Have a website built with the help of Magento eCommerce development company? Are you into B2B eCommerce? This article is for you to help you boost sales.

But first, what is B2B eCommerce? When a business provides or takes a service from another business, it is a B2B eCommerce. The parties involved in the transaction are both businesses. Yes, it is that simple.

Do you know the company with B2B eCommerce is opting for the Magento B2B marketplace? Let’s understand everything about the Marketplace, its benefits, and from where to get it built.

Understand B2B eCommerce Marketplace

You have seen many B2C marketplaces, like Etsy or Amazon. However, it is predicted by the end of 2023, 70% of eCommerce websites will have a B2B marketplace. What is the B2B marketplace, and how it helps?

The B2B marketplace brings different businesses (seller and buyer) together to perform the transactions. The marketplace can have a single industry product or a wide variety of products from various sellers.

With the B2B eCommerce marketplace, it will be easier for a business to sell its products to potential buyers. SMEs (small-medium enterprises) often look for the business-to-business marketplace for both buying and selling.

Benefits of B2B marketplace

• Streamlined procurement workflows
• The global pool of sellers and buyers
• Easy uploading and managing product catalog
• Effortless management and tracking of orders
• Lower order processing costs

Types of B2B eCommerce Marketplace:

Based on product types

Vertical: A business transacting products of one category is a vertical B2B marketplace. Here, you will find only one type of product or service.

Horizontal: A marketplace that provides shoppers with a wide variety of products having the same properties or from the same industry is a horizontal b2b marketplace.

Global: The best example of a global business-to-business marketplace is Amazon business. The global marketplace provides a broad range of products from different industries and categories. It is creating an ecosystem that will bring sellers and buyers with both high and lower needs together.

Based on the business model

Products: A product-based marketplace platform connects businesses for the fulfillment of product supply. It will have sellers and buyers dealing with different products.

Services: The name itself suggests, that a service-based marketplace brings together businesses providing services.

Hybrid: A Hybrid marketplace is for both B2B, B2C, and C2C transactions. It includes more than one type of business model selling products or providing services.

How Magento B2B Marketplace benefits every intent?

With the trending shift to the marketplace, don’t let your business left aside. Marketplace provides numerous benefits to leverage. A Magento development company will help you in creating a b2b marketplace.

Builds Brand Presence

Physical store shutdowns at the end of the day, but a marketplace will operate 24/7 and 365 days per year. Hence, your brand will be visible to everyone at any time. You might think getting a B2B marketplace is costly but look at the brighter side. With the marketplace, there will be cost deduction on marketing actions, inventory management, and warehouse system, as it will operate everything.

Diverse customer base

With the Magento B2B marketplace, you can operate the eCommerce store in different countries and have a diversified customer base. Your products and services will be available to international companies as well (if you wish to). It will be more comfortable for sellers, manufacturers, and even distributors to attract a wide range of audiences or buyers for the provided products and services.

Optimize customer relationship

Who said you can’t build a customer relationship by online selling? Magento B2B marketplace allows you to chat with the customers and build a long-term business relationship.

As mentioned in the above section, a business-to-business marketplace is an ecosystem that gathers vendors and purchasers to make a fruitful transaction. You already know, marketplace runs 24/7, so you can provide professional help to the customer and create a long-lasting business relationship.

All these factors will boost your sales for a good reason. Along with that, you will also have another source of income as well from the marketplace. How? You can generate profits from commissions, subscriptions, advertising fees, etc.

Why choose Perception System for Magento B2B Marketplace?

Perception System provides Magento web development services and is one of the best among the others. It is building Magento marketplaces with expertise for the past 7-years. To date, they have created a dream project for every brand that is now earning ample profit with a boost in sales.

The ROI on the marketplace is significant. So, get a one for your business too, spike up the sales, and earn maximum profit out of it.

The post Why B2Bs Create Marketplaces to Boost Sales in Magento? appeared first on Perception System.

Online shopping businesses are expanding at a rapid pace. Believe it or not, as of 2021, there are around 24 M eCommerce websites running all over the globe. Even small businesses are opting to enhance their digital presence for their business.

With so much competition, clashes were bound to happen between eCommerce website development platforms. There’s a tough competition going on between Drupal Commerce (2018) and Magento (2008).

Drupal Commerce

Drupal Commerce is a newly launched open-source eCommerce software, which was once known for its content management system. There are 40 thousand Drupal Commerce-developed eCommerce websites, of which 10 thousand websites are live at the moment.

According to BuiltWith, there’s a 0.11% share of Drupal Commerce websites among the top 1 million eCommerce websites.

FYI: Opt for the best drupal web development company to get your eCommerce website properly built and give it a head start.

Magento

Even a fresher in the web development industry knows about Magento. It is a PHP-written eCommerce platform specifically designed for developing eCommerce websites by Adobe. It can carry out inventory management and marketing. There are more than 7 lakh websites created with Magento, of which 2 lakh websites are live.

According to BuiltWith, among the top 1 million eCommerce websites, 1.06% are developed using Magento.

FYI: Almost every eCommerce website built with Magento development company has excellent inventory management, customizability, and scalability.

So, you have already brushed up on the platform knowledge and their statistics. Moving ahead with our actual topic:

Drupal Commerce vs Magento 2

Features

Knowing features help you decide which eCommerce platform to choose as per your requirement. So, have a look:

Drupal Commerce Features

• Content Management System
• Security
• Accessibility
• Multilingual
• Personalization
• Marketing Automation

Magento 2 Features

• Site Management
• SEO
• Catalog Management
• Product Browsing
• International Support
• Order Management
• Customer Accounts
• Customer Support
• Checkout, Payment, and Shipping

Ease of use

None of the platforms are easy to use. You will need highly skilled developers to launch the website. It can be easy if you are a developer yourself.

Both Drupal commerce and Magento 2 have extensive coding needs, so hiring a team to develop and configure the website is beneficial.

The configuration on both platforms requires going through the user guide in detail to understand its working. As both are open-source platforms, the developer has access to the original PHP code, which he/she can customize as per the client’s requirement.

Hosting

As for hosting, the websites created with Drupal and Magento need a high productive server that can sustain high traffic and heavy content. For Drupal, you must select the host with an increased PHP limit as eCommerce websites require more horsepower.

The hosting in Magento is a bit simple as it can be hosted in the cloud, on-site, or via a third party. If you want to launch and run the website entirely on Magento, opt for Magento Commerce Cloud for hosting.

Theme Selection

In Drupal Commerce, you get around 3000 themes that are contributed by other users as well. However, Magento has only 11 paid and 6 free themes across all its editions. The paid themes on Magento can vary from $30 to $499. Choose wisely!

SEO

The main component of the website is SEO itself. You can never neglect the power of SEO. It can take your website higher in rankings and generate more leads.

Drupal Commerce uses the Drupal module to perform SEO activities. You can even integrate Google Analytics, meta-tag systems, robots.txt generators, etc.

In Magento, you can do the proper technical SEO. It is flexible enough to customize plug-ins. The Magento 2 update builds SEO tools into the eCommerce website.

Extensions & Apps

You can download extensions & Apps of Drupal Commerce from the respective directory on the website. Oh, yes! It provides 40,000+ extensions and modules.

As for Magento, it offers 3,500+ extensions that you can find on the marketplace.

Payment Options

You can manage payments and orders with the help of 114 different payment providers. Most of them are well-known providers like Amazon Pay, PayPal, Stripe, etc.

However, Magento supports 12 multi-currency payment gateways that are secure and active worldwide.

It also provides offline payment options, such as COD (cash on delivery), bank transfer, or payment on account.

Content Management

While creating a website, you will need CMS to maintain the web content, edit, create, and publish digital content on the website without much coding. You already know which platform is known for its CMS software.

Drupal Commerce is a combination of eCommerce capabilities and a Drupal content management system. Drupal is known for its CMS, so it will be easy for you to integrate payment streams and domain publicity into content channels.

Magento is a specific eCommerce website development platform, so there’s a lack of proper CMS. However, now it has a dedicated CMS module, which has block-based post-building and drag-and-drop functionality.

Enterprise Level Security & Scalability

Both Magento 2 and Drupal Commerce are ideal from the viewpoint of security and scalability. How? Read below:

Drupal Commerce is one of the trusted platforms for being the most secure eCommerce platform. Its recent security updates protect websites from injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and cross-site request forgeries.

Magento 1 was vulnerable to DDoS attacks, which caused issues in protecting customer’s data. However, the Magento 2 update has many built-in security measures. It also releases the security patch update regularly.

As said, both Drupal Commerce and Magento 2 are highly scalable. All you need to do is integrate the module and a Drupal Plugin API to add new functionality and resources to the Drupal Commerce-developed website.

On Magento 2 website, you can add up to 250,000 product catalogs with multiple statistics without sacrificing the website’s performance.

Headless Commerce Approach

For the headless commerce approach, you need to integrate Magento 2 and Drupal 8 in website development. How will it work? The user will see the product page as a Magento store, i.e., the front-end will run on Magento. On the other hand, Drupal will handle content from the back-end, including blogs, vlogs, and product descriptions.

With the headless commerce approach, you might create one of the best eCommerce websites with almost zero disadvantages.

Affordable solution

As said above, you will need to hire a team for both platforms. So, keep in mind the expenses to get the website live and running. Still, few points make one of the platforms affordable.

As Drupal eCommerce is a developer-oriented platform, the team will have free access to the code, reducing technical costs. However, you will have to pay for third-party applications and extensions.

Magento has three versions including, open-source, Magento Commerce, and Magento Cloud Edition. Among them, the Magento open source edition is free. However, you will have to pay for the latter two.

Don’t worry! You won’t have to install many third-party extensions and applications in Magento 2-developed websites.

Conclusion

For creating a website with the integration of Drupal and Magento, you will have to go with the company providing both Drupal web development services and Magento web development services.

Both platforms have their benefits. Never select an eCommerce platform based on cost. Consider the niche of your business as both platforms have niche-specific top websites.

The post Drupal Commerce vs Magento 2: Choose the Best One for Your Business appeared first on Perception System.

85% of smartphone users around the world prefer to use mobile applications for e-commerce rather than using a website. E-commerce mobile applications have been the revolution in the retail industry. Although, the sad news is that there are actually very few retailers who use a mobile application for their e-commerce business. To stand out from the competition all you need to do is to build an e-commerce application for your business.

Taking the example of various giants around the world like Amazon, Domino’s Pizza, Mc Donald’s, and even Starbucks we could see that m-commerce or an e-commerce application has actually contributed to smoothening the customer journey for these big companies. But, that does not mean that opportunities are limited in this domain due to huge competition from globally renowned companies.

How to build a successful e-commerce mobile application?

The process of building an e-commerce mobile application is very much similar to cooking food. Surprised right? But, you heard it correct just as food requires the right ingredients mixed in the right quantity and cooked at the right temperature to be delicious a mobile application requires ingredients like a user-friendly design, strong interface, no errors, and many other things. If all these ingredients are mixed in the right quantity then your successful e-commerce mobile application is ready to launch!

If you do not know how to code your mobile application then there are various e-commerce development companies in the USA and an android app development company that could create the e-commerce mobile application for your business according to your requirements.

Now, let us look at the process of building a mobile application for your e-commerce business.

Decide the goals for building your mobile application

In the e-commerce mobile application development process it is very important to define your measurement of success of a web application. This could be based on various parameters like lead generation, increasing sales, customer support service enhancement or simply brand awareness and traffic generation. If you are quick enough to figure out the KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) of your mobile application then you can guide your android and iOS app development company or team accordingly.

Understand your target audience by conducting research

As soon as you decide your goal to develop your company’s or business’s mobile application you can the next step you need to do is to understand your target audience. It will help you customize your app in accordance with the requirements of your target audience or primarily app users. There are various ways to figure it out like age, gender, personal interests, geographical location, and sometimes even important events like birthdays or anniversaries.

Select your app development platform and technology

Now that you have clarification of your mobile app development goals for your e-commerce business it is recommended that you select an app development platform and technology that you shall use to develop your e-commerce mobile app. You can either opt-in for a progressive web application development or native web application development for your e-commerce mobile app. If you want an all-platform app then you can go for progressive web application development but for a single-platform app native, web application development is necessary.

Create a simple web design

User-interface (UI) and web design is the first thing that your customers observe when they enter your mobile application. It allows them to navigate, explore your product categories and search for products that they need. One very important thing that you should keep in mind is that the screens of mobile devices are extremely short and that is why it can sometimes be difficult to include a lot of your e-commerce elements in the same.

List all your app requirements

After you have designed and document your e-commerce mobile application it is now time to list out your requirements from your mobile application. This could be done by either discussing your requirements about features and functionalities with your app development team or your android development company. Once, you are ready with defining your features and functionalities there are other things that you need to work upon which are your budget and your digital marketing for your app.

Decide your app development budget

Now, that all ingredients are ready and you want to cook the dish it is time to make the dish. For making your app successful there are two things that you need to consider i.e. budget and development. You clearly do not know how much time, money, and resources you would need for your app. For this, you can get in touch with an eCommerce development company in the USA or an android development company for more guidance.

Conduct digital marketing for your app

The final aspect of your app development process is marketing. You might have the world’s best e-commerce app but if you do not market it you would not get enough downloads for your application. That’s where marketing comes into the picture, spare enough time to develop a marketing strategy for your business and channelize all your efforts towards digital marketing so that your app could turn out to be a success.

Some final words…

If you are looking for e-commerce solutions then you can try the best e-commerce development company in the USA Perception Systems. We are an android application development company that is internationally renowned and provide e-commerce mobile app development solutions for all of our clients. For more information get in touch with our dedicated mobile app development team at Perception Systems.

The post How to Build a Successful E-Commerce Mobile App? appeared first on Perception System.

Let’s imagine you have started a business, you want to expand it that is why you move towards adopting Digital Marketing strategies to take your brand online. At an advanced level, that strategy would include developing an E-Commerce website for your business which would complement the online customer journey for your business. To cater to this rising demand, several E-Commerce development companies in the USA and around the world have come into existence.

However, building an E-Commerce presence for your business is not easy as it seems the process involves multiple steps and is very extensive. The daunting task here is to choose the right framework to design your E-Commerce platform. Here we try to understand the 4 most popular E-Commerce frameworks Magento, Shopify, Woo Commerce, and Drupal Commerce in detail to find out which framework suits your business the most.

1) Magento

Magento, an open-source E-Commerce platform developed by Varien Inc. was launched in March 2008. It is written in PHP language, includes the Zend framework, and uses the MYSQL system for database management. Magento is the most suited E-Commerce platform for small and large businesses. You can start by adding 10 products to your website to an upper limit of 10,000 products.

Pros

• User-friendly customization process for your E-Commerce store, you can do almost anything with your website while using Magento.
• Conducting your SEO using Magento offers you a higher extension and ranking on the Google search results page.
• Online merchants using it have entire control over the code, design, functionality, appearance, and content of the website.

Cons

• You require deep knowledge of coding and computer programming to get your hands on the Magento platform.
• It is an open-source platform but your website hosting will need to be done from other platforms.
• As there are no themes for your website, you will need custom-developed themes either made from scratch by yourself or by third-party developers.

2) Shopify

Shopify was founded in 2004 as an online E-Commerce store development platform. With a global presence, Shopify can be used to develop your website as well as to use the platforms to sell, ship, and accept payments for your online products. It is a SAAS (software as a service) platform as well as a hosting website. Shopify also provides its own payment gateway and is ideal therefore proves to be a great support for brands with physical stores.

Pros

• This platform has 24*7 customer service available by live chats, email, or even phone.
• Shopify consists of 100+ mobile-friendly storefront themes that are pre-designed and easy to navigate across.
• More than 25 different types of payment gateways to provide multiple payment options to your customer, including cryptocurrencies. Yes, Shopify supports accepting payment in Bitcoins or Ethers or even DogeCoins!

Cons

• Although there are more than 100 themes available for the end-user only 10 themes can be accessed free of cost, the rest are paid.
• Unlike other platforms, Shopify charges transaction fees for every sale made through its dedicated payments gateway.
• Shopify only has three different product attributes which do not help in creating a diverse product portfolio.

3) Woo Commerce

WordPress was primarily developed as a blogging platform, but with time it has now become the CMS (Content Management Services) that could be used to develop several websites. It has a wide range of available plugins or E-Commerce platforms, the most popular among them being Woo Commerce. It is such an easy-to-use, simple management, and user-friendly platform that it demands no or very little technical knowledge and expertise to use it.

Pros

• Dozens of website themes to choose from specially designed, and developed to support websites using the Woo Commerce platform.
• Unlimited customization is available. You can create an entire store on this platform with its own personal identity.
• SEO-friendly website which allows you to keep an eye on the rankings, performance, metadata along with well-sorted reports according to their category.

Cons

• This platform lacks proper customer support.
• It cannot be used on websites that do not use WordPress for their content management.
• The base program is free to use but add – ons and extensions can prove to be very costly especially for small and local businesses.

4) Drupal Commerce

Drupal Commerce is a fast and robust CMS platform that has now updated itself to be a user-friendly E-Commerce platform. It gained popularity for its built-in generation tool which has since then made it one of the most desired CMS platforms among designers and developers. It is the best option for an organization that aims to create a trading website from the scratch.

Pros

• The content management system allows you to re-use the same type of content for different types of web pages.
• The platform is complete in itself, therefore you do not need to install add – ons, extensions, or modules for any type of E-Commerce website.
• Allows managing users from the control – panel which enables you to create access points, user groups and easily edit user permissions.

Cons

• The development activities on Drupal Commerce might be difficult to conduct for freshers-level developers.
• It has a complex understand user – interface, and does not have an intuitive CMS which sometimes makes it difficult to master.
• Drupal has very high system – requirements therefore, before switching on to Drupal be prepared for higher hosting charges and forget free or cheap hosting facilities.

Conclusion

There is no doubt about it that given the popularity of it Shopify is one of the most desired E-Commerce platforms you can use to develop your businesses’ E-Commerce website for guaranteeing an overall user shopping experience. Then comes Magento with its unique features but could be quite tricky on some occasions. Therefore, you need to hire a Magento development company to develop a Magento-based E-Commerce website for your business.

If you’re looking for a Magento development company get in touch with one of our advisors today at Perception Systems who have industry-leading expertise in creating Magento-based websites.

The post Magento vs Shopify vs WooCommerce vs Drupal Commerce – Which one is Better for your Business? appeared first on Perception System.

So, you might have created web design layouts on Photoshop and have image files that summarize every aspect of your product page as per your desire. Supposedly you hear about the benefits of Shopify and decide to convert your PSD designs to Shopify templates.

Well if so, you have made the right desicion? Refer to this guide carefully where we will help you get your PSD designs converted into Shopify templates with a few simple steps.

Before starting with PSD conversion process, let’s give light to Shopify and know what exactly it is. Shopify is one of the best eCommerce solutions for those businesses, who are looking to setup online stores.It delivers ready-to-go product pages, inventory management, shopping carts, wish lists, product comments, etc. that lessen the problem related to web development task. The best thing is it charges a small monthly fee.

Considering the design, the interface is customizable that can easily compatible with any brands. Moreover, site also offers standard, design templates for free to newbie to start their business. Those people, who want to make their store stand out from others, can obtain a custom HTML/CSS design.

Simple and motivating, Shopify is the best way if you want to do the business, but lack the tools. It is a platform with all the necessary features for running a successful business. It works with both the eCommerce and point of sales sides of the process. It enables you to start from scratch without being an expert. It is a hosted solution which means you need to involve less and didn’t worry about buying web hosting or installing software. If you like to avoid plugins, Shopify is the thing for you. Moreover, it offers many apps and customizable themes, so you have a lot of space for freedom and creativity.

Furthermore, it has a long list of clients like GitHub, GE, Tesla, Britannica, CrossFit and many others confirming its reliability. There are over 800,000 stores powered by Shopify. Shopify has paid more than $850,000 to 300+ ethical hackers for resolving security issues.

Besides, here are some convincing facts for you for converting PSD into Shopify

• The revenue from merchant services increased from 20% to 50%, from 2013 to 2016 respectively.
• Last year Shopify’s paying customers grew 55% from the previous year.
• There is a 126% average year-over-year growth for Shopify Plus merchants.
• According to  Shopify’s financial report, its total revenue in the first quarter of 2019 was $320.5 million, a 50% increase from the first quarter of 2018.

If you have made up your mind for Shopify, you need to follow these steps to transform your PSD. But firstly, you have to first sign up for a free Shopify account.

Things to Require For Starting PSD to Shopify Conversion Process

Let us have a look at some instructions that show how to convert your PSD design into a fully functional coded Shopify page. For that, you have to first sign up for a free Shopify account.

– Knowledge about CSS/HTML
– PhotoShop design for your page, PhotoShop skills and a working copy of the program.
– A Shopify account and knowledge about customization settings.

Steps to Follow for Converting PSD to Shopify

After opening the Shopify account, you need to follow the below steps.

Set up a development store

After creating your Shopify Partner Account, navigate to the “Development stores” tab in your dashboard and click “Create a development store” button.

Open Your PSD document Design in PhotoShop and Use the Slice Tool.

First of all, you have to slice your PSD design into small pieces using the slice ToolSlice tool. Now, you have to separate plan into smaller division section like “header,” “footer” and “sidebar” to make coding easier and customizable. You have to draw a rectangle around the elements that you want to separate.

Save the files as images (JPEG, JPG.)

In the next step, you have to save the image by choosing File, Save for Web, and choose the highest resolution. After that, you have to keep in a jpeg format. You will prevent a pixelated and blurry image from your site.

Save your PSD file as an HTML file.

Now, you have to save the completed version as a .html file in the same PhotoShop program.

Upload and Add Your files into the Shopify customizable CSS.

Lastly, you have to upload new HTML and image file to your services, and now, you are ready to edit your page’s template. You can even replace the relevant images with the page’s template. Now, the process of PSD to Shopify is completed successfully.

Find and Install theme 

Now that you have sliced your PSD file, now it’s time to browse through the Shopify Theme Store and find a template that is already close to your PSD file design. In the dashboard of your development store, go to Online Store Themes and click “Visit Theme Store”.

Customize Shopify Theme to match your PSD

Once your favourite theme is installed, go to the Theme Manager to customize your Shopify theme according to your PSD file’s design. Click “Customize theme” button in your Theme Manager, and it’ll take you to the Theme editor where you can modify and preview theme settings in real-time.

You need to edit these theme files and restoring the images with your relevant sliced photos can make your Shopify theme look exactly like you want it to. As you can see, every file in the above screenshot ends with a ‘.liquid’ extension. If you have a closer look at a ‘.liquid’ file, you’ll notice it’s just like a regular HTML file with some embedded code.

Add personalized features

Now that you have successfully converted your Photoshop design file, it’s time to add desired custom functionalities to your brand-new Shopify theme. Click the Apps icon in your development store dashboard, and you’ll see several apps available to enhance your store’s functionality. To explore more Shopify apps, you may further click the Visit Shopify App Store button.

Once your all development work is complete, there are two ways you can use the newly PSD to Shopify converted theme:

– Export the theme from your development store and then import it to the Live Shopify Store as the primary theme.

– Switch your development store to one of Shopify’s paid plans.

Reasons to Choose PSD to Shopify conversion service.

Those people, who don’t have fluency with HTML or CSS, are advised to hire a Shopify Builder, who helps you make your site more professional.

Shopify Builder is a professional team of developers, who have expertise in developing dynamic online shopping experiences. They are committed to providing professional outcomes within determined time-frame.

Shopify professionals are developing a pixel-perfect representation by using your PSD designs like JPG, TIF, BMP, etc. that coded according to the Shopify server. The coding is well-written to obey with W3C standards in CSS formats and HTML/XHTML. The codes are used for conversion are error-free, clean and semantic.

You can receive your templates that you have installed straight onto the site or you can extract ZIP files as well. Lastly, you will see the final design that should be compatible with every device and browser. A complete Search Engine Optimization and content production are included in our service for your page.

Why choose us to convert PSD into Shopify?

Suppose you are not fluent with HTML or CSS. It would be best to hire a team of experts to ensure your website sees and manages its maximum potential, especially since website errors can give potential customers a professional look.

Perception System is a team of professionals Shopify builders working with brands worldwide to create a dynamic shopping online shopping experience. With a short practice time, we can achieve professional results. – We work with your PSD design (or JPG, TIF, BMP, etc.) to create the perfect pixel-perfect presentation for Shopify servers.

• All code is written in HTML / XHTML and CSS format to comply with W3C standards.
• All coding is clean, meaningful and error-free.
• The template can be sent to you as a zip file or installed directly on the site for you.
• The final design is guaranteed to be compatible with every browser and device.

Our services include full search engine optimization and content creation for your page. (Different levels on request.) See our portfolio for more information on why this is so critical to the success of your business.

The post How to Convert PSD to Shopify With Ease appeared first on Perception System.

Launching a brick-and-mortar store involves rigorous efforts at pre-launch, launch, and post-launch stages. The same goes true for the modern eCommerce storefront launch.

In a broad sense, an online storefront owner or a company has to pass through the following phases and answer the respective questions on each stage before starting an e-commerce business.

Initial Research & Market Strategies:

• What to sell?-Selection of products/services
• Whom to sell? Target Audience Research
• How much to sell? / How much to invest
• Who are competitors and what they do
• Where to stock – inventory management/stock tracking
• How to take orders – order tracking
• How to ship –shipping management
• How to manage returns
• What is the price/Profit/Budget? – Monetization

Building E-commerce:

• Selection of domain name
• Selection of eCommerce technologies
• Selection of development team
• Selection of marketing team and strategies
• Designing
• Programming
• Selection of good content
• Testing
• Deployment
• Compatibility
• Support/maintenance/upgrades

Consider WooCommerce for building an eCommerce website. Why? There are many reasons. First, it is one of the most rapidly growing eCommerce platforms. Second, it is a part of well-known CMS – WordPress. Last but not least, there are around 4 million websites using the WooCommerce plugin. (BuiltWith)

Here are few statistics about WooCommerce that you need to know (HostingTribunal):

• Around 28.19% of online stores are built with it.
• There are 22% WooCommerce websites among the top 1 million eCommerce websites.
• WooCommerce has 980 plugins and 1267 themes.
• Also, 93% of the WordPress websites use the WooCommerce plugin.

So, if you are planning to go with WooCommerce for your eCommerce website go for the custom WordPress development services to get the desired online store built.

Let’s have a look at things to know before starting an eCommerce business for broader knowledge.

1. Selection of Products/Services

When we look at the selling figures of other eCommerce stores obtained by our private circles, we tempt to mimic the same business with similar products or services in our geography or another.

In fact, it is fatal to go that way. Instead, we have to run thorough research to find out actual needs in the market for unique products or services. If you already have a brick business with products/services, you simply go online with it.

For instance, we take an example business of supplying flowers as gifts (Gift Shop) in your town, by taking online orders from the relatives or friends of recipients. You can do it at a charge and with doorstep supply and appropriate presentations according to the occasion.

This one seems to be a unique idea and a likely one.

2. Target Audience Research/Know Your Consumers

Once you find out what you want to sell, you should have in mind, to whom do you want to sell it. You should know,

• Which computing devices they use
• What are their buying preferences?
• What is their demography?
• What is geography?
• What is culture?

Once you have all the answers, you can plan your eCommerce business strategies accordingly. In our example business, the target audience would be outside relatives or friends of the citizens living in your town. Their demography and geography may vary according to the occasion.

3. Credit Card Processing

One of the costs of running an online business is that of credit card processing. Fortunately, over the past years, collecting money online has become easier than before. Apple Pay, PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, Square, and other e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce makes it practically seamless to include credit card processing and an “add to cart” button to your online store.

4. How Much To Sell / How Much to Invest

Once you have decided on the products or services to offer online and you know your target audience, you have to estimate the buying capacities of your prospective customers/visitors. If it is a regionally targeted business, you can compute it easily with local data available on trade centers or other industry sources.

However, it becomes challenging when you think of globally or in untraversed territories. Therefore, you should run a competitor survey using various eCommerce tools as well as use confidential resources to know how much they sell and how much we need to invest in an eCommerce business.

Thus, you can arrange financial resources accordingly as well as register your business based on investment and future expansion planning. For instance, you can register as a Sole Proprietor, Partnership, LLC, or Corporation.

5. Who Competitors Are? What Are They Doing?

As mentioned before, competitor surveys are highly beneficial to know market realities. Based on thorough competitor analysis, you can formulate your business strategies for business processes, production/purchase, marketing/selling, and financial planning.

6. Where to Stock – Inventory Management/Stock Tracking

If you have digital goods or services that hardly require anything to store, you are free from the warehouse, inventory storage, inventory management, and stock tracking worries or exercises.

There are third-party software and several inbuilt features in leading eCommerce platforms to do inventory management efficiently so think of it to integrate it into your eCommerce portal.

Stock tracking may help you to save your shoppers from frustrations when they realize that the product is out of stock at the end of the checkout process.

7. How to Take Order / Order Tracking

Just like inventory management, order tracking software is trendy in the eCommerce landscape. Your customers can track the status of their orders once it is fixed. They can cancel or modify orders at certain stages of shipping.

For an eCommerce business, there is software available to handle orders and relevant procedures like shooting emails accordingly and automatically. If you integrate order tracking with shipping management, you can save spending on human resources to do several things manually and can provide real-time order status as well as shipping status in your eCommerce modules.

Several products need special packaging for specific orders also based on the geographies of the recipients.

8. How to Ship –Shipping Management

E-commerce vendors have to tie with various shipping services regionally and internationally to meet the diverse needs of shipping according to the products/goods to deliver.

Most of the eCommerce platform offers shipping calculators or developers can integrate the best one to confer the shipping rates before producing a final invoice for payment. Thus, online shoppers can know the real price of the product when it arrives at doorsteps.

With the integration of order tracking software, you can track shipping status and prospective dates of arrivals.

9. How to Manage Returns

The biggest hindrance of eCommerce is it is devoid of real product touch so you cannot find out whether it is perfect for you or not and it happens when it arrives actually at your door after payment.

Therefore, reputed eCommerce vendors always offer return options with the required flexibility and precautions. Thus, honest customers can return unwanted goods immediately and get either replacements or a money return if a replacement is not possible.

You have to introduce return policies and create modules during the eCommerce designing and programming process.

10. Monetization –What is Price/Profit/Budget

Once you set up the entire planning of eCommerce, you need to count the price tags for your products or services based on the investment, ongoing expenditure, eCommerce site development cost, maintenance of the site, and your profit to sustain the further growth of the business.

Frequent changes in prices, as well as mimicking price slots of your competitors, may not give your eCommerce the required boost, in the long run, so it is best to come down with your own pricing policies.

11. E-commerce Development

Once you have planned the e-Commerce concept and the entire process mechanism, it is time to think of an eCommerce website or web portal to take action on the planning and efforts you have made in the form of a live and interactive eCommerce storefront running on the web.

In due course, you will have to pass through the following steps of eCommerce development and running the site on the Internet.

12. Selection of Domain Name & Business Registrant

Each business has a unique identity as its name so your eCommerce business should have a name that reflects its purpose and offers branding opportunities. Of course, registration of the business name is essential by following the laws of the land.

Based on the unique business name, you can register a domain name for online identity. If you are only with an online business without any brick-and-mortar identity, you must select a unique domain name as you do with real-world business.

Just like a real-world business, you must go to obtain EIN (Employer Identification Number) to open a business bank account and fill up taxation requirements by securing social security numbers like things.
It is an essential step when the verification process goes for payment gateway integration and international currency exchanges.

13. Selection of E-commerce Technologies

You may not able to select an appropriate eCommerce platform without the help of experts, so it is better to carry this procedure after the next phase of selection of your eCommerce website design company.

For the sake of information, today myriads of eCommerce platforms are running on the web to solve different purposes for various businesses. Among them, PHP open source with CMS capabilities are trendier, and Magento is ranking on the top beside WooCommerce, VirtueMart, and Ubercart.

The selection of technology may decide hosting requirements, hence the choice of hosting services.

14. Selection of Development Team

The topmost aspect determines the success of eCommerce. The right talent, expertise, and skill have a distinguished role in the right product development. Therefore, you must carefully select the eCommerce team of designers, programmers, QA professionals, UX designers, and marketers by applying appropriate filters.

Check portfolio, testimonials, cross-references, social media, and reviews on the Internet to determine the capable team for you. Rates are afterthoughts because quality never comes with the cheapest so you must be ready to pay worth the quality you receive at the end.

15. Selection of Marketing Team and Strategies

If you have a decent online storefront with awesome products, but nobody has any idea of it, who will buy it all? In this age of competition, you should apply all possible Internet marketing techniques and tweaks in cost-effective ways.

You need to create a pre-launch landing page with a Coming Soon message to start the buzz, keep its updates continue. Extend reach on social media. Declare marketing incentives such as freebies, gifts, vouchers, discounts, daily deals, location-based offering, and use Beacon technology in your brick store and integrate your online campaign.

You can go for natural SEO as a long-term strategy, but apply paid search on search engines and social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. for an initial boost.

These all require the assistance of seasoned online marketers and Perception System has a talented and experienced team to do eCommerce marketing.

16. eCommerce Website Design

Each eCommerce website demands unique designing approaches because each product is unique. Therefore, you and your designing team should run a thorough search on the web to find the best examples to follow or apply your creativity from the scratch solutions.

Your prior research and a deep interest in interactive prototyping may yield expected outcomes in the end.

17. Programming

The best coding practices and following high programming standards can give birth to a high-quality eCommerce portal, where UX and usability are at their best.

Seamless integration of external services and third-party software is a priority for eCommerce programmers. You should focus on SEO, performance optimization, and conversion optimization while creating a functional eCommerce storefront.

Regional and international payment gateway integration with a hassle-free checkout process is the demand of the day. Advanced search features and personalization technologies are trendy and contribute significantly to the success of most eCommerce sites.

Therefore, you need an excellent team of programmers with advanced eCommerce technologies, tools, and techniques knowledge as well as experiences. Perhaps the Perception System can give you a perfect answer by its excellent team of eCommerce programmers.

18. Selection of Good Content

Using different channels will help you deliver suitable content to every audience you have in your mind and engage everyone your company deals with. Your competitors most likely sell a similar product as you, which means your customers need to know what makes your product better or different.

This is where content works. To prove why you’re worth buying from, you should demonstrate why you’re worth listening to.

19. Testing

Testing begins with the beginning of the eCommerce development process, and each step needs some sort of testing and quality assurance procedure. Therefore, you need to have highly qualified and experienced testers and QA professionals to decide and implement the right testing strategies and QA techniques.

A bug-free product is the first condition for excellent UX. So check whether your testing team has all the required arsenal handy like simulators and real computing devices including smartphones and tablets of all mobile platforms with different OS versions.

Touch gestures require special testing efforts with real users in UX testing so create and furnish the right environment.

20. Deployment

For a high-performance eCommerce store, the selection of right hosting is crucial. If you have scores of transactions involved in the operation of your online store, and your database has to accumulate or exchange sensitive, and private info, dedicated hosting or private cloud hosting are preferable options.

The use of encryption technologies and certificates may create trust among the shoppers so ask your hosting provider for competitive rates.

21. Compatibility

Compatibility is very important because your eCommerce store is accessible to the audience through many browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, opera, safari, and probably the most popular browser – Google Chrome. Being compatible on platforms like – Mac, PC, PDA, Mobile phone, iPad, etc. also helps increase traffic to the store. World Wide Web Consortium is the leading international standards organization for the www, making the sites more compatible as it allows them to be searched on more browsers.

22. Support/Maintenance/Upgrades

To build a good rapport and efficient branding, excellent support, maintenance, and updates are certain factors. Your reputation-building processes on the web and social media only can respond when you have comprehensive and pleasing support services for the website experiences and products/services related experiences.

If you sign up for regular maintenance contracts with the right providers and follow regular software updates, product updates, and technology upgrades, you shall surely win the battle of online business.

23. Security

Because you manage your customer’s financial and personal information, you need to implement appropriate cybersecurity measures on your site. According to Hackmageddon, e-commerce sites were targeted more frequently by hackers in 2015 than by any other industry. Hackers see small e-commerce sites as a low-hanging fruit due to their weak security measures, preferring to focus on them instead of their larger counterparts.

24. Customer Relationship Management

How do you manage your store’s relationships with customers? Some eCommerce platforms come with streamlined, integrated customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Even if your CMS does not have a unified CRM, you should choose a third-party solution.

Using CRM, you’ll gain insight into your customers’ behavior, allowing you to automate follow-up emails, handle customer inquiries, use customer information, and feed customers through the sales cycle.

25. Future Growth

You need to consider future growth when planning your e-commerce store, which measures the success of any business. As your store grows and attracts more visitors, it will become more profitable and fruitful.

E-commerce stores typically experience both short-term and long-term growth. Long-term development takes place over many years, during which more customers use the site. The short-term gain is usually temporary and occurs during the holidays and on select dates associated with the store’s structure.

Conclusion:

Starting an eCommerce business does not differ from the brick store launch process. You have to pass through all steps just keeping online mode in your mind. When a startup or a brick store owner thinks of selling online, he/she has to take care of each aspect of the business before going for website development.

Careful planning for excellent user experience, usability, site performance, and site optimization can yield great rewards in the long run. Of course, the help of expert eCommerce developers can make big difference in the quality as well as the cost of the development.

Therefore, leading brands and reputed businesses prefer the WordPress Development Company – Perception System and its eCommerce development team as their online store development partner.

The post 25 Factors to Consider before Starting an E-commerce Store in 2022 appeared first on Perception System.

Day-by-day, the growth of the eCommerce market in India is expanding as it attracts lots of retailers to have an online store to boost their business worldwide. We all know that India is the second-most populous country in the world, and it is the home of 1.2 billion people.

It is true that India’s per-capita purchasing power is low, but still, the country is the most attractive emerging market for the eCommerce industry.

The major problem is that eCommerce businesses or retailers are facing various challenges in the Indian market, and it is not easily possible for them to stud their legs in the market and do business.

Below, you can find the top 5 challenges faced by eCommerce businesses in India:

1st Challenge – In India, Cash on delivery is the preferred payment mode

In India, most people prefer to pay cash on delivery due to the low credit card diffusion and low trust in online transactions. Not like electronic payments, manual cash collection is quite perilous, expensive, and laborious.

2nd Challenge – Internet Penetration is Low

In India, Internet penetration is quite low as compared to several western countries like the USA, UK, France, and more. Still, the country is a small fraction of what other countries are getting.

Moreover, the quality of connectivity is low in various regions. However, these both problems are slowly disappearing. In the next few years, the connectivity problems will disappear from the list of challenges to eCommerce in India.

3rd Challenge – Indian Customers Return Much of Their Products They Buy Online

It is true that eCommerce in India has lots of first-time buyers. It means, they are still not sure about what to expect from eCommerce websites; thus, purchasers fall prey to hard sell. Finally, when the product is delivered, they started feeling regret and return the goods.

Therefore, customers’ regret is the biggest problem majorly in India. For eCommerce retailers, returns are extremely expensive as it shows some unique challenges and it becomes more difficult in cross-border eCommerce.

4th Challenge – Many Times, Postal Addresses are not consistent

Once if you place an online order, you will get a call from the company, asking about your exact location. The given address is not enough because there is always a little standardization while writing post addresses. It is also one of the biggest challenges faced by eCommerce in India.

5th Challenge – Features Phones Rule The Roost

When it comes to the total number of users of mobile phones in India, it is extremely high as various people still use feature phones, not smart-phones.

The consumer group is still unable to make eCommerce purchases on the move while the country is still away from the scales tipping in favor of smart-phones. With the increasing number of smart-phone users, the demand for online shopping also goes up automatically.

6th Challenge – Security and Privacy

These days, the more pressing issues related to e-commerce are privacy and security. There is no protection offered either by site or outside watchdogs against problems created by endangering oneâ€s privacy.

7th Challenge – Supply Chain Issues

Many a time, timely delivery is a major challenge faced based upon the infrastructure, location, and unavoidable roadblocks during transitions that lead to the cancellation of orders. An annoyed customer is a lost cause if the product is not delivered on time. This is a tedious procedure that requires a lot of R&D on part of all the e-commerce platforms selecting the supply chain model. So, these were the top challenges that majorly faced by eCommerce businesses in India. It is also important to note that eCommerce giants are increasing in India, and many cross-border eCommerce to India is also expanding. So, if you also want to make an online store for your business, you should hire a professional eCommerce developer.”

So, these were the top challenges that majorly faced by eCommerce businesses in India. It is also important to note that eCommerce giants are increasing in India, and many cross-border eCommerce to India is also expanding.

So, if you also want to make an online store for your business, you should hire a professional eCommerce developer.

The post 5 Major Challenges Faced by eCommerce Businesses in India appeared first on Perception System.

As the eCommerce industry is growing, more people are striving to carve a niche for themselves by opening up their own online retail stores. Because of the increasing craze of selling products or services online, you can find keywords like “how to start an online store”, “how to start an online clothing boutique”, “how to make an online store”, “create online store free”, etc having very high search volumes.

Here we come with simple yet effective steps that will help you to create a fully functional WordPress online store. WordPress is one of the most used Content Management Systems, which is easy-to-use, secure and reliable. Plug-In architecture and a template system are the two excellent features that are available in WordPress. Many other features including this make WordPress very easy and useful to create an online store.

Considering its better functionality and remarkable outcomes, most of the people who are thinking of building a shop online, prefer WordPress for creating their eCommerce websites. In this article, we have also discussed how a developer can incorporate eCommerce features into their WordPress theme.

Setting up WordPress Store

If you want to fasten your development process, it is must that you set up WordPress on your localhost. You do not require any FTP program to upload the files to the server, once you have set this. For those who are using Windows or Linux, they can use xampp while for the mac users, mamp will work.

To install WordPress Locally on Your Mac with MAMP, you just have to use one of the remarkable themes for WordPress. Here, I am using jQ.
It is advisable to install a WordPress eCommerce plugin from official plug-ins repository or from its official website. Once the installation process gets completed, you will find a tab named Products below the comments tab.

You need to start from the settings option and after that, you will have to add some products for setting up your demo store.

General

This tab is available under the settings tab. Click on the ‘General’ option and set your target markets, location and currency in which you want to trade your products/services. You can also find the option for setting up an additional tax that will be charged on your product price.

Presentation

After the general tab, you will find a presentation tab that shows how you want to display your products in your store. A gold cart with more options is also offered by WordPress.

If you can find some options disabled in the settings, don’t need to be worried about that as it’s a premium version with more features. There is nothing wrong with the installation method or with server permissions. This option works only with the Gold Cart.

There are some options that can be easily understood. You can also select button types or breadcrumbs, product ratings, etc. according to your requirements. Display packaging and postage mean you want to display the shipping charges on your product pages or not.

With the product setting option, you can easily customize the layout of your product pages. You can also choose different layouts (with gold cart) and various themes to display the products in more appropriate ways.

As WordPress eCommerce has three built-in themes, among all, the third one seems best to display your products. With Shopping cart settings, you can simply show the cart, wherever you want. It has a collection of options from widgets to manual insertion of a template tag.

Moreover, the Sliding cart helps your customers to add or remove the products from the shopping cart using buttons +/-.

E-Commerce Store Settings

You can give thumbnail and description at the time of creating product groups. Moreover, one can also select parameters to display products on product pages. It is available in the Product Group settings option.

You also have the option of choosing pagination as Thumbnails. In case, you enabled this option, you will see your products divided into different pages just like WordPress pagination.

Admin

In the Admin option, you can set up digital goodies store. You can also find the option to set the time of downloading a specific file. If you want to lock the download for some specific region, you can also do that with the options available in the admin tab.

Additionally, one can also set default email addresses for sending various notifications to the customers and for their own records.Option for writing custom messages is also available that can be sent on different occasions and also to the admin of the eCommerce store.

Finally, you can give links to different pages. After changing the permalink structure, you have to place page links.

Shipping

All shipping options can be set up here. You will find different shipping schemes such as weight rate and flat rate. The shipping charges can be automatically calculated by using this plugin and will be added to the user’s product’s price.

WordPress eCommerce has in support of ShipWire, which is one of the reputed order fulfillment companies. With this, you can also develop some kind of conditions/layers.

Payments Options

Payment Gateways is one of the most essential parts of any eCommerce store, so it is very important to take care of it. Paypal and google checkout are two Payment Gateways that offered by WordPress eCommerce. Moreover, you can also use online transactions to your bank account or money orders to set up the Manual Gateway Payment/Test.

You can also import data of your previously added products as a CSV file using the import tab.

Checkout

Setting up the checkout form is the last step of setting a WordPress eCommerce website. It is advisable to implement the restriction of registration before checking out. You need to check “Anyone can register” box in settings if you want to activate this option.

Creating Product Groups and Categories

Here, we will show you one example of creating an online clothing boutique, where different brands of t-shirts are sold. Now, just remember to divide t-shirts into different colors, sizes, brand and sex groups. Then, move towards to create sub-groups to manage things more efficiently. Demo Example is given below:
T-Shirts
Color :

• Black
• Blue

Brand :

• Nike
• Adidas

Let’s start by adding it one-by-one. Go to Products>Categories. In the first step, you need to add a new group and make categories in it. It is very easy like creating categories for WordPress. Take products as categories and “categories” as sub-categories.

After that, you have to select t-shirts from the drop-down menu and add them to the appropriate sub-categories. Adding categories make you confuse, however you have to take care while adding. Ensure to remove 2 dummy categories “brands” and “categories”.

After creating categories, let’s move towards products.
Develop first Product with WordPress and WP eCommerce
Go to Products>Products and add products. Here, you will find a WYSIWYG editor that looks like a WordPress post editor, where you can add details of your products.

SKU stands for the Stock Keeping Unit that identifies specific products like every post in WordPress has a unique ID. Here, we are going to show the procedure for adding a t-Shirt.

You can also select inventory for keeping the store’s record. Additionally, you can upload your product’s image as well.
Now, it’s time to add some widgets to your WordPress theme. For that, you have to follow the given process: Appearance> Widgets. Add your product groups and shopping cart widget to the sidebar as it will give an attractive look to your eCommerce store. Check out how it looks.

If you want, you can also use the products page as the home page. For setting, you just have to go to WordPress reading settings. Other than this, you can use wp-hide-post to hide some pages, so no one can access order pages and shopping cart pages directly.

Choose Compatible and Attractive WordPress theme

The external layout of any website decides the real feel of that website. Choosing a great theme that invites the online surfers to become buyers is very important. You can either go for selection from the thousands of free eCommerce templates available online with required customization. Secondly, you can get design your own layout from scratch according to your specific needs.

Extending Your WordPress Online Store

Collection of premium and community WordPress plugins are available to enhance WordPress functionality. You can explore the web to find out some more remarkable plugins for your eCommerce site. Finally, it is easy for startups to go for basic eCommerce development.

But after that, if you plan for extending your store for thousands of products, according to prevailing needs, you will have to go for some highly skilled web design and development company that will help you face your customization needs.

The post WordPress eCommerce 2020: How to Start an Online Store appeared first on Perception System.

The lifestyle of consumers is evolving and it has become more adaptive to online shopping. As more and more customers are preferring to shop online, merchants are establishing online stores to maintain their existing customer base. Besides this, it is also crucial to delight the customers by providing them with unique experiences. One of the many technologies which are evolving the eCommerce industry is the Internet of Things (IoT ).

IoT-enabled appliances transfer data with each other through the internet, accommodating retail and e-commerce businesses to manage essential operations efficiently. As one research study suggests, by 2020 retailers will spend about $2.5 billion on IoT. This blog is a comprehensive guide that will show the powerful impacts of the Internet of Things on the eCommerce industry.But, before we move on to exploring the idea, let’s understand the basics.

What is IoT?

The Internet of Things is the system of interrelated computing devices that are interconnected with each other with a medium of the internet to transfer data without necessitating human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. With the help of connected software, actuators, and sensors it is possible to monitor real-time, and a constant flow of information.

To put it briefly, IoT is the electronic device that collects the information and sends it to another device, receives information and acts on it or performs both activities.

Since IoT has evolved, it helps to automate many complex processes for businesses. And, today most of the companies are taking advantage to improve efficiencies and productivity of their business, the eCommerce industry is not the exception. But, how IoT can empower the E-commerce industry?

Let’s look at how IoT is impacting the e-commerce businesses and helping them to grow faster

Efficient Supply Chain Management

Uninterrupted and dynamic supply chain management is imperative to run smooth operations of e-commerce businesses. With IoT, supply chain management is a no more complex procedure. It facilitates the tracking of items directly from the production stage to delivery at the final destination. According to research, more than 80% of companies who adopted IoT, noticed increase in their business productivity and efficiencies.

The technologies like RFID and GPS help in tracing the items in transit by providing absolute information about location, temperature, distance, and more. One can also know the route and speed of the shipped products, along with forecasting the arrival time periods. There are minimal chances of losing shipments or misplacing items with IoT. Sensors can be applied in transportation vehicles for real-time monitoring of the shipments.

Real-time Inventory Management

Managing inventory for an eCommerce store is a daunting task. Internet of Things allows the merchants to keep accurate records and management of inventory. IoT sensors and RFID tags offer easy management of inventory in real-time and also streamline the entire flow. With the improved monitoring and tracking of various inventory items, it reduces errors in reordering items.

Details such as product type, manufacturer’s name, batch ID, expiry date, etc. can be automatically saved in the system without manual intervention. Smart shelves are useful in overcoming customer dissatisfaction. IoT, the smart technology, is capable to track the number of sold products and place automatic orders. Thus, one of the most complicated tasks, inventory management can be performed easily by using IoT.

Personalized Customer Experiences

IoT enables e-commerce businesses to offer personalized services to their customers. It helps to recognize shopping patterns in search trends and online browsing so that eCommerce businesses can sell targeted products to their customers. IoT will allow presenting products, services and offers to the customers according to their choices.

Generally, with more data available to marketers about consumer behavior, it will be easier to attract potential consumers and influence their purchase decisions. It enables the 360-degree view of customers’ activities, which is important to deliver personalized experiences. An IoT device can help detect customer issues and responding to those issues even before they are notified. This helps the businesses in envisioning possible complaints, driving prompt resolution, and flawless customer experience.

Automated Purchasing

Automated devices can order products based on your preferences. You just need to adjust the settings. Well, there are many instances when eCommerce platforms are integrated with IoT. For example, some apps sync to your account on the eCommerce platform and send you an alert when the products are running out, and it can also automatically buy the product for you.

For instance, the eCommerce giant Amazon has integrated an Amazon Dash Button which does the job for its customers. It is a Wi-Fi connected device that assures a customer never runs out of the daily essentials.

Improve Revenue Opportunities

IoT opens the way to new business opportunities by assisting companies to benefit from renewed business models and solutions. IoT-driven modernization advocates in formulating powerful use cases, abbreviate time to market and augment return on investments. IoT has the future to transform the ways companies are reaching the global audience. Leveraging the connectivity of IoT can help enhance the customer experience.

Hence, IoT seems the futuristic solution for eCommerce businesses, and it may prove a dire need to offer a solution that customers are looking for. By blending IoT with their eCommerce platforms, companies can get enormous benefits like increased revenue, inventory management, personalized customer experiences, supply chain management, and many more.

With the increased demand for online shopping, online businesses need to focus more on upcoming technologies to maintain their business growth. Thus, integrating an IoT app with your eCommerce business can bring new fresh opportunities expanding your profitability.

If you want to develop an online store for your business, you need to consult with an experienced IoT development firm that can understand your requirements and deliver the software product on time.

The post How Is the Internet of Things (IoT) Impacting the eCommerce? appeared first on Perception System.

We went online with the advent of the Internet and mobile commerce. We have an inherent instinct to have instant access to the products or services whenever we want it. So, we have floated slogans for ecommerce like,

“Online shop never closes and provides instant access to the products and services you desire.”

We have uplifted user experiences (UX) by applying a variety of technologies and techniques, including eCommerce design, advanced search, personalisation engines, Chatbot, and security aspects. These all resulted in the rise of

• Online surfing, which is accounted for today 88% of global buying.
• Online e-retail sales, which is projected at 13.7% in 2019 and may go up to 17.5% of total retail sales (online + offline) by 2021

Statista shared a beautiful graph to demonstrate the data. According to them –

“82.5% of total retail sales in 2021 will take place in physical stores.”

It shows a big gap between online and offline shopping behaviour of shoppers in the near future. CBRW Group Inc. has revealed that 70% of its millennial respondents prefer brick-n-mortar shopping against complete online shopping.

It is an astronomical figure to force only online eCommerce stores to think about physical outlets in various forms. Now, let’s check what recent surveys by Salesforce on the behavior of modern shoppers using Omni-channel approaches.

They have brought out one distinguish the fact that 43% of respondents prefer the online search of the products/services and also through online payment methods without visiting brick-n-mortar stores at all.

Opposed to those figures, only half of the respondents (21%) had preferred complete in-store search and purchase without visiting the online shop at all. It is natural that all offline retail buyers might not have access to local stores or unable to reach those by traveling long distances and burning fuel on it.

Now, what if we pull those online surfers and buyers of a particular brand to its B&M store or outlets for offline experiences?

These facts have given birth to a new retail shopping model/concept where mixing online and offline experiences were working. Experts have named it Online to Offline (O2O) commerce.

What is O2O Commerce?

A business finds shoppers through online channels with online experiences, and bring them into real-world stores to make purchases with offline experiences. Do you aware of what is online & offline experiences and how advantageous those are for modern shoppers?

Advantages of online shopping

• Quick access to tons of products even while on the go.
• Advanced search makes life easy to find the desired products out of heaps in large enterprise-grade eCommerce storefronts.
• Get details of all product attributes without spending time on calling or talking with a live sales representative.
• Comparison engines allow shoppers to make logical and legitimate decisions to grab a good deal.
• Offer to redeem facilities for various online incentives smoothly.
• Offer secure payment without carrying any cash or credit cards at all.

Advantages of offline shopping

• The physical touch of the products, which is the biggest benefit for some categories of products.
• Try it on option gives utmost satisfaction when fashion and apparel like products are in question.
• Measurement of the size of your legs or body/parts becomes a possibility to check or place a custom order in physical stores.
• Personal touch with business increases rapports, trust, and branding.

Viability of O2O (Online-to-Offline) eCommerce Model

Now, we know both ends are apart and squeeze them into the one model may prove a nightmare, but the following statistics and surveys support their amalgamation.

Salesforce team had seen that the behavior of first-time shoppers and repeat shoppers are supporting the amalgamation of O2O experiences and model is viable.

They also noticed that modern shoppers expect retail businesses to keep pace with their changing needs and expectation, which is only possible with the O2O model.
Salesforce team also has found that online shoppers prefer offline experiences in certain ways, such as

• Surf the products and buy those online, but pick it up from the retail outlet of the brand in their vicinity.
• Visiting the physical store of the brand in the location, check the products available, but buy those products through online channels with an online order that delivers the product at their doorsteps.
• Returning or replacing the product purchased through an online channel to the physical store in their vicinity, instead of avoiding returning via shipping channels.

Benefits of O2O eCommerce Model

Offers Omnichannel Marketing Benefits

In the O2O model, a retailer has to use both online and offline marketing strategies with Omnichannel approaches as well as multi-channel marketing techniques.

Enhance Branding

It leads the retail marketing business to do efficient branding using a variety of online branding capabilities, including Online & Offline Ads, SMO, SEO, mobile notifications, SMS, proximity, or location-based services. These all need to combine with the latest technologies like AI, AR, analytics, and system integrations.

Boost Conversion

O2O increase overall UX of the business that leads to increased traffic, engagement, and finally conversion rate with high AOV.

Augment Customer Loyalty

When online shoppers avail the offline experiences with ease, they tend to stick with the brand and show increased consumer loyalty in the long run.

Increase Speed-to-Market by Minimising Time-to-Market

O2O model enables a business to collect real-time data about the inventory and behavior of shoppers, including preferences for different products. It ultimately helps the business to fix product strategies and fill up inventory, which is in demand. It eventually leads to no product out-of-stock status in the store.

Futuristic Approaches of the World Leading Brands

We have seen that leading brands are experimenting in various ways and technologies to enhance the online as well as offline experiences. Let’s see what is going on at the world level.

Magnolia Market at Silos

Magnolia has recorded 1.6 million footprints in the previous year. How did it do? It has replicated offline retail experiences on its online channels. Shopify ARKit is one of the efficient ways to achieve it. The app can place 3D models of its products in the homes of prospective buyers using various AR tools.

It provides answers to a lot of queries from online buyers who never have touched the product at all. Now, shoppers can place virtual products in their places and find out how it seems in real-life. What is on the surface and inside of a product? Whether products are befitting in the designated places or not?

Whole Foods by Amazon

Recently, Amazon had spent $13.7 billion on buying Whole Foods traditional local stores in four major cities of the USA. It has declared that customers can get free of charge delivery of groceries from Whole Foods within two hours while ordering online. Now, Amazon is going to introduce automated warehouse technologies in such local locations of retailers and expand the O2O concept further across the globe.

Walmart Groceries

Walmart is offering a huge selection of grocery items online and offers free pickup services at its vast chains of stores across the regions. It eases the life of busy people who want to avoid visiting various stores for the collection of their groceries. They can pick up their orders from the convenient store at a convenient time.

Bonobos Guide Shop

Bonobos is an online-only marketplace for fashion products. It has opened guide shops in the New York office on a trial base. It offers customers try-on experiences of their products and enables them to place custom orders on-the-spot. The custom orders are delivering the very next day or on the given date to the homes of the buyers free of charge.

It got tremendous success in itself and now, Bonobos going to open 20 of such outlets across the various regions in the USA and elsewhere.

Shopify Merchant All-birds

Instead of indulging in a discounting distribution system, All-birds have preferred O2O marketing strategies. They had the exclusive raw material from New Zealand merino wool to create the most comfortable shoes in the world. They have taken the help of Shopify Plus and created an online store along with offline outlets at two different places in the USA.

Their strategies worked well, and the O2O model got momentum with huge sales. After partnering with Nordstrom, the demand for new stores in other countries in the world increased many folds.

Conclusion

For retail businesses, bringing online customers to offline outlets is not a new thing. Click and collect strategies are working great for many eCommerce brands and niches, but it is not a surefire way for all.

Similarly, O2O seems good as a concept, but many densely populated areas prohibit it from creating a location. Therefore, it is good for Amazon and Alibaba to dwell into O2O commerce buzz with a huge investment on Drone like delivery options, but for SMBs, it is demanding a lot of brainstorming sessions before spending capital on it.

If you are a Shopify merchant and think of Shopify Plus using O2O commerce strategies, our Shopify eCommerce consultants can help you a lot in giving the right guidance and services to customize your Shopify development with O2O features and functionality.

The post The Future of O2O eCommerce Model in the Retail Industry appeared first on Perception System.