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.

Read more »

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.

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

Why to Do Business with Amazon

Amazon Webstore is not only popular in the U.S.A. but it’s also gaining recognition as a powerful eCommerce platform throughout the world. With strong infrastructure and user-friendly features, Amazon is growing leaps and bounds. Have you ever wondered why eCommerce merchants love Amazon?

Consider the following features:

Infrastructure: Amazon offers highly reliable technological infrastructure that reassures customers and merchants alike for timely and accurate payments. The checkout process is secured with the latest firewalls and anti-hacking programs to protect your information. It employs risk management techniques to reduce your bad debt. Apart from payment, Amazon offers logistics and fulfillment support too to its sellers.

Templates and layouts: At Amazon, you can find several thematically organized and arranged design templates and layouts. You just need to select the one that’s appropriate for your business and customize it. You can even personalize your entire store to give it a unique feel and look.

Costs: To set up a store on Amazon, you require quite a small pool capital. Apart from charging monthly fees, Amazon charges a small percentage of commission when you sell the product.

Products: Listing products on Amazon is quite easy. It just takes few minutes to do so. Also, you can list unlimited number of items on Amazon Webstore.

Marketing: Apart from helping you list your products, Amazon helps you sell your products with highly search engine optimized website. With Amazon, you can optimize the keywords as well as images of the products. You can even use marketing strategies like product recommendations, customer reviews and recently viewed items on web store.

Multiple store: You can even create multiple stores on Amazon if you are targeting two different segment of audience. For each store, you can have customized looks, features and shopping cart. What’s more, you can even integrated the dashboard of both the stores for easy management.

User experience: To offer the best user experience, Amazon lets customers use the same account, shipping addresses and billing methods on other sites that Amazon.com empowers.

If we conclude that Amazon Webstore is indeed an amazing platform to big boost to your eCommerce business, we wouldn’t be wrong. So go on and set up your shop on Amazon.

Read more »

4 Tips To Improve eCommerce Brand

When you are selling online, it’s quite important to create a strong brand. A brand that will stand out among thousands of products and services; a brand that differentiates itself from your competitors. 

Brand strengthening can be done through social media comments, customer reviews, videos and content syndication. 

Let’s discuss them further.

1. Social media comments

Social networking platforms aren't just for socializing; they are great for connecting with the customers too. When you engage and discuss with customers, you are doing free advertising of your business as well as growing your brand online at the same time. Be proactive and post more than just one-line sentences about your products. Use social networking platforms to tell stories, ask questions, sharing news related to your products and initiating discussions about your products. Also, when you get comments, respond to them – thank customers for positive comments and try to resolve customer’s query for negative comments. Once you solve their problems, those customers will get converted into loyal customers, always ready to buy from you.

2. Customer reviews

When customers are unhappy, they are going to review your product negatively – if not at your website then somewhere else. Why not convert the unhappy customer into a happy one? Actively ask for their reviews and feedback. When those are positive, it’s a great way to attract new customers; and when those are negative, you can work with the customers to change their opinion. However, do remember not to spam your customers’ email box with repeated requests. One email asking them to post what they thought of your product is a good idea. Also, when you respond to reviews, you are building a positive image for your brand.

3. Videos

Videos are great for giving a product demo for potential customers. And they have the ability to go viral, presenting your brand to millions of people. Apart from showcasing your products, you can use videos to tell your story or use various techniques to engage people in your brand and draw them to your store. You can even make a funny tutorial to make your brand lively.

4. Content syndication

In simple terms, content syndication means the content – including text, video and audio – that’s created by you is made available at other sites for use.  When you syndicate the content, you are allowing customers to access the information about your products that you want them to have, instead of information created by the secondary company. Syndication is the best way to offer accurate and consistent information to your customers.

Now, all you need to do is to make sure that all the functionality or eCommerce branding features as mentioned above should be implemented and customized in your eCommerce website properly as a part of your branding and marketing.

Read more »

5 Factors To Consider While Hiring An eCommerce Developer

Hiring a Professional eCommerce Developer

A lot has to be taken care of while developing an eCommerce site, and due to this very reason, eCommerce merchants usually prefer to hire a professional developer even when they have little bit of technical knowledge. Hiring a professional developer, however, doesn't guarantee that everything will be hunky-dory, especially when a relatively inexperienced developer is hired. If you wish to make the development process of the website simple and quick, you need to consider following five factors while hiring the developer.

Experience:

The first and the foremost factor to consider is developers’ experience. While discussing the idea of eCommerce sites, they usually tend to spout technical jargon. You need to cut through that and look at the hard facts. Ask them for the examples. Look at the websites created by them. Scrutinize the designs they have used, features they have embedded in the websites and the applications that are implemented to offer superior user experience. If the given examples do not match with what you are expecting, ask them to show the example of what they can do. This will give you a fair idea of what the developers can do for you and if that’s enough for you.

eCommerce Platform:

Before you proceed with the development, you definitely need to know which eCommerce platform the developers are going to use. But before you ask this question, you will need to conduct your own research. So look at the various eCommerce platforms and solutions that are available in the market; what exactly they bring to the table and how much they can contribute toward your business success. Apart from the paid software and solutions that offer hi-tech features, ecommerce platforms such as e-Smart eCommerce Suite, Magento and PrestaShop are quite handy because they offer convenience yet are free for use. 

Special features:

Although you will require bit of technical knowledge for looking into this aspect, it’s definitely worth the research time. Ask the developers what special features they will embed in the website, ask whether the theme will be the existing one or a new, custom one built from the scratch. Consider the amount of time they will need to create such features an

d embed them. Compare this estimate with the open-source eCommerce platforms that offer various innovative features at nominal prices.

Mobile-friendly:

Mobile website is as important as a desktop website, if not more. You need to make sure that your eCommerce site is easily accessible for mobile users as well as is user-friendly enough to engage them. You can opt for responsive eCommerce site that will allow you to offer unique shopping experience to all the users irrespective of the gadgets they are using.

Managing website:

Building a website is a one-time effort; however, managing it is a continuous process. The photos, videos, content, product details and banners need to be constantly updated. So make sure the developers understand this and they create a website that you can handle it on your own. Also, ask them how they are keeping your website’s backup as well as get access to all accounts, passwords and codes associated with your site.

Read more »