Deciding on the type of eCommerce Platform

One of the most common frequently asked questions from eCommerce website designers is about type of shopping cart most suitable for any retailer. Retailers, before trying to search the suitable eCommerce platform, should focus on the goals they want to achieve by setting up the eCommerce web store. Additionally, the features which they want to integrate in their shopping online cart also help in determining about the eCommerce platform.

Ignoring these critical issues would result in under utilization of the shopping cart or the shopping online cart would not be able to manage cart's operations effectively.

Emphasizing on the very fundamental issues offers a better clarity & retailers can choose their suitable platform from a few selected one like platform with light add-ons, hosted or SaaS, self hosted or custom eCommerce shopping online cart.

Types of eCommerce Platform

Light add-on cart: This means that any cart which integrates with the existing shopping cart of the online retailer or Content Management System(CMS) like Word Press. The basic advantage of this platform is that it is inexpensive &suitable for those retailers with a limited number of items which requires very little customization. Retailers, while opting for this platform, will face some issues regarding the flexibility of the custom items restricted design features.

Hosted or SaaS Carts: Hosted Carts are those shopping online cart where the hosting is done on the web server of the online retailer. Conventionally, the hosted carts offer more flexibility for inventory management and customer service than any add-on cart.

This type of shopping platform is suitable for those start-up businesses with limited resources that have a few hundred items. The cost of initial setup is low, but the retailers need to spare for monthly hosting fees and fees for uploading further products.

Those retailers who have custom design needs or requirement of any customized data integration should not use hosted solutions. Using a hosted solution for any customization cost the same amount as that of using a licensed or purchased cart.

Self-hosted open source or licensed/purchased cart: Those shopping carts which online retailers can place on their own servers or web hosting service belongs to this section. This cart is usually suggested for customized website designing. Retailers can download this type of the eCommerce platform on their servers and can modify them according to their requirements.

There are few downsides to this approach like the preliminary cost of setting up is high and the cost to upgrade is very high.

Custom eCommerce shopping cart: This type of eCommerce platform is suitable for those retailers who are using various other web applications like ERP or CRM. Custom shopping online cart allows retailers to fully integrate the existing systems.

These are suitable for enterprise companies as the cost of setting up is very high and normally takes long duration for designing & commissioning.

Deciding on the type of eCommerce platform is always a tricky situation. To remove such an indecisive situation, most of the shopping online cart are coming up with their demo versions.

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New optimization feature for debuting robust 24Seven Cart

LAN services, in order to leverage & enhance the customer experience while shopping online, has expanded its 24Seven Cart, an eCommerce shopping cart solution, by making it exhaustive with new optimization feature.

                         

Online retailers always need to put extra efforts so that their webstore get higher ranking on the searchengine and also to generate & attract more traffic to their web store. 24Seven Cart has come up with new optimization feature so that online retailers need no avail any additional service for driving traffic to their shopping cart.

Operating in the online space is more complex as compared to traditional brick and mortar vertical. Though both the verticals have their own glitches & complexities, but in web space online retailers need to be meticulous about various issues. It is critical that the eCommerce platform they choose allows them to control various factors important for SEO.

After considering these complexities, the following new optimization feature helps the online retailers in increasing the visibility in the online space.

1. Webmaster Tool Verification- 24Seven Cart has an inbuilt feature for verifying the website by webmaster tool, Google and Bing. It allows online retailers to view the crawl errors, update settings for SEO.
2.  Google Analytics eCommerce- This shopping cart has a Google Analytics setup which provides eCommerce tracking support which shows the detailed information about the shopping behavior of the online shoppers.
3.  XML Sitemap- 24Seven Cart instantly creates an XML site map which helps in setting up & maintaining the updated sitemap of the site. This is necessary as the online retailers constantly updates the inventory by adding, editing and removing.
4.  Tailored Product detail pages- 24Seven Cart allows online retailers to write, edit any product pages and their meta descriptions accordingly. This is more important incase if there is duplicate content written on their websites as it affects the ranking on the search engine.
5.  In reality, meta descriptions don’t impact the Google SERPs directly but they do have an impact on Click Through Rates.

Category pages- 24Seven Cart treats category pages equally important and therefore offers similar features like:

• Page titles & meta description addition
• Adding Social share buttons
• Keywords in static URLs.

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Transition from eCommerce to Social Commerce

Businesses operating in the dynamic environment need to be vigilant about the current trends of the market. They need to be acquainted with market trends to adopt new communication channels for revenue a generation that promises growth.

The social networking channel is one of the latest fads that is inflicting among customers of every segment. Customers are using this communication channel not only for socializing and increasing their social circle but also for researching products online before purchasing. Among such customers who are using social networking media, at least half of those publish reviews and post comments about the products they buy.

Utilizing this communication media to develop an ecosystem for retailers nurtures new course of revenues. This is also true for different platform vendors who are providing such solutions to enable social commerce.

This social media enable online retailers to exploit social capital and helps in extracting tremendous word-of-mouth publicity of fans who like the products, make purchases and share about it with their friends. Now there are several ways to pull the power of social networking media and social commerce.

1)   Rating & Reviews: This system of rating & writing reviews on social sites is a decade old practice. Acknowledging that the friends’ recommendation scores more than any other criterion for influencing the buying behavior, companies like Amazon integrated reviews & ratings to their sites paving a way of substantial growth.

There are two aspects which the online retailers need to consider. Firstly, customers rely heavily on researching about the products which they are going to buy and look out for any such kind of reviews on the retailers’ site from first hand users & experts.

Secondly, the online retailers should utilize the user generated content on their site as a successful social commerce strategy. Search engines give preference to those sites which posts new content on a regular basis.

2)   Social Logins: According a report by Forrester, approximately 25% of the online shoppers abandon their shopping cart at the checkout stage if they need to fill the traditional registration form for creating an account.

For online retailers, account information is necessary as they learn more about shopping pattern or to offer them promotional discounts so as to retain & develop a relationship. But online shoppers are averse in filling out such lengthy registration forms. Moreover, most of the customers fill inaccurate information.

To tackle such issues, a feasible option is opting for social logins. Social logins means login through IDs created on social sites like Facebook, Google etc. It reduces the time spent on registration as it fetches required information from such logins. This ultimately reduces the abandonment of shopping carts by expediting the registration process.

3)   Social Sharing: It monitors the recommendations of the fellows for driving qualified traffic to the product pages on the ecommerce sites. This kind of arrangement leverages social advocacy about the purchases made by the customers or their product reviews to their friends on multiple social networks.

It also helps retailers in avoiding the news feed optimization. Social networking sites like Facebook, etc. are designed to promote the significance by preferring news feed posts from friends who interact frequently. News feed posts that customers write are likely to get higher rank in the news feed than those from the brand.

Social commerce has become mandatory in today’s market. The only need is to develop deep analytic& using this channel as a complementary vertical only.

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24Seven cart integrates a new Advanced Pricing Configuration

Online retailers are occasionally prohibited from showcasing prices that are below than the manufacturers’ advertised price. 24Seven Cart has unveiled an advanced feature that offers online retailers an opportunity to offer their customers a better price, while fulfilling the requirements of the manufacturers.

Now a days, eCommerce sites are intentionally hiding a critical piece of information: the price tag. To get to know about how much these items cost, online shoppers need to add items to their shopping carts. This tendency is the result internet inclination of persistently driving down the prices.

This trend of hiding the prices has faded the implicit promises of eCommerce sites: searching & visiting the comparison shopping sites for getting the best deals. Presently, manufacturers can forbid online retailers from displaying their products less than a certain price; which is called as Minimum Advertised Price. 24Seven Cart offers a powerful tool to manage pricing, discounts and price rules.

Now, with this new advanced feature in 24Seven Cart, online retailers can organize their store to avoid the display of actual prices where it's not permitted to show according to the conditions of the manufacturers. They can determine the price types & the values which need to be displayed on a uniform basis for all products as well as for individual products.

Ever since the manufacturers are regulating the prices by forcing the online retailers to display the Minimum Advertised Price, they have started displaying a note that says things like “See price by adding this item to your cart”.  The result of this activity is that the search sites like Google Product Search & Price Grabber are not able to show such prices.

To deal with this price displaying the issue, 24Seven Cart offers different price types that include: Retail price, Cost price, Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail price (MSRP), Price A, Price B and Price C. Advanced pricing helps in establishing variable rules that can be used with individual products or for all products.

Both the manufacturers & online retailers have their own versions to support the Minimum Advertised Price. But to deal with such situation, this feature of 24Seven Cart will certainly help online retailers as they use this feature as a marketing tool.

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Resizing website for different screen sizes

An increase in the internet and mobile penetration has led the online retailers to design their eCommerce sites compatible with mobile devices. To increase the visibility of their web store, online retailers  have made separate mobile websites. But with the increase in display technologies, nowadays, mobile devices are coming in different screen sizes.

To confront this issue, online retailers are crafting their sites on responsive web design.The responsive web design allows the web content to re-size according to the device’s screen size. The concept of responsive web design emphasizes more on fitting content to various screen sizes instead of shaping the content to fit the value.

A responsive web design adjusts the width of the browser and adjust the content accordingly. The coding language transforms the site’s web presence. Since the websites are now accessible through multiple devices, the visitors get the optimal viewing experience. This easy access of information through various devices has led businesses across different sectors to opt for this responsive design.

But before opting for it, there are certain issues which online retailers need to consider like what is the difference which the responsive web design makes, how it is going to expand the online presence. Responsive design is definitely going to offer convenience. The content adjusts itself depending on the screen size and this helps in gathering information anytime & from anywhere.

It also requires less code & are usually preferred by most of the search engine sites. This ultimately leads to more uniform clicks. Besides from having a compatibility across various screen sizes, it is also helpful in search engine optimization.

SEO Benefits-

Reducing the bounce rates: If the visitors are not able to access the websites through their mobile devices, they will go back to the result pages. This increases the bounce rates for the website. And ultimately, the Google will reduce the ranking of the site after considering the pattern of the visits to the site.Therefore, responsive web design also helps in optimizing the sites.

Leading traffic to one URL: Having a separate mobile site has its own advantages & disadvantages. The owner of the site needs to optimize the URLs of both regular &the mobile sites. But in case of responsive web design, optimization is done only for one URL & this helps in avoiding confusion among the site visitors.

Using the prevalent inbound links: Google is using the pre-existing inbound links for ranking the websites in mobile search. Therefore, those sites that are using responsive web design gets higher ranks due to existing inbuilt links. This improves the SERPs functioning thus increasing the visibility among mobile user.

But having said that, there are a few hindrances while adopting this technology.

CSS media queries limitation:To be compatible with a wide range of devices, the responsive design depends on CSS media queries. But in reality, majority of the devices are not matched with CSS media queries.

Resizing images: Image resizing in the responsive web designing needlessly consumes CPU & RAM.

Loading speed: Speed of loading sites on the mobile devices is less as compared to desktops. Responsive design doesn’t remove any Java Scripts or HTML codes. This makes the site slower on the mobile devices.

The responsive web design is definitely not a passing fad. It is going to stay but the site owners need to be considerate while opting for this technology.

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High mobile penetration & social media drives Online shopping

With a rise in the number of web stores, customers are more inclined to make purchases online. The major reason behind this higher favour can be attributed to high internet &mobile penetration. Now whether it’s the home or on the way, these consumers use their phones to browse, research, find deals & make purchases from these online retail shopping carts.

According to a report by e Marketer, US consumers alone will spend nearly $37.44 billion in 2013 on purchases made via smart phones or any mobile devices like tablets or laptops which is approx. 57% more than last year figures. As far as number of mobile shoppers are concerned, such high revenues denotes an approx. 23million more consumers for 2013 reaching the figure to 118 million. Such a figure also indicates a more mobile centric lifestyle even if shoppers don’t buy on mobile.

Of these 118 million mobile shoppers for the year 2013, approx. 72 million will make purchases through a mobile device. The new trend seen in the mobile shopping vertical is that consumers who were using a mobile device are more likely to spend more while in-store than those who did not use it. Moreover, consumers who were using their mobile device for product research were more likely to make a purchase from eCommerce shopping carts.

The real challenge which the marketers & online retailers are facing is how to engage customers &convert them to final sales. To tackle this issue, they are using different resources to make their presence feel. Making their website mobile compatible is definitely one of the ways to tackle such issues. In addition to this, online retailers are also adopting social networking media to increase their visibility.

Report by e Marketers states that, ‘As social media has gone mobile, more & more consumers are accessing their accounts via smart phones & tablets. Now, marketers are racing to catch up with consumers where they connect, employing a variety of strategies for outreach. The key opportunity to capitalize is that mobile users not only log in more frequently, but they also spend more time on social networking sites too’.

As devices integrate social media more deeply, for e.g., by making it easier to upload photos from a mobile phone to a social site, it reinforces the mobile-social virtuous circle, making it even stronger.

But even to realize this, marketers need to make their content accessible through all mobile devices. Moreover, they need to focus more on content they write as news feed for their social media promotions. Therefore, before adopting this mobile commerce strategy, there are certain points that need to be attended.

Online retailers need to generate news feed for their social media promotions. For this, they can focus on using more images than simple text as images are more self explanatory. Marketers can carefully craft the content that includes images, product price, availability & other related options.

An important point to note is that while generating news feed for social media campaigns,  marketers  need to focus less on promotions tied to their brand page & more on the content.

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24Seven Cart leverages online business with Facebook / Energizing 24Seven Cart with Facebook

LAN Services has revolutionized the online shopping experience by launching 24Seven shopping cart integrated with Facebook. Now customers can experience this enhanced feature not only at the time of making purchases but even while researching about the products.

Purchasing products online can be a tedious task especially when customers don’t know about any features or usability of it. To tackle this issue, they need to search extensively on the web or need to ask personally with their friends or experts. It’s a time consuming process & at times the final result is not satisfactory as they can ask about it with a limited number of people.

To confront such issues, 24Seven shopping cart software has come up with a feature to integrate Facebook in their shopping cart. This integration of Facebook works for both online retailers and online shoppers. Online retailers get an extra channel to promote about their web stores. They can use this social networking platform to increase the visibility of their shopping carts.

This feature offers online retailers:

Higher Conversions: By simplifying the process of sign-in, customers can bypass creating separate IDs and passwords, removing a key hurdle for getting a potential sales conversion (and future conversions). With more customers getting first hand information themselves before they buy, retailers gain powerful insights on their potential customers, enhancing revenue generation.

Encouraging Social Marketing: With access to potential customer data and social graphs, online retailers gain initial information about the potential customers’ behavior, interests and favorite brands. Facebook link also simplifies how customers share the products they buy and the online retailers they check.

Customized Interaction with Customers: Identifying potential customers gives online retailers to offer recommendations or suggestions based on previous purchases and interests. More relevant products are likely to grasp the customer’s attention which will increase the chances of buying.

Online shoppers can reap the benefits of Facebook integration with 24Seven Cart even before making the final purchase. Web stores built on 24Seven shopping cart software offers a feature to write reviews about the products shown in the web store. This helps the prospective online customers to get the first hand information about the features, usability and the overall performance of the products. In addition to this customers can rate the products by liking/unliking the products.

This helps prospective customers in their products research and decision making regarding the final purchase as they can read the reviews of the products. Moreover we even can add a web link of a video showing product usability while writing reviews about the products. This even makes it simple for potential customers to find information about product usage.

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High mobile penetration & social media drives Online shopping

With a rise in the number of web stores, customers are more inclined to make purchases online. The major reason behind this higher favour can be attributed to high internet &mobile penetration. Now whether it’s the home or on the way, these consumers use their phones to browse, research, find deals & make purchases from these online retail shopping carts.

According to a report by e Marketer, US consumers alone will spend nearly $37.44 billion in 2013 on purchases made via smart phones or any mobile devices like tablets or laptops which is approx. 57% more than last year figures. As far as number of mobile shoppers are concerned, such high revenues denotes an approx. 23million more consumers for 2013 reaching the figure to 118 million. Such a figure also indicates a more mobile centric lifestyle even if shoppers don’t buy on mobile.

Of these 118 million mobile shoppers for the year 2013, approx. 72 million will make purchases through a mobile device. The new trend seen in the mobile shopping vertical is that consumers who were using a mobile device are more likely to spend more while in-store than those who did not use it. Moreover, consumers who were using their mobile device for product research were more likely to make a purchase from eCommerce shopping carts.

The real challenge which the marketers & online retailers are facing is how to engage customers &convert them to final sales. To tackle this issue, they are using different resources to make their presence feel. Making their website mobile compatible is definitely one of the ways to tackle such issues. In addition to this, online retailers are also adopting social networking media to increase their visibility.

Report by e Marketers states that, ‘As social media has gone mobile, more & more consumers are accessing their accounts via smart phones & tablets. Now, marketers are racing to catch up with consumers where they connect, employing a variety of strategies for outreach. The key opportunity to capitalize is that mobile users not only log in more frequently, but they also spend more time on social networking sites too’.

As devices integrate social media more deeply, for e.g., by making it easier to upload photos from a mobile phone to a social site, it reinforces the mobile-social virtuous circle, making it even stronger.

But even to realize this, marketers need to make their content accessible through all mobile devices. Moreover, they need to focus more on content they write as news feed for their social media promotions. Therefore, before adopting this mobile commerce strategy, there are certain points that need to be attended.

Online retailers need to generate news feed for their social media promotions. For this, they can focus on using more images than simple text as images are more self explanatory. Marketers can carefully craft the content that includes images, product price, availability & other related options. 

An important point to note is that while generating news feed for social media campaigns,  marketers  need to focus less on promotions tied to their brand page & more on the content.

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Marketers failing at Content Marketing

Content marketing is a marketing format for the creation and sharing of content. It helps in promoting the business online and finally acquiring customers. Now-a-days, online retailers are using the content marketing to attract customers. However, generating the quality content requires time & resources.

Until recently, marketers who were performing SEO had focused on link building to get high-ranking on Google SERPs. Since Google has changed its algorithm that is used for ranking the websites, marketers are now interested in content marketing.  Online marketers may get benefited from content marketing for their online retail shopping carts if they avoid the following common mistakes:

Not scheduling the content activities: Content should have to be planned & created ahead of time. Marketers should devise plans and the marketing activities for the year & all the events should comply with this schedule. One of the easiest ways to design the content calendar is to consider all the upcoming holidays or festivals. Marketers along with online retailers can decide about the content theme and promotional offers for each festival.

Not using the buyers’ perception: Marketers & online retailers need to understand that, to have an effective marketing campaign, right message should have to be delivered, to the right audience and at the right time. If the marketers don’t know about their customers, they cannot create the customized messages for them. This also helps in answering the queries of the customers/ visitors. Marketers can customize their content for promotion based on the questions their customers are asking.

To create the content according to the buyers’ perception, marketers need to keep in mind about the age & the gender of their customers and their income levels.

Not prioritizing the content: There are many options available to marketers for publishing the content. They can send e-mails to their prospective customers or can share information on social media or write in the forums/blogs etc. Marketers/ online retailers should prioritize which medium they are going to utilize. This is important as every medium used for publishing the content generates different types of results.

The quality of the content: Online retailers or marketers should create & publish the content by themselves for their online storefront. The problem with a lot of businesses is that, to save money, they outsource the content creation for extremely low rates. The quality of such content is not upto the mark. Now-a-days, good content is denoted by how much it is commented, shared and liked.

Not optimizing the content: Content promotion is not just posting the same content on several sites, but rather promoting the content through various mediums of optimization. These mediums for optimization include the use of social media, keyword usage in headline, meta title & description and link building. Marketers can re-purpose the content and publish in different formats on different sites.

Results not measurable: Marketers need to understand that every content created for eCommerce shopping carts is not going to  generate good results in terms of likes it generates or the number of times it's going to be shared. They need to chalk out a plan about what specific goals they are going to achieve with their content marketing.

Content marketing is the foundation of a successful online marketing campaign. It will lead marketers & online retailers to a successful campaign.

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