June 24, 2014

Use Videos to Sharpen your Marketing Strategy

Video blogging or simply videos are the latest marketing fad, and the reason behind it is very simple – customers engage with videos better than text and images. Put simply, a video will attract 10 times more traffic than a simple text. So of course you should use videos to promote and brand your store and products. Still want to know what you stand to gain through videos? Have a look below.
Video Marketing Strategy
Enhanced look
When you embed videos on your website or online store, you are enhancing the look and feel of your website. Customers will experience a unique shopping experience, turning them into your regular customers.

Informative
Informative videos are great for imparting knowledge to your customers. Create videos of your products, highlighting their benefits, features and functionalities. This will give your customers an idea about how your products can be beneficial to them. Grabbing their attention for higher conversion ratio would be a bonus.

Customer engagement
As we said above, when it comes to customer engagement, nothing can beat videos. Be it products’ demo or simple tutorials, videos attract users as honey attract flies. To improve your customer engagement ratio, you can also utilize user-generated videos to showcase your happy and satisfied customers. Additionally, this will create a sense of authenticity and trust among the users.

Social Media
Social networking platforms such as Pinterest allows users to pin images and videos of their choice and share them – opening up a powerful venue for you to promote your brand, products and services. Encourage your satisfied users to share videos on these platforms among their friends.

SEO Rankings
If you have noticed, Google has started giving lot of importance to videos. Whenever you perform a search, you will see more of video results. So we can safely conclude that your video will definitely gain higher ranking on SERP than your text-based or image-based web page.

Do you want to promote videos of your products? You can easily do so by creating a dedicated YouTube channel for your products and use the feed in your online store. If you are looking for a customized video showcase, you will need to create your own video streaming solution.

If you have products or a brand that deserve marketing on YouTube, just contact us, and we can take it from there.

June 20, 2014

How to Protect Yourself Against Fraud with Amazon

As eCommerce businesses expand, so does eCommerce frauds. Every year, millions of dollars are lost due to cyber-attacks and identity thefts. Consequently, when eCommerce industry is expanding more than 20% every year, it becomes all the more important for eCommerce merchants to protect themselves and their customers against any type of fraud. Amazon, one of the most influencing eCommerce platforms, offers highly advanced fraud detection technology that helps you get rid of cyber frauds while keeping your business safe and sound.

Designed with multiple layers of security, Amazon’s fraud detection technology offers sophisticated industrialized authentication procedures and guides to help eCommerce merchants protect themselves against number of risks and threats. Amazon’s highly advanced security system calculates thousands of individual risk indicators per order and leverages refined machine learning procedures to recognize orders that have to be stopped. It calculates probabilities of fraud in milliseconds, and stops the transactions that need to be.

The features offered by Amazon’s fraud detection technology include:
  • Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption to protect financial data and personal information of customers
  • Reliable and secure payment processing gateway
  • A-to-Z Guarantee for appropriate purchases
  • Regular updates to security features for the most up-to-date fraud detection capabilities
What do you gain through Amazon’s fraud detection capabilities?
  • Enhanced customer satisfaction: When customers are offered Amazon’s A-to-Z Guarantee, they make purchases on your store with full confidence, which in turn enhances their shopping experience.
  • Hassle-free business operations: By leveraging Amazon’s infrastructure, you can reduce your operational costs that you otherwise would have spent to protect yourself against frauds.
  • SSL encryption: Through Amazon’s SSL encryption features, you can safeguard yourself against the loss of financial data as well as customer data.
  • Latest technology: Amazon will offer you updates throughout your term on their platform free of cost. Consequently, you will always have access to highly sophisticated tools and features to secure your business.
Want to know what more you can do? Contact us.

June 11, 2014

How Order Management Works

Order management is a significant part of any business operation as it connects inventory and customers. It starts right from the moment a customer places an order and ends when the customer receives it. Many times, eCommerce merchants connects with the customers after few days to know how happy they are with their products. Although it seems easy, there are lot many intricacies involved in this process. Let’s have a look at the process in detail.

Steps involved in order management
  • When the order is placed, the merchant will pick the ordered items from the inventory and ship it to the customers
  • Send email notifications to the customer, informing him/her about the shipment status
Problems involved in the process
  • The merchant may be facing an out-of-stock situation when he/she received an order. So now the merchant has two options: either he/she can partially ship the order and request the customer to wait for few days to receive other part of the order, or he/she can ask the customer to cancel the order altogether.
  • Sometimes the merchant may not stock all the items, especially when he/she is selling thousands of items. He/she may be using drop shipping, asking the manufacturer to directly ship the item to the customers.
  • Another potential area of problem is when the merchant is using fulfillment warehouse. When the cost of carrying inventory rises too much, many merchants use third-party warehouses to store their inventory. When the merchant using such facilities receives an order, he/she forwards the order information to the warehouse party, who in turn will ship the goods directly to the customers.
Execution of the process

As I said earlier, many times there can be multiple parties involved in the order management – merchant, customer, shipping company, manufacturer/vendor, and/or fulfillment warehouse. To co-ordinate between all these parties, the merchant will need to use series of communication tools, including email, fax and phone calls. This method is feasible until the operations are small. As your business starts expanding, problems will start cropping up in this system. So in this situation, it’s better to use order management software.

What can order management software do?

Through order management software, a merchant can automate the entire process – right from the moment a customer places an order to the moment when the customer receives an order. Merchants can even set reminders to follow up with customers. Through an order management system, a merchant can:
  • Send automatic order details to the involved parties
  • Keep track of your inventory through a centralized inventory system
  • Co-ordinate with various parties involved through a set procedure
  • Send automatic shipping information to the customers
  • Follow up with the customers to gather their feedback
Do you need help in implementing such order management system? Contact us.

Follow us Circle us on Google Plus Like us on Facebook