How to Track Inventory in Multiple Locations

As the size of inventory increases, management becomes complex and convoluted. The problem becomes more severe when you have to expand the warehouse facility and manage multiple warehouses. If you don't have a proper inventory management system in place, you will never know how much of inventory is stored in each of the warehouse locations. So in this kind of situations, an highly advanced inventory system that helps you in warehouse management is a must. Ideally, a flexible inventory management system will help you:

• Check inventory levels of each products at each location with a click
• Integrate shipping options such as UPS, FedEx and USPS
• Transfer bulk of items from one warehouse to another in case of shortage or excess
• Monitor short-term as well as long-term trends, leading to optimum inventory decisions
• Streamline shipping and ordering processes for both customer orders and supplier orders
• Utilize wireless barcode scanners to order, receive and cycle count inventory for each location
• Update information about inventory, orders and shipment real time across the board
• Update relevant information in all other locations, including Quickbooks and Microsoft Dynamics

If you scour the market, you will find several inventory management software but not all can offer the above mentioned features. Kaushalam's inventory and order management system will offer the most advanced features over and above the functionalities mentioned above. Our software will offer convenience, reliability, efficiency and sophistication.

If you wish to know what else our inventory and order management software can offer you, contact us. Pronto.

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Basics of Setting Up An eCommerce Stores

If you are selling through a brick-and-mortar store, it's about time that you set up an online store and expand your horizons. The reason for doing so is simple: daily more customers are shifting to online buying due to packed work schedules and advanced technology. And there will come a day when a customer will rarely go to a brick-and-mortar store to buy anything. Consequently, if you want to keep pace with the changing times, you have to have an eCommerce store. If you are wondering from where to start, no worries. Here are the basic steps that you need to follow to set up the store.            

Setting Up An eCommerce Stores

Domain name

Like your brick-and-mortar store, your eCommerce store too will need a name. Catchier the name, better the business. Make sure that the name you are selecting reflects the business you are in, and it's appealing to your target audience. Also, if the name is already taken by any other business, you won't be able to get a domain name for that. So, the name needs to be unique too. If you aren't able to make a concrete decision regarding the name, do some research – as in how your competitors have named their business. But do not copy them by making minor tweaks to it or you might end up with a weak branding strategy.  

Platform
 
The next step is to decide the platform of the store. When you are building a store, you should select the language which is flexible for creating user-friendly websites. Unless you are a technical person, you won't be able to do it on your own. It's better to hire professionals for this task. If you don't want do so much of work, you have an option to choose existing eCommerce platforms such as Amazon, Yahoo, Collusion and Shopify.  

Design

There are several eCommerce stores out in the market, selling the exact product or service that you are selling. Consequently, if you want to attract customers in hordes, you have to set yourself apart from the crowd. You have to differentiate yourself from your peers, and you can do so by customizing the design, layout and shopping cart. While customizing, make sure that the overall look and feel of the store reflects your business.  

Search engine optimization
 
Once you have set up the store, the last step is to make sure that your target audience is able to find you. To let them find you easily, you have to make your website readable and searchable for search engine bots. Optimizing the website from SEO point of view requires lot of effort and unless you are an SEO expert, it's better to hire professionals for them. If you are on shoe-string budget, you have the alternative to read up loads of material available over the internet and learn. However, do remember, this alternative will take up lot of time because mostly you'd be doing trial and error for the website.

If you are new to setting up a business and require some guidance, do not hesitate to contact us. We specialize in offering a range of products and services that simplifies eCommerce business while offering maximum output.

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Make Your eCommerce Store Social-Shopping Ready

In the era of social networking platform, social shopping is gaining prominence. When we talk about social shopping, we are talking about sharing of outfit ideas on Pinterest to tweeting links to coupon codes to more. If you aren't trying to explore this avenue for more sales, you are losing out on a lot. Are you wondering how you are going to take advantage of the new phenomenon? If so, you just need to make sure of three things – be mobile ready, merge online and offline marketing and offer personalized shopping experience.

Be mobile ready

Consider these figures:

Mobile sales is expected to rise from $204 billion in 2013 to $626 billion in 2018.
29% of the American consumers made at least one purchase on a smartphone in 2013, 28% on the tablet 535 million consumers worldwide are expected to make a purchase in 2014 through mobile 46% of American smartphone users engage in mCommerce

Now do you think ignoring mobile users is a smart strategy, especially when we are talking about social shopping? One of the best ways to make sure that your website/eCommerce store is accessible through all types of smartphones and tablets is to use responsive/adaptive web designs. If you are receiving majority of the traffic from smartphones, you can even get a special mobile website designed.

Merge online and offline marketing

A recent study by Econsultancy and IBM Tealeaf revealed that most of the retail stores fail to seamlessly merge online and offline shopping experiences for the buyers. Although most of the stores display their store location and hours on the website, they fail to provide retail product information and services through social media. The study also revealed that less than a third of businesses optimize content for local and mobile search, and only 18% allow customers to place an order online and pick it up on the store.

To merge online and offline marketing efforts, you have to look for ways to bring social media, online shopping and local promotions together. You can get started on this task by emailing a coupon code that offers extra discount when used in the physical store; and by offering flash sale notifications or limited-time coupons. Depending on your target audience demographic, you should also explore other means to offer unified shopping experience.

Offer personalized shopping experience

If you think a single deal or promotion will appeal to all your customers, you need to think again. If you are looking to create loyalty while pushing up the sales, you will need to personalize the deals based on the customers' demographic and shopping history. But it's easier said than done, especially when customers are unwilling to share their social media or any other contact details. To make the unwilling customers into willing customers, you have to win their trust, and to win their trust, you need to put more marketing control in their hands. Let them decide how frequently they can receive deals and promotions from you; let them decide what kind of information they would like to receive.

Future of social shopping

Social shopping is here to stay. Many companies are even coming up with apps that helps companies share data throughout all the platforms, including POS systems, eCommerce stores and mobile apps. You too can look for this kind of apps and get ready for social sharing.

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Tips to Leverage Pinterest for eCommerce Business

Pinterest is one of the most popular social networking platform. Generally, there are five types of Pinterest users – passion, profession, pastime, project and preference. If you want to make the most of Pinterest, you have to offer the content that your target audience wants.

Pinterest Media Optimization

The task, however, doesn't end with just offering the content. As there are over 750 million boards with 30 billion pins, if you aren't using Pinterest properly, your content is never going to be found by the target audience. Following are some of the tips that you should use to leverage Pinterest effectively.

1. Optimize pins

As we said earlier, there are millions of boards with billions of pins. To make yourself visible, you should:

Make your pins descriptive. If you are selling sweaters, pinning it as just a sweater isn't enough. Mention the color, the kind of wool that's used and so on. If you are getting confused about it, just think how would you optimize the description for Google and other search engines.

Pre-populate pin descriptions on the website. This means, you should include thoughtful descriptions about the products people pin from your website. You can even use Pinterest's widget builder to add pins to your website.

2. Reach Pinterest mobile users

75% of the Pinterest users are from smartphones and tablets. So it definitely makes sense to reach those 75% of the user base by understanding how the social networking platform works on the mobile.

Make your pins and boards mobile friendly. While creating boards and pins, think how they will look on mobile devices.

Add the Pinterest mobile SDK to your mobile app. When you do this, a “Pin It” buttons will be added to the images in your app, which in turn will increase your pins and referral traffic.

Have a mobile-friendly website. As Pinterest is great for driving traffic to the eCommerce sites, make sure that your website is mobile-friendly.

3. Use Pinterest Analytics

Through this tool, you will be able to keep track of the images that are being pinned from your website, how the pins from your Pinterest profile are performing, which pins and boards are driving the most impressions, clicks and repins, and which pins are driving engagement across different platforms.

4. Utilize Promoted Pins

Promoted Pins is Pinterest's advertising platform. Just like Facebook Ads and Twitter Promoted Tweets, you can set your own budget to promote your products.

5. Follow Pinterest portfolio boards

To inspire users and businesses, Pinterest has put together a collection of boards. By following these boards, you will be able to connect with people from your field.

6. Get featured on Pinterest's business blog

At regular interval of time, Pinterest spotlights on businesses to talk about how they are using the platform to promote their business. So submit your profile to Pinterest with a brief summary about how you use Pinterest for your business. You might find yourself featured over there, giving another boost to your presence.

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How to Start A Profitable eCommerce Business

Starting an online store is as difficult as starting a brick-and-mortar store. Right from choosing what to sell to how to sell, you have to take 1001 decisions. In this article, we are going to help you do primary homework for your new upcoming eCommerce store.

Profitable eCommerce Business

Choosing a product

The first and foremost step toward building a successful online business is to decide what to sell. If you are having any hobby or you are passionate about a particular product, starting a business around it is a good idea. However, if you don’t have any such passions, you should look for what’s trending and what’s likely to survive for years. Also, while choosing the product, you should consider your financial resources and from where you are going to source it.

Research

The next step is to research your competition. You should know what they are selling, where they are selling and at what price they are selling. If possible, you should also know how they are targeting the customers. If you have this last piece of information, it will become very easy for you to tap into your competitors’ customer base.

Planning

Once you are aware of what you have to sell and how are your competitors selling, you have to plan a strategy. Your business plan should clearly mention from where you are going to source the products, how you are going to target your audience, how you are going to market the products, and so on. Each and every aspect of your business should be spelled out for better execution.

Setting Up

The next step is to register your business. To register your business, you have to find a suitable name. Also, the name you have decided upon should be available because if the domain for that name is unavailable, the name would be useless for you.

After the name is decided, you need to create a logo. The logo should be unique and attractive, and should reflect your business. If you are selling sunglasses, having a logo with sunglasses would make sense.

You will also need to register your business with the concerned authority. If you are registering as a private limited company, it’s better to hire a lawyer. But if you are registering as a sole proprietor, just go to the government office and ask the procedure there.

Building Store

Once you have registered and set up your business legally, it’s time to set the business online too. To build a store, you will need to select design and layout, add product images and descriptions, highlight the special products and offer unique relevant content to the users. If you are selling products directly from the website, you will need to add a payment gateway too.

Search Engine Optimization

After the store is set, you will need to optimize it to attract organic traffic. And to optimize the store, you should know the basics of how search engines work. There’s lot of material available on this topic on the Internet but if you are still confused, it’s better to go for expert services.

Launch

The last step to start an online business is to launch the store, and to launch the store, you will need to advertisement and market the store to let your target audience know that you are open for business. You will need to have a strategy for paid marketing to attain desired footfalls. You can even have marketing campaign.

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