Reviews appear to be an important and integral part of the decision making process for a buyer. This shouldn’t be underestimated by any business. This is certainly noticeable in the retail industry, but it’s definitely not limited to retail only. About 82% of all consumers considered user generated reviews as extremely valuable or valuable. Are you offering your clients a possibility to review your products? Are you using their reviews? Read on, check the Infographic and decide for yourself.

Internet shopping and reviews have gone hand in hand for some time now. Anyone who is considering spending money online to buy a product or service that they can’t see or try before, has no doubt engaged in a  research in on various levels – usually by researching the feedback left by previous users.

EBay, Amazon and Trip Advisor are just three major sites that have built their own reputation on encouraging third party reviews and now almost every e-commerce site you can think of will have some kind of review or rating system.

In short, we’re so used to seeing a star rating system or a comment box that if a site doesn’t allow reviews we wonder why not and this isn’t limited to e-commerce sites only. We just tend to trust the opinion of our “peers” more than the marketing bla, bla you will in general find online. The opinion of a like-minded person counts. That’s among others the power of social media. Link you reviews system to Facebook and a word-of-mouth will probably even do a better job, assuming your clients are positive about you, your service and/or product.

If you don’t make use of this review opportunity, you are really missing out on something. 

The counter-side is that once you have a review possibility, you will have to monitor it. You can use positive reviews for your promotion. But what to do about a negative review? Don’t ignore it! REACT! Preferably, immediately. Ask for some feedback, offer to replace a product, just act! Ignoring is the worst thing you can do. In fact you should treat a complaining client as an opportunity to improve. By doing so, others will be convinced you are a provider they can trust.

PeopleClaim.com

We have already been writing about the huge influence of mobile devices on the advancement of the e-commerce market. However, Forrester went as far as to predict a 10% growth each year on the US e-commerce market and a fractional higher growth rate in Europe (11%). By 2017 this will result into online sales worth $370 billion in the US and $247.1 billion in Europe.  This growth is mainly thanks to customers’ mobile shopping activities. Despite the ongoing financial downturn there’s no sign the e-commerce market suffers.

Sales in US to accelerate

In 2012 e-commerce reached $231 billion worth of e-commerce sales, until the end of 2013 it is expected to grow by 13.4% and reach $262 billion. According to Forrester research, there are a few reasons for this process to occur. Firstly, the existing shoppers are becoming more and more likely to make bigger purchases at online shops. Moreover e-commerce is also about to be joined by 4 million new users who will in most cases focus on smaller orders, such as music files and apps. The final trigger for the growth was concluded to be mobile orders.

In the report you can read:

Mobile presents an opportunity to reach out to shoppers in new ways, influencing the decision to buy at a critical moment. eBusiness execs must support their online strategies with a mobile strategy that considers mobile as more than just another transactional touchpoint. Instead, they must use features like barcode scanning and augmented reality to capture and analyze offline activity in order to more accurately personalize future online interactions and drive web sales.

The runners-up from Western Europe

It’s not only the US, whose online sales are about to go over the roof, Western Europe is also about to strike a promising score with its market growth. The sales in 2012 were worth $114 billion and by 2013% they are predicted to reach $165.5 billion , which gives a 14.5% growth. The undisputed leader in this part of the world is Great Britain that contributes 13%, and by 2013 15% of total online sales in the Western European market.

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Watch out on the Mediterranean area of Europe. It’s no secret that countries, such as Spain and Italy struggle with economic crisis in general. In e-commerce it reflects by only 2% each, in the contribution to total online sales of Western Europe for 2012, but this will change as online shopping becomes a mainstream activity in Spain and Italy over the next five years. Spain is expected to hit €9.1 billion in 2017, equal to 18% annual growth, while Italy will rise to €8.3 billion, with 16 percent growth.

Follow me on Twitter: @PetersOpinion

A modern human being has on average 40 mobile apps on his smartphone. The mobile device has gathered a variety of our daily-use tools from a classic calendar to a rather extravagant metal detector.  Since we live in a consumer generation, where retail brings $1.1 trillion annually, we want to buy a lot in the most convenient way possible, thus we are also increasingly using retailer’s shopping apps. What does it mean for retailers? Is it time you forget about other channels and go mobile? 

Mobile is taking over

During this year’s Cyber Monday, which is the Monday after the Friday following Thanksgiving and one of the biggest online shopping days in the US, we could see a strong share of mobile commerce usage in the overall sales. It appears that due to convenience tablets reached higher conversion rates than traditional desktop computers.

Image source: econsultancy.com

This small change brings a lot of knowledge to shop owners. Consumer behaviour indicates that the mobile channel has been trusted and approved by e-shoppers. The convenience-led consumers used to choose their mobile devices  to browse for products and services, especially on the go. Nowadays they seem to be using them as much at home as on the road, and this has created both the opportunity and obligation for shop owners to increase their mobile presence.

App&Mortar a good combination

According to Flurry the growth of time spent per shopping app increased between December 2011 and December 2012. In the area of retail apps even by 525% . That’s for sure in amazing increase.

Image source: blog.flurry.com

The usage of shopping apps is obviously flourishing, which can also be proven by a life example of Macy’s. Regarding the mcommercedaily.com in December Macy’s launched a new version of their mobile app. Throughout only ten days it was downloaded by 44% of the previous version’s users. This shows in practice that the consumers became aware users of all our channels.

Image source: mcommercedaily.com

Perfect shopping experience is a unified experience

Creating a professional mobile version of your website is the most basic part of your omnichannel presence. You need it to make your service responsive to your shoppers need for convenience. It exists to provide them with information and give a possibility to purchase on the go.

What’s an app for?

In the ideal case scenario it’s downloaded to make your shoppers engage with your brand. You should have it to offer something extra, personalize the shopping experience through wish lists, shopping guides and account management panel to be used at home or in store.

To be there where your clients need you, you need to give them a full strategy for mobile experience, where each part serves a defined purpose. The 525% growth on retail apps is promising but only if clients truly engage in each channel.

Judging by the statistics and by our personal experience shopping needs to be unified and engaging. Nowadays different shops, eshops offer customers with a variety of products. You can browse, play, compare prices and at the end of the day choose different providers for different products.

What counts is the experience that the shopper gets, if it is divided into channels with a purpose in mind and up to you standards in each channel than you can think of a nice revenue.

Would you like to share your case? Or maybe need a piece of advice? Feel free to contact us via Twitter @21webmerce, through our contact form or by leaving a comment below.

Search engine optimization seems like a true art. You need technical knowledge just as much as you need decent writing skills. Of course you can hire a company or a freelancer who will do it for you. However knowing that content marketing is expected to soon become one of the most important components of e-marketing, it’s wise to get familiar with the basics of SEO-friendly writing. Let me try to put forward some things I’ve learned about writing texts for the Internet purposes.

Valuable, unique and for a purpose

It used to be that text packed keywords repeated through out a website would do just fine if it comes to SEO. However, that’s hardly the way nowadays. Search engines are getting more and more familiar with such operations and “read” your content in a more intelligent manner.

Thus, not only for the sake of the reader but also for the sake of Google be more relevant, brief and authentic.

The keywords are simply not used by major search engines in web ranking. What matters are links and page’s uniqueness.

Relevant product page

Product page text should be encouraging but also truthful. It also shouldn’t be long, but may be divided into smaller parts of general information, detailed specification and recommendations. Remember that the product name and what you write in the title should correspond to the description of the product, so if you place cotton t-shirt in the name and then display 70% of polyester in it, you will confuse both the search engine and the shopper. There’s no place for mixed messages here!

Some bad practice here:

Image source: deichmann.com

Not only isn’t there a description, it’s also all placed here as an image. Let’s take a look at a more correct example:

image source: asos.com

Asos for instance has a neat product description with all the necessary details. I wouldn’t call it convincing, rather informative, but the amount of extra content on asos.com (blog, newsletter, etc.) makes up for it. Decide yourself – if you have a social media strategy, blog or newsletter, you may decide on a brief and concise product description.

However, don’t copy paste producer’s product description. It’s usually not meant for shoppers but for you, the shop owner. Regarding SEO this turns out a terrible idea, since it assures you the lack of UNIQUENESS. In general your competitors will also use the producer’s content.

You know what’s unique – customer reviews

Genuine customer reviews both at your e-shop and on social media can realize miracles. Make sure you enabled them and encourage shoppers to leave those comments. Not all of them might be positive, but they all help your e-shop to get more visible, and if they regard a product, customers will more easily reach your shop and might choose something else you’ve got to offer.

There is a nice example by Amazon:

Image source: google.com

Amazon enables customer reviews and appreciates the most valuable ones. As you can see they sort of contribute to higher ranking.

Image source: amazon.co.uk

The law abiding eshop

Terms and conditions as well as a privacy policy are two pages you may want to have a closer look at. Since shoppers become increasingly aware of their rights and check each and every promise you make, it’s not enough to copy and paste those pages. Make a list of things you can do for your customers and things you expect from them and consult them with a lawyer. Don’t just put “free delivery” because it’s a trend if it is restrained with multiple conditions.

A word of advice for multinational retailers, read through the laws concerning your target market. If it’s possible unify them, however if not assume the most realistic scenario for each country you’re providing your services to. Keep it short and clear, leave out the law jargon and try to translate into standard language. It’s nowadays pretty common for shoppers to start off with your shop by reading the conditions before browsing for products.

Additional content medium

When you go through the majority of manuals, articles and posts on SEO and content writing you get such advice, as brief and short. What to do with the rest of your ideas? How to write more about the products, not to make their product pages spammy? The solution are additional media, like a blog, newsletter campaigns and social media accounts. You can add here some extra hints regarding a product, promotion announcements or just articles connected to your eshop’s area of interest.

Thus, if you preprepared a lot of valuable texts try to divide them between different channels. This gives you an advantage of targeting your shoppers with up-to-date, reasonably frequent and SEO-friendly content.

This is just a small part of what you can do and how you can improve content management at your eshop. Remember that SEO includes website’s content to only some extend, follow best practices from, a post, as this one to see what else is there to be done.

In case you have any thoughts or would like to add some ideas, feel free to share. I’m looking forward to writing a follow-up soon!

The commerce reality is changing dramatically fast. With the developments and new trends that have arisen over the last year it’s especially visible. As in each technology-dependent area the novelties come as fast as a lightening. Some of them disappear as fast as they came, but a part adapts to the market and makes milestone changes. Here are some of the major milestones we can see if it comes to modern retail.

Multichannel cooperation

From a nice add-on to your business online commerce has just become an inevitable must for each brick-and-mortar retailer. In the Forbes article Five Trends Driving Traditional Retail Towards Extinction we can read that Macy’s online sales grew 40% in 2011 while their in-store sales only 5.3%.

Does that mean that bricks-and-mortar should close up go totally online?

Hardly. The trick for the high street is to offer goods in an omnipresent way but with an emphasis on your e-commerce presence, since you may already get the feeling that it will become your main selling channel.

Image source: marketingcharts.com

Online sales showing the highest growth rates

Analyzing this year’s Black Friday Results, we can see that, although online sales grow fast they still constitute in a relatively small share of retail sales in general.

Will that change overnight?

Probably not, but it might go faster than you expect.

Thus, it’s highly recommended that you think of enabling price comparisons, flash sales and some mobile solutions (as a dedicated website and maybe a payment solution for your brick-and-mortar). That will do good both for you e-commerce site, as well as in-store sales. 

Image source: marketingcharts.com

Why there can be an end in sight for in-store retail…

There are some obvious  advantages of having only an online shop. There’s no denial that avoiding the high street rental costs is a tempting possibility. Moreover it gets even more tempting if we also get rid of the middle man and sell directly to our consumers. Such profits open the door to better offers and even prices but most important to better margins, don’t they?

Your lower prices combined with the known quality can only mean new clients. The loyal ones you had, know you for the brand, the new may be attracted by the prices.

Image source: marketingcharts.com

A small price to pay – free delivery

Already from the chart above it gets obvious that shoppers have their demands. I mean, the technical advancements don’t change that you can’t feel the product and see it in real life. You still get only an image of it at first.

The question driving the next trend is probably: “Why should I pay for a pig in a poke?”. That is exactly why free delivery, reviews, your reputation and a clear return policy are valued so much these days. The Forbes article goes as far as stating that free delivery and free returns may increase your later sales by 50%-350%.

A truly loyal customer through subscription

A loyal customer that would pay for your products every month, or every week without even analyzing the offers around him is a dream come true. I have actually written about this as well. Subscription commerce is becoming a huge opportunity to those who offer products that we need regularly  In such case quality, convenience and price attract once and give you a core customer base that may stay intact for a long time. Quoting a great post, I’ve recently read on practicalecommerce.com:

You need to have a relationship so that customers will want to do business with you over the long term. Company profits comes from repeat customers.

I wonder about the future of retail. Above I’ve just mentioned some possible trends. What will the high street look like in the near future? Will it move more towards a showroom or experience center like the Apple Store or will entertainment fill the available space? Or is a different purpose for it awaiting. 

What is your opinion on that? Can you see more chances in this changing retail landscape?

Online shopping is booming, no secret about that. We’ve already reported that also this Holiday Season we all together are buying more online than ever before. Probably, just like others, you heavily rely upon others’ opinion before you decide what to buy. Nothing strange about that because over 83% of buyers do so. But don’t let these reviews ruin your Christmas. Unfortunately, some of these reviews are just fake! In our opinion this is a bad practice which is increasingly becoming an issue. It forces us to rethink the value of reviews and to watch them a bit closer.

Some days ago YOTPO published a great Infographic clearly showing the issue about the reliability of reviews. They predict that by 2014 around 10-15% of the reviews will be fake or paid for. This makes relying on (fake) reviews might result in purchases we won’t be happy about in the end. 

Introducing ”social” reviews will reduce this problem. Increasingly, web shops show what your social media friends think about a certain product. The reliability of such reviews can be better assessed by you as a buyer and you can even contact the person to be really sure. In addition in the Infographic below you will find some additional tips how to find out whether or not you can trust a review.

Don’t let fake reviews ruin your Christmas’ shoppings

The shopping rush season has already started in November and especially sped up after Thanksgiving.  What’s more it seems the mobile devices and multichannel strategies bring the expected results for the majority of retailers. Current data promise the season success of at least 15% revenue over last year’s Christmas. Sounds like e-retail can be proud of the innovations it started using since last Christmas, however these also bring certain trends to the picture, that to be successful must be taken into account.

So far so good

As for now, we can with almost complete certainty assume that this Christmas e-commerce season will be concluded with a booming success. Forrester Research is expecting a 15 % growth over last year while analysts from Jefferies & Co. speak even of 16.4%. Keeping fingers crossed for the 16.4%, but we can already look at some interesting results.

Image source: marketingcharts.com

Cyber Monday shoppers spend 28% more than last year with a 10% rise in mobile sales. Black Friday also helped the retail world much by letting department stores earn more by 16.8% than last year, health and beauty by 11%, home goods by 28.2% and apparel sales by 17.5%. Although, played an important role in the Christmas sales it’s not over yet. There are also last-minute shoppers that may create an unexpected amount of traffic, thus it’s still worth keeping one’s finger on the pulse.

Multichannel specificity 

Multichannel strategy can be a fantastic opportunity to drive  customers both in-store and online. That’s what we already know and it’s definitely one of the reasons why researchers, such as Forrester Research, expect shoppers to spend $68.4 billion online. One thing to remember, though the attitude of customers towards each of our distribution channels. To many buyers online just means cheaper.

marketingcharts.com

According to mercurynews.com the customers are convinced that online shopping should bring them additional advantages consisting of not only at least a significant discount, but also free shipping and returns. Sounds demanding, but thanks to a good multichannel strategy Wal-Mart is now expecting 600 million visitors this Christmas. 

The Holiday Season has become sort of multichannel challenge during which shoppers hunt  for the best deal, but it’s also a time of the year when they treat themselves buying things which are out of their reach the rest of the year.

Strong mobile commerce growth

The latest research by econsultancy.com presented some interesting data. It turns out that tablet conversion rates (5.84%)  exceeded conversion rates on desktop (5.51%) during this year’s Cyber Monday. It’s not an extreme difference, but the trend implies that only those retailers that are mobile devices and more specific tablet friendly can hope for a share of the 2012 Christmas season success. Generally  mobile sales are currently exceeding the 9.8% of sales from 2011 with 16%.

There’s a lot of statistics currently available on a variety of blogs and websites, it seems that for the e-retailers who prepared their mobile and online strategy well the champagne will taste better this New Year’s Eve. We are on tiptoe of curiosity at 21webmerce about the final results of the season and keep our fingers crossed for all online e-shop owners.

Have a Marry Christmas!

Would you like to share your experience or maybe you need any help or advice? Comment or contact us  on twitter: @21webmerce or click here for our contact page.

Let me guess, you’re preparing your Christmas displays and seasonal Santa’s smiles! Your store fronts, websites and auction sites will soon be filled with Christmas decorations. You should be planning an all-out Christmas attack on your shoppers’ senses. But what will be different from last year? How is this global commercial celebration changing and how are you supposed to capture value most efficiently?

Don’t want to miss 50% of your potential clients? Now is the crucial moment to be online!

The Early Bird shoppers (around 25% according to LivePerson), seeming to dislike the fuss around Christmas will conclude their purchases just about now. The second group consists of more than half of all shoppers. They will do their purchasing throughout the entire 3 month period before Christmas. The last group are the Christmas fever enthusiasts and late purchasers. They either enjoy the promotion and the whole Frank Sinatra playing everywhere while outside snow piles up, or simply didn’t have the time to do their shopping earlier. This group does majority of their shopping late November early December, this is 28% according to LivePerson, almost one third.

These are also the shoppers that are still left and should be targeted now!

How to reach the other 50% of the Christmas shoppers?

Unlike the early bird shoppers, there are still plenty of people who are always lacking time and do  their shopping on the run and last-minute. Two key areas for capturing the late purchasers will be fast delivery and providing on the run shopping facilities.

This might be the right time to review your contract with your delivery company, try to get them to work faster through Christmas and maybe have the delivery officers wear Santa Claus costumes when they deliver packages. All in all treat your delivery company right, so that they treat your customers right.

How to approach the still growing group of on the run shoppers? Smartphones combined with QR codes create an opportunity to make a sale everywhere. Using QR codes can be a great alternative to the traditional browsing. An example of this is a recent campaign of Wal-Mart and Mattel using QR codes on 3D image ads in places commonly passed by people on their way to work.

Image source: moneyville.ca

A  presented product could easily be purchased by scanning the QR code and received free shipping. Implementing such a promotional campaign can be easily done for online stores that already exist, they already have the entire infrastructure for the customer to make his order and receive the delivery.

Do not forget that on the run shopping is synonymous to a mobile version of your web shop. The mobile version should be simpler than the web version. Sometimes it means that you present only a part of your assortment on your client’s smartphones. However, what you present has to be easy and fast to purchase.

Christmas has already started!

To capture the most value e-retailers should have begun their Christmas campaigns and implemented their Christmas fronts by mid-October early November at the latest. Research shows that shopping begins online. All managers have to realize is that by setting standards prior to Christmas they will be able to capitalize on the opportunity. The cream lies in hinting that Christmas is right around the corner and that by buying now people can save time and money, because it’s true and because they know it. Also now is the time to aim at the late purchasers that are ever on the run and will be doing their shopping soon; deliver fast, and meet them where they are bored or free.

Cross-promotion innovation for multichannel sales

Everyone is aware that e-commerce is playing a bigger and bigger role over time, 63% of all shoppers are planning to make the majority of their purchases online. 50% think it’s important for a e-retailer to have a mobile version of their store. The tablet, laptop, smartphone are becoming store hubs on par with those in shopping malls due to the difference in price that balances the discomfort of using them.

This year the major innovation is the cross-promotion between online stores and physical stores (that sometimes serve as points of sale for the pick-up of an order). If you not yet are using this, then you should consider it. The opportunity here lies in taking advantages of the physical stores as a return point for the online purchases, and for taking advantage of the online store as a source of information for the physical store.

Thus, be understanding, as your success depends on customer satisfaction which in this part of the year is the most difficult to attain.

So the question now is:

ARE YOU READY FOR CHRISTMAS?

If not, then the first thing you should do is set up your sales strategy for the next commercial hype. For example Valentine’s? A big chance that you’ll manage to be well prepared and you’ll pick up the deserved fruits. Do you own a physical store as well? Profit from the multichannel promotion and sales opportunities. Read our next blog post to learn more about this great way to give your business a real boost!

Do you have any ideas of your own that you would like to share or would need help with implementing? Feel free to let us know and we will extend our helping hand.

In contrast to a common stereotype, it’s lately been men who shopped online for clothes more eagerly and effectively rather than women.  E-commerce male shoppers’ spending in the fashion sector grows currently at 13% rate annually, while in case of women the number closes at 10%. The trend is especially visible on sites providing complex shopping experience, such as fashion advice and/or purchases based on shipping trunks of clothes. And let’s be honest guys, we like to buy the things we need, but we just don’t want to visit the mall, right?

Fashion business in e-commerce 

Clothing  sales (36% of share in e-commerce) are catching up with e-market B2C leading product: books (44%) . They are currently worth $41 billion, and although women are responsible for the majority of those spendings, the male audience started to be more responsive outdoing women in fashion online market 13 to 10 percent of annual growth. Apart from the traditional e-shops selling clothes, there are also those customized exactly to men’s needs. Personally, I believe they have a lot to do with those 13% mentioned above.

Online shopping needs to become more convenient

I personally believe that the majority of man do not really hate shopping. They just hate to waste their time looking for something you might not find in the mall. Shopping in a mall or high street is just way too time consuming and exhausting.

Online shopping has the potential to solve this issue, when the online retailers really manage to provide a good online shopping experience. Good and fast search and “personal” advice are the key factors here.

And it looks like retailers start to understand, because based on the figures men start spending more and more online. But I’m not sure whether many retailers realize this market potential. Too many shops might be too much focussed on the big spenders, women.

Trunk-shopping 

The main idea behind trunk-shopping in fashion is that clothes are being shipped to the customer for free, so that he can pick and choose. Most of such services are provided in man-only e-shops and can be characterized by being fast and convenient. No longer does the client need to spend time on browsing online shops in correspondence to his preferences. He needs only to set his preferences, including size, style, etc once. This saves a lot of time, and if one feels this is not the best at matching pieces of clothing there’s also a stylist who will analyze client’s choices for him. 

Image source: trunkclub.com

This is a perfect solution for professionals who prefer spending their time in a different way than shopping in a crowded mall or even browsing through an e-shop. No wonder e-commerce clothes shopping is becoming more appealing to man.

Worth investing in

The world’s leader if it comes to B2C e-commerce sales is still the United States, followed by the UK and Japan. The fastest growing market in the area is China and the best performance out of  European countries is expected from France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Turkey and Poland. All of these countries are characterized by well-developed services sectors, which indicates a lot of white-collar workers also among man. Out of those professionals we  can easily assume that the majority is increasingly tech-savvy and open to innovation.

Moreover, the research conducted by to the U.S. Census Bureau, points out that in comparison to women, man stay single longer. This tendency leads to the following conclusion: they have more money to spend on themselves, need to look good and are more likely to ask for some (anonymous) fashion advice. Stereotypically known for being pragmatic, men will also spend more on one purchase, just to get it over with for a longer period of time. 

Prepare for changes

The e-commerce market is constantly opening to new audience. Each sector has to response to them in time, since e-commerce is getting more and more available to a variety of retailers and customers. Thus, no wonder that the fashion industry, so close to women, is now being invaded by men looking for convenience and efficiency. In case you need any help, feel free to contact us!

E-commerce is growing with an enormous speed. In the most prolific month of the year (so far, July) e-retail sales went up to 17% and m-Retail recorded a 313% growth that is still soaring up. However, with such a growth come also huge expectations. The e-shops operating on older technologies seem to start feeling fatigue with their performance being on the verge of possibilities. According to Forrester research up to 56% of e-commerce businesses are planning to increase their expenditures on technology in the near time.

The omni-commerce

One thing not keeping up the pace of a growing number of clients is customer experience in its broad sense. It seems that the problem lays in e-shop management across the sales channels, which are clearly multiplying. What a consumer expects is challenging: to browse an e-shop by a mobile device, make a purchase using the desktop version, use recommendations available through a social network and collect in-store. That’s only an exemplary scenario, since it can go exactly the other way round.

Most of the e-commerce platforms are not ready for such a management combo. Thus, it requires a platform integrated with your CRM solution and with a manger supporting shoppers groups managed on a variety of levels (starting with basic, such as age or gender and finishing on more complex, such as shopping preferences) under one enterprise. This is all needed to be able to join all channels into one.

To give the best shopping experience you need a great managing experience yourself! Wouldn’t it be great to have a place for all the data starting with shoppers’ orders, pick-up points and delivery status of each purchase manged form one back-end?

The speed demands for scalability

The potential of e-commerce market has already been discovered by a multitude of retailers. There are those well-known brands selling their products via the Internet and there are their substitutes. A shopper able to buy the same product, in sometimes even, a thousand of e-shops will not wait for the site to load. Thus, another thing to improve is general performance of your e-commerce site. Have you ever heard of Cloud solutions? Our 21webmerce solution is one of those operating on Microsoft’s Cloud platform Windows Azure, the market leader in the field.

To exemplify, let’s look at the chart. Once analyzing your traffic through the year  you may conclude that your e-shop is able to support a decent amount of shoppers at once. However, a decent amount might not be good enough to handle peak traffic for example after a successful marketing campaign or during the Holiday Season!

Image source: theknowledgebase.imrg.org

Are you willing to give up the Christmas income to save on bigger server space? No, you’re not, but what next? The e-shop doesn’t need that much of server space during the rest of the year. Well then, use as much as you need at a particular time, and pay only for what you actually used up. That’s the flexibility and scalability a cloud based solution has to offer. You get the extra bandwidth and the computing power when you need it and you don’t pay for it when your traffic returns to the “normal” level.

To conduct a trade expansion 

Markets such as the United Kingdom, Germany or the United States seem to be full of a variety of e-commerce initiatives. No wonder that retailers are looking for a new trade space. Sometimes this export of your goods is easy, the same language, same currency and culture. Nevertheless, there are e-retailers taking more risk by setting up their business in a far away land. Such an attempt requires, not only a translated version of your e-shop. It demands an e-shop adjusted to all the cultural and economic aspects of a new market. That may mean a new version of your e-shop, with different promotions, layout and of course the basics, such as language and currency. Difficult? Not when you can easily manage and compare the sales from all the e-shops versions in one system.

Need a helping hand?

The Forrester Research Inc. report results showing that 77% of e-retailers are not satisfied with their current e-commerce solution and are considering its replacement in up-coming time were no surprise. Thus, most of e-shops run on old systems, built even up to 10 years ago. In case of such systems it’s hard to talk about an update. In the face of current demands of retailer’s multi-presence, multi-culture and multi-management, only a total system rebuilt would make any sense.

If so, then maybe a solution built entirely using new technologies is the answer.  From my experience, I can tell that in IT especially, there’s nothing permanent. Thus, a well-considered change may turn out less time and money consuming. 

Feel free to consult us if you need any advise. You can leave a message below, through the contact form or tweet us at @21webmerce or @PetersOpinion.