E Commerce Marketplace blog

Category: Execution

  • Network Effect: How does it help E Commerce Business?

    Network Effect: How does it help E Commerce Business?

    In E Commerce parlance, Networking Effect means that more and more consumers of  products or services are joining a platform while at the same time, providers of those products or services are also joining it, in anticipation of sales.

    At the start of an E Commerce project, it is basically a supply side excess. You put a product or you sign up several suppliers ( in case of a market place)  and wait for their customers to sign up. In case the customers don’t sign up, the platform may quickly lose relevance.

    Thus, you would need to simultaneously also would need to attract the customer base . The larger the customer base, more products you can sell or more suppliers you can sign up.

    Positive feedback loop for your business

    This is called as Network effect and it is very important to understand the importance of it for your E Commerce business to succeed

    The Network Effect causes a positive feedback loop as can be inferenced from above. The larger your catalogue, the higher will be your customer base and higher customer base means more suppliers are attracted to your business.

    Spend money initially, enjoy later

    When your E Commerce business is new, you would experience a barren customer landscape. This is because you don’t have advertised your platform and how it benefits those who are signing up. And that may be a significant spending. But once you have a sizeable user base, you can utilize their data to help your suppliers target them with specific attributes such as gender, location or interests.

    In case you cannot grow organically (there is probably competition), you will need to use all available methods including running paid ads to attract as many sign-ups as possible.

    The funnel that is created out of those orders, can further be incentivised by using data analysis for higher customer satisfaction. You may also incentivise users by providing referral mechanisms, initial discounts or free shipping offers. The idea is to attract a growing customer base and then when once done, increase engagement.

    Utilize the growing network to better your platform

    Even if you are knowledgeable about your business, E Commerce can still spring a surprise upon you. You could be asked to provide your products in a different variant for e.g. in a different size or a different colour or shape. If offline world, you would rarely get an opportunity to collect so much requirement unless your network is huge. But in online world, your users’ behaviour can be studied in detail. The data you collect may not only improve your sales funnel but also help you give new product ideas or open the markets which were probably hidden from you.

    You can also improve your innovation based on the search queries on your platform and guide your suppliers towards creating new demand-based products.

    Getting more engaged user base

    Your users would be happier if they have multiple choices to sell their products or buy from your suppliers. They could even compare terms and prices in order to get a good deal for themselves.

    And you benefit from all these activities as well because the data analysis allows you to understand deep motives of your user base. You can further define strategies and personalized recommendations based on that data analysis.

    Thus, you would get highly engaged customer base which responds to your offers and promotions, and you would get to see more orders and referrals.

    Network effect is an important part of your E Commerce business journey and you need to keep in mind that it takes time and money to reach an optimal level beyond which network grows itself. Be patient and win.

    Photo by Pixabay

  • Social proof helps your E Commerce Business – How?

    Social proof helps your E Commerce Business – How?

    Social Proof is defined as something that propels an individual who is uncertain about making a decision to give them a psychological push in order to help or make that decision. Social proof is telling the individual that the decision they are going to make is already being taken by other individuals and that has turned out to be a great decision for them.

    Social proof was extensively used in the offline business. If you want to increase your customer base, you may ask your existing customer to refer your product or service to a friend or an acquaintance and to also let them know how the existing customer is benefiting because they are using your products or services.

    Let us understand a few reasons why social proof works in E Commerce.

    Uncertainty is the enemy of ordering

    Have you ever visited a website that you found is carrying the product that you have been looking for. Everything looks good and you are fairly convinced that the product that they have on the site will meet your needs. However, there is always a nagging doubt if the product will actually perform as it is shown on the page. You scroll down and then you see that other people have added reviews for it. Now, you can be confident that other users have navigated the same uncertainty, yet they have gone ahead and taken the risk of trying things out.

    And that has worked for them. Thus, you move past the psychological barrier of being uncertainty. You can now order, happily knowing that the product has been tested and approved by others.

    Celebrity endorsement works

    If a popular celebrity endorses a particular product, a lot of fans following them become eager to buy what they are advertising. For example, if a strong sport star promotes a healthy protein drink, fans who are aspirational to reach their levels of fitness, would like to try and buy the protein drink. The advertisement instantly catapults the product to top of their mind.

    If you can, consider using a celebrity based on your budget to promote your product. You can put the images or videos of the celebrity endorsement on your website. That way, the user that has come looking for a solution gets instant rewards in his or her brain upon purchasing that product.

    Conformation helps with social proof

    Every product comes with a level of aspiration. If a large number of people in a social or local setting use a particular product then the pressure on a person who does not use the product increases significantly.

    A prime example is rise of new songs. On social media, a song gains some popularity, and it is moved up the chart. Soon because of word of mouth or social media algorithm, the song is moved to the top of the list. Everyone starts talking about it. A person who hasn’t followed the herd, now needs to listen to the song, leading to further increase in popularity.

    In E Commerce parlance, if you can use existing trends to your advantage, you may ride on popularity wave. Sales of concert T Shirt of the artist sells like hot cakes, when you create them based on who is more popular or who is going to perform near your users.

    Detailed testimonials matter more

    A person who buys a product and then writes a detailed testimonial of what works and what doesn’t is a far valuable asset than the one who just leaves a rating (which is also good, but it doesn’t have the same impact). These people actually make effort to craft a review and add images or videos of them using the product.

    A person who writes detailed review may not always leave positive reviews, but it still helps to improve your product. A well-crafted reply to a detailed reviews leaves a visitor with a good impression about your business.

    Photo by Lisa from Pexels

  • How to effectively use Social Media for your E Commerce Business

    Social media these days is one of the primary ways to interact with friends and family on internet. However, almost all social media channels also double up as venues for facilitating E Commerce activities. Social media websites can be utilized for brand awareness, launching new products, creating sales funnel among many other things.

    Social media can also be used as customer communication channels where complaints and inquiries can be handled right on the social media website.

    Social media can also to be used to develop granular insight into the customer behaviour so that you know your customer base and you can move to end of funnel pretty quickly (in this case, sales)

    Your E Commerce store can benefit from being on social media and utilizing the benefits of a targeted campaigns run on social media with deep analysis done on your customer segment.

     

    Select your social media platform carefully

    The idea is not to start on all social media platforms at once and then get overwhelmed checking up the engagement on each of them.

    If you are a sole entrepreneur or a business owner with small marketing team, trying to be on every social media platform at once meaning stretching your limited resources.

    Let us say your product needs an explainer or a live tutorial (like a how-to-use video). Video would be obvious choice for marketing. And the platform that serves the best interest is YouTube. YouTube viewers are used to long videos and they will not mind watching a well-made video.

    However, if your product appeals to families or friends who interact a lot with each other, you may prefer Facebook as that kind of engagement gets higher reward over there.

    If you prefer short form videos, Instagram and Tik Tok are your friends and if images are what are important to you, Pinterest is the right place.

    If virality is important to you and your product line needs rapid coverage, X will better serve your needs.

     

    Influencer marketing

    Social media created a new generation of celebrities. They are called as influencers. Even though the term does not have a lot of positives associated with it, influencers are a major force in the social media world.

    A reliable influencer can readily convince their follower to give your products a try. They can become brand awareness consultants for your brand, taking your new product launches to their million of followers.

    This obviously introduces a level of scale that is not possible with just plain advertising.

    However, you need to be aware if the influencer has the right reach and credentials to connect with the followers. And, that influencer needs to be knowledgeable about the industry he is going to work with.

    Understand how interactions work in social media context

    Social media interactions are different compared to other styles of interactions. In a phone or email conversation, a limited number of people are involved and there is almost no virality.

    However, with social media, every statement that your company writes, is broadcast to the world. The statements may generate further discussions which may be positive or negative.

    The primary idea on social media is to show that your brand is mature enough to handle all kinds of feedback such as praise, criticism or worse, trolling. Respectful answering in the face of provocation, with facts indicates that you can handle criticism of your product and are willing to incorporate changes to make your product a better one.

    Using nonorganic methods to promote your products

    Yes, we all want almost zero cost virality. In recent years, the organic reach of the pages esp. in Facebook has been going down continuously. That means social media companies would want to cut the free traffic and charge you for showing your products and campaigns to their users.

    With the paid advertising, there are a number of features that social media platforms provide. You can for example with paid advertising, target a specific set of people, you want to reach. It could location, gender or interest groups. This may not be possible in a organic sharing. The reach may be far restricted than the paid campaign

    Use Social media as customer service

    How and why, you may ask!!

    Using social media platforms as customer service is a great and effective way to achieve good results and reputation across websites that already have huge numbers of engaged viewers. Social media platforms are the places where trends emerge and ideas happen. With you working in the right direction, you can leverage social media to answer questions, handle comments and also listen to complaints. Your thoughtful responses will lead to better benefits for your business

  • How to resolve the challenging issue of E Commerce Business – Returns

    One of the biggest challenges faced by E Commerce providers is handling returns. The returns often cost a substantive portion of order completion and if mishandled can cause dissatisfaction with customer base.

    However, without possibility of returns, customers would not take the risk of trying a product, more so if the cost of product is high. This is evident mostly in consumer apparel industry where unless the product reaches the customer, it cannot be tried and only then it can be scheduled for returns.

    So how does an E Commerce portal owner solve this problem?

    Let us outline a few of the steps.

    Add as much fitment details as possible.

    Retail clothing, shoes websites face this problem. The size fitment expectation is often different when the actual product is tried on. An E Commerce portal owner thus needs to make sure that the size is as standardized and as accurate as possible. That means listing out all the attributes that are used when the product is created. It may include for example, fabric type, height of the clothing, the width of the person that it is suitable for in case of clothing.

    A good idea for example in apparel sales is to include a model wearing the cloth and attributes describing their height and width is clearly mentioned thus helping the buyer to understand the product details a little better.

    You can also add a live customer help (an expert) or a chatbot which takes the query related to product and provide answers either in real time or by other channels a little later.

    In case of other kind of products such as electronics, specifications should be clearly shown in a table. Also, all the salient points related to product should be mentioned in clear bullet points.

    Clear Return policies

    If I am buying a product, I sure want to look at the return policies mentioned in the website. If it is a costly product, I read through the return policies more carefully. By doing that, I avoid the heartburn that comes when I realize that policies prevent me from making a return.

    On the E Commerce website’s side, it is important that return policies are easy to read and not made deliberately confusing. By creating difficult policies, you are only going to end up in arguments with a customer. Keep it simple.

    Design a policy like

    • what can be returned and what cannot be
    • In what time return window closes (can’t keep it open forever) . PS: It should be reasonable
    • In what condition the product should be returned (For example, unopened, unworn, untried etc)
    • What will be the charges if any for returns pickup?
    • Are products allowed for exchange only or refunds?

    Having clear policies often help achieve a good ratio of return to ordered and helps in better profitability.

     

    High resolution images

    Have you ever felt the frustration when you pinch zoom a product image on the website and all it leads to is a blurry image. That is frustrating because the details than can be seen with eyes now is not clearly visible on the image. It may not be intentional to put up a low-resolution image that does not scale well but it tells the customers looking at your page that you are not professional enough to take good photographs of your product.

    Use bright lights and good quality camera to take good photographs of your product preferably from multiple angels possible.

    If you decide to add a video where you show the actual usage or assembly of the product, that aids the buyer decision in your favour.

    Data Analysis to help reduce returns.

    A scenario may be where a customer habitually orders a product use it and return it within the return window. While legally in their right to return, such customers may misuse the return process and cause you losses in your order delivery.

    Another scenario may be that customer reports that your orders are not delivered in right condition or at agreed upon times.

    Yet another scenario may happen that customers frequently report damaged or defective goods.

    All the scenarios provide useful data that can helped to identify which part of the process needs tweaking. Is it an issue with production, shipping, website or customer themselves and return policies can be tweaked to made it easier and more effective.

  • Types of E Commerce Businesses

    Types of E Commerce Businesses

    E Commerce is a very broad term. What initially started as Commerce between a business and end consumer initially on internet now has encompassed multiple branches and diversifications.

    E Commerce refers to selling/buying goods either electronically (they are available as downloads) or physically (they are shipped in boxes) . It can also mean transfer of money from services such as IT services, BPO solutions, legal and even CV preparation.

    Initially, most of the E Commerce used to be performed through desktops while in new age, E Commerce is conducted on desktop, TV, laptops and most importantly on mobile devices.

    Let us have a look at various types of E Commerce types that currently exist in the world.

     

    Business To Consumers

    Business to consumers is inarguably the most known type of E Commerce business. Dell computers for example, sells its configurable computers online. The customer just needs to customize and place the order and make payment, everything online. Then the computer is shipped to the home.

    Another great example is Amazon. Amazon is one of the largest E commerce companies with millions of products and customers as well.

    But there are millions of small other companies and businesses running their business online often in competition to the giants. The companies sell niche products.

    In case of service Industry, one can think of companies such as Fiverr, Upwork, and many online education platform which provide services and not products as their main offering. The customer pays a subscription and in return they are provided with the services related to their needs.

    There are some businesses that outsource part of their business to vendors while they focus on taking orders. Such example of drop shipping, T shirt and Mug printing services fall under this category.

    Business To Business

    Commerce just does not happen between consumer and businesses. It can also happen between two businesses. A truck company for example can entertain applications for electric component manufacturing, online instead of offline. Even the process of bidding for the tender may happen online.

    Then there are bulk buyers, which supply other companies with the required raw materials. Things such as inventory level replacement, shipping dates, payments can be integrated within the two companies leading to smooth E Commerce transactions.

    Even for services, a business can buy online from the B2B arm of a company while the company also serves B2C customers. An example is Stock photography companies. While the individual customer needs only one or two images at a time, a business can make multiple image purchases from the stock photography companies.

    Consumer to Consumer

    In this type of E Commerce, the consumers talk to each other, buy and sell using a company providing listing services. The payment is handled mostly by the consumers themselves. Companies such eBay and Etsy allow consumers to directly buy from other sellers on the platform. The company providing the services thus generally neither produces anything, nor ships   anything to customers. It is left to the sellers and buyers to agree on the price and terms of shipping. The intermediatory though takes a cut of sales value or charges a fee for providing extra details such as phone number or email id of the buyers/sellers.

    Direct To Consumer

    If a company not just lists its own products but also sells it online on its own website, it is supposed to have performed the Direct To Consumer sale. It is different than Business to Consumer that here the manufacturer is directly selling products or services and is often providing even service guarantees. The manufacturer can also list products on other B2C sites such as Amazon to increase the reach but often will give you the best price and guarantees if you purchase things from their own website.

    Examples are electronic consumer good companies that manufacture and sells them through their own websites. They typically cut the middlemen and often have enough flexibility to manage the customer service requests, complaints too.

     

    Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

  • Pros and Cons of getting into online E Commerce business

    Pros and Cons of getting into online E Commerce business

    E Commerce is probably the most important trend in the timeline of human business endeavors. E Commerce exploded once the internet became ubiquitous and faster than before. The advent of giants such as Amazon and eBay led to a number of small businesses taking their business online.

    If you are planning to take a business online or just want to understand if you should even consider doing it, it is a good idea to understand the pros and cons of going online.

    Let us look at some of the pros of doing online business.

    You have global reach

    If you can fulfill the need, the world is your oyster now. People searching for that special product that only you can manufacture can find from beyond your country’s border. You get orders from distant places and being online just exploded your reach. You have more data to analyze about global audience and chance to explore markets that may be more profitable than your local demographic.

    You are online all the time

    That is the dream of every business, to be running even when the owner is asleep. The orders can keep flowing while you are busy with other aspects of the business. You don’t have to pay your employees to be at the store all the time. The website acts as an interface, the chatbots answer customer queries and even make sales on your behalf. The customers are browsing, checking out your products even when there is no personnel around to show the products to them.

    Your costs of operations are reduced for the hours you are open

    Of course, there are costs associated with operating an online store. However, if you are using large companies such as Amazon, Etsy or eBay to list your product, you may just add the products, set up details and forget about them. These companies will do the job of keeping the servers running and even marketing products if they fit their own criteria. You will just need to fulfill the orders. You can even outsource the product in case of the dropshipping business, where someone else will fulfill the orders on your behalf.

    Even if you run your own website, the cost of running it is far less than operating a physical store with all whistles and bells such as electricity costs, rent, hiring employees, providing physical security and dealing with store theft.

    Enhanced Data analysis and tracking

    You collect the information the moment a visitor lands on your site. You have their IP, their browser type, the mobile phone they are using, their geographic location etc. The granularity of data can help you understand customer behavior in more detail. You may find it easy to target a particular demographic based on the data collected and analyzed. This level of detailing is not possible in a physical store where the data collection is often minimized to phone number or email address.

    But not everything is hunky dory. As is everything in life, good things come with a cost and that cost cannot be avoided. There are obvious cons to selling online.

    Faceless ordering leads to poor interactions and personal connections

    Yes, you are aware of the customer’s geographic location and other attributes, but you can never replace the value of a customer that you know personally. A good shop owner knows their customers often by name and understands their buying patterns and motivations to buy something. The relationship leads to lifetime customers who come to them for repeat purchases and even for suggestions. Online doesn’t establish such connections easily and thus cannot replace the value of personal connections

    Product fitment problems

    Can you ever imagine going to a clothing store and just buying an item of clothing by reading the size label. You won’t, like, ever do that. But online, you are often forced to make an educated guess about if the product is really going to fit your needs.  The site selling the product may have policies that a return is not allowed.

    As a store owner, this could be a problem as customer expectations are hard to foresee and it is always a guess work even for you to correctly resolve fitment issues.

    Security and data protection issues

    Well, you may ask, if there are no storefronts, why do you need security. It is because you are custodian of the customer data and often that data is sensitive. You wouldn’t want the world to know what any customer has ordered. The expose of such data may lead to loss of reputation, hurt brand reputation and open you up to lawsuits. And the data stays in the world forever, ready to be used time and again by hackers.

     

    Photo by Jan van der Wolf

  • Advantages and Disadvantages of Chatbot as customer service tool

    Advantages and Disadvantages of Chatbot as customer service tool

    Chatbots have come far in time. Initially they were just based on static questions and answers that were predetermined and configured in the software system. Now chatbots can handle complex questions written in the native language of users and can supply information based on rules in the system.

    Chatbots are a major component of business automation. They can be used in customer service, answering customer questions and taking requests for service. They can help a company free customer service resources for important calls or other useful tasks rather than answer similar questions.

    Here are a few advantages of using chatbots in your E Commerce landscape

    Available 24/7

    One of the top advantages of having a Chatbot system installed in your web property is that Chatbots are available 24/7 to answer customers questions. That means you can have one shift of human employees while leaving the other shifts to chatbots. You can even start your first customer interaction with chatbots answering basic and repetitive questions which may often consume valuable time of a human employee.

    In case that chatbot cannot answer a question, the query can be forwarded to a human agent.

    Personalized Service

    Chatbots can be helpful when they can answer customer query by deriving information from multiple sources. A chatbot can provide answer after the engine that it is using is trained on company and customer policies. A chatbot is trained on product data and content based on the website. It can also connect with multiple systems such as Order management and Customer relationship management and can fetch order details from them without the need of human intervention.

    The advantage of chatbot here is that it can converse with the customer in their own language using the advantage of Natural Language Processing system.

    With the data collected from the interactions , the chatbot can further be personalized. Customers chat history can be collected to refine the future interactions.

    Higher efficiency, Cost savings

    Chatbots can offer cost savings as we can see from the above paragraphs already. They can help reduce the number of human agents required to answer similar or repeated questions. There is definitely a cost related to initial investment in setting up the chat systems but with time , you might see a reduction in cost if the chat systems are correctly configured and data is analyzed well for further usage.

    The efficiency results from the fact that these systems are available 24/7, takes data from multiple sources and can provide personalized services. The chatbot system can be used to handle multiple customers at a time , freeing up the human resources for other important tasks. They can suggest products on the fly leading to less time lag and higher customer satisfaction.

     

    What are the disadvantages of using Chatbots as customer service tools

    Obviously with the upside of using Chatbots, there are downsides to them as well. Remember that chatbots can never completely replace a human in the chain and they can sometimes cause more damage than benefit

    A chatbot may sound fake

    Once, I had to call an E Commerce company regarding their delayed order and how much it was affecting me. Fortunately, at the other end of the line, was a human who could understand, how much of a frustration I was feeling. She was empathetic to my issue and then she put the order escalation to the highest priority. It would have been difficult for a chatbot to understand my agony. Even the empathetic preset messages may sound phony as I can see that a machine is empathising with me , which totally appears fake.

    Problem with customer confidentiality

    There have been cases, where a chatbot often based on LLMs ( Large Language Models) engines have been known to be hacked easily and spill out details that were not supposed to be exposed to anyone. This is a dangerous thing because if there are no guardrails, a hacker may know everything about your customers and their order books. This can lead to lawsuits and reputation damage.

     

    Photo by cottonbro studio

  • Challenges in Logistic for a Small Business E Commerce project

    Challenges in Logistic for a Small Business E Commerce project

    Small E Commerce ventures often have multiple challenges that cause hurdle in running the business smoothly. One of the prime challenges is logistics. The logistics involves procuring raw materials and then shipping the finished good to the product. The company that running the E Commerce business is the sole customer check point and is responsible for smooth delivery of the product. However, due to multiple challenges, the delivery of the product is delayed.

    Let us look at few of the challenges faced by a small-scale E Commerce venture.

    Last mile connectivity

    In a number of countries, last mile delivery is probably one of the most challenging aspects of E Commerce. During the last mile delivery, i.e. to the home address of the customers, there could be multiple roadblocks to delivery.

    For example, a customer may not be available at the time of delivery. The address may not be complete or correct. The customer location may be farther than expected. The weather may play truant. It may not be possible to leave the package at the door due to possible theft of the package.

    In case of international shipping, customer may be asked to pay extra to the customs. In the worst case, they might not have permission to import a particular product into their country.

    Customers may not be understanding enough about the issues leading to overall bad feedback about the services in general.

    Inventory management

    Small businesses are often low on resources. That means one can only have limited stocks of the relevant items. It might take some time between stock depletion and then further replenishment. It depends on a number of factors, primary one being the availability of raw material and in time shipping to the E Commerce vendor.

    When there is no stock, the product shows out of stock status in E Commerce website. If that goes on for a long time, the customer may be tempted to look for other websites to buy the product. It leads to loss of hard-won customer loyalty and can lead to customer turnover. The inventory of top products needs to be stocked all the time.

    However, too much of stock also has its own set of problems. If the stock is perishable like food or flowers, it needs to move before expiry date. If for any reason the stock lies unsold, then the cost of the spoilage has to be borne by the business.

     

     Multiple vendors/ systems

    A small business usually sources its products from a single vendor. However, the complexity of logistic increases if there are multiple vendors. There could be issues with software systems that are too primitive to handle complexity. Often small businesses depend upon spreadsheets to keep a track of inbound delivery, production and outbound goods movement. This is very error prone. And with more vendors it gets more difficult to keep all the things working.

    Ever Increasing Transportation and material costs

    The inflation around the world is up in recent times. It has caused an uptick in both manpower and material costs. The constant wars around the world does not help with the oil prices.

    Due to this, the cost to deliver the goods increased rapidly for small business E Commerce companies. If the transportation charges are too high, the customer does not want to buy or make repeated purchases that frequently.

    Excessive returns

    The fundamental problem with E Commerce business is that it is impossible for a customer to try and then buy. Often the order is based on the appearance of the product’s picture on the E Commerce portal, and any misunderstanding may result in dissatisfaction with the delivered product.

    In retail for example, issues could range from colour, size, fabric, fit etc. In that case the logistics need to work to pick up the return requested by the customer.

    In a few cases, customers frequently return the products leading to high return costs for the E Commerce business.

     

    Photo by Marcin Jozwiak

  • Top wordpress plugins for e com business

    Top wordpress plugins for e com business

    WordPress is a world-famous project for managing your content. It has been dominating the internet for quite some time. With its advanced functionality and ease of extension, no doubt WordPress is a very popular software. Also, a primary feature is that it is open sourced and free to use. What more can one ask for?

    Do you know that you can run your own E Commerce Project from a WordPress installation? Not only this there are extensions (known as plugins in WordPress) that can connect with other useful utility sites such as MailChimp and payment vendors to set up complete E Commerce suite.

    Let us examine a few of these plugins that can help you with E Commerce journey.

    WooCommerce

    WooCommerce is a plugin that extends your WordPress installation into a full-fledged E Commerce Solution. WooCommerce is designed and developed by the same company that developed WordPress, so be rest assured that you are getting the same power of open source and freedom that comes with it.

    You will get a full store front design that you can customize for your requirements. The theme store is full of themes that you can use for your own needs.

    In addition to the themes, you get well tested shopping cart system that as per their documentation helps convert more shoppers. They also provide integration with multiple payment vendors, taxation calculation and shipping options a breeze.

    Because it is hosted on your own server, you own the data and it is not shared with any other entity until you explicitly provide permission to do so.

    Like any other open system, you can interact with WooCommerce using their APIs and extend it using hooks.

    In addition, if you have the required skills, you can even contribute to the development of WooCommerce product.

    MailChimp for WooCommerce

    What is E Commerce business without marketing? A great tool that I personally used for my own business was MailChimp. It is a great way to automate your Campaign processes.

    You may need to send email when a user signs up or buys a product from your website.

    You may also need to automate your campaign processes as to what happens on a periodic basis with your existing contacts or customers. Do you send them promotional offers, or do you just like to send them tips related to your product usage. OR would like to find how much they are satisfied with your product that they have purchased. All these things are automated using MailChimp website.

    However, wouldn’t it be better if you could do this from your WooCommerce based website? That is where MailChimp plugin comes in.

    Using the plugin, you can automate processes related to signups. You can show them sign up popups that directly add them to a Mailchimp account. Check out more features at their plugin page

    SureCart

    SureCart is also a WordPress plugin that even though it provides an E Commerce function, outsources intensive operations such as tax calculations and payment processing on its own server rather than your own.

    The idea is that your server may not be able to handle excess loads during peak times and performance because the database may not be optimized. It is because often scaling of E Commerce solutions comes with additional problems of database management and server performance during peak times, for which you do not want to spend time and resources.

    Also, it is a common problem in any WordPress based system that some plugins interfere with each other because of the way they have been coded and cause breakdown in the site.

    SureCart plugin avoids the above issues because your E Commerce system will use infrastructure provided with the SureCart cloud solutions.

     

    Photo by Markus Winkler:

     

  • How can Growth Hacking help boost my E Commerce Website?

    How can Growth Hacking help boost my E Commerce Website?

    Growth Hacking according to Wikipedia is processes or skills that often are cross discipline and those that can be applied to achieve rapid growth of the company.

    There are various growth hacking measures that apply generally to all business. Some of them are marketing using innovative measures or creating innovative campaign to attract customers at a higher rate than normal.

    In context of E Commerce, which means using various tactics from promotions, marketing and customer service to maximize the revenue in the shortest amount of time possible.

    Let us discuss a few ways in which growth hacking can be done.

    Using social media to create brand awareness

    Catchy campaigns using influencers if done in the right way, can lead to higher brand awareness. The influencers may create the content and it turn share the link to your website to their followers. With a minimal spend, you may get higher traffic than just traditional advertising because of the authority that the influencers command. The trust factor, or the entertainment value that they have created over the years often prompt their followers to at least want to click and discover what the influencer seems to be promoting. The higher the level of content or curiosity that the influencer generates, the more clicks to your website you might receive.

    Read more: How to effectively use Social Media for your E Commerce Business

    Faster Website/ Useful design/ Quicker Checkouts

    If you are thrifting on the quality of the web server your web site is hosted upon, you might be losing a lot of traffic based on its performance. A good server with a good connection with a reputed vendor impacts the site performance. It makes it easier for user to navigate and make decisions.

    A well-designed website where the call to action is clearest will take your visitor from just browsing to making a purchase really quick. A good, painless checkout process means that user does not spend time on understanding your complicated workflows. Instead, keep your processes simple and see your purchases improve rapidly.

    Read more:

    How to make your Website mobile friendly?

    How to improve user experience in an E Commerce site?

    Product Recommendations

    Product recommendation helps your E Commerce website to increase sales and increase customer stickiness.

    Not only you want the users to buy, but you also want them to buy another product with it. That is called as Cross Selling. You may also want to up sell user with a higher level of product, which increases the order value.

    Amazon does it extremely well, where not only cross-selling and up-selling is done but if you are logged in, they might show something related to what you have already purchased and which makes you want to buy it again.

    Also, one can do bundling which means sell two or more products together at a better rate on average than if the person would have purchased them in single quantity.

    Referral bonus

    Referral bonus refers to either monetary or point based rewards awarded to a customer that refers a new customer to sign up or make a purchase. The advantage of this kind of hacking is that the person who is already converted into using your product is more likely to convince a friend or an acquaintance to be using the same product. In this case, you are not really adding any additional cost beyond just providing a small monetary reward to the enticing party. If the product is good, the network effect that this generates is far more than anything that can be generated by paid advertising.

    Read more: How can referrals help you get customers for E Commerce?

    Using social proofs (reviews)

    If you are doing great with a segment of customer or if your product is achieving great traction, it is time for you to level up your game with social proof. The social proof can be in the form of reviews, ratings, pictures of actual product being used.

    Display of such social proof can actively convince a fence sitter that your products are worth a try. Make sure that you give a thoughtful reply to the various reviews.