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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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.

Point of Sale System - Retail PRO eCommerce Integration 

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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.

POS Software - Retail PRO eCommerce Integration 

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