Showing posts with label mobile store. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile store. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

How to achieve success on Black Friday and beyond

With only two days until the start of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the US the day after Thanks Giving, many stores are looking ahead to the anticipated day as they look to achieve a high number of sales and in turn, plenty of profit. According to figures published by software developers Adobe, Cyber Monday alone will bring in around $2 billion to both bricks and mortar and online stores.

However, with these stores all vying for a customer's business, how can you improve your ecommerce store to ensure you give yourself the best chance of achieving success?


Be up early

As you run an online store, it's going to be open 24/7 so you don't need to worry about customers being unable to buy. However, need to plan for it being as busy as possible, which means you need to get up as early as possible. A busy day means plenty of traffic, plenty of questions and of course plenty of sales. You don't want to wake up late and be facing a backlog of orders and queries, this will diminish your overall customer service and make the day extremely difficult for you.

Monitor your competitors

While it's impossible to monitor everyone, you should pay close attention to those stores that you consider your closest rivals. Look at the products they have on offer and any promotions they may be running for this special occasion. If you don't pay attention and your competitor changes their prices lower than yours. it is going to result in you getting fewer sales than you expected as your customers go to your rivals for their purchases.

Advertise everywhere

Although it may be difficult to launch a full on marketing campaign now with only two days to go, you should still look to publicise your products, offers and anything else to do with your store everywhere you can. This means placing information on your social media pages, forums, through emails pretty much anywhere and everywhere you can think of. Advertising your store is going to not only result in a great brand awareness, but once Friday roll around you will begin to see an increase in traffic. 

Offer free shipping

You will be surprised the difference free shipping can make in enticing a customer to purchase from your store. Not only does it encourage them to visit your ecommerce or eBay store and make that initial purchase, the fact that shipping is free often tempts them into making multiple purchases. Yes you may be losing a small amount of your usual profit as you will have to pay for the shipping, but if the promotion results in many more orders, you 

Create a landing page

Whether you are running a promotion for Black Friday, Cyber Monday or for Christmas, creating a seasonal based landing page can play a pivotal role in drawing traffic to your site. Its appealing design, when combined with information regarding any products or services you offer will enforce a positive brand image within the customer and make them more likely to visit your store in order to make a purchase. Just remember to remove the landing page once the seasonal event has ended.

Optimise your site for mobile

On Black Friday, around 25 percent of all sales will be make through mobile devices, meaning if your business doesn't have a mobile store that is fully optimised, you are going to be missing out on a significant amount of sales. Read our guide "How to make your mobile store a success" for an in depth look on how you can develop your mobile ecommerce platform.

While this article may be geared towards Black Friday in the states, there is nothing to stop you from employing these techniques on your own ecommerce store no matter where you may be in the world, in order to give you the best chance of achieving success this Christmas.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Monday, 19 November 2012

It's going to be a mobile Christmas

According to figures published by online marketplace giants eBay, it looks like running around shopping centres on Christmas Eve looking for those last minute Xmas presents are soon to be a thing of the past as they expect eBay mobile transactions to exceed £10 billion for the year after a 200 percent year on year increase in Q3. 

However, this increase in purchases through mobile devices isn't purely through smartphones, eBay's applications can be used to various phone and tablet devices, opening up a whole new number of ways for buyers to easily complete their transactions on an eBay store. With more advanced tablets and smartphones, such as the iPhone 5, released on a regular basis, buyers making their purchases through these devices is going to increase more and more as the years go on until we get to the point where is makes up the vast majority of all sales.  

From the perspective of an ecommerce store, this underlines the necessity for a store to have a fully optimised mobile store, enabling you to take advantage of some of the customers venturing into mobile commerce, with over 2.5 million people shopping on a mobile store for the first time on eBay alone. 

Checkout our post "How to make your mobile store a success" to see how you can improve your mobile store and if you don't yet have a mobile store, sign up with us for free and get one now.

Get your free ecommerce store now: http://www.esellution.co.uk/pricing.html

eSellution: www.eSellution.co.uk
Twitter: www.Twitter.com/eSellution

Recent Posts

http://esellution.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-improve-your-business-with.html
http://esellution.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/from-ebay-with-love.html
http://esellution.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-measure-social-media-success.html
http://esellution.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/ebay-revamp-top-seller-status.html
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Friday, 19 October 2012

eBay on the rise and mobile could be the key

Although many eBay sellers are concerned about how the new Cassini search engine will affect their ability to generate traffic and sales, it would seem that the marketplace is going from strength to strength as sales in the US they have seen their year on year Q3 sales rise 16% to $6.48 billion from $5.59 billion. 

John Donahoe, eBay's President and CEO, has put this Q3 increase largely down to the growth in mobile commerce: "Mobile continues to be a game changer for us, and we continue to be a clear leader in mobile commerce and payments." 

The growth that eBay has seen in their sales figures, particularly through their mobile platform was emphasised last month through the announcement that the total number of eBay apps downloaded and the number of products listed through mobile devices has surpassed the 100 million figure. The growth of mobile commerce over the last year was summed up nicely on eBay's Ink Blog, who stated:

"Mobile commerce is exploding...connecting people to the things they need and love and helping sellers of all sizes in today's rapidly changing world."

As we here a eSellution tell not only our customers, but our reads too, the future of ecommerce store success lies very much in having a mobile friendly store. With many people now shopping not only on smartphones, but also tablet devices, having various stores that appear correctly on various platforms is going to be key to you achieving any future success. 

Most ecommerce software package, such as the one we provide here at eSellution, provide users with a number of different platforms for you to sell online, giving you the best possible chance of making your store successful.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

How to make your mobile store a success

As we have said time and time again here at eSellution, using ecommerce software to have your site set up to take advantage of mobile commerce is incredibly important in helping your business achieve success. 

While success in terms of a mobile store for your business comes in the customer making a purchase from your store via their mobile device, there are a number of different things you as a the business owner need to do to ensure that the customer gets to this stage. Before they can even access your store, you must first create those initial levels of engagement.

Now there are a number of different ways you can engage with your customers in order to get them to visit your mobile store. While the majority of these methods will be mobile specific, as most smartphones have social media and email capabilities, there is nothing to stop you using these traditional methods in order to bring traffic to your site. 

However, the best success, in terms of bringing people to your ecommerce store through their mobile devices, is going to come through mobile specific methods. 

SMS messaging


One of the more popular methods some business use is mobile messaging. This will involve sending text messages to users mobile phones, providing information about your business and what you have on offer, as well as giving the user a link on how to gain access to your store. To carry out this service you would need to employ a mobile messaging company to carry it out on your behalf, which charge a specific amount based on each text message sent. For this reason, sending out a text message to anyone and everyone isn't probably going to provide you with the best ROI. You could instead focus people based on a number of different parameters such as geographical location, shopping habits and demographic traits such as age and gender. 

This allows you to focus your efforts, targeting a specific group of individuals who you know will have an interest in what you have on offer, ensuring you get the best ROI possible. 

QR Codes


QR codes are a tool used more by large businesses with an already established brand identity, but they are a great way to target people who are constantly on the move. The QR code is placed on any promotional content a business may have such as posters or other display advertisements. A person can then use a QR scanning application on their smartphone to scan the code on the poster which will then redirect them to the webpage that is programmed into the code. This is a way for a business to provide users with a large chunk of information without them having to stand in front of the promotional material in order to read it all. If for example you did this for your online store, the QR code on your promotional material could take the user directly to your mobile store. 

Mobile applications


While a lot of these mobile marketing methods require effort on your part, having a mobile friendly store will allow you to take advantage of some location based applications such as the one produced by eBay, that allows a buyer to locate an online store within their country or specific region that has the products the user is looking for. This means that these types of applications can engage with the customers and then possibly direct them to your site. All you need to do is make sure you have your mobile store set up correctly to keep these customers happy throughout the purchasing process.

Getting ready for Christmas


With the Christmas period fast approaching, many online stores are now gearing up for a business festive period. As users are constantly busy during the Winter months carry out a range of tasks, having a mobile store is evermore important. Last year around £8 billion was spent in the UK alone online during the Christmas period. That was an increase of 16.5% in comparison to 2010 and the figure is set to be even higher this year.

This alone is reason enough to get your mobile store in order post-haste and that's not even considering the 4G technology that is set to be released across the UK in the coming months.  

What makes a good mobile store?



When setting up your mobile store, you should make sure it provides the following:

  • A shorter checkout process
  • Larger buttons for customers to see and click on
  • As little text as possible - You only have a small screen to work with
  • A quick load up speed - Users generally expect a website to load up within 3 seconds
  • Contact information at the top of the page - Telephone number and email
  • Appealing images - Not too many as more data will result in slower loading times

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Thursday, 11 October 2012

How to determine the right ecommerce software for your business

When setting up your own online store, selecting the right ecommerce software is vitally important in not only allowing customers to see and purchase your items, but also giving you more free time to focus on making other areas of your business a success. 

However, at the end of the day, for any small business, the important factors are going to be ease of use and cost. Depending on experience, something that it too complicated is going to make it difficult for you to set up your store the way you would like, resulting in you having to constantly get assistance until you become familiar with the software. On top of that, as you may have just recently set up your ecommerce store, you may not have the financial backing to spend a significant amount of money paying to have a website created and ecommerce software integrated into it. 

When deciding what ecommerce software you want to use for your own online store, you need to ensure that the shopping cart software provides you with value for money in terms of it being easy for you to use, no matter what your experience levels are and provides you with all the features you require to make your store a success. 

Working with a number of new and established businesses on a daily basis, we are well aware of the difficulties many new stores face and we have worked effortlessly in both our ecommerce software and support to make every store that joins us a success. 

So if you are looking to set up your own ecommerce store, what are the features you should look for when deciding on what shopping cart software to use? Well a few of a necessities you should be looking for are:

  • An easy to use system - If you are setting up your own ecommerce store for the first time, you don't want to spend hours figuring out how to list your products. You want a system that is easy to use and allows you to literally get all of your products online in minutes. 
  • Mobile store - With around 20% of all online shopping sales made through mobile devices, the importance of having a mobile store is incredibly important. A mobile store allows customers to purchase easier on mobile devices as the buttons are easier for them to click on and the entire checkout process is shorter. 
  • Stock synchronisation - If you have a number of different ecommerce platforms such as ecommerce, Facebook and eBay stores, monitoring your stock levels across all of these platforms can often be difficult. Poorly managed stock can often result in you running out and possibly overselling, meaning the customer purchases a product that you haven't actually got in stock. When deciding on the right ecommerce software for you, you want a package that synchronises all of your stock, meaning that when a sale is made on one platform, it will update the stock levels across all the others. 
  • Social commerce - In terms of marketing your business, for any small ecommerce store, no marketing platform is better than making use of free social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. While you can create accounts yourself and generate followers, it is important that your shopping cart software has social commerce integration. This means that each of the products in your store has a number of buttons with it that allows customers to share these products across their social media accounts for their friends to see. For any ecommerce store, big or small, this is an incredibly important feature as, it will not only enhance your brand image, it will result in a large proportion of your sales. 

We at eSellution provide all of these features as well as a number of unique ecommerce and eBay templates to help give your ecommerce store a unique and professional look, that will considerably enhance your brand image. On top of that, we also provide out customers with a Facebook store and eBay integration, allowing customers to not only take advantage of this new social commerce platform, but also import and export products between your ecommerce and eBay stores. 

The ecommerce store from eSellution and all of the unique features it provides are completely free, requiring no set fee, monthly fee or any added costs whatsoever. Our dashboard holds all of the features previously mentioned within this post and is incredibly easy to use, providing no previous HTML or coding knowledge. If you are looking to start a new business, break away from eBay or move your current ecommerce store to a more affordable and easier to use platform, sign up now with eSellution and have your store up and running in minutes.

Get your free ecommerce store now: http://www.esellution.co.uk/pricing.html

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Monday, 8 October 2012

What 4G means for your ecommerce store

With cities up and down the country rolling out new 4G capabilities within the next few months, what will this  new high-speed data service mean for your online store?

4G will allow mobile devices to have download capabilities up to 100 megabytes per second, that's more than double the speed on current 3G mobile devices. This means that in terms of your ecommerce store, mobile commerce has never been more important. This significantly increased download speed will mean that your online store will load on smartphones much quicker, resulting in customers being able to carry out their shopping experience faster than ever. Not only will this make customers happier, it will also result in you being able to take more orders over a shorter period of time.

However, looking at 4G as simply a way of allowing your current ecommerce store to load quicker on mobile devices is limiting it's true capabilities. Rather than looking at what it can do for your current mobile store, you should be looking at how it can help you have a more advanced mobile store. Currently, a number of mobile stores are limited on the amount of data they can have. The bigger your store in terms of data, the longer it is going to take to load on a mobile device. 

This drastically increased speed that 4G provides means that a mobile store on a 4G network can hold much more data and still load quicker than your current 3G store. For this reason, you should be looking at what you can do to in terms of making your store more appealing to your customers visiting through mobile devices. This could consist of having more detailed designs in terms of layout and buttons, having more images to entice customers to purchase your items, insert videos or having a complete overhaul, creating a new, more efficient mobile store from scratch. 

Another benefit comes in not only the ability for a customer to view your store's pages quicker, but also find your store quicker through other methods. If a customer is using a mobile app to find the cheapest price for a product they are looking for, they will either use the app itself or the search engine capability on their smartphone to trawl through a number of different ecommerce stores looking for the best deal. On the current 3G data service, due to some sites loading slower than others, a customer may grow tired of the process after searching through four or five different online stores. What this means is that if your store is low down in terms of search engine ranking, the likelihood is that they won't come across your site. Increased speed through 4G capabilities means customers will be able to go through more online stores at a quicker rate, greatly increasing the chances of a customer actually coming across your ecommerce store during their search.

However, even with the 4G data service, if your store is on say page 10 of Google, no matter how quickly a page loads, a customer just isn't going to spend the time searching through all the preceding pages until they come across yours. For this reason, you need to look at your store's SEO as well as your mobile store capabilities. For help on improving your online store's search engine ranking, check out: 'New businesses guide to SEO success' 

If you have yet to set up your own mobile store or are looking to upgrade your current model, you can sign up with eSellution and get a free mobile store in time for the 4G boom. 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, 14 September 2012

Men now love to shop more than women?

The general stereotype we see these days is that women love to shop and men don't. Well information produced by online market research company, uSamp, has seemingly destroyed this idea.

According to their research, they found that more men make an online purchase through mobile devices than women. The main reason for this is most likely due to the ease in which someone can purchase a product from their phone. They do not have to travel to the highstreet, they don't even have to be sat at a computer. No matter where they may be, or what they may be doing, they can still purchase products online using their mobile phone. 

With 45% of men and 34% of women surveyed using their mobile to complete an online transaction, it is further evidence as to the importance for all online store owners to have a mobile friendly store for customers to visit. 

The research also found that women are more likely than men to take advantage of an ecommerce store's offer through the use of mobile customers, while men are more likely to improve your businesses social commerce by telling their friends about a purchase they have made via their social media platforms.

One of the most popular type of product purchased by males is electronic goods, accounting for 27% of all mobile purchases. So if you run an online store that sells electronic goods, has specific offers and allows customers to share content via social media sites, you need to make sure you have a mobile version of your store to take advantage of this popular shopping platform.

If you currently don't have a mobile version of your ecommerce store, you can get some from eSellution for free.

(http://blog.usamp.com/blog/2012/09/12/retailers-meet-mans-new-best-friend-mobile/)
Get your free ecommerce store now: http://www.esellution.co.uk/pricing.html

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, 13 September 2012

iPhone 5 set to revolutionise mobile shopping

The launch of the iPhone 5 is expected to play a huge role in the substantial increase of mobile commerce within the next few years. 

According to research carried out by consultancy firm, Conlumino, the launch of the iPhone 5 will see the time people spend researching the prices of various products double in length. This will cause a dramatic increase in the number of ecommerce sales made over mobile devices, which is already set to reach 20% of all online sales by Christmas. The longer someone spends researching item prices by visiting various online stores, the greater chance they are going to be exposed to a wide range of stores. This means that not only is your online store going to have a chance of increasing it's sales, but it is also going to see a major increase in traffic and your overall brand exposure. 

According to research, people currently spend around 1 hour 20 minutes researching across various stores comparing the prices on a number of different products. It is believed that the launch of the iPhone 5 will see this figure increase to 2 hours and 30 minutes by 2014. With a number of "Third Wave" technologies currently in development, such as the ability for customers to try on a store's products virtually, the mobile shopping platform is set to go from strength to strength. 

This increase in mobile commerce will be a positive for both customers and shoppers alike. For the customer, they will be able to easily browser various stores all from the comfort of their own home, ensuring that they get the best possible bargain on a product they are looking to purchase. For the ecommerce store owner, it opens up a greater platform for them to target their customers through location based details which will entice customers to visit their online store. 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

How to stop people leaving your site

When a customer visits your online store, there are a number of things which can cause them to gain a negative impression of your site, resulting in them leaving your store to go elsewhere.

Website Layout


As the main page of your store is most likely the first part of your site a customer lands on, it is important to make a good first impression. You want to have a site that has a clear layout and allows customers to easily see the different item categories you have on your site, showing a visitor how easily they can navigate to different sections of your site. You should look to avoid having all of your items on main page for customers to view. This just makes your website seemed cluttered and is a bit of a turn off.  However, you could have a small selection of products on your main page, showing the most popular items that your store has for sale. 

Easy Maneuverability 


When a customer visits your store in order to make a purchase, the easier you can make the whole experience for them, the happier they are going to be. The more pages a customer has to go through in order to complete the purchasing procedure, the more annoyed they are going to get. While many people say that the key to mobile commerce success is making the process as quick as possible, the same applies to your online site. One of the factors that affects this maneuverability is the ability for your website to load up in different browsers. Depending on the browser your customer uses, the appearance of your store may differ slightly, resulting in images and other content appearing distorted. Read our earlier post (Your browser is more important than you think when selling online) for more information on how to try and combat this issue.

Speed


It isn't just the speed of the checkout process that needs to be right to keep your customer happy, the time in which it takes the pages themselves actually load up is a crucial factor. Both on your online store and mobile store, if a web page takes too long to load up, the likelihood is that the customer is going to decide to abandon your store and try somewhere else. The general consensus is that for a customer to be happy with a page's loading time, the page needs to completely load up within three seconds. If you have done tests on your own page and have found that your pages take longer than this, one of the easiest ways to try and fix this is simply to reduce the number of images you have on a particular page. The more images you have on your page, the bigger it is, so the longer it is going to take to load. However, if you run an online store, your images are what's going to entice customers to make a purchase, so reducing the number of images you have may just not be possible. If this is the case then you should look to change your image files to GIF files as they are the smallest type of image file and will load up the quickest. You should avoid using PNG files and bitmap as these are the biggest types of image files and will result in a significantly increased loading time.

Another option would be to enable PHP caching on your site. Essentially what this does is save all of the information such as the data and images, when a person first visits the site, for retrieval at a later date. What this means is that when a customer visits your store for the second time, it will simply load up all the data which was previously saved, making the website load up much quicker. 

Provide As Much Choice As Possible


The more options you can provide a customer with, the happier they will be. This applies not only to the products you have for sale in terms of colour and size, but also payment and delivery options a customer can select. This variety in choice is going to allow you to attract as many customers as possible to your website and help you achieve the maximum amount of sales. While it may cost you more in terms of using more delivery options, the extra sales it will generate will result in you still achieving a greater profit. The same attitude should apply when selecting the payment methods your online store will provide. While many people tend to use Paypal in order to purchase products online, you should still give them the option to pay by other forms such as credit card, Sagepay and all other forms of online and merchant payment methods.

Provide Some Form of Security 


If a customer visits your ecommerce store and finds that there isn't adequate security to protect both their login and payment details, customers are going to be very reluctant to purchase from your store. When setting up an ecommerce store you should look get some form of hosting security. This means that all of your emails and other data within your store will be protected from any external attack. The next step would then be to  get yourself some form of payment gateway which will allow your customers to make a secure payment. When a customer makes a purchase, they enter the payment details, such as their credit card information, their details are then transferred to the online gateway to be processed and send to the buyer's bank to get authorisation for the payment. When approved, the cost of the product would then be debited from the users account in order to complete the payment process. Using a gateway allows you to ensure that this transaction is kept as secure as possible.

Get your free ecommerce store now: http://www.esellution.co.uk/pricing.html


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, 7 September 2012

The hows and whys of mobile commerce

As we constantly tell our readers and clients here at eSellution, mobile commerce is ever growing, becoming one of the biggest online sales platform out there. While eBay is the world's biggest shopping site with many online buyers and sellers alike using the marketplace to carry out a substantial amount of transactions every day, over 10% of all these transactions are carried out of via mobile devices. This figure is constantly on the rise, underpinned by eBay's CEO, John Donahoe predicting at the start of the year that eBay's mobile gross merchandise volume would reach $8 billion in 2012.

Why you need a mobile store


Currently eBay receives over 17 million users to the site a day through mobile devices and while these figures are mainly due to the traffic that eBay's brand generates, it demonstrates the importance mobile commerce plays in not just selling on eBay, but selling across all ecommerce platforms. As we stated last week, by Christmas this year it is expected that mobile commerce will make up 20% of all online retail transactions. So if you are running an online business that sells across any online platform, there has never been a better time to take the plunge and setup an mobile version on your online store.

How to get a mobile store


Now, you may want to set up a mobile version of your online store but are unsure how to go about it. Well it is actually easier than you think. There are a number of ecommerce companies that are reasonably priced to instantly provide you with a mobile platform and yes, we at eSellution do offer this service absolutely for free: http://www.esellution.co.uk/pricing.html.  When you sign up with eSellution for example, you receive an ecommerce store which already has a mobile platform, meaning customers can instantly access your online store via their mobile devices.

How to make your mobile store effective


However it isn't just good enough to create a mobile platform and then leave it for your customers to use. The key to mobile commerce comes in the ability to make your platform as efficient and easy to use as possible. The quicker customers can visit your store on their mobile device, find the product they want and complete the purchase, the happier they are going to be and the more likely they will return for future purchases.

When deciding to set up a mobile platform for their ecommerce store many people wonder "is my business ready?" The truth is every business whether big or small should be using mobile commerce as part of their sales platforms. The more opportunities you give people to access your store, the more sales you are going to make. You are going to see much less traffic if you only have an online website, meaning the majority of customers need to be stationary at a desk to make a purchase. Mobile commerce allows users to access your store wherever they may be, whether stationary or constantly on the go.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

July highlights the online retail revolution

Online sales reached it's yearly high through the month of July according to figures published by the Interactive Retail in Media Group (IRMG) which showed a 17% year on year growth.

While these figures show an increasing growth in all online store categories, a particular increase has been seen in clothing and electrical sales, with clothing sales increasing 15 percent on it's previous year and electrical sales increasing 30%. 

When reading these figures, you shouldn't think that this growth only applies to large corporate brands. Small online retailers, such as those who run eBay stores, are also finding a growth in their online sales. While their income may not be as high as other ecommerce brand chains, many customers see small online sellers as a better platform to purchase products as they provide the customers with the products they desire at a lower price.

No matter what product you sell, there will be numerous stores out there who also sell the same products. This competition for customers is what brings about greater value for the customer as online sellers look to gain an advantage over their rivals by offering lower prices on products. This underpins the growing strength of online retail. As more businesses launch online, competition for customers grows. This growth in competition creates greater benefits for customers in product choice and price, enticing more people to transfer from bricks and mortar to online shopping. 

When we look at the rise of online retail, it isn't just sales made via a computer screen. Mobile commerce has seen the biggest growth of all online platforms with an increase of 313% through July when compared to the same point in 2011. However, while this may be an increase on the previous year, it is lower than the figures for May and June. Although this is a decline on previous months, you shouldn't think of this as mobile commerce being on the decline, in fact it is the opposite. 

A recent survey conducted by "InMobi" found that 59% of all people surveyed use mobile devices to complete transactions. Mobile commerce is increasing exponentially and is one of the most successful online platforms with many online businesses both big and small now looking to develop their mobile sales platform in order to gain access to this increased traffic and revenue streams. 

Many customers have now begun using their mobile devices in order to find the best price on products. When a customer finds a product they like in a bricks and mortar store, they then use one of a number of different mobile apps to find the best deal for that product online. This is essentially a win win for an online seller as it not only encourages customers to purchase from an online store, it is the bricks and mortar store that has brought the product to the attention of the customer and the mobile application that has then brought the customer to your store. 

Although many have suggested that this increase could be down to the recent London Olympic games, this growth through July, when combined with online shopping's rise as a whole throughout 2012, is just one more indication of the ever growing dominance online retail has over it's bricks and mortar counterparts. 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Why your business needs a Facebook store

 When setting up on online business, many people tend to overlook the need for a Facebook store as they don't believe that customers will be willing to purchase through social media. While this stance was correct a number of years ago, many customers have now opened up to the idea of buying through Facebook.

While many businesses have a Facebook fan page, telling users about products, sales and containing external links to access their online store, many people can often be hesitant to leave Facebook. Another benefit of having a Facebook store for your business is the ability to take advantage of a customers buying impulse. If a customer comes across a great deal for a product in your store, it perks their interest and makes them want to buy it. The longer the customers goes from coming across the offer to making the purchase, the more this buying impulse fades until eventually they don't want it anymore. Running a Facebook store is similar to having a mobile store in the sense that you need to make the checkout process for both platforms as quick as possible. Allowing customers to buy products through Facebook means that they don't have to spend time travelling from Facebook to your store, they can purchase through Facebook, taking advantage of a customers buying impulse.

With over two-thirds of all Facebook fans, following a business to find out about the latest products and sales, it makes sense to give these customers the option to purchase products instantly through Facebook. 

However, one thing you need to take care of when setting up a Facebook store is that you do not use Facebook credits as the currency customers use when purchasing products. If your Facebook uses Facebook credits it is going to make customers very hesitant to purchase from your store. Essentially how Facebook credits work is that the customer uses their money to purchase Facebook credits and then uses those credits to purchase things across the social media site. Like I said earlier, the key to making your Facebook store a success is a quick checkout process. Using Facebook credits not only delays this process, but also makes your store seem slightly less trustworthy in the eyes of visiting customers.

The more places you sell your products, the more customers and always you are going to generate for your ecommerce store. If you are worried about the added effort that running a Facebook store could entail, there are a number of multichannel shopping cart software platforms that can help you do this with ease. We at eSellution can help you achieve this with our multichannel ecommerce software, enabling you to sell products across Facebook, eBay, through your own ecommerce site and across mobile devices. What's more, you can easily list and manage your products as well as monitor your stock levels with our stock synchronisation features. For more information about how we at eSellution can transform your online business CLICK HERE 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 21 August 2012

How to optimise your content for mobile devices

Mobile commerce is an every growing platform that is seemingly revolutionising online selling, making it easier than ever for customers to visit your store and purchase items wherever they may be.

When it comes to producing content for your mobile website, less is more. As mobile screens are much smaller than computer screens, you don't want your customers scrolling through large amounts of text (as I covered in an earlier post). All it is going to do is annoy your customers and result in them leaving your site. Not only that, but large amounts of content will result in your website taking longer to load which is another reason why customers will leave your site.

The simpler you make your mobile store, the better. When developing your mobile store, try to avoid using large amounts of scripting language or flash as some mobile devices will struggle to load it. However, a large proportion of mobile users tend to use smartphones which are able to load up a variety of mobile stores quick and easy. 

Deciding where to place key information on your site can always be tricky. However, you want your customers to see the information as soon as possible, which means that you should place it as close as you can to the top of the page, without affecting the overall style of your website.

When producing content for your mobile device, try to avoid using fixed sized tables. Depending on the type of mobile device the user is viewing the webpage on, the size of the screen is going to be different. This will mean that if your website contains fixed sized items such as tables, they simply may not fit, making them look distorted and affecting the overall look of your mobile store. 

Before you release your ecommerce store's mobile platform for customers to access, you must make sure that you don't forget to include the basic search engine optimisation features that your website needs. This means include the required keywords that relate to your business as well as carrying out all link building techniques to drive traffic to your mobile website. 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Tuesday, 14 August 2012

How to maximise your mobile commerce potential

If you have read any of my previous posts or any other digital marketing blogs in the last few months, you have found that mobile commerce is the next big thing when it comes to online selling. You've looked through all the information, how the this trend will increase and how it can help your business and have now decided that it is time your online store invests resources into developing a mobile platform.

Now that you know mobile commerce is right for your online ecommerce store (read: The future of ecommerce selling and customer engagement if you are still unsure) the next step is to see how you can maximise your efforts on this platform to ensure the best possible results. 

When creating a website for a mobile platform, you need to bear in mind that less is more. A mobile phone screen is substantially smaller than a computer screen, meaning that what you don't want to have is a website that is chocked full of text. All this is going to do is make your mobile site look very unappealing. The key to mobile store success, comes in the ease of use. If you have an online store that allows customers to purchase items, you need to build a mobile store that enables customers to select and purchase the product in the quickest time possible. 

To truly maximise your mobile store and make it an appealing platform for your customers, you should look to do away with the traditional login process where the customer must first make an account to purchase an item. What this means is that you should have a process whereby the customer will select the item they want, enter their mobile number, credit card and delivery address before pressing the purchase button to complete the transaction. This information can then be stored within their mobile phone's browser cookies so that if the customer visits your store in the future to purchase again, all of their details will already be saved, making the process even quicker next time round. As people tend to visit stores on their mobiles when they are on the move, you do not want to ask your customers to tick boxes or confirm different terms and conditions before the process can be completed. Like I said at the start of this post, less is more and ease is everything.

While you want your mobile store to look inviting to visiting customers, you need to always be thinking about the constraints of mobile bandwidth in comparison to an Internet connection. Although there are now a  number of hotspots all over the country, allowing users to connect their mobile phones to the Internet when out and about, mobile phones which are not connected to the Internet will have substantially slower page loading times. What this means is that if your website is rather large in terms of the data it has, it could take a while for the user to actually load up and view your site. A slow loading time negates the whole purpose of a mobile store, damaging your conversion rate rather than helping it. With over 59% of mobile users expecting a web page to load in under three seconds, a slow loading web page is only going to annoy the user and probably result in them being frustrated and leaving the page.

Creating a mobile commerce store is very much a balancing act. While it must have less information than it's website counterpart, you must ensure that the design of your mobile store is exactly the same as your online store. The look of your website is one of the many parts that make up your business's brand. Having a online store and a mobile store that both look different is going to confuse the customer and not give them that instant recognition that it is your store as soon as they land on it. 

While all of these different factors are important to creating a successful mobile store, you must always remember that above everything else, ease of use is the crucial factor which will determine your mobile platform's success. You could have the best looking m-commerce site that loads in seconds, but if the site is difficult for customers to use on their phones, making the checkout process arduous, all that money and time you have spent developing your mobile platform will be for nothing.

eSellution: www.eSellution.co.uk

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)