Select the Right Ecommerce Platform for your Retail Business

Published on by

Select the Right Ecommerce Platform for your Retail Business – What Commercial Model Should I Follow?

Electronic commerce has revolutionized the retail industry.

Customer’s are getting smarter. The technological outburst has enabled customers to make intelligent decisions. The traditional brick and mortar business model may not be enough to persuade and convert the customers into brand advocates.

Now straight to question, Are you into the retail business and is planning to venture into the virtual world? If yes, then there are few prerequisites that you need to look into.

There is a misconception among newbie entrepreneurs that ecommerce is an easy venture. If you are one among those who believe in the GBF (Grow Big Fast) idea, then let me demystify the thought at the earliest. The increasing competition has welcomed immense challenges. The virtual space is crammed with digital entities that offer almost similar products and services.

Preparing for the long run? Better look into these factors that could influence your digital success. Well let me deduce those factors to two,

Your online store and the strategies that you use to commercialize it.

Did it ever cross your mind that all your commercial model is synergized around your online store? The platform that you opt will play an important role in determining the success of your online expedition.

Looks Matter – Personality of your Online Store

We millennials judge a lot based on its appearance. Looks definitely matters. If a brand fails to be consistent with what it provides then there is a high chance people end up pursuing it wrong. With a plethora of online stores created every day it is important that you establish and maintain a unique digital identity. An identity/ personality that resonates with the expectation of your target customers.  

Let’s consider an example of a pre-owned luxury apparel store. After the introduction of eCommerce, the fashion industry has witnessed a steep climb in revenue. People find it more convenient to explore the opportunities available online and then make a purchase. As the revenue model for an online apparel store is different from that of a physical store, even the walk-ins find it more appealing to try it out in a physical store and then place an order of the same via online.

Following the same example, When you are planning to start an online fashion store (in this case a refurbished luxury apparel store) there are multiple factors that need to be addressed.

An Exuberant Design

First and foremost, look at the design of your eCommerce store. If you are planning to start your ecommerce venture with a pre-built platform provider (eg; Shopify, BigCommerce, Shopnix, Volusion, Weebly, etc) then make sure that you invest the right time to select the theme/ template that fits your need.

In case of a luxury apparel store, the target customers anticipate an exquisite experience. How do you expect a luxury lover to draw their credit card for USD 150 (say an average price for a pre owned luxury bag falls in that range) when the quality and experience of your online store is restricted. It’s that simple. Your website/ e-commerce store is your digital identity. Your storefront should be designed to inspire and accommodate the expectations of the passive surfer.

How your Store Design Could Extrapolate to a Nightmare

Often as part of your digital strategy, you may end up incentivising your target customers up front. Even before they have shown interest in your business. So the best opportunity for you to justify your investment is to make sure that the website will motivate the leads to engage and explore the options available. Higher the people explore your platform greater the chance for them to land on a spellbinding offer.

Customise your Online Store to Meet the Visitors Needs

Most entrepreneurs start with the idea of a speciality store and end up creating an online marketplace. The best example will be, that you planned to start an online boutique selling pre-owned luxury handbags for ladies and end by creating an online marketplace listing all kinds of products in the fashion industry. The challenge comes when people perceive it as a speciality store that sells luxury handbags and gets confused upon landing on the website.

The digital penetration has liberated us from a monopolistic market. Information about anything and everything is made available. The simplicity in starting an online business has compelled a lot of startups to go on the wild chase, offering more or less the same (even to an extend to emulate their competitor’s strategies). This leads to a surplus, the market seems to be flooded with a lot of similar products. You need to give your customers a reason to stay and engage with what you offer.

Your customers are looking for an instant solution. The average attention span of your customer is narrowed down to 10 – 20 sec (even lesser to my experience).

Too short a time span and too much to convey.

Keep in mind, it’s not that you will get a second chance to convince the customer (to the least not for free). Your online store needs to be optimised to meet the expectation of your customers.

For example; In the initial stage you decide to start an online boutique offering kids apparel. Later you recognized the demand and decided to convert your store to a full-fledged online apparel store catering to a wider audience. In such a case, when you offer multiple products you need to be sagacious in designing the online store. The virtual identity should be themed in such a way that it accommodates the demands and expectation of all customers. Don’t baffle the online visitor and make him click the red box on top of the browser.

If you curate your online store around a single theme (say a speciality store for kids) then it could bewilder the customer. The customer may be searching for men’s T-shirt and will get perplexed when he lands on a store that sells kids apparel. Make sure to structure and map the store front/ landing page. Don’t let you design compromise your revenue.

Customer Experience and Customer Satisfaction

In a fast-moving consumer world how you treat your customer matters. There is no excuse to compromising your customer experience. People don’t want to jump through multiple hoops and convert. They expect a simple process. As an eCommerce entrepreneur, you are obliged to provide the same. The best strategy is a customer centric strategy that delivers the best user experience and customer satisfaction.  

How to Select the Right Ecommerce Platform

As an entrepreneur who plans to start an online venture, you will get multiple options. Whether to start with a pre-built platform provider or to hire a website developer and create a custom online store. Both these options come with their own pros and cons.

As a newbie entrepreneur, one strategic decision that you need to make is to weigh the options available. Once pinnacle decision will be where to invest and how to justify the investment.

Don’t leap in and select what comes your way. You need to make an informed decision.

Start by understanding the requirement. As a start try to answer these;

  • What kind of an ecommerce store should I start?
  • How many products do I plan to list in the initial stage?
  • Is there a budget to hire and maintain a development team? etc.

With a handful of pre-built platforms out there you get the liberty to test and then decide which platform is the right fit for you. The cool part is that almost all the platform providers give you a 15 day trial period to test run their platform. You can use this time frame to understand the platform. Even compare the limitations and benefits the individual platform provides.

It’s a good strategy to identify the features individual platforms provide. At the same time never trade quality for an additional feature. Your platform is the base, a foundation upon which you will build your ecommerce entity.    

Look for reviews and testimonials. Explore their social media and identify how people perceive the brand. Talk to the platform provider (support team) and understand their commitment in helping you set up a compelling virtual store.

Word of caution:- Analyze every option and then make a decision.

Is Drop-Shipping the Right Business Model

Drop shipping has opened and an amazing business opportunity for entrepreneurs. With this business model, you only need to invest the least possible. Woo Ya. In drop shipping, you don’t own or manage the inventory. Instead, you will enter into a contractual agreement with a wholesaler/ manufacturer/ dealer, etc and will start commercializing their product. Whenever a sale happens through your website you will notify the wholesaler/ dealer/ manufacturer, etc and they will fulfil the order.

Allow me to explain it with an example.

Tim starts an ecommerce website. Tim then reaches to Mike (who runs a startup in the pre owned apparel industry). Tim and Mike agree for drop shipping opportunity. Tim lists Mike’s product on his website. Janet (who was searching online for refurbished louis vuitton handbag) happens to notice Tim’s website. The offer seems intimidating that Janet places and order online. Tim receives the order request and forwards the same to Mike. Mike then makes sure that the order is fulfilled at the earliest possible.

During the process, Tim was able to earn a commission as the sale happened through his website. Mike is happy that he was able to sell a product. Janet got the handbag he was searching for, that too at a lucrative price.

Marketing Strategies to Promote your Online Store

It’s important that you have the right set of strategies to promote your eCommerce business. Marketing/ advertising plays an important role in determining the success of your online venture. To compete in a dynamic world you need to come up with radical ideas and innovative strategies that help position your brand among target customers.

Few ecommerce marketing strategies that you could look into          

Social Media Marketing

Social media has become one the most favourite hotspot for online dwellers. Let’s narrow down the importance of social media to a single question. On an average how much time do you spend on social media every day?  

What about a number? 135 minutes per day. Yes! Stats published on Statista.com suggests that the daily social media usage of global internet users amounts to this number. Social media has become a platform for brands to build a reputation among their target customers. This channel enables brands to interact, share and build a strong relationship with customers.  

There are countless online stores that have used this channel to effectively position their brand proposition among the audience.

Over time the concept of social media has changed. It’s no longer a platform for brands to just broadcast their offers and services. Rather an effective channel to address people’s concerns and offer practical solutions.

Google Ads

As Google is one of the top search engines in the world it’s important that brands look into this opportunity. Google ads help drive instant traffic to your eCommerce store.

With Google Ads, you get an opportunity to drive a highly targeted audience to your online store. Through Google ads, you get multiple campaigns options

  • Search Ads
  • Product Listing Ads
  • Retargeting and Dynamic Retargeting

Push Marketing

Push marketing strategies are widely deployed by business entities to reach out to prospects and nurture them to paying customers. Few channels that are widely used for push marketing are;

  • WhatsApp
  • Email
  • SMS

Channels like emails when used intelligently could help increase your conversion that too with the least investment. Stats published by CampaignMonitor.com clearly indicates that email marketing could result in impressive results $44 for every $1 invested.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is quite effective and it allows you to leverage the authority of an influencer. Think about this way, you are a hardcore fan of celebrity X, and celebrity X shares a post featuring a product. Imagine the kind of relevance/ domain authority it could attract.

It’s not that you should look into influencers who are recognized at a global scale. You can start small. If you could find a local celebrity (If you are selling apparels then it could be anyone in the fashion industry) then you could start from there. The local celebrity will be having a set of fan followers who closely follow his/her digital profiles and social accounts. Scouting the realm in search for novel fashion trends and ideas.

 

Parting Note:- With a steep climb in digital commerce its critical that you reflect a robust online presence. The strategies you frame and the decisions you make in selecting the right ecommerce platform provider along with your marketing strategies could determine the success of your online venture. Have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve. The best awaits you, don’t hesitate to take the opportunity.

Cutting Costs as a Home Business Owner

Published on by

As a home business owner, one of the most important considerations to make is that of saving money. When your business is your home and vice versa, it’s important to keep everything as well ordered as possible; including finances. Saving money in these circumstances can be quite difficult, especially if you run a busy household as well, but with the right attitude to your home business, it is achievable. It’s as much about smarter choices as it is about cheaper ones.

Here are a few great ways to make sure that your costs as a home business don’t skyrocket:

Ditch Expensive Phone Systems

Traditionally, businesses have an extensive business phone system – usually connected to a landline. These can be quite expensive – both to procure and keep up. Looking for an alternative, then, is often more a case of common sense rather than anything else. There are plenty of alternatives which you can find in order to suit your needs as a home business owner.

Mobile phones, for example, can be much cheaper and portable (obviously). As well as the fact that you can easily connect them to a virtual landline; saving you money and bringing your business into the 21st century with a definitive thump. It’s exactly as it sounds, a landline number without the hassle of renting a line or the other extortionate fees that come with that. And you never have to miss a call again as many of the services work to connect with you wherever you are in the world.

Ultimately, where you choose to go virtual or just ditch the landline altogether, there are plenty of options for both. And either way, you will be saving your home business a lot of money.

Paperless Business

Not only is a lot of paper bad for the environment, but it’s also bad for your wallet. The expense of paper and ink mounts up, slowly but surely, leaving you with a printer shaped hole in your finances. And a majority of the time – if we’re being honest – the printing we do is fairly unnecessary. That’s why going paperless probably wouldn’t be as difficult as we might expect.

In fact, if you turn your invoice system digital, fill in all of your most important paperwork on the computer and forego printing off almost anything, you may be shocked by how much money you genuinely save!

Start Marketing Online

Have you tried to market your business in a traditional way? An ad in the newspaper, your face on the side of the bus, that kind of thing? If so, chances are you are wasting a lot of money.

If you want to see your business thrive in the modern age then there’s one way to do it; digital marketing. With more people than ever before spending a good portion of their time online, reaching these people via digital marketing has become more important than ever. Through a mixture of search, social and email marketing it perfectly possible to build your business to dizzying heights. And, best of all, you can potentially do so without spending a penny in the beginning.

Yes, the fact is that as a home business DIY marketing is very achievable – and, better yet, very affordable. Set to learning the basics of SEO for your site, start scheduling posts on social media and look into audience metrics, then try to apply all of this. Sometimes even the smallest of tweaks can have a big impact in terms of marketing. So, give it a go.

Conclusions

Overall, saving money as a home business isn’t necessarily difficult – it just takes a lot of self-budgeting and planning. Remember you are trying to save money, though, not put your business on a backfoot. So don’t prevent yourself from spending money on necessary things, just on anything that isn’t strictly a benefit to your business.

 

Benefits of Getting Government Contracts | RFP Bid Sites

Published on by

Government organizations inspire the services of suppliers across the country for continuous authoritative work. Anchoring one of these agreements can enable your organization to develop immensely. Presently, it doesn’t bode well for each organization to offer on contract openings. You need to have a sensible perspective on your present tasks and what you can practically offer. There are many RFP bid sites which can help you for finding the government contracts RFPGurus is one of the best RFP search engine.

Yet, in the event that you are hoping to venture into new domains, these agreements can be your answer. While it takes time and cash to make careful offers, they’re regularly certainly justified regardless of the assets. Here are the advantages of acquiring government contracts.

 

Payment Consistency

Government contracts enable organizations to rely upon accepting consistent month to month income. This makes it significantly less demanding to grow a business, as it enables your staff to contract and spending all the more properly. Likewise, it’s profitable to have this progressing work process amid slower long stretches of business. Regularly, it takes up to 30 days to get instalment for your finished tasks. Nonetheless, you know you can depend on this income every month, as it’s originating from a confided in the source.

 

Company Value

 

The advantages of keeping up a government contract can last notwithstanding when you’re prepared to offer. By acquiring this relentless work process, you’re expanding your organization’s esteem. This will be exceptionally gainful very much into your future. RFP bid sites are giving you government contracts as well as other contracts.

 

On the off chance that you choose to offer, you’re ready to pass an agreement on to new purchasers. In addition to the fact that this makes offering more favorable, it helps with getting advances and credit extensions. Loan specialists will consider you to be a substantially more dependable competitor with this on your application.

 

Discover More Opportunities

 

Having a government organization in your customer portfolio will open up numerous entryways for you. Future customers will discover you significantly more alluring and they will increase larger amounts of trust in your organization. RFP bid sites are able to discover more opportunities all over the world.

Government contracts can likewise build your systems administration potential. Will probably create associations with individuals who can lead you to lucrative chances. You can even request that your customer give out referrals to other government organizations!

 

 Points of interest for Female-and Minority-Owned Companies

 

Is the proprietor of your organization either a female or a minority? Assuming this is the case, they can beat a genuinely preferred standpoint for getting an agreement. The administration endeavour’s to grant a specific measure of government dollars to both of these gatherings every year. Female-claimed organizations must get somewhere around 5% of government contract dollars every year. Minority proprietors, then again, ought to get no less than 25% of the cash. Likewise, a specific measure of government dollars is allocated to private ventures every year.

 

Conclusion

In case you’re hoping to build your organization’s esteem, government contracts might be the course to go. Notwithstanding, you should have the capacity to deliver a set measure of yield every month and always meet due dates.

 

For more information, you can visit: RFP Bidding sites