E Commerce Marketplace blog

Category: E Commerce

  • 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.

  • Tips to make your E Commerce site mobile friendly

    Tips to make your E Commerce site mobile friendly

    Mobile is the place where most of the content is now being consumed. What it means for your  E Commerce business is that a lot of signups and purchase decisions are going to made while the user watches their mobile while lying on the bed or watching videos on it.

    You may not be able to use the design that you use for your Desktop based E commerce website on mobile. Yes, with responsive design , you can definitely make the needed changes but mobile themes are to be carefully thought as themes designed for another device different in league from desktops.

    Here , I list a few things, I have personally felt that can be done to mobile themes which make the users not click away.

    Yes, use the responsive design

    It is possible that your target audience does not use the same resolution as your desktop. Maybe they are surfing your site from a tablet, a laptop with different resolution or simply a mobile. Without using a responsive design, which takes into account these parameters, you would see non responsive website, often overflowing the screen space and the buttons and links gone haywire.

    The idea is to define the size buckets based on the trends in the screen categories and refine your theme’s styles based on common minimum features for that bucket.

    That means you will have to let go of some of your buttons that you see on a large screen and often club them together under a menu box. Also you will need to ensure that there are no horizontal scroll bars that take the screens out of the screen area.

    Optimize your images

    It is quite a possibility that your viewer is not only using a mobile to view your website but also they are on a patchy connection because they are sitting in a remote corner where internet services are slow.

    In that case, you may not want to serve them the images that are so large that loading your website becomes only an endless wait forever.

    So the images not only have to be optimized for screen resolutions but also for the fact that they have relatively less size to be easily transferred on a mobile device on a bad connection.

    Cut down on non-essential items

    Yes, you would like to keep all the bells and whistle items that you have on a desktop screen on mobile as well. Unfortunately, they are a big distraction to the mobile user. The digital assistant that keeps cropping up and cannot be closed easily and takes 5-10% of the screen is a big no-no. The user will be distracted to focus on the assistant because it has annoyingly crept in while they do not look at the main offering.

    Also , you would like to cram in as much details as possible in the mobile screen as well but remember there is only so much before the user gives up on the product.

    I have seen the sites where the offers keep popping up on the screen and they cover about 80% of viewing area. They are a distraction and should be minimized on a mobile screen.

    Keep the focus on the main item, reduce the clutter. Try to give your message in words or videos that easy to digest and doesn’t take forever to read.

    Testing on variety of devices

    Normally we tend to think of the devices that are in our vicinity and we feel good when it works. But remember there are operating systems and then there are many screens running them. Also there are screens with different resolutions.

    This makes it difficult to test for all kinds of devices . But there are specific tools and websites that help you test your website as much as possible.

    One example would be Chrome Extension for mobile simulator that imitates multiple devices.

    One tip is to find out the most used devices on the vendor website and test for them. Automation in testing may need some budgeting but generally pays in the end with a good usable website /

     

    Photo by Sanket Mishra:

  • Top E Commerce Business ideas for your Small Business

    Top E Commerce Business ideas for your Small Business

    So, you have decided to venture into E Commerce field to make money. E Commerce is one of the profitable yet also a competitive space. With newer technologies ever coming into E Commerce space, the opportunities are expanding too. However, this all may lead to confusion as to where to start. Here, we have compiled list of items which you can use to learn more about your preferred choice of E Commerce venture.

    Print on Demand

    The idea of Print on Demand is simple. You are a designer and want to sell T Shirts, Mugs, Key Chains with your designs. However, you do not wish to add a service where you also need to physically print the product and ship it to the customer. There are services to do that are called as Print on Demand.

    Some services even allow you to create designs using Generative AI tools, while also giving you an option for your customers to print and ship products to them.

    These print on demand services also may provide integration into your own E Commerce software so that upon ordering of the product, the product is processed by the On Demand vendor. Later, the same vendor ships the order to your customer.

    Digital Products

    Digital Products are mostly software products such as manuals, books, letter formats, software. They do not exist in physical world when compared to physical products such as automobiles, laptops, shoes. However, physical products may be sold using hardware carriers such as USB, CDs, and dedicated hardware. The world of digital products is large.

    There are plenty of items you can sell as digital products either on your own website or if you don’t want the hassles of maintaining it, on a well-known publisher such as Etsy. The advantage of digital products is that once they created, they can be sold without any large overheads of physical handling. However, this advantage may also cause problems such as digital piracy.

    You can create digital products like eBooks, games, courses, arts, and many others.

    Affiliate Marketing

    Affiliate Marketing has been one of the ways to start small and slowly scale up larger revenues. Affiliate Marketing describes promoting someone else’s product using your digital property. You may utilize your own website, your YouTube channel, or other social media channels presence to attract audiences and then at some point in time promote the product that either you are using or you feel would provide value to them.

    Affiliate marketing usually involves sharing links provided by the product or service companies that intend to promote their product using your property. Then a special code is attached to the URL, making it trackable that the visitor to their website originated from your property. Based on the agreement, you may receive a commission either if the visitor signs up to become an opportunity for the company or if they make a purchase.

    Affiliate marketing is challenging work as it involves creating content and building an authority before some companies allow you to promote their products. However, sometimes a sales page too is sufficient to send traffic to the product company. That though needs to be market well enough so that the visitor is enticed to buy the product.

    Personalized Products

    If you have a flair for designing products that are hand crafted can appeal to your customers on an individual level, you can be successful in selling them. Personalized products include perfumes, candles, greeting cards with messages, videos with birthday messages. There are endless number of things you can create and sell.

    Personalized products if market and packaged well, can expect a premium over generic product. To create a personalized product, you will need to deeply understand your user market and create campaigns to understand their motivations for buying your personalized product.

    By focusing on their needs, you can sell your products much easier over time. The disadvantage of this kind of product is that most of the time they cannot be bulk produced and quality controls need to be much stricter. Manual labor may be required and thus cost of production may be higher than a mass-produced item.

    Subscription Services

    Subscription is a fitting example of E Commerce product (or service) that can provide a sustained income with time. Subscription can range from subscription of products such as food items, groceries, personal health or services such as educational courses, entertainment videos for select audiences.

    The obvious advantage of such a service is that you will get predictable income, and you can plan better to become efficient with time. However, the disadvantage is that you will need to provide the service all the time despite any roadblock. Some of the services like food and personal health are very essential and thus their supplies on time are must. If you already have such a service, you can take the process online and encourage users to sign up online.

    Photo by Markus Winkler:

     

     

  • Top E Commerce Trends in future

    There has been exponential growth in technology space in the last few years. From improvement in internet speeds, better customer targeting to implementation of AI based engines for a better shopping experience, it has become almost a race to achieve better profitability and efficiency.

    Increased competition from existing large players and constant entry of new players, everyone is forced to adapt to new methods of looking for customers and marketing to them in the most efficient way possible.

    From the last few years, entry of mobile and social media has upended the traditional E- Commerce channels such as websites and opened new avenues to grab eyeballs. Of course, it has been very challenging to maintain track of such changes and adapt to them as quickly as possible.

    Here we are listing a few future E Commerce trends that are shaping the industry, from reputed sources that you need to be aware of.

    Continued Rise of Social Commerce

    It is probably the most important trends about future of E Commerce. Platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok continue to drive engagement in an inorganic way. To do this, they reward the creators that drives the users of the platform to view their content. Later, the content can be monetized and products sold either as a link or an in-content ad.

    The important part of Social Commerce is a sense of community. An influencer creating a content can either have a large following or leads a group discussing specific topics.

    The influencers are generally considered authority on their subject and their recommendations matter to their followers.

    With attention spans going down, Social Media platforms have introduced short form videos where it is much quicker to capture attention and direct people towards an objective for brand, either by attracting leads or converting them to sales.

    Rise of Automation

    The use of automation is necessary when you want to minimize human interface in a known and repetitive process. This reduces the chance of errors and help optimize the process. Imagine a human sending an email manually on order completion vs sent automatically by the software system. The chance of missed email is eliminated.

    The above example can be called as workflow, and many such workflows could be chained to form a complete process chain. This would ease the process and free up human resources for other important work and also that it minimizes any errors that creep up because of manual processing.

    The automation will increase with time as more rule-based Automation systems allow users to set up their own workflows.

    Entry of AI

    When we talk about AI, we need to differentiate between two types of AI as there can be confusion about capabilities of each type.

    Traditional AI: AI that is deterministic and that are known to have predictable outcomes based on the inputs. For example, predictive analysis and self-driving could be called as traditional AI.

    Generative AI: This type of AI helps in text, image and music generation based on pre-set data. It is easy to create a lot of new creative materials based on the existing datasets. It is usually unpredictable and requires human oversight on its output.

    More detailed comparison here

    While traditional AI is used to do further analysis such as Inventory management, seasonality predictions and supply chain management, generative AI will be used to further automate customer processes such as chatbots, visual commerce and price optimization.

     

    Virtual Reality

    The emergence of Virtual Reality and Augmented reality might have a significant impact on E Commerce. The devices allow users to experience a product in almost real time. One can also do product demonstrations in three dimensions and make the experience immersive.

    You might have already seen the process of trying on for example, spectacles, clothes or make up on your image or a computer-generated image.

    The next stage would be for you to take a walk into an integrated, virtual store and pick and view products. You can then later add these products into a shopping cart and pay for them getting the feel of an in-shop experience.

     

    Conversational Commerce

     

  • Top Categories in E Commerce World

    E Commerce has been on a constant growth path over the years. The categories have grown multi-fold. Some of the subcategories now even classify as categories of their own. This shows the extent to which E Commerce has swept the shopping mania across the world.

    Here are some of the most popular E Commerce categories based on the demand. I have taken the top categories based on the top-level categories displayed by Amazon in their menu. Also added are some stats to give you a perspective on why these might by the top-level categories.

     

    Electronics

    According to Research and Markets, electronics today account for $789 trillion worth of market , expected to grow to 1.2 trillion in 2032. The top contenders in this category are mobiles (cell phones), laptops and computers, gaming, audio and video equipment.

    In addition, there are

    • Musical instruments
    • Software
      • Wearables
    • Office Equipment
    • Headphones ( yes, they are in there)
    • Car Electronics

    As you can see that the categories evolving, even smaller categories are getting a space of their own.

    With ever evolving technologies we can see more categories being added to this top-level category.

     

    Computers

    Other than just electronics, computers form a top-level category of their own. According to a research paper, personal computers market is experiencing a growth of 8% CAGR year over year

    Computers category contains Computer, PC, tablets. Then there are supporting categories such as

    • External monitors
    • Disk Drives
    • Printers
    • Network Storages
    • Specific components and parts

    Home, Garden And Tools

    Home décor, gardening and related tools and accessories are a top category on the Amazon Website. According to Technavio research, the category is growing at 13%, which is phenomenal. The category is very wide because it essentially covers what is involved in management of a home.

    A few important subcategories are

    • Home Décor
    • Furniture
    • Kitchen
    • Dining
    • Gardening tools
    • Utensils
    • Cleaning supplies
    • Kitchen Gadgets

    Pets Care

    Pets Care as E Commerce category stands to grow by 7-8 % CAGR over the next few years. Primary subcategories are

    • Dog Food
    • Cat Food
    • Apparel
    • Pet Waste treatment
    • Furniture for pets
    • Aquatic pets
    • Reptilian pets

    Food And Grocery

    This category holds a dominating share of E Commerce market across the world . Based on one report, the market for grocery is growing at about 25% CAGR.

    The top subcategories under this category are

    • Canned and packaged foods
    • Coffee
    • Chocolates
    • Snacks
    • Breakfast
    • Cooking and Baking
    • Drinks
    • Sweets
    • Beverages

    Beauty And Health

    Beauty and healthcare is also a rapidly growing category in E Commerce. The category has a huge size just because of presence of influencers, social media tools such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. In USA alone, the beauty category is growing at 23% plus.

    The top subcategories in this segment are

    • Personal Care
    • Skin Care
    • Hair Care
    • Makeup
    • Perfumes
    • Foot care
    • Beauty Accessories
    • Shave and Hair removal

     

  • Key Metrices for a small business E Commerce project

    Key Metrices for a small business E Commerce project

    Metrices are the numbers that are used to understand the performance of any project.  Your small business E Commerce software too needs to focus on certain metrices that will improve your sales efficiency and enhance the customer experience.

    Large corporations track multiple metrices across their large landscape of E Commerce. For a small business, however, it might be quite difficult to track so many metrices as it can get overwhelming.

    Here, we list a few top metrices that you can consistently check and evaluate your performance for your E Commerce project.

    Visits to your website

    The biggest problem for a small business E Commerce website is its discoverability. You have just entered the highly competitive landscape of E Commerce on internet, and you realize that you are not getting the traffic you were expecting even if you possess the most unique products. Increasing visits means your site is getting known and getting featured on search engines.

    Conversions

    The next most important question to ask is that what percentage of visitors are converting to customers or at-least signing up on your website. It is important for a small business to track it because the advertising resources are limited and you want a high conversion rate for the visitors. So, a good ratio to check would be Number of sales ( or sign ups ) done / Total number of visitors to the website.

    Bounce Rate

    Bounce happens when a customer visits your site and just migrates away. Bounce rate is also an important indicator for search engines to evaluate, if your website is providing the needed content for the traffic they are sending your way. If the bounce rate i.e., number of users leaving site upon visiting first page/ total number of visitors is high, then it may signal to the search Engine that something is not right with your website and it needs tweaking

    Shopping card Abandonment

    Shopping cart is considered abandoned when user adds the product to cart but does not move forward with intent to closing the sales. It can mean that either shopping cart to check out process is difficult or user finds out that the closing price does not guarantee the value that you are offering. Shopping cart abandonment leads to sales loss and affects conversions on a higher scale as customers have given up on your products just in the final stage.

    Return rate

    A major source of headache for business owners, small or large in E Commerce segment is the returns from the customer. High rate of return means either the customer has a mismatched expectation (in terms of colour, size, or weight) or the policy about return is too lenient allowing the customer to use and send the product back. High rate of return could also mean that customer is not satisfied with the quality of the product that they see online.

     

    Website loading speed

    The biggest source of frustration of a user and the most important factor for the search engine is website loading speed. Slow websites lead to higher bounce rate. They also mean that your shopping cart may be abandoned much more than a faster website. If you self-host your website, the loading speed is often your responsibility. You may use a number of online tools to help you increase your website speed. Remember, slow website is equivalent to money lost.

    Photo by RDNE Stock project

  • How to find sources of funding for your E Commerce Project?

    How to find sources of funding for your E Commerce Project?

    Any E Commerce business need funding for starting up and for ongoing activities. In the age of internet, finding funds have never been so easy. There are multiple options to finance your e commerce dream. Here are some of the ways in which you can secure funding for your E Commerce business.

    Bootstrapping (Family/Friends)

    Bootstrapping is one of the easiest funding sources that you can deploy. You can use your own savings or ask your family or friends for funds, in return for promise of revenue or shares. Bootstrapping removes one large pressure of paying monthly instalments for e.g. to a bank. You often do not need to part with equity as you may get support from the family just based on personal relationships and not wanting much back in return.

    You are thus free to pursue any strategy you see fit without needing investor approval. This provides unimaginable flexibility to pursue your goals.

    The issue with this type of funding is that personal or family funds are limited and you need to show results at some point otherwise your finances may be stretched. Also, the funding may not be sufficient to meet the need of an E Commerce project based on the scope forcing you to look for other sources of funding.

    Bank Loans

    Bank loans are essentially given by the banks to an entrepreneur or businessman based on a business plan and other criteria such as repaying capacity or revenue forecasts. Banks may require a collateral to issue your business a loan. The loans may be short or long-term depending on your needs and bank’s decision.

    Once you submit your plan, banks issue the loan. The loans have conditions attached to them such as how much is repayment period, and how much is the interest charged on the loan. Based on your credit history with the bank, you may ask for lower interest rates from the bank.

    Since bank loans are secured with collaterals, you may lose collateral if your business is unable to pay the instalment. This is different compared to personal loans where often no collateral is desired. So, you need to be strategic with the fact, that not paying the loan back may cause bad credit history and future denial of loans.

    Business Credit Cards

    Entrepreneurs often have the habit of using personal credit card for funding their E Commerce business but that causes some problems. Using personal credit card for business means your personal and business expenses are now on the same card. It makes reporting difficult and bloats your card expenses.

    A better way to separate spending is to apply for business credit card. Business credit cards are similar to personal credit cards but with higher interest rates that business loans. This is because the credit provided to you with a business credit card is unsecured.

    With business card, there are advantages such as building a credit history with your loan provider. You may use the credit card as any other credit card paying for expenses (even rotating the credit) and earn points based on the spend.

    Banks may ask for your credit scores and your past repayment history to issue you a credit card. Remember that it is a responsibility for you to pay your dues back or interest penalties may become too much to manage.

    Crowdfunding

    Crowdfunding is another noteworthy method of financing. Crowdfunding uses social media or crowdfunding platforms to initiate funding for startups. Often investors scout these sites looking for next disruptive product or technology and innovative ideas get funded quickly. The advantage of crowdfunding is that there is no repayment obligation such as monthly repayment instalment and the “crowd” invests on either your personal history or their perception of your product. You do not even need to share your equity with the donors. Often the donors become your target market or your amplification marketeers because they have a stake in seeing your product succeed.

     

    VC/Investors

    VC or Angel investors could be toughest funders. Even though they are nothing like banks i.e., you do not need to supply a collateral or make a monthly payment, what they demand is something else, equity in your business.

    You will get connections, large amount of money, mentorship in addition to elevated media presence. However, now you are strictly bound to the performance. You might even need to change your business model so that your VC can move it to 10x their returns.

    Thus, your original idea may be distorted to the point where you no longer recognize it. It can be demotivating. But the success, which is often huge, may mitigate those circumstances.

    The VCs may have an upper hand in decision making. In certain case, after a few rounds you may end up as minority shareholder. This discourages many founders to see VC funding even though the scale that this funding provides is tremendous.

    Customer Advances

    Photo by www.kaboompics.com

  • How automation in E Commerce helps you achieve your E Commerce goals

    How automation in E Commerce helps you achieve your E Commerce goals

    Automation is in rage these days. But what is automation actually and what actual scenarios that one can utilize the automation in especially in E Commerce.

    Well by automation, we mean automating a repeated task that needs to complete without mistake once the action related to the task triggers it. In real life, the morning alarm is the simplest automation that wakes you up. In case you decide to snooze it, the automation wakes you up in next five to ten minutes.

    Here the trigger is time of the day. When it matches your condition of alarm type, the alarm rings and you wake up. It cannot be simpler than this.

    Monitor something for trigger-> triggered -> check condition match -> perform action associated with the automation.

    Now that we have understood the basic concept of automation, we would like to understand how we can use automation to automate things in our E Commerce project. Note that without automation, we would need to trigger these manually and manual actions are prone to missed conditions leading to difficult consequences.

    Order fulfillment

    Let us say, we receive an order from customer. Imagine the scenarios that can happen.

    • High value orders may trigger a mail for priority.
    • A mail is sent to a customer confirming the receipt of the order.
    • A supply requisition may automatically is created for vendor.
    • Various mails to customers regarding the status changes of the order
    • Once order shipping is complete, sending customer survey to check for reviews or customer satisfaction levels.

    Inventory Updates

    Once a customer places an order, the order affects the inventory level with you or your vendor. An automated process can

    • Update inventory levels.
    • Send email for inventory shortage.
    • Create requisition orders for stocking the inventory.
    • Warn of low inventory.

     

    Customer Service

    With automation, tasks related to customer service can be automated. Once an order process gets triggered, the customer service may be involved in every stage of the fulfilment process.

    • A customer rep is notified of the abandoned cart. They can send an email to entice the customer to make the purchase from the cart using offers.
    • In case of any order delay, customer service department gets notification to let customer know that there will be delays in fulfilment.
    • Customer service may send marketing communications based on the customer preferences.
    • Welcome mails upon sign are sent using automation.
    • If an internal process needs to be triggered, for example order related to a sensitive item, a different team can be notified to approve the order items first.

    Customer lifecycle related automation

    There are events related to customer’s journey from just one who browses your website to one who places an order and gets the shipment.

    • Welcome mail upon sign-up.
    • Nudge to buy upon browsing for example by showing a discount on the top.
    • Automated nudge to complete profile including social media profile.
    • Thanking email / SMS/ any other notification upon order placement
    • Regular marketing emails (if permitted by the customer) regarding upselling, cross selling or repeat purchase.
    • Real time update of last purchases just before check-out to increase cart value (for e.g., letting them know if they are forgetting something).
    • Customer satisfaction surveys

     

    Photo by Jakub Zerdzicki: