales drop, there are below FIVE signals which can notify you to adopt an eCommerce consulting to smoothen your sales & business.
1. You are not using the LATEST 2.4.3 version of Magento
Adobe released the latest version 2.4.3 with 400+ fixes. If you’re still using a lower version then your store is having 400+ loopholes. Is that acceptable to you? We bet, it’s not. It’s like using iPhone 4 when the world is using iPhone 13. Using the latest version will always help your store to stay more secure, faster and lead to more sales. Have a tech consultant who can keep you updated with such technological upgrades.
2. You don’t have a mobile app
If you’re still not having a mobile app, then you’re losing the sales you could have achieved through an app. If budget is an issue, you could have opted for PWA. The right tech consultant could help you to create an app version of your store and market it to double your sales.
3. Your store need advanced technical functionalities
Any eCommerce platform offers limited functionality. You need to customize your store according to your visitor and product sales report. The right consultant can help you with some plugins which can skyrocket your sales and make your site more user-friendly.
4. Your store has a high bounce rate
Check through analytics tools & scan through bounce rate. Imagine what will happen if that bounce rate figure will get reduced. Eventually, it will turn to more sales. Yes, that’s correct. An experienced eCommerce consultant knows the drill. He knows what steps can be taken to reduce the bounce rate.
5. Your store isn’t having good search results
Google promotes your site FREE via SEO. But, are you leveraging benefits for your all products/categories URLs. If the answer is no, then you need an eCommerce consult who can customize your store in such a way that your site will start achieving good ranks & sales.
Apart from the above five, there are numerous things such as low conversion rate, low site speed, bugs in the site, security issues with the site, responsiveness, email marketing where an eCommerce consultant can guide you to achieve desirable sales figures. Don’t pause your eCommerce sales & hire an eCommerce consultant today.
Have you ever felt that you are not able to track and manage all the processes in your Magento store? If your answer is yes, then it means that you need to integrate certain tools into your store to help it boost efficiency. You will be able to increase the sales at your store, offer better customer service and take care of business operations smoothly by integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365.
To keep it short, when you integrate Magento with Dynamics, you will be able to improve finance & operations with the flexibility and features of Magento, driving operational efficiency, and unparalleled customer experience.
Preparing for Magento Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration
For a growing business, integrating ERP/CRM and an eCommerce store is considered critical today. If you achieve it properly, it can be good for your business. So, once you have decided to proceed with the integration, you will need to come up with a plan that can work in your favour. Now, this can begin with choosing experts at Mage Monkeys for the integration task. Integrating Dynamics 365 and Magento store involves a few steps and having an understanding of the same is important.
Step 1: Assess your data
For an eCommerce store, you need to consider syncing various types of data. In the case of integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Magento 2, you need to consider four types of data in specific. They are data related to inventory, order tracking, pricing, and product descriptions. You will have to determine many things for each piece of data and this includes deciding the frequency of updates, the place to store it, and how to manage it. This is where Mage Monkeys comes in. The experts at Mage Monkeys will work alongside you to help you with assessing the critical data and managing it for your business needs.
Step 2: Use Microsoft Dynamics 365 to document your workflow
The place where your data will go and when will be clarified by your workflows. The workflows followed by merchants are different. Compared to a retailer, the workflows followed by dropshippers and B2B companies are complex. So, Mage Monkeys will set up a workflow that aligns with your kind of business and will lead it to success. We will achieve this for your Magento store by integrating it with Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Step 3: Get involvement of the right stakeholders
When you work with the right stakeholders for your Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration with the Magento store, you will be able to ensure that it supports the right business processes. Apart from that, such integration will ensure a better experience for everyone. The stakeholders involved here also include your target market. Now this includes the people related to sales, marketing, finance, and your potential suppliers and customers. During the integration process, the Mage Monkeys team will keep your stakeholders in the loop to ensure they have a better experience at your store.
Step 4: Make use of the right adapters
It is possible to quickly integrate Dynamics 365 with Magento store using pre-built adapters. Using such adapters will save you from spending money on building one from scratch. There are some adapters available in the market that are certified by Microsoft and good to work for Magento. This helps such adapters with tasks related to inventory, order tracking, pricing, and product description and specs. Here at Mage Monkeys, we will tweak the adapters for you in a way that fits well with your business needs and workflows. Again, our team will work to ensure that the integration of Microsoft Dynamics 365 with your Magento 2 store is done well.
Tips for successful Magento Dynamics integration
Understanding the things to do for the integration is important but then to ensure it is successful, you need to follow certain tips too. They have been listed below:
Choose experienced partner
You want the integration to meet your business needs and to make that happen you need to have the support of experts. You need to choose a partner like Mage Monkeys that have experience and expertise in working on high-level Magento Dynamics 365 integration projects. The best way to start is to meet our team and tell them your technical requirements and the kind of business goals you wish to achieve through this integration. The team will start by exploring the challenges, risks, costs, and deadlines and will communicate the same with them for more clarity.
Make use of middleware
For processes that are outside Dynamics 365 or Magento, using multichannel selling is now common in this new world. You can streamline data workflows using middleware and make it easier to interconnect Magento and Dynamics 365 for information passage. Such a middleware separates the ERP system from the frontend functions of your eCommerce store and thus adds in an extra layer of security.
Test your integration
It is important to plan to test once your requirements have been specified. Testing your integration will help you ensure the expected results are achieved. It is important for you to know that your data reaches the right destination at the right time and the accuracy and reliability of your processes are maintained. The experts at Mage Monkeys will also involve your team during the process. During the testing process, our team will also look for the speed of updates as well as any synchronization errors related to the display of data.
Training and support
Magento Dynamics integration is quite business-critical and so it is important for everyone part of it to know how the processes work and how to handle issues if they arise. Our Mage Monkeys team will provide you training for the same and will offer continuous support if required.
Conclusion
Magento Dynamics 365 integration can help the business with increased efficiency, properly presenting critical information on the website and reducing the chances of human errors. Mage Monkeys team ensures to complete the integration task for you with the utmost attention. We will work alongside your team to understand your business processes well and take care of errors during and post-integration before it can cause some serious issues.
If you are planning to upgrade your Magento store by adding ERP features through Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration, then talk to our team today. Right from planning the whole process to final execution, our team of professionals will take care of everything.
NetSuite is one of the most popular ERP solutions in the market that is quite flexible and scalable. NetSuite is right for mid-sized businesses that have plans to grow and expand. Magento NetSuite integration needs to be done with care and by partnering with Mage Monkeys, you can go ahead and integrate NetSuite into your Magento store seamlessly.
If you wish to go ahead with integrating these two systems, you need to be aware of a few things and the same has been explained below:
NetSuite-Magento integration points
There are a few touch-points covered in Magento-NetSuite integration which will be taken care of for you by Mage Monkeys and they are:
Customer
The synchronization to NetSuite will be done for a new customer account, billing and shipping address, contact information, etc.
For the existing customer, it will automatically download customer details to NetSuite in real-time.
Item
Maintain the right inventory of products in the eCommerce store through a real-time stock update from NetSuite.
Include and update the items in NetSuite with that of the Magento store and sync properly.
From Magento download the existing products to NetSuite. The update made of product details over Magento will be reflected in the NetSuite item instantly.
We will map Magento websites fully with warehouses of NetSuite. This way you can sync cumulative stock from different locations or inventory from a specific location to Magento.
Shipment
Map Magento shipping methods along with shipping charges to NetSuite Shipping methods.
Order
The sales orders placed by web customers and all web sales by guest customers on Magento will be turned into NetSuite sales orders.
We will sync web orders to NetSuite with status.
Sync in discounts for sales orders on NetSuite and for Magento to have the same value.
How to integrate Magento and NetSuite?
Magento and NetSuite integration can be achieved in three ways and Mage Monkeys can help you choose the preferred option to help you reach your goal.
Point-to-point integration
Point-to-point Magento NetSuite integration is one of the ways to integrate eCommerce with ERP. In this case, both technologies are placed face-to-face to synchronize different data like orders, inventory, customers, and items. In this type of integration, there is no operational platform working between the systems. Therefore, it is up to you to decide which system you should choose as ‘Master’ to help with data management. Mage Monkeys can help you turn the Magento platform into the ‘master’ system and thereby manage everything from it by considering it as a central repository. Here data is sent between the systems in the original form. Moreover, you will see certain limitations in the functionality.
In this case, data is generally synced between the systems in regular batches and that can be done on an hourly basis or once or twice a day. This kind of integration can work for small businesses that have no plans to make a big jump.
Custom Magento NetSuite integration
Custom integration is another way of having NetSuite integration with Magento. Some eCommerce businesses go their own way of having their own custom integration. To help eCommerce stores with such integration, Mage Monkeys will work on APIs that are present on Magento and NetSuite and will tie both systems by writing custom codes.
There may come situations when choosing custom integrations to become necessary for the business, like adding order fulfilment or SKU administration to your Magento 2 or NetSuite. Then there are situations where a custom solution is the only solution. In both cases, this integration solution works.
SaaS-based integration
SaaS-based integration is considered to be the most cost-effective way to integrate NetSuite with Magento 2 stores. In this option, the platform makes use of pre-built NetSuite and Magento connectors designed for them.
When compared to point-to-point integration, SaaS-based integration connectors are highly customizable and configurable so that they can easily satisfy your business needs. Here the businesses have the freedom to set the limits for their data and decide how it moves and behaves between the two systems. It offers them more visibility and control over the data. With Mage Monkeys, you can easily opt for SaaS-based integration for your eCommerce business and have the right connectors used for integration.
Benefits of Oracle NetSuite Magento integration
Avoids out of the stock situation
Helps replenish inventory quickly
Fastens order process
Improves customer satisfaction
Automatically record financial entry
Track guest buyers and convert them to loyal customers
Things to consider before carrying out Magento NetSuite integration
As said above, Magento NetSuite integration needs to be done properly and the Mage Monkeys team will work closely with you to help you achieve it as per your business needs. There are a few things you need to consider or be aware of before going with the integration process and the same has been explained below:
Identify the data you want to integrate
Oracle NetSuite Magento integration is all about streamlining the data that come from different sources. For increased efficiency, it is important to identify the data you want to integrate. Focusing on better automation, the data related to inventory, product information, and orders will be migrated to NetSuite software. Moreover, for better understanding and personalization, you can also integrate the data related to customer journey into NetSuite.
Triggering and processing time
For an eCommerce business, time for processing and triggering happening between operations is critical. With Magento NetSuite integration you get to spend more time on the process as you get to streamline data.
Avoid redundancy in data entry
In the case of an eCommerce business, tracking shipment is critical. Magento 2 NetSuite integration makes Magento website update quick and tracking easy. This means you can track customers in real-time by including their email lists. This process completely avoids the issues rising from human intervention and other data entry issues.
Middleware solutions and multi-channel data integration
Geographies and channels don’t limit eCommerce business. You will have to manage your business sales from different channels once it keeps growing every year. NetSuite integration with Magento makes it easy to handle multiple APIs. Again, you get to streamline data workflows using middleware solutions and add in an extra layer of security. This will help you segregate frontend Magento operations with backend ERP operations.
Taxation streamlining
You need to streamline and adjust taxation operations as your business operates from different locations at a time. You need to ensure that your NetSuite Magento integration is capable enough to support legal terms involved in taxation and easily switch between different currencies.
Security
Irrespective of the size of the business, data security remains a daunting task for many. To keep your system safe from cyber-attacks it is important to keep it updated with the latest security protocols. You will be able to keep your system updated to the latest security standards by going for Celigo NetSuite Magento integration.
Adaptability
One of the important things to consider during your Magento and NetSuite ERP integration is adaptability. As customizing the solution every time is not an easy job, it is important to make it feature-rich and future-ready for the market. This saves time, money, and resources for the business.
Conclusion
If you are planning to enhance the features of your Magento store by aggregating the features of NetSuite ERP then integrating both systems can do the job for you. The expertise of the Mage Monkeys team in handling Magento NetSuite integration can help your business enjoy the benefits of both systems in a way that turns your business more productive, makes it easy to manage, and helps in delivering excellent customer satisfaction.
Whole Foods Market became a pioneer in selling naturally-sourced produce when organic food was undergoing a renaissance in the West. The idea to capitalize on the changing food trend was brought up by four hippies John Mackey, Renee Hardy Lawson, Mark Skiles, and Craig Weller, in the 1980s. It was a result from an idealistic attempt to change the way people eat, make them healthier and promote sustainable harvesting.
Whole Foods Market got huge success after John Mackey came with an idea to buy products from 1970’s style health food Co-ops and package them in a way and make them look like a conventional product. His idea was to normalize the consumption of healthy food and make it available in supermarkets. However, at that time, these organic products were not available in supermarkets.
Whole Foods’ journey started with a struggle- John Mackey & Renee Lawson borrowed $45,000 from family & friends to open an organic vegetable store called Saferway in Austin. Two years down the line, Mackey and Lawson partnered with Craig Weller and Mark Skiles to merge Saferway with Clarksville Natural Grocery to open the original Whole Foods at 10,500 square feet with 19 staff.
Initially, the team members and founder faced several challenges, but they were driven by a mission to nourish people and the planet with hygienic food. From a small store run by hippies to a multinational company acquired by Amazon. It’s truly an American’s success story.
Mackey and Lawson aimed not at running another grocery store but to change people’s thoughts about food and its role in the community. So instead of selling pre-packaged fruits &vegetables with commercial pesticides, they partnered with local farms from the Austin area to sell fresh organic vegetables and fruits. In a short period, the large group of customers got fancied by their store & became a regular buyer.
In a catastrophe, only a few months later after the opening, Austin witnessed the worst flood, which tore apart uninsured building, but with the help of loyal customers, the damage was quickly recovered.
Whole Foods Market Expansion
In the mid-1980s, new stores were opened in Austin, Houston, and Dallas. The first expansion out of Texas came with the purchase of the Whole Foods Company of New Orleans in 1988. Within ten years, Whole Foods became a national company by purchasing local or regional natural food chains.
The company further moved to Canada in 2002 and into the U.K. in 2004. Its single largest purchase was Wild Oats Markets, which operated in 109 stores in the U.S. and Canada when Whole Foods had more than 190 stores. Currently, the company has over 500 outlets.
However, in 2017 amid the declining sales, John Mackey’s Whole Foods Market was rescued by Amazon and got acquired for $13.7 billion. Now Amazon is expanding the digital footprints of this brick and mortar store.
So What Worked for Whole Foods?
Quality Above Everything
Whole Foods Market differentiates itself from competitors based on quality. The separation is achieved through unique features that define Whole Foods. The main selling point of this company is organic & natural products free from hydrogenated fats & chemicals. They focus on maximizing product quality. E.g., the company always seeks products with the least possible artificial ingredients to stand out from the rest.
Brand Positioning as All Naturals
Whole Foods Market was among the first grocery store to attain the “certified organic” label in America. The company gives a competitive edge to its counterpart by offering high-quality products to USDA-accredited, third-party certifier. It is also certified by California Certified Organic Farmers.
Less Advertising, More Word of Mouth Marketing
Whole Foods Marketing has been averse to run ads on print or visual media. The brand focuses on awareness to attract customers to their stores and ensure the service provided at the store entices customers to make them come back. WFH’s marketing expenses have been lower than the 0.5% of sales for several years. The company did not even have any loyalty program until 2015. It relied a lot on word of mouth and social media. The company has an active marketing team on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook & Instagram with over 11 million followers combined. It was only after 2015; the company came up with a new marketing strategy and launched a national ad campaign with over $20 million budget amid declining sales.
Sustainable Approach
In 2008, Whole Foods became U.S.’s first grocer to eliminate plastic grocery bags at the checkout. By 2019, they also stopped selling plastic straws from all of their stores.
As the company is sensitive towards local farmers they work with, it offers annual small interest loans to farmers annually. Whole Foods understand the link between organic farming & reverse climate changes. So to promote regenerative organic agriculture, the company supports farmers.
Mission Driven
It’s no wonder that Whole Foods’ prices are costlier than the rest, but the company repeatedly claims that it chooses people over profits. This is true since the company is deeply involved in charities. Whole Foods donates 5% of net sales to a local non-profit organization. Additionally, they run a foundation: Whole Planet- for alleviating global poverty, Whole Kids- Improving Children’s nutrition, and Whole Cities – for healthy food access for all.
To Sum up!
Here are the words from the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey
“Just as people cannot live without eating, so a business cannot live without profits. But most people don’t live to eat, and neither must businesses live just to make profits.”
With more people spending hours online browsing internet, it can be wise for your business to promote your products or services on the digital platform. Choosing Magento as your development platform and hiring Magento developers can be the best decision you could ever make for such a digital transformation. However, whether to choose a freelancer or a Magento agency can be quite confusing for an organization, especially the one that has no technology as its core business.
Being in this industry for a long time as a reputed Magento development company, something that Mage Monkeys can say without any doubt is that hiring a development agency can be profitable to your business in many ways compared to hiring freelance developers. An agency is more organized, technically-sound, skilled, and experienced in what they do and this itself is enough to know that they can handle your project in better manner.
Freelancers can work for you if yours is a small and low-budget project. However, as the project complexity increases you cannot rely on freelancers who have limited technology knowledge and technical skills.
Choosing a Magento development company like Mage Monkeys can be the best choice you can make compared to hiring freelancers. The same has been explained below through a number of key factors:
• Desired project outcome
The project’s outcome greatly depends on the Magento developers you choose to handle your project. In case you choose to have a group of freelance Magento developers for the project then chances are high they may lose their direction if you don’t stay in continuous contact with them. Moreover, accountability cannot be completely expected in case things go the wrong way.
When you choose Magento agency like Mage Monkeys, things will be different. Developers at Mage Monkeys understand that such a project may face difficulties as the development stages progress.
There can be issues with the designing of the project or in its execution itself. Freelancers may be hesitant to take up the complete responsibility of the project and find solution. However, Magento development company like Mage Monkeys will keep a track of the project progress and each team member is accountable for their part in development.
We stay put through the development process till its final deployment. This itself ensures that the project outcome will be quite better than what freelancers can offer you.
• Project continuity
Project continuity and durability of the developers is what makes an agency like ours the best choice. For a number of reasons – professional or personal, the group of freelance Magento developers you hired may not work for you. Now this can also happen in case of your in-house team or Magento dedicated developer team you hired.
Now the major difference you will see in here is that someone will be there to take care of your project needs when you have an in-house team or a team of dedicated developers that you have hired as compared to when you hire Magento freelancer developer. Dedicated Magento development team like that of Mage Monkeys will keep track of your project progress and will provide you regular updates. They will not leave your project halfway. There will be always someone within the team to take care of your project needs. This way the project will not face any delays and will be completed within the stipulated time frame.
• Business oriented strategy
By gaining the experience of working on many Magento projects for business clients for a long time, Magento designers and developers have gained proper understanding of how a certified Magento agency like Mage Monkeys work precisely. When operating with a business, Mage Monkeys follow a business-oriented process. They work closely with the clients and keep them in loop throughout each stage of development. This lets the clients have a regular check on their project progress.
Moreover, when you choose to go for a dedicated team of designers and developers from an agency like Mage Monkeys, you can be sure they will remain committed to your project. This means your project will not suffer if one of the developers falls sick or don’t turn up at work for some other reasons. All the developers will come together as a backup and complete the work within the stipulated period.
• Better turnaround time
Project turnaround time is one of the key factors that drives a business to choose experienced Magento agency over freelancers. At Mage Monkeys, we are bound to complete project development within the stipulated timeframe. We have enough resources that are skilled to carry out the development as and when needed. In case you have a critical project on hand, we can help you complete it as per your business demands.
• Technical expertise
When you hire freelancer Magento developer you cannot be sure about whether such a developer is a pro when it comes to exhibiting technical skills. Technology keeps on changing and so it is very important for developers to keep themselves updated. Now in case of freelancers it is a bit of problem for them to update themselves as they are overwhelmed with the different projects on hand at a time. Again, when you hire a freelance developer, you have to completely depend on the talent and skills possessed by that single mind. This limits your project functionalities.
Now things are quite different when you hire Magento agency like Mage Monkeys. At Mage Monkeys we have a Magento development team of highly talented developers who have access to latest technology. Moreover, our developers have many years of experience in this field and have served clients of different industry niches. This has helped us to learn many things on the way and pick the ones that can prove beneficial for our clients. This means you can expect reliable services by outsourcing your project to us.
• Project privacy and security
Businesses that hire Magento developer working as a freelancer will not be getting into any legal security step to preserve the data or other crucial information related to the business. This means there is always a risk of data getting leaked. On the other hand, at Mage Monkeys we make it a point to sign an NDA with the client to secure the business-critical data of our theirs as well as of their customers.
If you have an eCommerce project in hand and need right consultation to go ahead, Mage Monkeys can help you throughout your digital transformation journey. Our team of Magento developers will analyze your business, suggest you a suitable solution and finally form a dedicated team of Magento developers to start working for you!
As a merchant you should spare your time to top priority & operational tasks.
You can hire a resource remotely who can do all your
Now you don’t have to build, nurture and grow your eCommerce business alone. You don’t have to drown yourself taking care of all trivial tasks.
Everything can be managed smoothly by hiring an eCommerce virtual assistant or VA.
By having right eCommerce virtual assistant,you will be able to easily delegate your tasks to someone. Such a hired virtual assistant will help you handle a range of tasks related to your eCommerce store.
A VA will be a professional who will have the experience of running a business. They will make required recommendations by reviewing your existing systems in terms of technologies used or methods followed. This will help in streamlining operations.
A VA will suggest cost-effective alternatives by researching suppliers.
A VA will manage the inventory and take care of all orders.
A VA will offer a remainder service by keeping a tab of upcoming events as well as responding to meeting requests.
A VA will let you know the areas where to concentrate your marketing efforts by coming up with an optimized marketing plan.
A VA will help the business maintain its existing customers and also with customer acquisition by offering excellent customer service support.
A VA will come up with a report of every planned campaign depicting its ROI.
A VA will help you follow the SEO best practices so as to help you boost the rankings of your website.
A VA will also help you organize and manage inquiries.
At Mage Monkeys we provide eCommerce virtual assistance to our eCommerce clients to simplify their business. We help them save time, money, and energy in the process by offering someone to handle all their headaches.
Fill the form below if you wish to hire someone virtually to take care of all your business tasks.
Many eCommerce merchants are NOT getting sales as much as they deserves. The reason is sites aren’t generally developed by having sales factor in mind.
An eCommerce store may be failing to generate sales due to:
2020 was the worst year across the world for all the businesses except eCommerce, the only business which prospered in 2020 was eCommerce websites and Apps. Looking at the current scenario people have created a habit of buying things online by sitting at ease at home and this habit is going to remain permanent.
I am assuming that you already know what is eCommerce and have landed on this page as you have made the decision to join the world of eCommerce by selling something online. It could be your existing products or you may be buying from multiple sources and selling online(What most people do).
Here I will try to explain what are essentials you should work on to start an eCommerce website and what best technological platform will be useful for that.
Let’s see some statistics here so you can make the right decision on if it is wise for you to jump into eCommerce or not.
Worldwide eCommerce sales (Image source: Shopify)
eCommerce Statistics to consider while building a website in 2021
Source: Statista
61% of eCommerce purchases in the world have been based on recommendations from a blog and influencers. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
First online shopping purchase of almost 59% of Millennials is through Amazon, that makes Amazon one of the biggest eCommerce store in the world. (Source: Inviqa)
Statistics says it is the best time to start an eCommerce right now, by the year 2040 almost 95% of all the purchase made in the world will be through eCommerce. (Source: Nasdaq)
In 2020, Amazon accounted for 47% of all US eCommerce sales, which will touch 50% in the year 2021. (Source: Statista)
There is a very high amount (55%) of customers who buy things online tell friends and family when they are dissatisfied with their eCommerce service or product they consumed. (Source: UPS)
Out of the total people using the internet, 93.5% of them have purchased have done eCommerce transactions at least once as of now. (Source: OptinMonster)
The average growth of the eCommerce industry from the last 10 years is at 23% but still, around 50% of businesses in the USA don’t have eCommerce websites. (Source: BigCommerce)
The Next Boom in the eCommerce industry is going to come in B2B business and 69% of B2B businesses say they are going to stop printing the marketing material in the next 2-5 years. (Source: B2XPartners)
Only 2.86% of eCommerce website visits convert into a purchase, so if your site is converting more than this than consider yourself very lucky and give a bonus to your digital marketing team (Source: Invesp)
A survey has found that No. 1 reason people do online shopping as they can shop anytime in the day without any time restrictions. (Source: KPMG)
Now let’s go through the points which you need to consider before you start building an eCommerce website, these points will help you to list features and functionalities required to build your website.
Here I am assuming that you have done good research on what products you want to sell online as without having good products to sell thinking about eCommerce is waste of time.
Initial research and strategies for your eCommerce store:
Whom to sell – Your Target Audience It is imperative to define your target audience as per the products you are trying to sell, If you are trying to sell baby products than mothers are the most suitable target audience than fathers. If you are trying to sell gifting products then emotion plays a major role in gifting and women should be your major target. If you are trying to sell Electronic products then men are making a major decision and if they are white goods then women are the decision-maker.
How to reach your Target audience? After the advancement of social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat reaching your target audience has become very easy. You can create an advertisement and target the exact age, sex, city, marital status, and interest of your target audience. Not only that in these advertisements you can even set on what time you want to showcase your advertisements. It is been known that if you want to get maximum sell then you need to target your advertisement at night time after 8 pm when people are just passing time on social media and have enough time to make a decision and purchase your product.
Use your competitors to your advantage Why reinvent the wheel, before you make your marketing plan you need to thoroughly research your competitors and their marketing activities, you need to research the tone of their text, what kind of blogs they are writing, what kind of content they are publishing on social media, now if you go to the Facebook page of your competitor you can even know all the advertisements they are running currently on Facebook. You can analyze their keywords and source of traffic with tools like SpyFu, QuickSprout, and SimilarWeb, and target the people they’re targeting.
Where and how you are managing the stock or you planning dropshipping?
It is very important to have an effective plan to manage the stock or have a dropshipping model. You have to ensure your business has sufficient stock in hand to meet customer demand. If you are a newbie in the eCommerce industry and want to save money on warehouse and storage then Dropshipping is best for you as you don’t have to handle the product directly.
How are you going to manage shipping and returns? Another big part of knowing how to start an online store is deciding how you’ll be shipping your products, AKA where you’ll be doing business. You have to consider various aspects of shipping like methods & rates, packaging, shipping solutions. According to research, every year 30% of orders get returned. Renowned eCommerce stores offer return options with the required flexibility and precautions.
What are your marketing strategies and if you are going to have a budget to spend on marketing? Some of the effective marketing strategies are:
– Email Marketing
– Content Marketing
– PPC
– Social Media Marketing
– Search Engine Optimization
– Influencer Marketing
– Affiliate MarketingTry and find out which strategy will give you the best impact. Determine your budget, whether it’s based on a fixed income or a percentage of revenue, This way it will be easier for you to allocate resources and measure the results of your campaigns.
How are your costs and your markups? When pricing a product for your eCommerce store consider these 4 angles:Your costs: Your costs will be a prime consideration of your pricing to have a sustainable business. Your competition: know your competitors’ pricing model. Psychology of your buyer: Understand your customer and learn what they are looking for (budget option: priced cheaper than your competitor) The market: Once your business met the costs, how much more do you want to have of surplus
There are multiple points you should consider for products:
With the emergence of technology, the healthcare sector is flooded with options for consumers. If you want your brand to stand out and more importantly, trusted by the people then certain imperative features are required in your store, which will not only create trust in your products but also will help you increase your top line.
Ingredients
Healthcare products are of personal use, before using the healthcare products, a customer wants to know what they are consuming as it directly affects them personally. Not only that but in most countries, it is compulsory as per the law to showcase the ingredients of the products you are selling. Before you start selling your products in different countries, please study the law about that country and abide by the law.
You can also position your whole brand in what kind of ingredients you are using. https://evandefacialcare.com/ has highlighted natural ingredients in a big loud way on their top banner of the home page.
Advantages of ingredients
You have already listed ingredients, but the “why” is very important. If you want to build the trust of the product in the consumer mind, then you need to engage them with the product, and showcasing ingredients is the best way to do it.
Your Story/Philosophy
Mostly the segment you are dealing with has 75% female consumers, and the best way to gain the trust of female consumers is by connecting them emotionally. Storytelling will give your brand depth, it will not just tell you about your product, but via storytelling, you can convey your values and philosophy. You can build a successful long term relationship with your customer with your core set of beliefs.
Your Story should have the following things :
Emotional connect
Transparency
Care for society
How you came up with the idea.
How you are solving the problem.
How are you changing human lives.
Directions for use
As discussed before that, we need to engage a customer with our product to build trust. Now one more way of doing that is giving them the direction of use, mostly direction of use are pretty obvious but still if you show that to the customer and add a bit of a twist in the direction of the use and customer will start believing in your product and magic which will generate from it.
If you read the below direction, they have articulately given direction by saying, “dot the product onto the ring finger and warm the material by rubbing it with the thumb in a circular motion.”
Personalized profile/Skincare Quiz
Customer is king, and if you make them feel special than they will remain loyal to your product for a lifetime. You can design personalize questionnaires, which would make them answer the health concerns they are having and which would lead the customer to buy the offered products. This questionnaire will make the customer feel that website is offering not any generalized product which is made for all, but some personalized products after listening to the concerns customer are having.
Subscription plan
Repeat purchase is the key to a successful business, and a subscription plan is the best way you can offer to a customer where they are purchasing your product repetitively without even coming to your website and, more importantly without spending an extra new dollar on the marketing!!.
When you are offering a customer a service where they don’t have to remember to order the product when they are run out of it is called a replenishment subscription.
It is paramount to understand you need to spend top marketing money to get a customer on your website and more importantly to make them buy the first product from your website. Now as a company owner if you calculate the cost of bringing customers the first time on your website is actually more than the profit you are making from the sale of that product, repeat purchase is the only way where you can make profits.
The major reason customer signup for subscription plan is to save money and you need to make sure that if a customer is going for a subscription plan then you are offering them at-least 15-25% discount.
Shop by different groups
When a customer is coming to your site they don’t know what are your products, they know the problem they are having, and helping them to guide in the right direction is half the time product sold.
Video Testimonials
People are always sceptical about the products when they are affecting their health directly or indirectly and to win the trust or remove the skepticism video testimonial plays the biggest role.
There are multiple reasons why Video Testimonials are a must for any products you are selling which are going to be consumed or used personally on the body.
1) Credibility and Trust
A written testimonial on your website might help you to convert the potential customers but to get fully trusted in your product they got to hear it from “Horse’s Mouth” and a video testimonial is the best thing for gaining trust. This adds authenticity to your product.
2) Emotional Connect
Reading a testimonial won’t connect the reader with the person who has given the testimonial but if they are watching the video then they will be able to see the face and emotions of the testimonial giver and that will directly connect them emotionally with the product.
3) Humanizing your brand
By putting video testimonial on your website you are not only creating trust but you are also humanizing your brand value, before the eCom era customer use to go in-store to buy the product but now they are buying online and if they see certain happy faces on your site that will give positive effect and will make your site more friendly and will establish a connection with your brand
4) Social Proof
Science describes social proof as people follow the action of others considering that others have taken a certain decision and it ought to be the right decision.
When you are dealing with female consumers, social proof plays a major role in making the buying decision, there is no major social proof than video testimonial.
Gift Cards
In the gifting industry, Cosmetic Gift cards make some of the best gifts, many times consumers are confused about what to gift and gift card really solves that problem easily.
Some of the benefits of why gift cards are useful to consumers
They can gift as per their budget
A person can buy whenever they want and whatever they want.
There is no hassle of asking for a shipping address or paying extra for shipping.
The recipient will have guilt free-spending, which normally recipient won’t spend if it has to buy with money
It more polite way to gift cash.
And most important, Gift cards are practical.
Our Team/Consultants/Advisors
When you are selling cosmetic and health products, consumers are always in skepticism about the quality of the product and how it won’t give them side effects. If a store try to show them who are people behind the formula of the products or with whose approval these products are made than it will help them to trust your product
Free online consultation
If you are into high-end skincare or health-related products than offering an online consultation service can be very helpful, customers will feel that they are getting personalized service and someone is there to listen to their exact problem and give the best solution for that, and for that customers are always ready to pay extra.
Reward points
You must pay for customer’s loyalty, and customers will stick with you for a lifetime. After certain purchases, you must have square-off the marketing expense to bring the customer on board, if you pay back 25% of the marketing expense required to bring the new customer back on board on the existing customer then they will feel special and will stick to your brand forever. Not only that, by giving them reward points you can keep reminding and pushing them to utilize the reward points by buying new products from your store.
You can also use a reward points strategy for spreading the word about your product by the customers, extra reward points can be given on the following actions :
On Referrals
Sharing the purchase on Social Media
Giving testimonial about the product
Rewards on Signup
Increasing Respect
There is increasing awareness among the consumers about sustainable living, they are getting conscious about living life without harming the nature around us. If we show how our products are natural and not harming the environment they will not only like your products but they will start respecting your brand, and respect will generate brand loyalty.
Blog
In the modern world, whenever any health or body-related issue occurs first thing a person does is goes on google to search for it, this is the best and right time to capture users attention, you should not try to directly sell your product, but first of all, you need to educate the visitor about the problem and its consequences in detail and then offer the solution to it.
Benefits of Blog writing in Healthcare and Cosmetic eCommerce store :
Improves your search engine ranking
It signals that we know about the problems better than anyone else.
It tells that your business is alive with new ideas and solutions
You can promote offers in your blog content
It can facilitate discussions
Attracts organic traffic on the website
All this says that if you are a healthcare or cosmetic store than blogging is a must for your store.
All this says that if you are a healthcare or cosmetic store than blogging is a must for your store.
Thank you page
This is the last screen of the user journey on your website and you must be thinking that user acquired, sale made and that is the end of the journey of the user. Have you ever thought of how to use this page for influencing the user to come again to your site without spending money on the marketing.
We should have links to your social media pages on this page so that before leaving the website they can follow you on social media.
We can ask customers to let their friends and family know about your site by having a form to refer to your friends and family and can win some exciting gifts.
We can ask a customer to share their recent purchase on social media by giving some good message.
If your customer is not registered and has used the guest account for shopping then we can ask them to sign up as a user by just entering the password
We can ask them to review the website or giving feedback on the shopping process on the website by asking “How can we improve”
We can give them some discount coupon code for their future orders with some validity of dates.
If your website is having blogs then we can divert to the blog section where they can read the blogs.
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