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Thursday, November 29, 2012

The Importance of E-Commerce Research

E-commerce web research can focus on any number of issues that pertain to an online business. Whether you are looking to increase your sales, launch an online business, promote to the search engines or simply investigate new consumer trends for product development, internet research is essential to keep up with online changes and to remain competitive. Some common examples of e-commerce research are examined below:

Keyword research:

Consumer search behaviour and the promotion of an online business go hand in hand. Irrespective of the nature of the business, each business supplies a product or service that can be categorized by common keywords. It is essential to research what keywords describe the nature of the business and which keywords consumers use to find the business. This e-commerce web market research is then used as the basis of search engine and pay-per-click campaigns. It is essential to do this research to scope and bound your market. You can then position your web site and drive targeted traffic to increase sales and exposure.

Conversion Research:

E-commerce web research that concentrates on conversion seeks to examine which keywords are delivering online sales. By recording transactions and tracking visitors by keyword, this research helps to narrow down the target market to eliminate pay-per-click costs and ramp up natural organic search positioning. By knowing which keywords convert, you can execute very effective pay-per-click campaigns and realize a higher return on your investment.

Market Research:

This can include investigating the business landscape for competition, product research or to identify new and unexplored opportunities. Because of the growth of online users, markets are expanding on a geographical basis. Every time a new product is created, the internet can be used as a medium to deliver these products and services to a hungry audience. Doing research to uncover potential hidden niches is a lucrative fringe benefit of doing e-commerce web market research to identify existing or new product potential.

Usability Research:

This area of e-commerce web research focuses on consumer purchasing behavior. Knowing how consumers respond and to what offers provides significant cognitive insight into purchasing behavior. When you are doing a volume of transactions online and paying for targeted traffic, modifying your offer, changing your copy or adapting your product pricing can result in a significant profit upgrade. Everything in the online space can be measured by percentages, so if you have a small incremental rise in your conversion rates, this can bring significant monetary return to your investment.

E-commerce research is an ongoing requirement for any business looking to enter a market or improve performance in an existing one. Companies that dedicate the time to planning and evaluating their e-commerce web market research will see a significant improvement in the way they do business.

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Choosing the Right Provider for Your Fashion E-Commerce Brand

Statistics in recent years show that fashion e-commerce is booming on a global scale, and the sector is responding. Whilst the likes of boohoo.com have jumped straight into the online market with notable success, we're now seeing a huge array of fashion retailers from small boutiques to luxury and high street brands translate their offers to the digital space.

This is great news if you're in the business of clothing - but to maximise the opportunity you need to ensure that your logistics are up to scratch. Of course, a huge part of this means choosing a logistic fulfillment provider with the right blend of warehousing, garment processing and e-commerce expertise to carry your brand into the online world. Here are the key issues to consider to make sure you get this crucial decision right.

Know your provider's garment processing capacity

When you're talking to different firms it's vital to know exactly what they're capable of - and that means asking the right questions. How many units can they process an hour? What equipment do they use and how is this maintained? From tunnel pressing to relabelling you need to know that your garment processing team are fully qualified and equipped, able to deliver to your volume and critical paths, and work in a clean, well lit space supporting by full warehousing and distribution facilities.

Clarify your garment processing providers' quality control procedures

Quality control is vital - so explore systems thoroughly with the logistic fulfillment providers you're talking to. You should expect to see evidence of garment testing to AQL 2.5 standards plus testing criteria covering 100% of the product. Metal detection machines should be regularly serviced and staff training maintained and updated. You should also establish how the garment processing team will report to you, and whether that reporting is fully compliant with statutory duties and obligations.

Adding value to your fashion brand with e-commerce fulfillment

If you're moving your brand online - or starting up a new internet fashion store - then your fulfilment systems need to adapt to this market. There are now third party logistics firms out there who also specialise in integrated e-commerce fulfillment.

Explore the extent to which you can link your website with the providers' wireless management system (if they don't have one look elsewhere, it's a must these days). The ability to automate product listings, order fulfillment, shipment tracking and many other e-commerce functions may add a little more when negotiating your budget. But when you analyse that against the countless man hours you would spend trying to manage these functions manually you will almost certainly win out.

Finally, when you're looking for a garment processing provider remember one important thing. All business is about people - and nowhere do you need to rely on your service provider more than in the world of logistics. A good provider will understand that and will be keen to develop their services to grow with your business. If the evidence checks out, the services meet your requirements and the relationship feels right then the chances are you're onto a winner.

The Importance Of Planning Ecommerce Projects

Ecommerce web projects require a project management framework to scope and bound project requirements and to serve as a guideline for stakeholders and the development team. With a high percentage of ecommerce web projects subject to adjustment, cost overruns and budgetary blowouts are a common consequence of failing to adequately plan. If you about to undertake an ecommerce site project, here are some guidelines to follow:

Develop a Robust Plan: Most projects start out with loosely defined functionality. This can create problems for the development stage. Programmers are required to interpret specifications and to code them accordingly. If you haven't carefully thought out the exact project specifications and articulated them accordingly, you need to do so before commencing the project build. When developers create the database, they establish dependent relationships. If, at a later stage, you decide to modify the project structure extensively, this can create a series of cascading problems for the development team. The first and foremost consideration is to spend time planning your ecommerce project before commencing development.

Select Experienced and Reputable Personnel: To execute an ecommerce project plan you need to have suitably qualified personnel. It is important to check the experience and credentials of potential candidates and web development companies before employing their services. The cheapest option is not always the best. If the company does not follow a project methodology then you can run into quality control problems that consume time and money. The past development of projects should provide a guideline as to whether the company can handle the project requirements. Securing the services of experienced personnel can help guide the project seamlessly.

Perform Extensive Platform, Usability and Stress Testing: Ecommerce web projects need to be tested across browsers, platforms and subjected to extensive functional checks. This is to ensure that the project is commercially robust, user friendly and meets the project requirements. If you have integrated payment gateways, this means testing for security measures to insulate the site form potential outside attacks. The developer or Web Company should have extensive protocols for performing these checks. When qualifying potential candidates to build the internet project, you can ask about this stage to establish the quality control standards followed by the candidate.

The above guidelines should help provide an overview for ecommerce site project management. Internet projects follow a similar process to that of the software development life cycle. You can learn more about this process by doing a web search on this.

Don't Sell Ordinary Stuff on Your Website - Make Your Products Exceptional

Getting people to buy from your website can be a bit of a problem. Even though it is convenient, one of the problems is the fact they can compare your offers to other similar products within a blink or two of an eye. Competition is at its highest and prices are being pushed down all the time. A couple of years ago ebooks were being sold for $97; nowadays it's $7 or less. There are price comparison sites forcing retailers to offer even lower prices and there are bloggers and Facebook users advising people not to buy certain items. For anyone trying to sell online it is rather like the Rubik Cube; as soon as you start to get it all sorted, something else happens and it all unravels.

There is also another problem nowadays - the number of people selling the same thing. Years ago you were the only act in town. You could sell your products and services to all your target customers locally and anyone else selling the same things was happy with their geographical coverage. Now, thanks to the web, all that has gone. Whilst you may still be able to protect your local marketplace somewhat, any one of your target customers could find what they are looking for from someone else, perhaps miles away.

Take for instance the humble office supply of stationery. Years ago there were just a couple of places to get office stationery - a local specialist supplier and a high street bookseller. Now there are places like Staples or Office Depot/Viking (the same company actually) as well as Ryman and a number of independent online retailers who all buy from the same massive wholesaler. On top of this, almost anyone with a website can become a reseller or affiliate for office products and many of the online stationery stores are built around affiliate links.

However, the mere fact that there are now millions of affiliate pages offering just stationery items online means that the competition is immense. And it is not just stationery - many other products and services are becoming similarly commoditised thanks to the web. For anyone selling online, the stuff they sell is just "ordinary" because so many other people are selling it too. Indeed, even if you are offering something quite special, such as a bespoke travel service for business executives - tough, there are hundreds of people online doing just the same. What was once seen as "special" is now just "ordinary".

That is a big problem for e-commerce stores. New research shows that, when it comes to spending, people are much more likely to spend on "special" things than ordinary. The study found that when it comes to budgeting, people are really quite good on working out their spending on normal, commonplace items. But when it comes to discretionary spending on exceptional things, people tend to underestimate how much they are spending and therefore commit more of their money to such items.

Because so much e-commerce these days is seen as "ordinary", people are less likely to spend as much as the store owners might hope. The only way out of that for the business wishing to sell more online is to make their items seem exceptional and special. The more you make your offers seem exclusive and unusual, the more people are likely to buy from you.

Things to Do Before Integrating an ECommerce Software to Your Website

Unlike blogs, an eCommerce business should have a strong support for running an online store in its most efficient manner. When in a blog, your best support is the features and customizations visitors will love, in an ecommerce solution the best support is having a great ecommerce software integrated into your website. Through that, expect greater cash flow management at its best. Before PayPal was a convenient choice for customers but due to recent developments, a lot of payment systems emerge and people are looking for more convenient ways to pay online. With the competition increasing, a shopping cart with a lot of features are the ones that will keep your site from running smoothly for years to come.

Buying an online shopping cart is easy. Just take note of the features the shopping cart has which can be of help to your website. To give you a hint, other than providing a lot of payment options, you need to think of customization. How well you can match the software to your site depends on the templates it has and customization options available. Have a look at WYSIWYG template editors so you can make a customized template yourself even without any coding knowledge. Another thing to think about before buying one is security features the software offers. 128-bit SSL encryption is important in keeping transactions confidential, and frequency of updates or fixes will help in getting protected from security holes. But then again, you can get a shopping cart for free but make sure it meets your requirements.

Once you have decided an ecommerce software, its time to integrate it in your website. Selecting a shopping cart solution which will go along with your ecommerce software is crucial so before you integrate it to your website you need to consider several options like if the shopping cart is proving exact and accurate information about the products being sold. It must be competitive with your business, and you should have knowledge of the daily transaction load of your website. You should also analyze the cost of your shopping cart and match it with other factors before you decide to buy one. Take note that your customers should be in focus with your business cycle. Customer satisfaction is very crucial as you are dealing with customers online. The software should provide you with the ability to manage transactions transparently to provide convenience to your customers.

Hiring professionals than doing the integration yourself provides the best experience in setting up the software to your website. They are also expert in customization of your site which can then save you time in creating one and money in buying a template. Ecommerce solution made shopping online secure and convenient. As a web store owner, you should provide your customers with the best and full-featured site, and optimal support to your customers to make shopping hassle-free. Remember that the your web store is not all about business but more on providing excellent customer satisfaction for better conversion rates. So before, you integrate you ecommerce solution to your website, make sure to follow this guide.

Why E-Commerce Websites Score Over Offline Retail Stores

Since the beginning of human civilization, trade and commerce have played a vital role in growth and prosperity. It all started with traders in sailing ships traveling to unknown lands in search of wealth and opportunity. Today the rapid development of science and technology has ensured that the world has shrunk to a global village.

Over the years, businesses processes have also continuously redefined themselves to survive and keep abreast with changing times and customer expectations. The internet revolution has played a major role in this and rapid development of e-commerce platforms and payment gateways is a testimony to this.

An e-commerce website for a retail business helps to position the business on a global platform without any advertising or promotional cost whatsoever. It saves the business major overheads like rent, salary and advertising in print and media which are unavoidable in a traditional set-up. Further, a majority of the advertising for a website will be via social media and search engine optimization techniques which are free of cost.

In the real world, a customer goes into a retail store, drops what he or she needs into the shopping cart and then bills it. But the disadvantage in this is that the customer spends a lot of time in scouting for the desired product, pushing the shopping cart and waiting in queues for payment.

This experience is replicated in a much more enriching way in an online retail store wherein, the customers simply search for their required products and make payments via a secured payment gateway. Many websites remember customer preferences to facilitate repeat shopping and the customer service is much more personalized in such cases. Travel time and cost are saved and comparison shopping is also possible to get the best deals. Thus the positive aspect of an offline shopping experience is replicated in the online world albeit with a virtual shopping cart while all the associated hassles are eliminated.

One of the greatest success stories of online retailing is eBay.com. Founded in 1995, eBay has today expanded its capabilities by adding services, partnerships and investments. The impact of eBay's global reach is significant with a presence in over 30 countries and the company had revenues of $11.7 billion in 2011.

However it is not easy for an e-commerce website to stand out from the crowd and it requires a partnership with a good e-commerce website design and development company who have proven domain expertise.

The e-commerce website for an online retail store must be easy to navigate and offer a pleasant shopping experience to customers. The website has to win the trust and grab the attention of the customers. First impressions are always the best impressions and it is vital that the content and images presented in a website are of the highest quality. If the web pages project a professional image, prospective visitors will feel that they are dealing with a legitimate business and go on to explore the various products and services deeper. Design of payment gateways must also be done with due consideration to all security related aspects. A business must ensure that it's online and offline presence is matched perfectly to engage with present and potential customers. This is largely dependent on the skill and expertise of the e-commerce website design company.

With increasing developments in international communication platforms, more and more businesses are shifting from traditional to e-business setups. The possibilities are limitless and it needs is a trusted partner who can help you navigate the online ocean.

What Sort Of E-Commerce Business Are You? Why Shopping Online Is Good For You Understanding Web Traffic Conversion Rate To Improve Your Online Strategy Setting Up an Ecommerce Store: The Basics