5 Things to get right successful ecommerce site

If you’re thinking about launching your own online store, now is a good time as the opportunity for success is exciting and promising, especially for small businesses. To help you get off on the right foot, go through the following five general tips that have helped many new eCommerce businesses start well.

1. Ensure everything is functioning before launching the site

Rushing or forcing the launch of a website is one of the biggest mistakes made by unsuccessful eCommerce entrepreneurs. You only have one opportunity to launch your website and it has to be up to standard. There’s nothing wrong with purchasing your domain name and putting together a “Coming Soon” page, however, you should try not to be too quick to reveal everything before all the groundwork, which could involve elements such as your site’s payment gateway, social media and content marketing, is satisfactory executed.

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40% of online groceries in UK made on mobile

About 40 percent of all online grocery purchases made in the United Kingdom are done using a mobile phone. Online grocery shopping in the UK is also quite popular, as 7 percent of all grocery shopping is done online. That’s more than Spain, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic combined.

These are some of the key trends from ‘Taking Stock of the Future or Grocery’, a new report by Criteo, which has explored the latest online retail themes and trends in the British fast-moving consumer goods marketplace.

As said, it found that online grocery shopping in the UK is more popular than in some other European countries. Criteo looked at the estimated ecommerce share of the FCMG market in some countries and with 6.9 percent, the United Kingdom leads Europe, with France just behind at 5.3 percent. Other European countries perform less well.

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Most Expensive Ecommerce Shipping Mistakes

Mistakes are inevitable on the way to successful business process. But some of them can cost you a lot money and can lead to losing customers. That’s the main reason why it is important to try your very best to mostly learn from mistakes of others rather than repeat every classical mistake in your own business. Shipping is sometimes underestimated and seen as not the most essential part of e-commerce business. But in fact, shipping is your real contact with the client and there is nothing more important than that. That is why we created a list of most common and most expensive shipping mistakes that sometimes happen with even best of the best e-commerce businesses.

Flat Rate Shipping

Flat rate shipping is a way to be polite to the customers and make the processes of shipping as easy and clear as possible. You might think that there is certain logic in charging shipping price depending on the size of item and the distance it has to travel. But in fact, your customers will definitely appreciate flat rate shipping and it will much easier for them to make up their minds and complete the order.

Wrong Packaging

In many cases using wrong packaging automatically means that you will never see this customer again. It is disappointing to find out that the item you ordered came to you damaged because the shop didn’t bother to provide an appropriate packaging. And it is going to cost extra for you and will double the expenses. Never forget than in packaging cheapest is the dearest and be especially careful about it. It is also a great idea to remember that it is nice when packaging is not only safe but also looks good. And there are always ways to improve your packaging without spending too much on it.

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Digital kiosks to help government with GST rollout

The government’s massive network of Common Service Centres (CSCs), or digital kiosks, have been identified to facilitate the rollout of Goods and Services Tax (GST), especially in rural and semi-urban areas.

Out of the total 2,52,000 CSCs that are operational, around 1,72,000 are in the rural areas. These centres will help merchants in filing taxes under the new regime and also provide necessary training and support services to people. The proposal is close to getting a final approval from the government.

Dinesh Kumar Tyagi, CEO, CSC e-Governance Services, told that the centres are proposed to act as a GST Suvidha Provider. They will also train and support merchants.

“The agency will have its own portal where all the details will be filled up which will be synced with the main portal of the GST,” he said. It will act as a “mirror portal” of the GST portal, he added.

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Belt and Road Initiative will Drive E-commerce

E-commerce powerhouses in China are extremely bullish about strengthening trade ties and invigorating economic activities in economies along the Belt and Road Initiative, industry observers said.

They said that as fast-growing mobile and internet usage propels consumer spending, an ever-widening array of “Made in China” items will be at their fingertips, while Chinese bring home worldwide delicacies thanks to frictionless online transactions and fast cross-border deliveries.

Chinese phones are gaining traction among buyers notably in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, with Russia, Ukraine and Israel topping the list of generous spenders on these gadgets, according to AliResearch.

Apart from electronic devices, fashion and jewelry, women’s apparel and nail beauty accessories are the latest darling of foreign buyers, said the report, which tracked data from AliExpress.

Bargain hunters in Russia have pushed the e-commerce boom to new heights, with Chinese products including phones, clothing and other consumer electronics being the most popular items.

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Tips for Increasing E-commerce Revenue Next Quarter

The whole concept of e-commerce began to take shape in 1989 with the development an internet-based system that did e-commerce transactions for the first time.

According to the U.S. Commerce Department, online retail sales account for over a third of the overall retail sales done in the U.S. With these facts in mind, it’s no secret that the eCommerce industry is booming. Some studies even predict that eCommerce sales will reach over $400 billion annually over the next few years.

But, for eCommerce stores, the industry can also be extremely competitive. Here are seven tips from ecommerce experts across the globe, to boost your eCommerce revenue quarter after quarter.

1) Tap into influencers

Influencer marketing isn’t exactly new, but far too many eCommerce businesses still aren’t taking advantage of it.

Sid Bharath of Thinkific says, “eCommerce businesses need to tap into the power of social media influencers. Influencer marketing has been around for years but it’s only starting to become mainstream (as in smaller businesses now have access to influencers) and it’s become crucial to generating traffic, especially since other traditional sources, like SEO and ads, are getting tougher.”

Essentially the goal is to build strategic partnerships with key individuals who have influence over potential buyers. They could be celebrities or industry experts, but generally they take on the role of influencers because they can bring in large quantities of would-be customers.

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Optimizing YouTube For E-commerce In 2017

As broadband Internet becomes more widespread and accessible across the world, the share of video content is rapidly and inevitably growing. The majority of users regard video as the easiest medium to perceive. It is only natural, then, that YouTube, being the best-known video sharing service, is an incredibly important tool for any online marketer. However, there is a huge gap between deciding to use it for marketing and actually achieving any success in this field. So how does one go about it?

It is not as easy task as it may seem, for e-commerce communication is by definition purely commercial in 99 percent of situations, and you will have a hard time persuading your clients, both current and potential, that the primary goal of any video you publish is not to get into their wallets.

1. Technical Stuff

For the visitors to see the awesome content you are going to publish, there first should be visitors. And to guarantee their initial influx, you should know basics of how to start a Youtube channel and optimize its technical aspects.

Channel name. That’s what you are going to be remembered by, so put a lot of thought into it. Make sure it is short, self-explanatory, catchy and easy to remember. Make sure there are no letters that can be mixed up (“i” and “y”, “c” and “k”) and fancy letter combinations that are hard to type by ear. Ask yourself: if you heard it for the first time with a lot of noise in the background, would you be able to type it correctly half a day later?

Integration. Place links to your main website and other social media channels you run to catch the audience attention immediately. Nowadays, people get distracted easily and they are not ready to spend their time searching for your website. Make their life easier – put everything they might need to reach you in front of their eyes.

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Softbank Plays Active Role In Indian Ecommerce

After ploughing about $2 billion in minority stakes in Indian e-commerce businesses over the past few years, Japan's SoftBank is upping the stakes, looking to play consolidator and take a more active role at a trio of leading start-ups.

According to sources, the solar-to-tech conglomerate is seeking to secure a piece of the market leaders in everything, from payment systems to online shopping and groceries, in a series of deals that would shake up the $65-billion sector.

Among the most high-profile plans is SoftBank's push to engineer a merger between Snapdeal, the No. 3 e-commerce player and one of its biggest Indian investments to date, and market leader Flipkart. The deal could be finalised as soon as next week, one of the sources said.

SoftBank has poured around $1 billion into Snapdeal since 2014, but competition in e-commerce has risen dramatically with US giant Amazon cranking up its presence and taking the No. 2 spot from Snapdeal.

Besides Snapdeal, SoftBank is close to finalising a cash infusion of more than $1 billion into Alibaba-backed digital payments company Paytm, giving it a more direct say in that group, according to a source.

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Indian and Chinese shoppers pushing e-commerce growth

Global e-commerce is forecast to double to $4.1 trillion by 2020, from $1.9 trillion in 2016, as consumers in populous countries such as India and China prefer to shop online to avoid crowded malls, a KPMG survey showed on Friday.

The share of e-commerce in total sales will rise to 14.6% by 2020 from 8.7% in 2016. Consumers in China, India and Singapore, say crowd avoidance was a top motivator to shop online.

In India, the government has been pushing citizens to go for digital transactions as part of efforts to move towards a less cash economy.

With 22.1 transactions per person per year, Asia tops the chart of online buys followed by North America (19%), Europe (18.4%) and Australia (16.1%).

Books, music, electronic gadgets, computers and women apparel are among the top five products purchased online, said the Global Online Consumer report for 2017. In case of India, telecom products and men’s footwear were also among the top five items purchased.

“Advances in technology, logistics, payments and trust coupled with increasing internet and mobile access and consumer demand for convenience have created a $1.9 trillion global online shopping arena, where millions of consumers no longer ‘go’ shopping, but literally are shopping at every moment and everywhere,” said the KPMG survey conducted on 18,430 consumers in 51 countries.

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How to boost Mcommerce sales in 2017?

Shopping has definitely gone mobile. The Thanksgiving holiday sale last year revealed that most of the sales traffic of top ecommerce sites came from mobile devices. Adobe estimated that mobile sales hit $1 billion during the holiday weekend.

With mobile becoming the preferred transaction channel, ecommerce ventures would do well improving their mobile storefronts. Needless to say, offering a mobile-friendly website is a must and creating a mobile app is becoming a necessity. Startups could even be at an advantage if they choose to start out with a mobile-first orientation.

Thankfully, most of the design themes and templates now support responsive designs that adopt to each viewer’s screen size. This allows smaller ventures with existing sites could cope without having to perform major overhauls. Nonetheless, m-commerce sites could use some tweaks in order to improve shopping experience. Here are 5 tweaks to make in your site to boost your ecommerce sales.

Use a CDN to speed up load times

A Google study revealed that more than half of visitors abandon sites that load for more than 3 seconds. A way to achieve this is to optimize the site, invest on better hosting, and integrate your site to a content delivery network (CDN).

A CDN improves site performance by caching site resources such as scripts and images in distributed servers all around the globe. This reduces the loading lag that occurs when browsers fetch resources from your server.

Using a CDN also lessens the need to scrimp on image quality due to progressive rendering and hosting or bandwidth restrictions. Using sharp product photos instead of small blurry ones improves product appeal.

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Mcommerce in Germany finally becomes mainstream

It looks like mcommerce in Germany is finally catching up. Although the usage of mobile devices for buying online and paying in-store in Germany is still lagging behind other big ecommerce countries, predictions look hopeful. In Germany, 29 million mobile users will buy online via a mobile device at least once this year, up nearly 15 percent from last year.

This is the forecast of market research company eMarketer. It states that mcommerce has been slow to catch on in Germany, where consumers still prefer to pay with cash, but mobile commerce is growing steadily with consumers getting accustomed to buy and pay for products using their mobile device.

The company predicts 29.1 million mobile device users in Germany will make at least once purchase via a smartphone or tablet this year, which would mean an increase of almost 15 percent compared to last year. This number represents about 60 percent of the country’s mobile device users. In view of this, Germany is still behind the United States (80.4) and the United Kingdom (76.4 percent).

In Germany, the smartphone is way more popular than the tablet when it comes to shopping online: 71.7 percent of mobile shoppers will make one or more mobile purchases using a smartphone during this year, compared to just 46.5 percent who will turn to tablets for mcommerce. The smartphone usage rate of 71.7 percent in Germany is higher than the 64.6 percent of American mobile device buyers who are expected to shop using their smartphones.

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How Can Online Payment Platforms Influence The B2C Relationship

In many discussions about online commerce, marketing takes priority. Web layout, ease of use, and other factors are often talked about as well. While all of these elements of e-commerce have a heavy influence on your company’s relationship with consumers, there is another aspect that is often overlooked but is also essential: online payment platform.

Understanding how your choice of online payment platform affects your business to customer (B2C) relationship is an important part of ensuring your e-commerce runs smoothly and effectively. Consider the following ways the platform you choose for online payment influences B2C:

Online Payment Platforms are Regularly Used by Consumers

If your business is succeeding at e-commerce, consumers are making purchases using your online payment platform. That means that every day, your customer base will interact with the tool you choose. Every time your customers reach the end of the e-commerce sales funnels, they will make their purchase online.

As a result of this reality, your payment platform has a big responsibility. Don’t underestimate how important user experience is when it comes to paying online. Consumers can purchase most products on different websites if they think your payment platform is hard to navigate, unreliable, or insecure.

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Facebook Chatbots in Ecommerce

Live chat for ecommerce has been around for a while and it has been used mostly by customers to ask questions about the product or service being offered or for after sales and support. Still, customers acknowledge its usefulness. Sometimes product descriptions or reviews don’t necessarily cover specific concerns and being able to connect with an actual person helps. An eMarketer survey revealed that 63% of customers are more likely to return to a site that features live chat.

There are now numerous live chat services that can be integrated with just about any ecommerce platform today. Most even now include advanced features such as surveys, analytics, transcripts, queuing, and reports which are all useful to measure how effectively customers’ concerns are being handled.

However, the use of chat for ecommerce is taking a new evolutionary step. Social messengers are emerging not only as an alternative to what these chat services currently provide but to online shopping carts as well.

The Rise of Conversational Commerce

The pervasiveness of messaging apps like Facebook Messenger make them viable channels for businesses to connect to customers.  There are 1.86 billion people who are already on Facebook, and despite un-bundling Messenger as a separate mobile app, the service has over 1 billion active users.

Facebook even made available the Messenger platform for developers so that sites and services can embed Messenger on sites and in other apps. One high-profile integration was when Uber tapped into Facebook Messenger back in 2015 to allow users to book rides within the chat window.

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Mobikwik Supercash increases consumer retention

MobiKwik on Wednesday announced the launch of a loyalty initiative known as 'Supercash', which aims to promote digital payments.

Supercash is the first ever loyalty initiative launched by a mobile wallet in India. Under this initiative, the user saves money every time he transacts on MobiKwik. They can earn reward points at all MobiKwik merchants, including their local mom and pop stores.

The initiative ensures that MobiKwik has less cash burn compared to competition while giving consumers a prolonged advantage for future buying. Since launch of Supercash, MobiKwik has witnessed a 28 percent growth in transactions per user and a 32 percent improvement in customer retention.

At the same time number of transactions per user has also grown by 17 percent in the same period. Supercash initiative will connect with the arbitrage generation as millennial like to save money wherever possible.

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6 Straightforward Steps To Protect Your E-Commerce Website

Despite popular belief, the secret ingredient to getting the mount out of your e-commerce site isn’t necessarily about your product or site design. In short, it comes down to security. Although it’s crystal clear that we live in an era where today’s shoppers are more comfortable than ever with the concept buying online, the fact remains that spammers and scammers seem to be around every corner. Likewise, consider the common hesitations which plague today’s online shoppers such as

* The widespread epidemics of credit card and identity fraud.
* Orders taking forever or not arriving in the condition promised on-site.
* Dealing with returns and poor customer service from smaller e-commerce stores.

As a result of these fears and concerns, every e-commerce business owner should strive to build their stores on a safe and secure foundation that ensures a positive experience for their customers. But where do you start?

1. Never Neglect Your Network

You won’t get very far in the world of e-commerce if you aren’t operating on a secure network day-by-day. For starters, a network vulnerability scanner is a must-have regardless of where you’re running your business from. Such scanners help ensure that you aren’t opening yourself or your customers up to potential threats. With so much emphasis on security on-site, network security is so easy to overlook but is crucial to protecting you and your customers’ well-being.

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Ecommerce in Turkey was worth 7.95 billion euros in 2016

Ecommerce in Turkey was worth 30.8 billion Turkish Liras (or 7.95 billion euros) in 2016. The online retail industry in this country is becoming more and more mature. The ecommerce share in Turkey’s total retail was 1.7 percent in 2012, but it increased to 3.5 percent last year, a new study shows.

This data was shared by Erol Bilecik, the head of the Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSIAD), which shared a new report about ecommerce in Turkey. Ecommerce in Turkey has grown from about 6.4 billion euros in 2015 to 6.95 billion euros last year. This is the whole ecommerce industry, but TUSIAD divides this amount into three different parts: online betting, online travel and online retail. The latter increased the most last year: it grew from 3.4 billion euros with 34 percent to 4.5 billion euros last year.

According to Hurriyet Daily News, the association says the ecommerce industry in Turkey has strong growth potential and it can grow further in the upcoming years. This potential growth is also because ecommerce in Turkey is still behind other ecommerce industries across the global.

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