Even though e-commerce is rampant in the country today,  a sizable population of the country is not aware that the concept was first introduce in India in the late 1990’s , that Rediff had been trying to capture the Indian market since the year 1999 and that IRCTC was the first company to create a successful e-commerce portal.

Here is the Infographic created by our team to recapitulate India’s ecommerce journey, depicted by the important milestones. Check ultimate guide to eCommerce marketplaces

It is only the beginning of the journey as India’s small and medium enterprises have just started joining the phenomenon.  Do It Yourself  eCommerce stores builders like Zepo &  Shopify are making it increasingly simpler for SMB’s to sell online. (Read: Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform for Your Online Store )

If you also are planning to become a part of India’s ecommerce journey by start an online store, you can talk to Software Analyst for the best suggestion and tips.

The post eCommerce in India From 1999-2015 [Infographic] appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

So you decided to Sell online. You have a very respectable website with a good content and good traffic. Active social channels, listing in the local directories for businesses and have a strong word of mouth promotion going on for you offline. Now it’s time to find the ROI in the scheme of things and create an online store. Your search will lead you to more than 50 such eCommerce platforms like Zepo, Shopify, BuildaBazaar, Kartrocket, PowerStores etc. that offer a wide variety of options.

Choosing the right eCommerce Store builder is tricky business. One small mistake and the customer might just never come back.

Typically for online businesses, Traffic is high on their eCommerce platforms (Thanks to SEO/Paid Ads) but Attrition even higher. It is important to keep in mind a checklist before you begin your journey no matter what your business category or revenue model is. Here are the 10 commandments to follow before you know your perfect match

1. To Open Source or Not to Open Source
   Yes, that’s the buzzword in the Tech Industry. Open source this and make it free and what not. But remember, before diving into open source or SaaS based eCommerce platforms, make sure there is a strong back end team that can execute whatever you wish to do with it. No point going with a free open source that will be dud just because no one knew what to do with it. Tie-up with Partners not with Vendors.

2. Make sure that it’s compatible with your existing Web server Technologies
   Next in, is the compatibility. Your Ecommerce platform should sync well with your server OS and should be able to handle the required bandwidth speed along with all protocols specially security, since, that is the most exploited feature by far on all ecommerce supporting websites.

3. Payment Methods support
   What is not a good customer experience?
   When Arvind logs in from Kanpur and finds that his preferred mode of COD is not available or when Stephen from Goa is unable to find his bank’s name as an option for Netbanking or when Pratham can’t buy things on EMI. Make sure your eCommerce platform has all bases covered including a reliable payment gateway. It builds trust. The most important value for your online store.

4. Process Management
   This is one of the most overlooked points by many.
   • Detailed reporting
   • Inventory management tools
   • Data management

   The 3 reasons why you decided to sell online in the 1^st place. Your website builder must be deliver the above factors that will decide whether you remain just an online store or become the destination for online purchases. Remember, in the Internet Economy, Data is Gold.

5. Integration with Digital marketing suite
   An eCommerce store is only as good as the RoI it brings. Which will happen only when it gets a suitable traffic. And that in turn will happen only when it is fully inline with your marketing efforts on all platforms. Make sure SEO, Social plugins, API’s, WebApps and all other Advertising and Affliate programs are fully integrated with your platform. It will reduce your pain in the long run.

6. Easy to use Interface
   Not only should your store front end look clean and easy to use but also the backend must not be cluttered and should be easy to handle for your team. Concentrate on UX both in front and behind the screen. Trust me. No one likes to handle morbid backends that seem like look like from the 60’s.

7. Remote Administration
   One of the top reasons for choosing to go online for most businesses is the Speed and accessibility. No point being on Holiday in GoKarna and still having to spend half a day asking your team to add products on a weekend. A good ecommerce store makes life easy.

8. Good technical support
   When in doubt, go for Technical support. One of the 1^st things that smart entrepreneurs do when searching for an online solution is to call the customer care. If it takes you 2 hours just to make it to the support executive, I guess, you know the answer. And yeah, make sure, they follow up. Avoid being stuck in an endless loop of calls to unknown executives who take 5 mins of your time to verify your identity.

9. Price and Scaling Plans
   Feemium is the way. All good portals have well defined solutions that are suited your needs. Go for one that is not only tailor made according to your business size and features but also is scalable and works with you without having to have board meetings just to decide whether to upgrade or not.

10. ROI
    Last but not the least, make sure that you track, manage and evaluate your eCommerce purchases regularly. Setting up an eCommerce store is just the 1^st step to success. The rest of the road is guided by your own acumen, strategies and robust reporting and evaluations. A magic wand is only as useful as the skill of it’s master and spell that he casts.

If you need help in selecting a Ecommerce platform for you business, talk to our eCommerce Software Analyst. You can check pictorial view of this article through infographic.

The post Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform for Your Online Store appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

With online sales increasing almost on a daily basis, it is becoming increasingly important for every business to have an online store. And the easiest way to set up one is to use a DIY eCommerce platform.

However, besides the eCommerce platform you choose to build the store, eCommerce business has many other facets like finding the right products, ensuring that you reach the targeted audience and also fighting competition. With so many things to do, it only makes sense to ensure you choose a right & efficient eCommerce platform for your online store. Shop2Grab is one such platform and is available at a price as low as Rs 900 per month (& that even includes the taxes).

Shop2Grab is an end to end eCommerce solution that provides almost everything you will need to set up your online store. The first step of setting up the store is to create a product catalog. Shop2grap has in-depth product creation functionality, and you can easily add product images and description. You will also be able to add discounts, group products, save model number and add almost every other detail you would want to store for the product.

Once the products has been uploaded, it becomes important to choose a theme. Shop2grab has multiple themes available and you can chose the one that suits your product category best. All you now need is a payment gateway to go live. Shop2Grab offers free payment gateway account for both Indian and International transactions, and this has been included in the plan. You can integrate one from the multiple options available in the Appstore. Internal features build in Shop2Grab like SEO optimization will further help you in reaching the target audience.

The eCommerce software also has multiple reports to increase the sales conversion and optimize operations. The dashboard has been built beautifully and will help you in focusing on the key report. On the whole, Shop2grab will give you everything you will need to sell online.

However, just creating an online store is not enough. You will need enhanced features to beat competition. Here are the features in Shop2Grab that we liked the most and can help you differentiate your store from competitors.

1. Logistic Support - Handling logistics is always a challenge with eCommerce store and can delay your launch by days if not weeks. Shop2Grab offers logistic support backed by the likes of Gati, Fedex & Bluedart. This guarantees zero delay in launch and you can start shipping your products from day one.
2. Facebook Store – Having a Facebook store can increase your sales by multiple folds. Shop2grab lets you build an online store with a few clicks. Though the transactions will be done on Shop2Grab’s platform you will be able to showcase your products and the “Add to Cart” button on Facebook page also motivates to take the transaction one step ahead.
3. POS system – If you own a retail store ensuring inventory synchronization becomes very important. To do this you will need to work with your POS system provider and go through the hassle of integrating your online store with the POS system. Shop2grab simples the entire process, as it has an inbuilt POS software. So you will not need to handle multiple software and also can save expense on the POS software.
4. Product review and testimonials – When competitors start selling product similar to yours, what can differentiate your store from theirs is user review and feedback. User review and feedback will also help you increase customer engagement on the website and help your users take decisions. This results in increased Sales conversion. Shop2grab has easy review and product testimonial set ups. You will also be able to moderate the reviews easily.
5. The theme editor – Shop2grab has many beautiful looking themes. However, the theme editor further multiplies the option by giving you the tool to edit the current themes. You can change the colors and the format for the store & easily synchronize it with your logo and corporate identity.
6. Payment Support – A good number of your visitors will not have credit card or don’t like doing transactions on their card. The option of Cash on Delivery, will help you convert such traffic and is thus absolutely important for any ecommerce store. Besides the Online payment options, Shop2Grab will also allow you to accept offline payment using COD, pickup from store & bank deposit.
7. Marketing and email campaigns – Increasing your sale per customer is easier than acquiring new customers. Shop2grab has in-built marketing automation tools to help you do this. With shop2grab you will be able to send notifications and marketing emails to your customer and increase the frequency they shop on your store.
8. Loyalty point system – Another wonderful feature of Shop2grab is the loyalty point system. The software allows you to associate points with products purchased. With every purchase transaction your customer makes on the platform, his/her points get accumulated, and can later be used to purchase a product. It works like the way a shopper stop or pantaloons loyalty card works.
9. Gift voucher and coupons – Gift vouchers are essential to increase conversion. Shop2grab also has internal gift voucher coupon management system. You can create multiple coupon codes with varied discount and use them as a way to attract audience.
10. Manage affiliates and commission – Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective way of generating sales. This is because you pay your affiliate a percentage commission only when there is a sale. No upfront payment has to be made and if there is no sale, no payment needs to be made. Shop2Grab will help you launch you affiliate program within minutes. It also calculates commissions and thus manages the entire process of affiliate sales.
11. Appstore – For everything you miss on the platform there is the App store. They have integration with 50+ external apps and these include Hellobar, GETkudos, Zopim, viralmint, amongst others.

Even though the Shop2grab is a DIY store, it lack DIY trials, the company is introducing it by June 2015. For the host of features one can get on Shop2grab, I think DIY trials can be overlooked.

The post Make Your Business Online, Simple, Flexible & Profitable with Shop2grab appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

The eCommerce trends expected for 2015 is – eCommerce is going to boom bigger and better. From FMCG products to electronics, consumers are consciously making a shift towards shopping online. The main reason being is the conveniency factor.

Most B2C brands have perfected the art of selling through retail chains. With the help of point-of-sale (POS) machines, they know the exact state of inventory, supplier shipments, sales figures, customer trends etc. However, when the same brands move towards an online environment and sale through eCommerce platforms, they forget to integrate the POS systems.

An eCommerce system has multiple processes related to storefront, payment gateways, customer accounts, inventory, product reviews, discount codes, product information, performance reports etc. Achieving high business productivity in an online business environment can be difficult especially when there are multiple processes that have to be taken care of to process a single order. Thus, instead of dealing with these multiple processes that can cause inconvenience, it is an excellent idea to adopt an integrated eCommerce platform when going for online selling.  You can read different Strategies to grow your eCommerce Business in 2015

In simple terms, an Integrated eCommerce platform is one in which back end applications such as CRM and ERP are integrated with the eCommerce platform. All the management processes and valuable data sets are integrated to provide one stop solution to the seller.

Adopting following integrations in your eCommerce website can help improve your business productivity by many folds:

1. Inventory integration: The online retail space is highly competitive and dynamic. Number of products and their variations that can be sold through an online store has no limits. But if products do not reflect consumer trends or prices do not match the competitor’s pricing, it can spell disaster. For a manager to make product and pricing decisions, he or she needs real time information of inventories and sales. Unavailability of real time data can dramatically affect the productivity of decisions. A manager always needs to have a track of stock count and needs to know when to stop selling products which are not available in the inventory. Thus, an eCommerce system integrated with inventory management software can professionally synthesize real time information to enable product management, control inventory and boost higher yield. Moreover, with an integrated system in place, changing product prices and introducing sales promotions can be managed from just a single location. Thus, it helps brand to serve customer better and increase customer satisfaction.
2. Marketing integration: Marketing activities helps to boost sales and promote products which are not popular or are new. Social media activities are an essential part of any marketing mix these days. An integrated marketing system helps to promote products in multiple ways such as automated email marketing with newsletters, automated social media integration which helps in promotion on multiple platforms, social media sharing when purchases are made, and finally social media analytics. Combining all these activities together, a manager can synergies all viral platforms and embrace the benefits of social media with least amount of efforts.
3. Data integration: Any retailer has three types of database – product data, consumer data and financial data. All these databases may have completely separate information. But from the management point of view, it is important to study all of them together before making any business decisions. If product data, consumer data and financial data is stored on different systems, it is difficult to leverage the rich real time data available to the company. Thus, an integrated eCommerce platform helps in maximizing the data resources and allows managers to deliver better productivity.
4. Accounts and finance integration: Adopting an integrated eCommerce platform means that all your processes will be centralized. That includes all function of accounting software and finance related also. Typically any manager requires financial accounting reports such as sales and purchases charts, profit and loss accounts, payroll, budgeting etc. With an integrated system, all your financial data are at one place and is accurate and timely. Thus, you can eliminate errors and delays of manual exports. Regardless of the scale of your business, your accounting books will be up to date.

An integrated eCommerce platform can improve organizational and management productivity by delivering better output in several aspects. The major reason behind using an ecommerce platform to build your own online store is you can get readymade integrations provided by the platform provider.

Moreover, if you are still confused in why selecting an ecommerce platform to build an online store you can contact our eCommerce Platform software experts at SoftwareSuggest.com to get unbiased recommendations and better explanation.

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The rise of social media has created a critical situation for businesses with poor customer service. With a blink, any disgruntled customer can shout out their story to the world. And that can really tarnish the reputation of your business in a short span of time.

Many types of customer-success software have made it easier to achieve customer engagement and intimacy, giving a personal touch to your business. Not only have the software programs got better and easy to use, but also more accessible and affordable.

Software for Live Chat, Help Desk, Email Marketing, Loyalty Rewards, and Product Recommendations are proven solutions that can keep your customers happy. If used in the right way as part of your entire customer experience strategy, these tools can build trust, earn credibility and increase conversions. They provide customers with instant access to relevant people, related products and sought-after answers within your company.

But with score of products in the market in each category, it’s hard to figure out what is right for your business. So let’s take a closer look at some of the most popular categories and the tools to personalize online store.

Live Chat Software

It allows users to interact with customers in real time while they are on your website on both mobile and desktop platforms. Some of these tools also come built-in with a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and shopping cart integrations.

The beauty of these tools is that user can suggest product purchases in real time to people who are on your website and not only that, user can start a chat with visitors based on what actions they took or what products they purchased when they previously visited your store.

With customized settings, one can easily identify which visitors would benefit from live chat and quickly initiate a dialogue. You can also see previous reports and surveys, recent search keywords and what part of the country each customer is chatting from. This helps you boost your business further by exploring new trends, upsell and cross-sell opportunities and conversion metrics. Some of the top live chat software available you can use are Smartsupp, Zopim, Olark & Liveagent.

Customer Support & Engagement Software

One of the most important element of any product or service in the eyes of customers is support. And many tools are available in market to make this process efficient and quick for both the parties. You can’t go wrong with either one of Freshdesk, Interakt, Zoho or Cayzu.

Implementing one of these solutions allows your customer service reps to forward the previous complaint and support emails right into the system so they can delight the customer with targeted support.

Another powerful feature is the ability to set a system for collecting valuable feedback. You can target a specific segment based on a specific criteria and enable a feedback widget which is visible to only selected users.

Besides all these tools, On-Website Customer engagement tools are gaining popularity these days. Increasing User engagement on the site leads to increase in leads & revenues. This helps unlock the true potential of your website. Connecto is one such tool which comes up with popup notifications on the website to increase customer engagement by many ways. Visitors exiting the website get popups offering more values resulting into reduction in bounce rate & increase conversions. Moreover- surveys, lead forms, video forms, mobile widgets & many more techniques are offered by connecto to increase the customer engagement level to next edge.

Email Marketing Tools

No matter how much buzz social media generates, the fact remains that email subscribers engage and buy significantly more than social media fans or followers. And a good email marketing tool can make a real difference to your bottom line. Mailchimp is one of the best email marketing tool, but other programs such as Soul CRM and Zoho Campaigns are also worth looking at.

These tools also let you customize logos, names and design elements so that they blend well with the rest of your brand. You can easily create compelling opt-in forms to collect email addresses and a series of emails to be sent automatically when a visitor becomes a subscriber. These emails can be used to communicate updates on what your target customers are interested in, further personalizing their experience with your business.

Customer Loyalty Software

Statistics say that it costs about 5-10 times more to gain a new customer than it does to sell to an existing one. And to make your customers keep coming back, a loyalty program is one of your best bets. It’s a system in which the customer gets rewarded in some way each time they take the desired action. Software such as Arvato, Genesis & Menusquare can easily get you started and running in no time.

The customer relationship programs you create using these tools can help your business differentiate from the others and keep customers engaged. You can create custom designs based on the member data analysis and consolidation to reward them with what they actually find valuable. This works better than delivering a generic reward meant for everyone.

Shopping Cart Abandonment

It may happen with every one that you put an item in shopping cart online & then for some reason didn’t complete the purchase? Well, guess what? This behavior is one of the major pain points of the online retail industry.

Software solution for this helps you convert abandoned carts into customers. It may do so with a variety of methods, one of which is personalizing your re-marketing emails with data from the cart, which drives click-through & conversion.

And for each email sent, you can track abandonment rate, email open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and more. This analysis can identify hidden opportunities to optimize your campaign and drive more conversions.

Not only these tools help you recover abandoned shopping carts, you can also capture partial web form submissions prior to the submit button being hit. Then you can allow customers to pick up where they left off by restoring their session when they return to your site.

Some of such solutions are provided by Rejoiner and Barilliance to solve these problems.

Product Recommendation & Web Personalization Software

Who doesn’t know about product recommendations on online stores, made famous by the online retail giant Amazon! I am sure you have seen related products shown below the product you’re interested. You have been prompted to buy even more because of this strategy.

Some of the popular tools deliver dynamic & personalized shopping recommendations across web, mobile and email channels. The product recommendations are based automatically on customers’ unique characteristics, past purchases, and current and historical shopping behaviors. Which is great for up-selling and cross-selling merchandise. You can target customers with relevant, effective and timely recommendations across their buying journey. It also makes it easy to personalize recommendations for individual customers. You can optimize conversions by delivering contextual, behavior-based product recommendations, and create an engaging customer experience. Some Popular tools are Exacttarget, Bunting & IBM Recommendations.

Happy customers provide returning business & positive word of mouth recommendations resulting into a profitable business. A perfect app for your business will have great impact on delivering customer service. If you are still not convinced then you can talk to our eCommerce software expert at SoftwareSuggest to know more on this & make perfect software selection. Read more on how to Increase Business Productivity with An Integrated eCommerce Solution.

The post Give a Personal Touch to Your Online Store appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

Many online retailers must be thinking on the ways to improve and grow their eCommerce business in 2015 and making it a profitable year. The online retail market is growing at peak these days. With increasing competition, online retailers need to continually grow their revenue by implementing needful strategies to cover their rising operating costs. Growing your online shop requires clever marketing strategies to keep you ahead of the competition.

Here’s our list of marketing strategies for the online shop owner to try in 2015.

1. Strong relation-bond with customers: Lack of in-person connection with customers is one of the greatest drawbacks of Ecommerce. The trend goes like- people visit the site, they purchase what they like, make the payment and once you ship the goods to them, it’s over. But now the situation is just opposite to it. Developing personal relationships with customers helps to grow your business in today’s eCommerce sphere. It may be through phone, live chat or any social media marketing. You can go through this article “Give a Personal Touch to Your Online Store” to read more on personalizing an online store.
2. Target Niche markets: eCommerce is basically about establishing or designing a site to reach an audience that share common interest. It is advantageous to know your customer needs and wants and thus accordingly bring in more relevant products. In 2015, make sure that every new product you carry is super relevant to your customer and less focus on the number of products you carry.
3. Content marketing: Content marketing is a cornerstone of your marketing platform. More consumers are growing into digital information, constantly scrolling through headlines, looking through photos and videos. Content should be in a way that is eye-capturing to your customers. Top tips to capture ideal customer’s attention are:
   • Indulge in consistent blogging. Create useful posts for your target people.
   • Consistent email newsletter, may be once a month. Don’t just hit the mail with hard sell. Send short mails to customer that gives them value.
   • Show multiple images for a product.
4. Go Multichannel: Create multi-channels offerings of products so that your customers can experience your brand consistently. Consider the channels in relation to your customer base and product line. Make sure that the products you sell via different channels are sufficiently differentiated for price differences.
5. Mobile Optimisation: Responsive and attractive web design is now an essential requirement of an eCommerce site and your best move in 2015 will be to go beyond this by optimising the mobile experience for your customers.More than 50% of all ecommerce traffic now comes through mobile. Browsing for products online via mobile devices is rising on high scale as compared to desktop. To stay competitive, merchants increasingly need to implement mobile-friendly responsive online shops or mobile applications so that more mobile viewers can be converted into customers. Material design by google is the latest up gradation in mobile design & implementing this one will lead to getting more popularity.
6. Email Campaign: Email is gaining most conversion traffic in Ecommerce. In order to make customers visit your website, you need to go to them.You can automate emails that are sent during your sales process and the different scenarios that trigger these emails. Online sales really get a boost when the emails include timely offers, like a special sale or discounts at a new product, sending thank you mail for the order etc.
7. Sell Internet-Only Merchandise: This strategy helps to build an exclusive brand — with eCommerce as the core distribution channel. By offering goods that are not available elsewhere and selling them directly to the consumer online, you can maintain much greater control over your margins.

2015 will not be the first year for many eCommerce stores but it might be too challenging. Using the right strategy for your store will help you to turn your customer into loyal customers with exceptional customer service. Each strategy positions online retailers to capitalize on opportunities to capture more market share and thus make 2015 a profitable year.

If you are a new one to build your own online store, you can go with some of this best ecommerce platforms.

The post 7 Strategies to grow your eCommerce Business in 2015 appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

Today the world is growing more and more online. Many ecommerce software have taken place in this online environment. So searching the right ecommerce solution has become more difficult & challenging task. Here is an infographic that will help you with the commandments before you opt for any ecommerce software.

So now it’s the time to create an online store choosing the right ecommerce solution. Some top solutions are Zepo & Shopify. To find other good options available, read our article on top 10 ecommerce platform. You can also talk to our eCommerce Software Analyst in case of any suggestion for selecting the right ecommerce software solution for your business. Do share your views or experience via comments.

Embed this infographic on your site:

<a href="http://blog.softwaresuggest.com/right-ecommerce-platform-infographic/"><img src="http://blog.softwaresuggest.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ecommerce-Infographic.png" alt="Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform for Your Online Store [Infographic]" width="1200" height="3068" /></a><br /> <a href="http://www.softwaresuggest.com/ecommerce-platform-software">Best eCommerce Platform Software in 2015</a>

The post Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform for Your Online Store [Infographic] appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

With an increase in the usage of internet and smartphone users, who’re seeking to take purchasing decisions via the web or smartphones, we could see now most of the companies which are a part of brick and mortar are evolving into click-and-order model. And of course the term e-Commerce is now becoming intertwined with mobile commerce.

Eventually, more businesses are seeking to expand on the web, be it a fashion category or grocery based store, now the companies want to serve all their products with just a tap of a button. What’s next, studies show that more customers want to shop with ease and thus shopping online while seeking discounts on a wide range of stores. If you are anything like that, find the best Paytm offers and Jabong coupons, and discounts on everything and from all the online stores that have their presence in India at one place – GrabOn.

Here are 3 major ways where any business in e-commerce space can seek to create brand engagement and take countless opportunities for e-commerce platforms, especially via social media.

Read here: Top Strategies to grow your eCommerce business in 2015

Inspiring Content

You know, consumers don’t specifically shop at an exclusive store. Before they make their purchase decisions, they generally head to visual platforms like Pinterest, Instagram or Polyvore to get in some inspiration. And let me tell you, this inspiration requires content. Presenting products to customers involves two phases: either showcasing the list of products with the help of content or presenting content early in the purchase cycle. So that before they had made their minds, the inspiration can let shoppers to buy it.

Here are some of the best practices for inspiring your users to buy stuff online through content are:

Want to post in Pinterest? Remember the key to get more users is to pin your content from your website or blog to Pinterest boards. And then implement Pin button across your website.

When it comes to Instagram, focus on posting beautiful photos of the products and celebrity inspired photos directly to your account.

Experiment with photos, videos, questions, links, express with emoticons, share timely content, have a competitive intelligence plan. You may also see progress while launching the campaign and optimizing your tags accordingly with the timely content updation.

To name, the above are very few tips that an e-commerce platform can take advantage of to engage their users or fans on Facebook or other social media.

Community to Share Content

I know creating the most inspiring content for every product that you showcase on your platform is not easy, and especially if your platform has about thousands of products under one category. The best way to scale up your creative content is to explore the various communities, find a different set of online shoppers. Find out groups where you see people who are passionate about your brand. Find the right content for such group.

For example, on Pinterest you can look for persuasive users on the web in one place. This is the right platform to enhance relationships with those users who have a maximum number of pins and of course their own personal blogs to post your content.

Similarly, when you are working with Instagram strategies, always make sure that you identify users with the highest number of follower accounts. This is because the most active users on Instagram can help generate more users present in their network. As a company, send users some free stuff, ask them to post their photo tagging your company and have them share on their timeline.

Paid Media Programs

The key to success which is followed by most top e-commerce platforms is – try to get support of organic searches and efforts through paid media programs. Paid campaigns can drive a higher share of audience in less time. Remember that your campaign should drive in target users. In addition to this, brands should also work on recommendations on social sites model. This can actually help user in buying decisions, while for the e-commerce platforms and companies that have an online presence can take paid marketing as an opportunity to drive brand awareness.

So if you are seeking to take advantage of increasing revenue and users through social media, make sure you have already addressed some of the important decisions on time – perfect site design, mobile, search engine optimization, social media strategies, paid marketing strategies and more.

The post 3 Ways E-Commerce Platforms Can Engage With Online Shoppers Via Social Media [Guest Post] appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

Online marketplaces are great option for those who want to start an ecommerce business but perhaps don’t yet have the inventory to warrant a large and expensive dedicated ecommerce site. Marketplaces help them if they want to sell casually or they just want to take advantage of all the great opportunities that marketplace selling can bring.

One of the greatest assets marketplaces have over other channels of e-commerce are their wide reach stemming from their existing customer bases. These sites already have vast databases of current and potential customers who search for products and buy from these sites on a regular basis.

This also means that these sites also do all the hard work when it comes to increasing visibility for your products. People are already aware of these marketplaces which means there’s no need to blow half your budget on getting people to visit your store in the first place. The most you need to do is optimize your listings so your items are easily found. The search engines on these marketplaces will make it easy for people to find your items, and in some cases your products might even be featured (free advertising!)

Let’s take a look at all the different marketplaces and how they benefit you, the seller.

Amazon

Amazon is currently the world’s largest eCommerce marketplace with around 168 million users every month. Amazon gives you the option to choose whether you want to be a Professional or Individual seller, which depends on how many items you estimate you will sell each month.

Amazon charges 15% commission to its sellers, plus $0.99/79p per sale to Individual sellers, but if you’re a Professional Merchant, you only need to pay $39.99/£25 per month and you’re only charged the commission instead of paying per sale – this might sound expensive, but if you’re selling more than 40 items a month, you’ll actually save money.

Pros sellers get additional benefits, including the ability to customize your shipping rates, offer gift wrapping and promotions for customers, use of Amazon’s listing tool and reporting tool, and more. Amazon pro sellers are also eligible for top placement on product detail pages and can choose to sell products from a wider range of categories which can be restricted for Individual sellers.

Amazon also offers a fulfillment service called FBA which deals with all handling and shipping of your items and could potentially save you money on shipping fees – of course you don’t have to choose this option, and a fee calculator is provided so you can know exactly how much shipping with FBA will cost you.

eBay

eBay is the second biggest e-commerce marketplace out there. All transactions brokered by eBay and fulfilled by third-party merchants. There are options for “Buy It Now” or for traditional auctions. The fee structure on eBay is complex: insertion fees, subscription fees and final value fees all vary from plan to plan. It’s easy to setup a seller account to get started, and there is a large variety of products you can sell and categories you can sell them in.

To set-up an eBay store, simply begin by creating seller account and confirming your contact details. You also need to specify which automatic payment method you will be using for your seller fees and eBay’s Money Back Guarantee reimbursements. Additionally, eBay recommends you get verified by PayPal in order to raise sending and withdrawal limits, increase your credibility and have the ability to list on international eBay sites.

Once your account is set up, you can then create and manage your product listings and interact with customers. Your eBay fees will depend on the type of item it is, category it is sold under, any shipping costs added, etc, and will vary accordingly.

Etsy

Etsy is a more specialized marketplace compared to Amazon or eBay. It is aimed at craft workers, artists and those who sell vintage items, handmade creations and craft supplies. Setting up shop is quite simple – you can use Facebook Connect which can make things a lot easier and after that all you need to do is name your store.

Etsy has a simplistic listing process in which the site will guide you throughout the entire process and ask questions like what type of item it is, who made the product, when was it created. The only other information you need to submit is a description, some photos, and shipping details (pretty standard stuff).

There is no monthly membership fees with Etsy, but there is a $0.20 USD charge for a listing an item for four months and Etsy takes a 3.5% cut of the selling price. Fees vary for direct checkout, promoted listings, multi-quantities, etc all depending on what you’re selling.

Rakuten

Rakuten is Japan’s largest e-commerce company. It lets merchants to customize their stores and product pages and to conduct post-sale marketing to their customers. Merchants can build and embellish their brands with Rakuten’s marketplace which allows a lot more creative freedom than Amazon and eBay. It also allows sellers to customise their storefronts. Although this can also be done within eBay, the general look and feel of storefronts is dictated by eBay.

The other marketplaces control product and store content closely. Store plans start at $33 per month, with commissions from 8 to 15 percent, plus a $.99 per item fee that is waived under certain plans and conditions. Rakuten also offers customer reward points of 1 percent of purchases.

Merchants can email their customers, design their own stores and products and can also host their own blog- all within the Rakuten eCommerce platform. The marketplace encourages direct communication with prospects and customers throughout the buying cycle. It also offers tools that allow participating merchants to promote products and stores within the marketplace search results, home page, and category pages. The other marketplaces mentioned here do not freely allow this.

View here: eCommerce in India From 1999-2015 [Infographic]

How to sell better on online marketplaces

Okay, so once you’ve set up your shop online, you want to become a great seller which is important because great sellers get better ratings and more customers.

Communicate with your customers – While You may not be able to customize the look and feel of your shop, you can let your personality shine through in other ways like how you communicate with customers. Always send them a thank you email for using your store, reply to them promptly and answer questions quickly in an engaging manner.

Optimize your listings – The ways in which you can optimize your listings will vary, from marketplace to marketplace, but generally speaking, you want to include the right keywords and make sure that you’re able to describe the items in an engaging but informative way.

Product descriptions are an important element and will differ depending on the marketplace you’re using – Etsy, for example, encourages its sellers to share the story behind each item- but the key is to be accurate and to give lots of detail.

Take great photos – Having high quality pictures will help stand out and sell more. One of the biggest problems with online shopping is that people can’t see or touch products but sellers can help by showcasing various product views and angles in the photos, and by showing the product in its proper context to let the shopper see it in action.

Try inventory management software – If you’re selling on multiple marketplaces, your inventory can become difficult and confusing to manage. It might be worth investing in a multi-channel inventory and order management software to sync your data across your multiple channels, so you can track everything from one easy-to-use system.

The post Ultimate Guide to eCommerce Marketplaces appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

With the increase in technology, where everything is available online, eCommerce is a sector with unprecedented growth rate. Not only is it expected to grow in the near future, but entrepreneurs are looking forward to make the most out of this opportunity. The people who have been selling offline are still oblivious about the large targeted market they are missing.

Reasons Why You Should Sell Online?

1. You Can Cater to a Bigger Audience
   With your business going online, you can cater to a very large audience that can be situated anywhere in the world (provided you have logistic services adhering to that)
2. Your Entire Catalogue is on the Display and Updated
   Gone are the days when you had to show each and every product to your customer and if they did not like it, then wrap it back. Now all your products can be on display for people to see and select. Thus minimizing your workload and time wastage.
3. Your Business Remains Open 24/ 7, Even if You Are Not There
   People can buy from your shop even if you are not there. The best part of going online is you can work from anywhere, any time and even when you are on a holiday.
4. Higher Margins and Better Cash Flow
   An e-commerce website will allow you to sell at higher margins. The shopping cart and payment options on the website also mean will be getting 100% payment from the customer straight away.
5. Lower Set Up Costs and Running Costs
   Setting up a store does not require a very high investment in terms of infrastructure or work people. The total costs are very low in comparison to an offline business.

The question then comes

What Do We Need to Sell Online?

For being able to sell online there are various things that come into picture. For you to be able to show all your products online, you require a website. This is the first point of contact with your clients wherein they get to see what you have to offer. The easier, customer friendly website you have the better it is for your customers.

Next thing is, if people like some product, they would want to buy it. Right? So you need a Payment gateway via which the payments could be processed and the money can reach you.

Now once the money has reached you, it is your responsibility to get the product to reach your customer.

This is where logistics come into the picture.

And then finally the biggest pain how to bring in more customers to your site.For that you need to market your website, search engine optimize it, advertise it.

So there are two ways to do so.

1. Go to a website developer, then get a payment gateway, then have a tie up with some logistics provider, create Facebook pages, market your website, etc
2. The second and easier way is to use eCommerce platform like Zepo, Sellmojo.

Our team tried zepo. With Zepo, creating your online store barely takes 5 minutes. All you have to do is enter your details and voila your store is created. It focuses on giving complete support to it’s customers. The day you create a store, a representative from Zepo takes you through the entire backend explaining each and every detail of how it works which on the other hand is very simple.

The features of Zepo include

1. Easy Platform to Use
   A platform with 100+ customizable themes and a lot of inbuilt and external apps/features to create and manage your store. You can choose how you want your store to look.
2. Free Payment Gateway
   Zepo provides you a payment gateway free of cost with low TDR rates.
3. Logistics Support
   Logistics support with our partner AVN, which is a logistics aggregator and is providing services through Fedex, Aramex, Delhivery to give you :
   • 40% ​discounted rates compared to market rates.
   • ​Free pick up service with multiple pickup points.
   • COD facility without any minimum commitment of orders.
4. Marketing Support
   Already start driving traffic and sales on your store with Zepo’s marketing tools :
   • Get a Facebook store to reach out that huge customer pool on Facebook.
   • With Whatsapp Marketing Tool “Bazaario” to directly reach out to your customers over whatsapp.
   • A Mobile store to let your customer shop from any device.
   • Sell on various Channels like Ebay/ Amazon/ Naaptol/ Tradus/ Snapdeal/ Flipkart/ Shopclues, etc.from a single dashboard, with all your inventory synced via Browntape.
   • Schedule and send free email newsletters to your customers right from your dashboard.
   • ​50+ inbuilt and external apps and integration with listing websites​.
5. The recently Introduced – Marketplace Listing
   Want to sell more online but find marketplaces very complex? Zepo is the solution for you. It helps in uploading your products on various marketplaces like Jabong, Flipkart, Amazon etc. in just 21 days. All you will need to do is send your products/ photos and everything else from your registration to product upload will be taken care of by Zepo!

Still have queries? Did you face any stumbling blocks in your journey of starting a business online? Share your queries and experiences in the comments.

The post How To Start Selling Online in 5 Minutes appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

The biggest difference between selling online and selling offline is being able to connect to the customers. When a customer enters a store, the people who work there help him out if he faces any difficulties but while running an online business your website is the first connect between the customer and the product. Going by that, it should be self explanatory as well as made in a way that it guides and acts like a perfect salesman.

We happen to go through the backend of an Ecommerce platform – Zepo.in where we saw that all these problems have been addressed.

Following this we picked up certain tools from their stores that are a must have on your website to make it more engaging, customer friendly and leads them to buy products. Also we have enlisted a few tools that will help you understand your web traffic better.

Tools That You Must Have On Your Website

1. Tools that help you analyze your website traffic
   
   These tools are a must to have because while operating an online business you need to focus on a targeted audience and see if the actions that you implementing on your website are getting you any traction for that matter or not. Zepo uses tools like Google Analtyics, Lexity, Google Webmasters to help their customers
   • Track down which region your visitors are coming from.
   • They tell you which product is selling more, which products are doing good and which are not.
   • Which page is getting more viewers, which pages lead to exits the most, for how long a viewer stays on your website, etc
   • These tools help you understand the output of all the things that you have done to scale your website including SEO, content marketing (blogs), social media pages.
2. A live chat feature
   This tool is a chat box that comes up in front of the visitor wherein he can chat with you at any given time. This gives you the leverage over other sites as it acts just like a store attendant. Any person will be more comfortable being able to chat to someone for an instant query rather than calling or dropping an email. A live chat feature improves
   • Customer communication and satisfaction.
   • Conversion rate from visitors to customers i.e if you address to the queries there and then you’ll be able to build trust in your visitor.
   • Feedback

   Zepo uses facilities of Zopim or Tawk for this.

3. Reviews, comments and customer rating tools
   
   An eCommerce platform – Zepo picked Disqus, Yopto and RatingWidget that help your customers post comments, reviews about your products that they have used. These tools work in many ways
   • They provide you feedback regarding your products.
   • They help in increasing customer satisfaction as the former customers are being able to put forward their opinions.
   • It helps building trust in visitors who are just browsing through. Reviews are a great way to confirm if the products is worth a shot. Positive reviews can push a visitor, whereas a negative one might create a doubt in their minds. But these apps come with settings wherein you can control what goes live and what doesn’t.
     
     
4. Subscription Box
   Always have a subscription box on your website and place it somewhere that catches the eye of the visitor. Your main focus should be on capturing the emails of visitors. A noticeable text with a simple email subscription box provides you
   • Emails of people who showed interests in your website.
   • You can send them offers and keep them updated about your new collections.
   • They are potential leads that you can turn into customers.

   ZEPO provides you Mailchimp or ManyContacts can help you integrate these features on your site.

5. Pop ups, action bars and exit intents
   
   Pop ups are a great way to get the attention of the people at the right moment. Say if someone has been on the store for sometime and leaving without making any attempt to buy anything, you can use an exit intent pop up stating a 25% discount and that will nudge them into buying. Or a pop up guiding them into the new arrival section after seeing no activity from visitors on the site. The best thing about pop ups is that you can place them anywhere on the website and at any given time according to your liking.
   • It will help you convert more viewers into customers.
   • Help to increase the time of visitor on website.
   • Help you collect email ids.
   • Targeted discounts and offerings

   Zepo uses Web Engage for availing this facility.

However going ahead and integrating all these facilities in the website is a headache in itself. At Zepo all these tools are already inbuilt in your online store and there is no added costs for it. So you already have the tools that are necessary for the website. These widgets provide a better insight into the business and also help users increase their sales.

The post All eCommerce Widgets On Single Platform – ZEPO appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

It has been a cliche for huge businesses to do commerce in a brick and mortar model. Since the early 2000, eCommerce has provided the independence from location of market place where buyers and sellers would come together to trade with individuals’ interest. Despite the rampant growth of eCommerce , businesses don’t want to fall into the hassle of creating a web presence by creating a website, purchasing a domain, hosting it, maintaining it. This becomes pretty cumbersome for a non domain person to implement and regulate it in a timely manner. As more and more consumers are trending towards online shopping, it would not be justice to your business if you do not have an eCommerce website and it would hinder your conversion opportunities. Hence some of the top ecommerce platform like twikster, zepo, nationkart,shopify comes up with a unique way of doing a hassle free business by taking up the obligations you had while implementing your own eCommerce website.

Ecommerce platform provides you with best in market widgets and templates for a better customer interaction and building a brand image of your product list. It is always good to have a strategic view by extending the scope of your business in this manner. Below mentioned is the list of amazing strategies that one would definitely have hands on, while doing any eCommerce business:

1. Select demographics to focus on consumer group: One needs to be specific as to which market is the business targeting. Every consumer has varied list of needs and requirements. Your business must be able to target that particular demographic of customer whether that is age, sex, lifestyle, race etc. This is an important strategy as it will be able to generate a better need catering business and would keep you focussed in your core work than digressing from the pitch.

2. Consistent and constant updation of content: The best tool tip to attain customers’ attention is to generate information about your products from time to time. Creating blogs about your products, email newsletters and multiple images of the product. This makes the eCommerce website customer centric. This enables your web presence to be eye catchy and attractive to the current users.

3. SEO and multi channelling: If your eCommerce website is available on varied sites, then it is certain to capture more attention that would lead to higher conversion ratio. Its presence on different social media sites would also lead to gain more desire for consumers to visit your site at the very go. It helps you provide multi presence on facebook, pinterest, twitter etc so that you are noticed anywhere your potential customer is available.

4. Make your platform exclusive: Being idiomatic makes your business stand out of your competitors. Customers tend to engross in the products and services that are uniquely offered by your business rather than the generics. You can have certain products/services that would be available only on your platform attracting more consumers and gaining importance too.

5. Do not make it device specific: More than 30% of the trending online market tends to buy products from mobile phones and tablets. If your service work well on desktop but is not equally effective on smart phones, then you may fail to win the conversion from these consumers. Hence you need to make your service apt enough to work really well on various platforms not just sticking to one specific platform. It would provide equal important details regarding the products featured.

6. Easy delivery integration: The corner stone for any eCommerce website is the delivery end. Ecommerce is not just about ordering good products, but the consumers will also expect easy and quick delivery processes ensuring that the product reaches in good state to the end users. Ecommerce platform like twikster comes with amazing delivery integration system ensuring fast and reliable delivery options.

7. Be pleased to help: Customer retention is equally important as customer acquisition in today’s business. Hence your business needs to be in constant contact with your clients even after completion of the deal. This would create a strong image in the customers’ mind which would easily retain for a longer period. This could even be more interactive by allowing users to give feedback on products and their experiences with your site. Zepo provides this unmatched facility using Web-engage that enables constant consumer interaction helping you make your business grow in a way your consumers want it to be. Be it through phone, emails or social media it is an effective tool that would help you have customers for longer while.

8. Secure payment integration: If the consumer is burning hole in his pocket then assure him/ her that the penny he is shelling off is secured to be transacted whether through debit cards or credit cards. One needs to bring faith in the customer using trusted gateways that all the customer details will be taken care of and will not be breached for any misuse

Equipped with these strategies a business is sure shot to ensure converting window shoppers to potential buyers. Business owners may now leave all the hassles of maintenance and creation of website using online SAAS applications. So what are you waiting for? Come & grow your business online in less than a day. SoftwareSuggest is here to help you out with the best available ecommerce solution for your business to grow online.

The post Approaching eCommerce: The Art of Clicks and Clients appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

E-commerce is booming and there is no reason to be left behind, regardless of the size of your business. With the advancement of technology, e-commerce has revolutionized. Mobile commerce, internet banking, internet marketing, data interchange and everything which uses internet for data exchange or any sort of payment come under e-commerce.

Conservative estimates put e-commerce growth at 13% every year. Considering this growth, one can conclude that e-commerce market doubles in every 5 years. And the obvious reason behind such a growth is exponential growth in internet users. Everything is going online because everyone is going online.

1. Impact on market and retailers

E-commerce provides a huge platform to the retailers to sell their goods and services as well. E-commerce sites like shopclues provides an open ground to sell things with them. So, in the today’s world if you have quality products or services then you need not invest in real brick and mortar showroom, you have a trendy and hot option of selling goods online, because everything is online in today’s world.

On the other hand e-commerce induced price competition in the market, because consumer’s ability to search and collect information of any product has increased to ten folds. So, retailers are now compelled to not only provide better quality but also better service to remain firm in the market.

2. Social impact

Few years ago, money transfer was a heavy task, which required certain procedure. One has to stand in the long queue to wait for his/her turn. But now, money transfer is a cake walk, just a click away. All credit goes to e-commerce.

So e-commerce not only gave a platform to the retailers to sell stuffs, but also provides freedom to the consumers to select from wide variety of goods and services.

3. E-commerce- a ripe growth opportunity

Global e-commerce is growing 13% annually, over the past five years. That’s impressive.

And if e-commerce kept on growing with this pace in the coming future, then that day is not far when whole market will be captured by e-commerce.

Retail expansion is increasingly occurring through various online channels as a favourite way to get into growth market, build various new brands. It also helps in learning the nature of customers while investing lesser capital as compared to traditional market.

Read More: All eCommerce Widgets On Single Platform – ZEPO

4. The Future

It has already been predicted that by 2022, brick and mortar showrooms will be very little more than showrooms. Instead of loading heavy goods by themselves, consumers prefer to surf their favourite e-commerce site. Simple returns and instant refunds are few other major factors which are attracting more and more customers to join family of e-commerce site.

The race to expand and develop online retail in developing markets has already begun for both the international firms as well as for home-grown retailers.

E-commerce and multichannel integration is becoming hot favourites of all because it takes lesser efforts and capital than conventional market. It offers tremendous opportunities- that too at potentially lower risk and investment as compared to building bricks-and-mortar stores.

By seeing the present growth of e-commerce we can easily assume that, entrepreneurs wisely understand the importance of e-commerce. Hence, that day is not so far when everything will go online.

So now is the time to create an online store choosing the right ecommerce solution

View an infographic on Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform for Your Online Store [Infographic]

The post e-Commerce Insights – “Home Of Growing Business” appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

With advancements in technology, e-Commerce is booming and this provides a great opportunity for every business, regardless of its size. All brands are going online and if you haven’t started selling online yet, now is the right time to do so.

Below are some incredible reasons for you to get on the e-commerce bandwagon immediately:

1. Selling online results in low set-up costs and overheads as compared to a physical store.
2. There are no restrictions on customers who want to buy your products. They can get your services and products anytime anywhere.
3. You can access all analytics needed to help you reach a greater audience. Sales, Orders, Customers, Geographic areas - everything can be tracked very easily.
4. You have complete control over the store at all times, time management becomes easier and you have the flexibility to scale your business whenever you feel ready.
5. Customer relationship management also becomes much easier as you can track the behaviour of customers and maintain all that data in one place.

In spite of all these reasons, many small and medium businesses fear that they need technical knowledge or will have to make a large investment in order to set up an e-store. They worry that they need design skills to set up an aesthetic store. But that is not the case.

We do admit that there are challenges that come with online selling, however, today, there are smart ecommerce platforms that help store owners overcome all challenges and take care of EVERYTHING needed to get started with and grow an online business.

One such e-commerce platform which makes e-commerce simpler is Twikster. It is a feature rich, mobile friendly, hosted e-commerce enabler which is soon introducing TwiksterSocial.  With this, Twikster will become the only platform to address one big concern of e-commerce store owners - how to drive traffic to the store, get more customers and increase sales?

Using TwiksterSocial, a store owner will be able to do the following -

• Post great CONTENT to over 10 social media platforms at once. The more content you post, the better your SEO.
• Interact with your CUSTOMERS where they hang-out and give them offers to drive them to your store.
• Analyze the PERFORMANCE of your brand on all social media platforms and google analytics from one dashboard - simplified so you can understand it better.
• View what your COMPETITION is doing and keep up to speed with them.
• Track what customers are doing on your store and see where they are coming from - so you can manage your AD SPEND accordingly.

How To Start Selling Online in 5 Minutes? What about the other challenges, you ask? Below are the other common issues faced by online sellers which are taken care of for every Twikster powered store.

1. A complete solution for all your E-commerce needs, be it creating a store, managing social media, team specialists helping you get started on marketplaces, logistic provider tie-ups and other complementary service partners.

2. Starting your business free of cost and allowing you to grow at your own pace. It is a pay as you go model, one that no other platform offers.

3. 40+ colors and design options with different layouts for your website which can be customized as per your requirements.

4. Payments are also taken care of as Twikster stores come ready with many different pre-integrated payment gateways for you to choose from. Twikster takes care of technical details and ensures that the money goes straight to your account.

5. For every product that you add, Search engine optimization with support to add meta titles and descriptions, tags, friendly URLs and image alt tags.

So, with a smart platform like Twikster and the support of multiple ecommerce experts at your disposal, all you have to do is sign-up and get started with your online business. Create. Socialize, Grow!

The post Selling Online Has Never Been Easier! appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

eCommerce development is not an unknown term for us these days. It is one of the major aspects of high internet usage (amongst social media, online movie/video streaming, gaming, information transfer and others). After the explosion of eCommerce websites over the past few years, online shopping has become the latest shopping norm. In such scenarios, even retailers who have their stores in prime locations are looking to capture the online channel for growth. They are investing in ecommerce web development as they realize that eCommerce is here to stay.

Some of the major benefits of having an eCommerce website are:

1. Lower operational costs

For starting with an online store, a lot of capital isn’t required. Moreover, any amount of investment is much lesser than that required in a brick and mortar store. Moreover, you are free from the headache of searching for the perfect visibility and location and hiring a number of employees as most services are automated.

2. Wide customer base

In physical stores, the customer base is limited to geographical location and it’s access. In case of an online store, with the right SEO practises, you can reach a number of customers in every corner of the world.

3. Customer convenience

People are getting lazier, there is no doubt. Why would they want to wait throughout the week for the weekend, travel to the mall and buy from the limited options available out there. They would rather buy the desired item online. Not only do online stores offer less prices and choice, but they are more convenient: from the customer’s perspective. Moreover as physical movement is not required, they can shop 24x7.

4. Lack of market barriers

Everyone can have a successful online ecommerce presence, provided the right SEO and marketing strategies are used. All you have to do is partner with the right, reputed and trusted service provider, and you are good to go.

Choose the Right eCommerce Platform for Your Online Store

Having talked about it’s benefits,we now discuss the ways in which you can leverage E commerce to the best of your advantage:

1. You must win the trust of your target audience

The simplest aspect to understand is that they won’t buy from you if they don’t trust you. A study revealed that 70% of web shoppers abandon their carts because they cannot trust the website.

In such scenarios, having a trust seal on your website is a great idea. It is a mark for authenticity. It lets the visitors know that the website they are visiting/purchasing from is authentic or not. These seals are given out by third party organizations that collect data in order to verify and state whether the said business conforms to the corporate rules or not.

From a technical perspective, these seals check your site’s association with SSL certificate or socket layer. In short, it means that a particular website has been thoroughly scrutinized and provides secure data transmission.

Users are now confident that they can carry out secure data transmission while using your website. They trust you (and your website) in disclosing their bank details and carrying out transactions.

These SSLs can be categorized as:

• Standard validation SSL certificates
• Extended validation SSL certificates (EV)SSL

The prime (and only) difference between both of them is that EV demands some additional administrative efforts in order to figure out about domains, and thus requires some extra cost.

TNS (and independent research firm) carried out a research and concluded that a large number of audience is aware of these seals. A majority of online shoppers in America stated that a trust seal is a prime requisite for an eCommerce store and 79% of online purchasers would want to see them on the websites they want to purchase from.

2. Never wait for the shopping season

Shopping carnivals during festive seasons are an excellent opportunity to get hold of web users. However, it does not mean that you must wait for them for rest of the year to launch your product. You must launch your app quite earlier in order to gain their trust.

3. Having mobile friendly designs

There is no denying that mobile devices are the first choice of users. Even Google has made standards with the responsive web design, which all websites must adhere to. This is in order to make them mobile friendly.

This adoption becomes even more imperative for eCommerce players as traffic on eCommerce sites has been on the rise - through the mobile platform.

There are a number of platforms, plugins and extensions available in the market, therefore developing an eCommerce website should not be a daunting task. eCommerce platforms like Twikster, Zepo, Shopify are some of the top eCommerce platform solutions you can go with. However, you must keep in mind that providing best services to the customers is a must, in order to achieve best returns.

The post Leveraging The Best Of e-Commerce Web Development For Your Business appeared first on SoftwareSuggest Blog.

For shopping now a days, more customers are moving online, so the eCommerce industry continues to grow. In current scenario, it seems nobody can go a day without having the news or update about someone or a group is hacking website and stealing credit card. Other sensitive data is also hacked from e-commerce sites. So how do you protect your eCommerce site from being hacked and sensitive customer data from being stolen? Here is an infographic to guide you.

So as hackers, web designer or developer with an e-commerce website want in, online security must be considered by you a top priority to protect customers’ personally identifiable information. However, to protect your business from hackers the most effective way is to think like them. Most e-commerce sites do this with an SSL security certificate. You can purchase a certificate, or there are some e-commerce platforms having a default built-in SSL upon checkout.

Embed this infographic on your site:

<a href="http://blog.softwaresuggest.com/keep-your-ecommerce-site-safe-secure/"><img src="http://blog.softwaresuggest.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Keep-Your-Ecommerce-Site-Safe-and-Secure.jpg" alt="Keep Your eCommerce Site Safe and Secure [Infographic]" width="800" height="6083"/></a><br /> <a href="http://www.softwaresuggest.com/ecommerce-platform-software">Top eCommerce Platforms</a>

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Embed this infographic on your site:

<a href="blog.softwaresuggest.com/top-ecommerce-solutions-for-business-infographic/"><img src="http://blog.softwaresuggest.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/top-ecommerce-solutions-infographic.png" alt="Top eCommerce Solutions for Business [Infographic]" width="648" height="3850"/></a><br /> <a href="http://www.softwaresuggest.com/ecommerce-platform-software">Top eCommerce Platforms</a>

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Shopping cart abandonment is a problem being faced by lot of eCommerce stores. In a recent report, the average cart abandonment rate is found to be 68.63%. If you are an ecommerce merchant, then you might have experienced this situation or will soon be experiencing it. You can’t ignore this situation or you’ll run the risk of missing out on potentially new and repeated customers. We are going to walk you through the practices that should be adopted to maximize conversions.

The eCommerce industry is experiencing a constant change in tune with the technology. With increasing competition and number of distractions, exceptional shopping experiences need to be tailored by eCommerce merchants. They are required to give their shopping cart a fighting chance to maximize conversions.  We hope that you find the above points worth pondering over.

Embed this infographic on your site:

<a href="http://blog.softwaresuggest.com/ecommerce-checkout-practices-maximum-conversions/"><img src="http://blog.softwaresuggest.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/eCommerce-Checkout-Practices-for-Maximum-Conversions.jpg" alt="eCommerce Checkout Practices for Maximum Conversions" width="800" height="4612"/></a><br /> <a href="http://www.softwaresuggest.com/ecommerce-platform-software">Top eCommerce Platform</a>

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