Budget process is as much necessary for any online business as it is for the offline business. It not only helps to make right and timely decisions but also highlights the non performing business practices. Many online retailers do not see it as an important activity because of the misconception that it is just for traditional offline business. Second factor that stops the online retailers from budget process is its cost, which they think may be too high- while it is not so.
Cost of budget process depends upon the business model. Generally, start-up businesses have more heads to be covered under budget process in comparison to mature retailers. It can be done in-house or can be outsourced. Both have unique positives sides; selection depends upon the particular parameters. However, cost of budget process in the both the options vary at large. Therefore, the right selection of process for budget process is important to get it done at bare minimum cost. If you know enough about the technical terms and microscopic components that budget processing involves, you would certainly be able to get effective budget process at amazingly low price. The following part of this write up highlights such important factors of budget process.
Net profit is the difference between gross profit and expenses. You need to estimate revenue. To calculate gross profit, subtract the cost of sold goods from revenue. Major E-business expenses include the cost of development, maintaining and promoting (marketing) the web store. Providing world-class customer services including guidance, after sales, warranty etc also generates recurring expenses.
SEO (search engine optimization), arranging genuine e-mail lists and sending informatory e-mails, appointing new affiliates and offering more attractive discounts etc are few of those marketing activities that need considerable expenses. Generally, retailers are suggested to invest 10-12% of total revenue for customer acquisition. Retention cost includes the expenses like customer segmentation tools, promotion and e-mail campaigns etc. It is kept 5-8% of revenue.
The cost of search engine marketing includes the charges of pay-per-click, submission to different directories & search engines, banner postings and placing advertisements on relevant popular sites etc like services. The fixation of this cost entirely depends upon one’s budget and may vary from $2,500 pm to $25,000 pm. Comparison Shopping Engines are effective traffic generators. Registration to these engines depends upon the size of business and nature of services or products. The cost of affiliate marketing is generally kept around 20% of revenue; however, selection of this business marketing strategy depends upon particular business model.
The cost of e-mail marketing depends upon the volume of mails in each phase. This cost can be adjusted both way according to the budget limits and response. Customer Relationship Management consumes considerably major part of marketing budget. It needs to be very effective because repeat and reference business volume solely depends upon its success.
Social Media Marketing and Mobile Marketing are relatively new marketing practices. Both of these low budget exercises have been successful in establishing brand image as well as making it popular among the masses. Content management and Imagery creation practices also help in making the brand popular and unique. This practice needs considerable good budget. Under this practice retailers modify the promotional materials and programs, offered by manufacturers, according to local market and clients. Online Merchandising is another marketing strategy that includes categorizing of products and associating them with other products, which are more in demand.
When we talk about the technology of e-store, there seems no limit because we see new developments in internet technology every day. The budget selection depends upon the facilities, an e-retailer wants. Development of E-commerce Platforms, Order Management Systems, Fulfillment and Customer service are the major activities of Online E-business that need special consideration. Budgets for creating E-commerce Platforms may be anywhere from tens of thousands to million dollars; budget for Fulfillment may be around 20-12 % of total revenue and budget for customer service is kept around 2-7% .
If the budget allows, retailers may opt for having Site Search costing around $2500-10,000 pm; Personalization/ Product Recommendations costing $1200-2500 pm; Ratings & Reviews costing $2000-3000 pm and Web Analytic costing $500 to 15,000 pm like facilities too.
Therefore, we see that budget process gives us enough freedom to choose our own way that suits to our business and targeted customer segment. Budget processes guide us to optimize the distribution of funds for various business activities. Because of the increased accountability, it becomes easier to improve the efforts and strategies according to the identified voids well before the loss occurring.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
RITE And LAN Services Form Strategic Alliance: Ecommerce Retailing
Minnesota’s Retail Information Technology Enterprises (RITE) and California’s LAN Services, LLC are joining hands to bring out a new application that would augment the use of “Gift Cards” with RMS integrated web stores.
The deal has not only commercial significance for both RITE and LAN Services, but it is also a breakthrough in optimizing the needs of retail customers shopping online. Rick Feuling, the president of RITE explained, “The RITE Gift application, an application that helps manage gift cards on Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS), is now integrated with an ecommerce platform thanks to the development team associated with 24SevenCart. With RITE Gift application integration to 24SevenCart online store system, a customer can redeem gift cards across multiple locations or from the web store. He/She can now conveniently pay for a purchase using their existing gift cards at the store or online. “
A retailer using Microsoft Dynamics RMS can accept gift cards at one location or across multiple locations. It makes it easy to create and redeem gift cards. For the shoppers, they can redeem it fully or partially whenever they make a purchase at the store. For retailers who otherwise pay the credit card service providers hefty fees for gift cards, this option will be a money-saver.
24SevenCart ecommerce solution helps retailers by taking their Microsoft Dynamic RMS based inventory online and establishing an RMS integrated ecommerce store. The RMS retailer can easily upload items or download orders to and from the online store quite easily.
“We have built a synergy in gift card processing for RMS users,” said Anil Jindal, CEO of LAN Services, “A Gift Card created at the store can now be redeemed at the physical store and/or at the retailer’s website. Moreover, the online shoppers can pay for their orders using either credit or gift card or both.”
LAN Services is known for their high-end applications for Dynamics RMS and POS 2009 and RITE is popular for their total computerized solutions for retail industry. Be it the RITE Gift and Biometrics or LANS’ 24SevenCart shopping cart, their products have been widely accepted by retailers. Now, with the integration of their major products, which would complement and enhance the performance of each other, online shoppers will have more options to exercise and ultimately, the retailers will succeed in reaping higher profits.
About RITE:
Headquartered in Sartell, Minnesota, Retail Information Technology Enterprises (RITE) provides complete Point of Sale solutions to retailers. From POS software and hardware through professional installation, training and support, RITE has everything to offer to run a successful retail business. For further details on RITE, please visit:
http://www.rite.us
About LAN Services:
A decade in the information technology market and with numerous satisfied customers, LAN Services, LLC (a Microsoft Certified Partner) has now an enviable list of worldwide clientele. Besides the 24SevenCart online store solution, LAN Services has also developed complete business models for e-retailing, point-of-sale solutions, Social networking, Price Comparison Engines, intranet portals and online marketing.
http://www.lanservices.com
The deal has not only commercial significance for both RITE and LAN Services, but it is also a breakthrough in optimizing the needs of retail customers shopping online. Rick Feuling, the president of RITE explained, “The RITE Gift application, an application that helps manage gift cards on Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS), is now integrated with an ecommerce platform thanks to the development team associated with 24SevenCart. With RITE Gift application integration to 24SevenCart online store system, a customer can redeem gift cards across multiple locations or from the web store. He/She can now conveniently pay for a purchase using their existing gift cards at the store or online. “
A retailer using Microsoft Dynamics RMS can accept gift cards at one location or across multiple locations. It makes it easy to create and redeem gift cards. For the shoppers, they can redeem it fully or partially whenever they make a purchase at the store. For retailers who otherwise pay the credit card service providers hefty fees for gift cards, this option will be a money-saver.
24SevenCart ecommerce solution helps retailers by taking their Microsoft Dynamic RMS based inventory online and establishing an RMS integrated ecommerce store. The RMS retailer can easily upload items or download orders to and from the online store quite easily.
“We have built a synergy in gift card processing for RMS users,” said Anil Jindal, CEO of LAN Services, “A Gift Card created at the store can now be redeemed at the physical store and/or at the retailer’s website. Moreover, the online shoppers can pay for their orders using either credit or gift card or both.”
LAN Services is known for their high-end applications for Dynamics RMS and POS 2009 and RITE is popular for their total computerized solutions for retail industry. Be it the RITE Gift and Biometrics or LANS’ 24SevenCart shopping cart, their products have been widely accepted by retailers. Now, with the integration of their major products, which would complement and enhance the performance of each other, online shoppers will have more options to exercise and ultimately, the retailers will succeed in reaping higher profits.
About RITE:
Headquartered in Sartell, Minnesota, Retail Information Technology Enterprises (RITE) provides complete Point of Sale solutions to retailers. From POS software and hardware through professional installation, training and support, RITE has everything to offer to run a successful retail business. For further details on RITE, please visit:
http://www.rite.us
About LAN Services:
A decade in the information technology market and with numerous satisfied customers, LAN Services, LLC (a Microsoft Certified Partner) has now an enviable list of worldwide clientele. Besides the 24SevenCart online store solution, LAN Services has also developed complete business models for e-retailing, point-of-sale solutions, Social networking, Price Comparison Engines, intranet portals and online marketing.
http://www.lanservices.com
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Get a Multi-Store RMS Integrated Shopping Cart Solution
Price, customization and features – are the three things to consider while selecting a multi-store RMS integrated shopping cart solution
Microsoft Retail Management system offers some amazing features to manage retail business. The RMS application, esp. the RMS headquarters offers features to manage multiple stores in an unprecedented way. A multi-store version of an RMS integrated shopping cart takes full advantage of these features of RMS HQ and gives the retailer a complete command over different stores both individually and in a collective way.
However, to select the best multi-store RMS integrated shopping cart, you need to start with care. Frankly, most of the RMS integrated shopping cart providers see an affluent customer in the retailer who wants the multi-store version and they conveniently ask for an enormous sum. So, the pricing of the solution should be reasonable with the additional prices for each individual store integration should be clearly defined.
Ask the vendor to give a real-time demo on multiple stores and check how the ordering system works. Ideally, multiple orders should get processed simultaneously in different stores and the web integrators should be developed in such way that the communication between the RMS integrated online store and every POS systems and the headquarter should be completely synchronized.
Finally, the multi-store RMS integrated shopping cart solution should be 100% customizable to support your business specific requirements. This is no mean a solution and being a retailer if you want a certain feature, the solution provider should be able to develop that at a reasonable cost. At the end of the day, the solution should be primarily what you want for your business rather what the service provider offers.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Top 10 Ways Make Your Online Customer Buy Twice
It is easy to sell first time, but equally difficult to sell every time. The biggest challenge for online retailer is not to get the site up and running; the most grueling part is to make your customer buy the second time. In fact, the success or failure of an online retail store depends on the how many first time customers return for the second time and subsequent times. The more returning customers you have, more likely you are to stay in the market and earn profits. Therefore, as an ecommerce storeowner, you must know the things that make your online customers visit and buy from your store on a regular basis.
Top 10 hacks that can make your customers comeback to your store are:
Easy user interface – Give an easy interface to find your products with proper filter, sorter and search options. If they find it easy to locate their products, your customers will avoid going elsewhere.
Offer coupons to your customers – If I am your customer and purchased once, you have made a profit. So, what’s wrong in shedding a portion of that profit to make me buy once again and make more profit? Offer coupons to your existing customers and create a need so that they buy again.
Offer discounts – The most lucrative thing associated with online shopping is low cost with discounts. Make your price competitive, give discount whenever and wherever you can and create a noise. Send mailers to all your customers or run promo campaigns.
Be interactive and friendly – Use social media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on) to be connected with your customers. Make your offers through these platforms. Use apps to make your products available through social media networks.
Get a toll-free customer care number – If possible, give 24 X 7-customer support through a toll-free number besides email and chat support.
Transparent business policies – Be clear in defining your shipping and return policies. Think from your customer perspective and if needed, add an FAQ section with the answers to the obvious questions.
Supports multiple payment options – Support all major credit cards in your region. If debit card or net banking is more popular, give these options too.
Sense of security – display authentic and reputed security seals from top service providers on store. Your online customers will talk about your security and this will create a trust.
Better technology, smarter look – Use the latest technologies and try to look smarter and sleeker than your competitors; your customers will always like it.
Keep an updated product list – Keep product-list of your online retail store updated and display the latest price and other information. If you want to display a product that is not in stock, Display the “Out of Stock” right at the beginning on the category page itself. No customer would like to start the buying process for an “Out of Stock” product.
These are some of tips (and not all!) that can make your store a ‘comfortable’ zone for your customers to return. Through your online store be friendly to your customers and give them better deals; nothing can entice your customer than a service with a smile.
Top 10 hacks that can make your customers comeback to your store are:
Easy user interface – Give an easy interface to find your products with proper filter, sorter and search options. If they find it easy to locate their products, your customers will avoid going elsewhere.
Offer coupons to your customers – If I am your customer and purchased once, you have made a profit. So, what’s wrong in shedding a portion of that profit to make me buy once again and make more profit? Offer coupons to your existing customers and create a need so that they buy again.
Offer discounts – The most lucrative thing associated with online shopping is low cost with discounts. Make your price competitive, give discount whenever and wherever you can and create a noise. Send mailers to all your customers or run promo campaigns.
Be interactive and friendly – Use social media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on) to be connected with your customers. Make your offers through these platforms. Use apps to make your products available through social media networks.
Get a toll-free customer care number – If possible, give 24 X 7-customer support through a toll-free number besides email and chat support.
Transparent business policies – Be clear in defining your shipping and return policies. Think from your customer perspective and if needed, add an FAQ section with the answers to the obvious questions.
Supports multiple payment options – Support all major credit cards in your region. If debit card or net banking is more popular, give these options too.
Sense of security – display authentic and reputed security seals from top service providers on store. Your online customers will talk about your security and this will create a trust.
Better technology, smarter look – Use the latest technologies and try to look smarter and sleeker than your competitors; your customers will always like it.
Keep an updated product list – Keep product-list of your online retail store updated and display the latest price and other information. If you want to display a product that is not in stock, Display the “Out of Stock” right at the beginning on the category page itself. No customer would like to start the buying process for an “Out of Stock” product.
These are some of tips (and not all!) that can make your store a ‘comfortable’ zone for your customers to return. Through your online store be friendly to your customers and give them better deals; nothing can entice your customer than a service with a smile.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Online Retailing: How to tune your store’s performance
For an online store, the buck doesn’t stop at selling the product only. Being an ecommerce storeowner, you need to monitor the performance of your online shopping cart constantly and that’s critically important! You must always be informed about the status your online business and have a clear idea about the performance. However, it is not so easy measuring the performance of your ecommerce shopping cart. There are so many parameters that you will have to consider; some of these are business or domain specific and some are more generalized in nature. Here we discuss a few aspects of performance monitoring of your online shopping cart:
Keep a tab on your profits
Your revenue depends on various things. You may run a PPC campaign on Google Adwords with a thick daily budget; you are bound to get better sales with bulging revenue. However, this is a return of an additional investment in terms of your PPC expenditure. Similarly, if you lower the price of your products below the market price, you will get sales and expanding revenue figure. Again, you are compromising with your profit margin to register better sales. So, it is important that you constantly monitor your profit PERCENTAGE over a definite period of time and regular plot it on a graph. A uniform upward growth means you are heading for a good time!
Distributed sales
The success of an online store business largely depends on your per customer sales. In other words, it is better to have five customers buying a certain quantities of products rather than one customer buying the same. If there are more individual buying sprees in your online store, better chances you have of a good exposure in the market place. So, it is important that you keep a tab on sales vs. no. of customers’ ratio.
Faster delivery, increased satisfaction
Your customers (and everybody else’s customers) love to get the shipment in time. If you are committing that the product will be delivered in 2 days, it should be 2 days. If he gets in on the 3rd day, the customer won’t blame the shipping company he will blame you! So, keep a tab on the delivery dates of each consignment. Ask the shipping company to send you a weekly or a fortnightly report of delivery of all consignments and find out the date difference between the order data and the date delivery of each order. If the difference is more than what you are promising for a certain order, find out why the shipment was delayed. If needed, call the customer and say ‘sorry’. If the instances of “missing the delivery date” are frequent, it’s time to change the shipping company.
Use Google’s monitoring and analysis tools
Google offers a plethora of tools to analyze and monitor the performance of your website. Google Analytics can help you to monitor your traffic on a daily basis with various filters and views. Similarly, Google Web Master Toolkit can help you to monitor your product-keywords and their overall positions on the web.
Success in running an ecommerce store depends on how regular you are in managing your necessary activities. It is not required to spend hours; it’s all about keeping a check on everything that relates to your customers!
Keep a tab on your profits
Your revenue depends on various things. You may run a PPC campaign on Google Adwords with a thick daily budget; you are bound to get better sales with bulging revenue. However, this is a return of an additional investment in terms of your PPC expenditure. Similarly, if you lower the price of your products below the market price, you will get sales and expanding revenue figure. Again, you are compromising with your profit margin to register better sales. So, it is important that you constantly monitor your profit PERCENTAGE over a definite period of time and regular plot it on a graph. A uniform upward growth means you are heading for a good time!
Distributed sales
The success of an online store business largely depends on your per customer sales. In other words, it is better to have five customers buying a certain quantities of products rather than one customer buying the same. If there are more individual buying sprees in your online store, better chances you have of a good exposure in the market place. So, it is important that you keep a tab on sales vs. no. of customers’ ratio.
Faster delivery, increased satisfaction
Your customers (and everybody else’s customers) love to get the shipment in time. If you are committing that the product will be delivered in 2 days, it should be 2 days. If he gets in on the 3rd day, the customer won’t blame the shipping company he will blame you! So, keep a tab on the delivery dates of each consignment. Ask the shipping company to send you a weekly or a fortnightly report of delivery of all consignments and find out the date difference between the order data and the date delivery of each order. If the difference is more than what you are promising for a certain order, find out why the shipment was delayed. If needed, call the customer and say ‘sorry’. If the instances of “missing the delivery date” are frequent, it’s time to change the shipping company.
Use Google’s monitoring and analysis tools
Google offers a plethora of tools to analyze and monitor the performance of your website. Google Analytics can help you to monitor your traffic on a daily basis with various filters and views. Similarly, Google Web Master Toolkit can help you to monitor your product-keywords and their overall positions on the web.
Success in running an ecommerce store depends on how regular you are in managing your necessary activities. It is not required to spend hours; it’s all about keeping a check on everything that relates to your customers!
Monday, August 30, 2010
LAN Services introduces New Winery-Specific Features for Online Wine Retail Store
Anything related to wine is special and needs extra-ordinary treatment. Like their customers’ aristocratic natures and ultra-sensitive taste buds, winery-owners often need specialized equipments and in modern days, customized software solution. LAN Services, the maker of 24SevenCart online shopping cart solution, is introducing a host of new features in the shopping cart system to meet certain specific needs online wine retailers.
“Our winery solution goes far beyond the regular process of integrating Microsoft Dynamics RMS with the online store. These new features are the fruits of our months of business analysis exercises to find the pain-areas in the online wine retailing business”, Mr. Anil Jindal, CEO of LAN Services pointed out. “We know how to present your wines, how a buyer searches, what you need to bring them back; we have covered everything in our winery solution”, he added.
The winery solution powered by 24SevenCart offers various wine industry-specific features. For example, the front-end website is equipped with a collection of filters and sort mechanisms that help the buyer find the exact wine based on price range, grape varietal or location. There are options to add additional filters or customize the sorting mechanism. The solution also offers an extensive module to manage wine club members’ portfolios, their purchases, friend list and so on. Since wine is considered an excellent gift for all occasions, 24sevencart powered winery store solution gives adequate option to manage and send gifts to multiple recipients too. Furthermore, Winelink (the application that integrates Microsoft RMS with the online store) synchronizes every customer’s details from the web store to the POS in the physical location.
Mr. Jindal also added, “The best part of our solution is - it’s truly affordable and 100% customizable; the winery solution can be integrated with various other third-party applications.” Some leading industry experts and marketers confirmed that the very flexibility in the entire solution makes it distinct from various other similar solutions available in the market today and this approach alone make a major difference when the retailer will sell his wines using 24SevenCart winery solution powered by Winelink.
For more info log on http://www.24sevencart.com/wine.htm
“Our winery solution goes far beyond the regular process of integrating Microsoft Dynamics RMS with the online store. These new features are the fruits of our months of business analysis exercises to find the pain-areas in the online wine retailing business”, Mr. Anil Jindal, CEO of LAN Services pointed out. “We know how to present your wines, how a buyer searches, what you need to bring them back; we have covered everything in our winery solution”, he added.
The winery solution powered by 24SevenCart offers various wine industry-specific features. For example, the front-end website is equipped with a collection of filters and sort mechanisms that help the buyer find the exact wine based on price range, grape varietal or location. There are options to add additional filters or customize the sorting mechanism. The solution also offers an extensive module to manage wine club members’ portfolios, their purchases, friend list and so on. Since wine is considered an excellent gift for all occasions, 24sevencart powered winery store solution gives adequate option to manage and send gifts to multiple recipients too. Furthermore, Winelink (the application that integrates Microsoft RMS with the online store) synchronizes every customer’s details from the web store to the POS in the physical location.
Mr. Jindal also added, “The best part of our solution is - it’s truly affordable and 100% customizable; the winery solution can be integrated with various other third-party applications.” Some leading industry experts and marketers confirmed that the very flexibility in the entire solution makes it distinct from various other similar solutions available in the market today and this approach alone make a major difference when the retailer will sell his wines using 24SevenCart winery solution powered by Winelink.
For more info log on http://www.24sevencart.com/wine.htm
Friday, August 27, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Role of Social Media in Promoting Your Online Store’s Products
A study by the leading business analyst group Nielsenwire has revealed some startling facts about the American web surfers. The study shows that 23% of an American’s time used online, is spent on social media websites. As for online search, they spent only 3.5% of their time. The growth in affinity for social media has increased by 43%, whereas time spent on emailing has declined by 29%. Instant messaging which was a must-do for everyone using the Internet even a few years back, has only 4% of share in the whole pie which is steadily declining.
These facts and others point to only one thing – social media rules; at least for the time being. Naturally, the most likely places where you can find people (read customers) are social media networks. Being an online retailer now is the time for you to focus on social media and make your presence felt there. Here are a few tips to make your online ecommerce store visible in social media:
1. It is important that your shopping cart software display icons that links to your accounts – put the icons for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. in one place and give proper visibility.
2. While socializing, people are mostly in joyous mood. Entice them by running games or lucky-draws; give away a few prizes (Why - use your least sold products!). This will give people a chance to visit your online store – even if they don’t play or win. Chances are that 4 out of 10 visitors will return.
3. Update your social media site regularly. This is very important, as your followers will always get the latest info; otherwise they would conveniently walk to the next ecommerce shopping store.
4. Don’t ‘push’ your products; rather try helping your followers. Don’t portray yourself always as a business person who is after profit. Instead, be a friend first, people will automatically follow. Do not go gaga about “what you have”, tell people “what you can give”.
5. Use shopping cart software that offers interface to link products directly to your favorite social media site. For example, there are ecommerce store providers who can help you to take your products directly into the Fan pages of your Facebook account. Your Facebook fans can see all the latest products from your online store from inside their Facebook accounts only.
Interacting with your fans/followers/customers is the key to spread your brand’s value in social media. Search engine optimization techniques are good for enhancing your search ranking. However, to be known in the social media front, you need to a have different strategy in place. You must give your followers the freedom to judge your products, comment on them and compare. On your part, you will need to analyze people’s views, follow trends, and implement changes and so on.
Social media networks have immense potentiality to expose your products sold through your ecommerce shopping store to new customers. Furthermore, it’s the perfect platform to help you retaining customers and build a sustainable relationship with new ones. So, when the social media rules, you can take your online ecommerce shopping cart to new heights, if you closely follow the rules of the game!
These facts and others point to only one thing – social media rules; at least for the time being. Naturally, the most likely places where you can find people (read customers) are social media networks. Being an online retailer now is the time for you to focus on social media and make your presence felt there. Here are a few tips to make your online ecommerce store visible in social media:
1. It is important that your shopping cart software display icons that links to your accounts – put the icons for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. in one place and give proper visibility.
2. While socializing, people are mostly in joyous mood. Entice them by running games or lucky-draws; give away a few prizes (Why - use your least sold products!). This will give people a chance to visit your online store – even if they don’t play or win. Chances are that 4 out of 10 visitors will return.
3. Update your social media site regularly. This is very important, as your followers will always get the latest info; otherwise they would conveniently walk to the next ecommerce shopping store.
4. Don’t ‘push’ your products; rather try helping your followers. Don’t portray yourself always as a business person who is after profit. Instead, be a friend first, people will automatically follow. Do not go gaga about “what you have”, tell people “what you can give”.
5. Use shopping cart software that offers interface to link products directly to your favorite social media site. For example, there are ecommerce store providers who can help you to take your products directly into the Fan pages of your Facebook account. Your Facebook fans can see all the latest products from your online store from inside their Facebook accounts only.
Interacting with your fans/followers/customers is the key to spread your brand’s value in social media. Search engine optimization techniques are good for enhancing your search ranking. However, to be known in the social media front, you need to a have different strategy in place. You must give your followers the freedom to judge your products, comment on them and compare. On your part, you will need to analyze people’s views, follow trends, and implement changes and so on.
Social media networks have immense potentiality to expose your products sold through your ecommerce shopping store to new customers. Furthermore, it’s the perfect platform to help you retaining customers and build a sustainable relationship with new ones. So, when the social media rules, you can take your online ecommerce shopping cart to new heights, if you closely follow the rules of the game!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Customer Care Process For Your Online Shopping Cart
The success of an online store depends on how effectively you can serve your customers. Online customers are more detail-oriented and they prefer to be treated more attentively. The reason is simple – the customer cannot ‘see’ you and your products in reality and to give them the ‘feeling’ that he gets when he visits your store physically, you need to be more specific in both pre and post sale scenarios. Naturally, an extravagant design, use of cutting-edge technologies, and a range of hotcake products – nothing can ensure your success for a longtime if your customer care facility is inadequate.
Gone are the days when customer care meant that your customer would call up to complain about a defect in the product and the lady sitting on the customer care desk would pick up the phone lazily, note down the complaint, give a complain number to the customer, hang up the phone and start polishing her nails or continue reading the trash novel. For today’s business, customer care plays the most pivotal role. Good customer care means you are emphasizing on customer’s delight and thereby winning loyalty, which is the most significant thing for an online shopping cart owner who often faces fierce competition to remain in the market.
The customer care process for your website powered by shopping cart software should consist of the following services:
• Email support – The turnaround time for an email should be ideally 12 hrs although the normal practice amongst online shopping cart owners is of 24 hrs.
• Chat support – Should cover at least the business hours of your country/locality (12 to 16 hrs a day at least)
• Phone support – Business hours normally; should employ additional manpower during shopping seasons
Please note that your customer care reps should be adequately trained to handle the queries and they should have proper product-knowledge and operational details of the shopping cart software. Besides, the customer care reps should also have the skill to build rapport with the customers and take the finer points of your products and services to them. Like your sales team, your customer care team should know about your customers’ demography, orientation, likings and so on. Most importantly, your customer care team members should have the linguistic abilities and communication skill to carry out their responsibilities successfully.
Besides these traditional customer support mechanisms, online retailers should also focus on social networking platforms which getting popular day by day. Social media platforms offer excellent ways to build communities loyal to your brand or product. At the same time, it offers a platform to advertise your product. Moreover, you can easily bring out new changes, offers or anything that connects with your customers on social media platforms and your customers will know this instantly. An account in Twitter or FaceBook has an enormous reach when it comes to sales through your online shopping cart. A small and targeted tweet or a short message send to your customers or a FAN page that describes the latest additions in your product-line is far more impacting than a roadside billboard in your locality.
Gone are the days when customer care meant that your customer would call up to complain about a defect in the product and the lady sitting on the customer care desk would pick up the phone lazily, note down the complaint, give a complain number to the customer, hang up the phone and start polishing her nails or continue reading the trash novel. For today’s business, customer care plays the most pivotal role. Good customer care means you are emphasizing on customer’s delight and thereby winning loyalty, which is the most significant thing for an online shopping cart owner who often faces fierce competition to remain in the market.
The customer care process for your website powered by shopping cart software should consist of the following services:
• Email support – The turnaround time for an email should be ideally 12 hrs although the normal practice amongst online shopping cart owners is of 24 hrs.
• Chat support – Should cover at least the business hours of your country/locality (12 to 16 hrs a day at least)
• Phone support – Business hours normally; should employ additional manpower during shopping seasons
Please note that your customer care reps should be adequately trained to handle the queries and they should have proper product-knowledge and operational details of the shopping cart software. Besides, the customer care reps should also have the skill to build rapport with the customers and take the finer points of your products and services to them. Like your sales team, your customer care team should know about your customers’ demography, orientation, likings and so on. Most importantly, your customer care team members should have the linguistic abilities and communication skill to carry out their responsibilities successfully.
Besides these traditional customer support mechanisms, online retailers should also focus on social networking platforms which getting popular day by day. Social media platforms offer excellent ways to build communities loyal to your brand or product. At the same time, it offers a platform to advertise your product. Moreover, you can easily bring out new changes, offers or anything that connects with your customers on social media platforms and your customers will know this instantly. An account in Twitter or FaceBook has an enormous reach when it comes to sales through your online shopping cart. A small and targeted tweet or a short message send to your customers or a FAN page that describes the latest additions in your product-line is far more impacting than a roadside billboard in your locality.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
100% Customizable eCommerce Store and Yet Solid As A Rock - That's 24SevenCart
Ecommerce is fascinating, profit making and a somewhat sophisticated business. But make no mistake – ecommerce is no child’s play! Running an ecommerce store involves a harmonized maneuvering of some technologically complex systems and that too - every time an order is placed in your store. From database-driven dynamic pages to payment process to shipping integration – processes are all intertwined and not so easy to understand in one go.
So, do you need to know everything about these technologies? Well – not at all. You can use most of the shopping carts without even knowing a line of web programming. However, when it comes to customizing the features or adding a new one – your lack of knowledge fails you miserably! You are now at the mercy of the shopping cart vendor who, in nine out of ten times would charge you exorbitantly.
This is where we are different. When we say we are 100% customizable, we literally mean it. With 24Sevencart, the buck doesn’t stop at some run on the mill features; we have a plethora of domain (read business-specific) specific features, which are sufficient to serve some unique needs of specific businesses. Moreover, if you need something extraordinary, a feature nowhere to be found but you need it badly for your business – we are here for you!
Our customization charges for any standalone or RMS-integrated online shopping cart is truly affordable and sometimes it’s FREE too! The truth is – we are not the no.1 in the business and it’s our continuous effort to match the top honchos in the trade. So, for us providing an online ecommerce store solution is a progressively elaborated process!
24SevenCart integrates with Microsoft Dynamics RMS and POS2009. That’s not all – if you are using any other third party application with Retail Management System, we can integrate that too! Above all, we have robust solutions for channel integration with a 24SevenCart-based online ecommerce store as well!
So, do you need to know everything about these technologies? Well – not at all. You can use most of the shopping carts without even knowing a line of web programming. However, when it comes to customizing the features or adding a new one – your lack of knowledge fails you miserably! You are now at the mercy of the shopping cart vendor who, in nine out of ten times would charge you exorbitantly.
This is where we are different. When we say we are 100% customizable, we literally mean it. With 24Sevencart, the buck doesn’t stop at some run on the mill features; we have a plethora of domain (read business-specific) specific features, which are sufficient to serve some unique needs of specific businesses. Moreover, if you need something extraordinary, a feature nowhere to be found but you need it badly for your business – we are here for you!
Our customization charges for any standalone or RMS-integrated online shopping cart is truly affordable and sometimes it’s FREE too! The truth is – we are not the no.1 in the business and it’s our continuous effort to match the top honchos in the trade. So, for us providing an online ecommerce store solution is a progressively elaborated process!
24SevenCart integrates with Microsoft Dynamics RMS and POS2009. That’s not all – if you are using any other third party application with Retail Management System, we can integrate that too! Above all, we have robust solutions for channel integration with a 24SevenCart-based online ecommerce store as well!
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Use Your Off Season - How To Get Ready For The Shopping Season ?
It’s ‘holiday’ season for most of the retailers; no long queue outside the store, no yelling customer over the phone for replacement, no capitalized email for delayed delivery – there is a lull everywhere these days. It’s the off-season – the same fanatic buyers simply not interested to buy anything these days! So, what do you plan to do these days? Watch soccer? Watch Wimbledon? Go fishing? Or do you have something else to do that would give you robust PROFITS during the coming shopping season? Well, it’s time to think seriously about your business!
The off-season gives you the time to assess your business capabilities and plan for the shopping season. In fact, most of the successful online retailers analyze, plan and act during this period; thus, just before the shopping starts, they launch something completely NEW and end up achieving ‘record-sales’ by the time the shopping season is over. Forget those game-changing marketing ideas of online giants, even a few simple and yet organized steps can do wonders for your business.
These are not everything that you should do during this off-season. Explore new business possibilities, ask your shopping cart vendor to help you and even more, if you don’t get a suitable answer, it’s high-time that you change your online shopping cart provider and go for a reliable before the shopping season begins.
The off-season gives you the time to assess your business capabilities and plan for the shopping season. In fact, most of the successful online retailers analyze, plan and act during this period; thus, just before the shopping starts, they launch something completely NEW and end up achieving ‘record-sales’ by the time the shopping season is over. Forget those game-changing marketing ideas of online giants, even a few simple and yet organized steps can do wonders for your business.
- Automate the online store: If you are using POS software like Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS Microsoft), it’s time that you integrate it with your online store. Integrating your Dynamics RMS or the POS software system with the online retail store will save more than 50% of your data-entry and order-processing time.
- Revamp the design: Do you compare the design of your website with your competitors? Does it look pale? Or is your competitor has a new design-element or a catchy animation that has the potentiality to woo more customers? Check out now! But please note two things – 1) You SHOULD never copy someone else’s design to build your online store and 2) Just for the sake of beautification never cut-down on navigational ease. Your online retail store should look unique, aesthetically designed and yet it should offer the complete freedom to find out the products comfortably.
- Work on your categories: Your product categories are like the departments or the ‘floors’ in your retail store and the sub-categories are like shelves or racks. So, arrange your categories as neatly as possible. If you are planning to add new products, add the categories and sub-categories. Experts say that the top selling categories or products should come first so that the customer’s eyes zeroes on those the moment he arrives at your online shopping cart.
- Recheck the pricing: Last year’s pricing structure may not work this year. Note down your best and worst performing products. Find out what others charging for the same product. Remember, a product that performed well last year may not necessarily do well in the next year. So, keep your pricing competitive.
- Plan your search-engine marketing activities: Search engine marketing is a long process and if you start it now, you will get the results right at the beginning of the holiday season.
- Rewrite the product description: Researchers say that the 70% of the reasons behind shopping cart abandonment are inadequate or incomplete product information and product details written in “sales language”. Your customers were not born yesterday; they know what they want to buy. So, find out the products whose descriptions are incomplete or unnecessarily exaggerated and make the changes.
These are not everything that you should do during this off-season. Explore new business possibilities, ask your shopping cart vendor to help you and even more, if you don’t get a suitable answer, it’s high-time that you change your online shopping cart provider and go for a reliable before the shopping season begins.
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