eCommerce POS Integration

When you own a retail business, you cannot just rely on one channel of sales in these challenging market conditions. In the last two years, the pandemic has changed the way people shop; there has been a marked increase in e-commerce sales. So, having an e-commerce store is a must. At the same time, there is a customer base for brick and mortar stores also. It is impossible to reject one channel completely and go with the other. So, providing an omni-channel shopping experience and retaining every customer is critical for success in retail business.

But this comes with its own challenges.

1. You have the same inventory, but multiple sales channels. When a product is sold through one channel, it should reflect in the inventory immediately. Otherwise, there is a chance of getting an order for the same item from another channel after it is sold. You may have to cancel the order, ultimately earning the dissatisfaction of the customer.

2. E-commerce provides opportunities for offers and discounts in unique ways. So, you may not be able to offer the same kind of discount in the retail store, creating a price difference between the two channels.

3. You have to enter the data manually for each channel to manage product catalog, inventory, purchase orders, etc. This is both time-consuming and expensive.

4. While e-commerce is designed to provide data on customer preferences and buying behavior, brick and mortar stores don’t have that luxury. So you will not have insights on part of the sales; without any insights, there is no scope for understanding customer preferences and personalization, especially in the brick and mortar store.

5. You may not be able to connect loyalty program and reward points collected from one channel to be used through the other.

All these downsides prevent you from giving a seamless shopping experience to the customers. The solution to this problem lies in e-commerce POS integration.

What is e-commerce POS integration?

E-commerce POS integration is the process of bringing together different online and offline sales channels under a single sales terminal. It synchronizes various software and hardw are components in your Point of Sale such as the cash register, digital payment hardware, etc., with a centralized sales management system that can handle online and offline orders and transactions.

3. Enables real-time inventory management

POS integration with e-commerce makes real-time inventory data and tracking possible. This enables retail businesses to proactively and automatically stock everything in right numbers depending on the data-driven forecast, so that items don’t go out of stock when customers look for them. It further reduces the bottlenecks in the flow of products between places, and makes shipping and order fulfillment quicker. More importantly, it prevents customers from ordering an item that is already sold out.

4. Increases speed and efficiency

E-commerce POS integration lets you manage multiple store fronts through a single terminal. It automates purchase orders, eliminates human errors, lets you efficiently track orders and collect sales data without having to break a sweat. When you can get everything in fingertips, the speed and efficiency of your operations increases significantly.

How can you achieve POS integration with e-commerce?

Choosing the right POS system and achieving E-commerce POS integration requires you to carefully analyze various factors and determine what is suitable for your business. Following are the steps involved in e-commerce integration with POS.

1. Check the current state of your POS

If you already have an e-commerce compliant POS system, you can integrate it with your e-commerce platform through the API. But the system needs to fulfill your requirements; so, the advantages and disadvantages of the system needs to be carefully evaluated.

If the software you already have does not offer e-commerce POS integration, then it will be impossible to unite the online and offline store fronts under one terminal. It is advisable to get a cloud-based POS system that directly integrates with your e-commerce platform.

If you do not have a POS system already, then you have to start from the scratch.

2. List out the features and functionality you want in your POS system

A good e-commerce POS integration does not necessarily mean just the compatibility of the system with your e-back end. It also means the system has all the features and functionality that you need. So, when you are choosing a POS system, you need to list out your expectations.

A good POS system usually offers powerful features to manage real-time inventory, customer details, customer support, order management and delivery, returns and exchanges, etc. A good POS system also works well with a large variety of POS hardware such as digital payment systems, cash counters, etc.

You can choose the system that suits your requirements the best.

3. Verify if the system will work well with your existing tools

When you achieve POS integration with e-commerce, it has to work seamlessly with your existing business tools and systems. It should also work well with your e-commerce platform. A good POS integration with e-commerce enables smooth flow of real-time data between online and physical retail stores, be it the product catalog, or inventory updates after sale or payment processing. It should integrate with other business management tools such as the accounting software, email marketing system, ERP system, etc. This will make sales data available across the systems automatically. So, when the management needs to take critical business decisions, it will be available to them without having to ask the concerned teams.

4. Analyze the cost of the system in relation to your budget

The cost of a POS system may vary depending upon the features and functionality you select. Further, some of the e-commerce systems demand extra charges for e-commerce POS integration. So, these factors need to be taken into account while allocating the budget.

5. Setting up the system

The ease of setting up a system and achieving e-commerce POS integration is paramount to getting it operational as quickly as possible. Some system providers offer a good customer support, and setting up the system will be easier with the help of a representative. It is better to choose a POS system provider who offers a good support.

6. Customize and start entering product details

Once you set up the e-commerce POS integration, you can verify if all the features are working properly as expected. You can make changes, customize and optimize the system, and start entering the product details, descriptions and images to build a catalog.

Top 5 POS eCommerce POS integrations

Following are the top 5 e-commerce integrations you can avail in the market today.

• Quickbooks
• Lightspeed
• Vend
• Loyverse
• Shopify Plus

How to use customer reviews in ecommerce to increase sales

Purchase decisions made by customers have always been based on their perception of a business. The trustworthiness of a retail business has played a key role in bringing customers to a shop and achieving sales. Building a reputation and trust in a traditional retail business requires word-of-mouth marketing, where customers recommend your business to the people they know. This method helps businesses build trust over a period of time slowly and steadily.

But the eCommerce scenario is different. eCommerce has a far greater reach and marketing for eCommerce businesses require you to create a strong brand appeal amongst people who are not connected, and are from a much larger demography and geographical location. As a result, word-of-mouth marketing is inadequate and ineffective for eCommerce. Customer reviews in eCommerce is a great substitute for word-of-mouth marketing.

Importance of customer reviews in eCommerce

Finding a good product amongst thousands of similar offerings from different eCommerce businesses is like finding a needle in a haystack. Identifying the right product from a trustworthy business is not easy anymore.

Customers are looking for reassurances from people like them. They need social proof to determine how good a product/business is, before making a purchase decision. So, displaying positive feedback and reviews on your business and products from a vast number of customers is crucial for building trust and achieving success in eCommerce. 72% of consumers will wait until they read reviews before taking action.

Best practices for displaying customer reviews in eCommerce

When you are running a eCommerce business, it is essential to display in different spaces reviews on your business as well as the products. Reviews capture the customers’ attention, create trust on your business and products, and help you achieve sales conversion. Following are some of the best practices in displaying customer reviews in eCommerce.

1. Display customer reviews prominently in product pages and product search

Product search page and product pages are the spaces where customers primarily look for product reviews. This is because, when they find the product they are looking for, they need social proof to confirm and reinforce the faith in the product and business to make a purchase decision. So, displaying customer reviews in these pages is key to achieving sales conversion.

2. Place your product reviews in every platform

In eCommerce, it is essential to be present in every online space frequented by the customers. Customers usually look for product reviews in the search engine, online media, YouTube videos, social media and other online forums. Collecting feedback and displaying reviews in all these platforms using suitable methods and mediums goes a long way in building trust and credibility. These reviews lead new customers into your sales funnel and help you achieve sales.

3. Display testimonials on your website

Websites are authentic sources of information related to your business and your products, and they play an important role in enabling customers to make informed decisions. Displaying testimonials from satisfied customers gives a reassurance to your customers that they are looking at a proven business/product they can rely on.

4. Make your reviews prominent on mobile devices

According to a study by eMarketer, the mobile share of total eCommerce across the world in 2021 was 72.9%. Mcommerce statistics reveal that 67% of customers purchase online using mobile devices. So, it is essential to make ratings and reviews prominent and visible on the smaller displays of the mobile devices to increase sales conversion.

5. Highlight numerical ratings

While detailed reviews can give the customers a better idea about your business and pros and cons of your products, most of the customers primarily look for the overall average ratings in a clearly defined scale. This helps customers judge a product and your business quickly and make a purchase decision. You can also add product ratings when you send abandoned cart emails.

6. Re-purpose reviews that stand out and highlight them everywhere

Constantly look out in every platform for reviews on your business/products that stand out. Share them on all the online spaces where you are present. Highlight the reviews that contain the reviewer’s profile image. This adds credibility to the reviews.

How to get customer reviews in eCommerce

While customer reviews in eCommerce can be useful for customers as well as the businesses, getting reviews from customers can be difficult. Once a customer buys a product, he/she has no obligation to rate your business/products. eCommerce businesses need to actively look for ways to convince them and collect as many reviews as possible. Following are some of the ways in which you can collect customer reviews in eCommerce.

1. You can send a follow-up mail or make a phone call after a customer makes a purchase and ask him/her to review the product.

2. Provide the space for writing a review on your eCommerce website. You can improve the visibility of it by integrating it with your orders history page. You can also add a pop-up page to catch the attention of the customers and collect reviews.

3. Prioritize getting a rating on a scale rather than a qualitative review. It is less time consuming for the customers, and there is a higher chance of customers leaving a star rating compare to a detailed review. Make it optional for them to write a detailed review.

4. Use social media and other platforms to redirect customers as well as other users to leave a review on your business listings on Google and Facebook. Increase in the number of reviews on those platforms improves the SEO and increases the chance of ‘being found’.

5. Respond to the feedback given by your customers and make them feel listened to. It motivates the customers to review your business and products favorably in the long run. Even if they leave negative reviews, write back, follow up with them and resolve their issues. Having a few negative reviews also helps in convincing the customers that the reviews are genuine. 89% of consumers are ‘highly’ or ‘fairly’ likely to use a business that responds to all of its online reviews.

6. Collaborate with journalists, influencers and YouTubers to review products and your business on various platforms. Having backlinks from reputed journalists and media houses improves your search listing.

7. Incentivize your customers for leaving reviews by providing them with discount codes and offers.

8. Make it easy for your customers to leave reviews from mobile devices by designing a mobile friendly feedback form.

9. Keep collecting reviews on an ongoing basis, as about 85% of consumers consider any review older than three months to be irrelevant, according to a study by Brightlocal.

Why email marketing works well for online selling

Businesses are always looking for ways to reach out to new audience and expand their customer base. There are numerous ways by which they manage to find new customers, right from introductory offers in their retail outlets to bolstering the brand presence on social media, which facilitates customer engagement. These marketing channels are not made equal. Some methods can be expensive to implement, some can enable you to tap a new group of audience, some can help in brand building and some can help achieve conversion better. So, depending on whom you want to reach out to and what your purpose of communication is, the choice of marketing channels may vary.

The power for personalization and communicating the right things at the right time to the right person is something that very few channels offer. Email Marketing is the most effective tools in this respect.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a means of digital marketing where the you can build a database of the email addresses of potential customers and individuals who have shown interest in your products, and send specific, targeted, and even personalized communication to those individuals. Email marketing can be conducted for various purposes including:

• 1. Announcing and promoting new products
• 2. Providing users with relevant offers
• 3. Disseminating useful information
• 4. Sharing news and announcements
• 5. Sending reminders and more

Depending on your objectives, you can design your email marketing strategy and customize email marketing campaigns accordingly.

How to develop a mailing list for email marketing

No matter what your objective is, the first step in email marketing is building a mailing list consisting of the email addresses of your potential customers. But collecting personal information is not easy. Customers expect businesses to deliver value on a continuous basis when they share their contact details. So, you should give your target audience a compelling reason to share their contact information with you.

To begin with, the quality of your products and services, and the interest you can generate in them amongst your target audience matter more than where and how you collect information to create your mailing list. Once you get those basics right, you can focus on building a mailing list. Following are some of the ways through which you can collect the contact information from potential customers.

1. Website and landing pages

A website is built around the brand identity and it provides complete information about your company, and the products and services that you offer. It also helps to establish the credibility of your brand. Since there is a high level of customer engagement and interaction happening in the website at any given time, it provides numerous opportunities for you to collect contact information from your target audience and build a mailing list.

Landing pages are specialized pages that are purpose-built to provide comprehensive information about the products and services the customers are looking for. Customers usually reach landing pages from online ads or blogs or promotional posts on social media. They pack a lot of information and have a call for action, which can be used to generate leads and collect customers’ contact information.

2. Social media platforms

Social media platforms are powerful tools of customer engagement and valuable source of traffic that provides you with the opportunities to interact with customers in different ways. You can conduct contests, promote products with offers, post human interest stories connected to the brands, broadcast product launches and send teasers. These engagement drives enable you to generate interest and lead potential customers to a landing page or website where they can sign up for newsletters, offers and other communication.

3. Point of Sale (POS)

Offering a customer loyalty program allows you to collect information and reward the customers with points for every purchase, which they can use later during future purchases.

High-impact mailing lists for effective email marketing

The mailing list is constantly expanding as new email addresses are added regularly to the list. However, the number of emails that are read and acted upon by customers, and the number of mails that achieved conversion are more important than the number of email addresses in a mailing list. Similarly, the emails that bounced most likely denote the contacts that are invalid. When the number of invalid email addresses is high, the email marketing can be ineffective. All these parameters can be tracked.

Further, a single mailing list does not fit every purpose. Different customers sign up for different purposes, and the communication sent to them should reflect what they signed up for. Otherwise, they will find the email marketing communication irrelevant and opt out of it. This calls for multiple mailing lists.

Also, the customers prefer personalization. Creating email marketing campaigns with a high degree of personalization delivers a good experience and increases customer engagement. Using these separate mailing lists, you can send emails with different messages to each category of customers and cater to them based on their preferences.

When all these factors are carefully considered and when the email marketing campaigns are fine-tuned accordingly, they will create a good impact in terms of engagement and sales conversion.

Using email marketing to attract, engage and convert customers

The ultimate aim of email marketing is to achieve conversion. But each customer’s preferences are different. Depending on what they signed up for, you can engage with them in different ways and achieve conversion. Following are some of the types of emails you can send.

1. Newsletters

Newsletters have an assortment of information relevant to the customers – from news regarding recent product launches to new product announcements or human interest stories of how the brand and products made an impact on people’s lives. By providing periodic updates on the brand, newsletters help you stay in touch with customers and create a brand experience. Sending newsletters are some of the most common types of email marketing.

2. Promotions

Offers and discounts provide value to the customers and let them buy products at a lower cost. Promotional emails deliver discount codes or coupons to the customers to make the best out of these offers. These emails also help in cross promotions, i.e. if the customer shows interest in one type of product, you can send promotional emails on related products as well. All these increase the chances of achieving conversion.

3. Autoresponders

Autoresponders are triggered as a reaction to certain actions or changes. For instance, if the customer is interested in a product that is not in stock, an autoresponder mail can be designed to be sent automatically when the product becomes available again, or to showcase the best alternatives currently available. These emails help keep the customers informed and alert them to changes that could potentially lead to conversion.

4. Abandoned cart mails

Customers often find themselves unable to purchase a product due to some technical issues. They might not also continue with a purchase due to other reasons such as simply forgetting to check out after adding items to the cart. Abandoned cart mails enable you to remind the customers of the items that are still in the cart. This increases the chance of the customer going back to the site and continuing the purchase from where they left.

5. Surveys

Email marketing can also be conducted to understand what customers expect from you. Collect feedback from the customers. Based on the findings, you can send personalized messages to the customers, cater to their interests and achieve conversion.

Best Practices in Email Marketing

• 1. Send a personalized welcome email using automation features of the email marketing platform, when an individual signs up for your mailing list.
• 2. Include in mailing list the addresses of only those who expressed interest and consented to be communicated.
• 3. Follow the standard guidelines and provide an option for the customers to unsubscribe from the mailing list.
• 4. Identify the right time and occasion for sending emails, create a schedule and harness the power of automation to send mails based on trigger events.
• 5. Identify the right frequency of communication and send only mails relevant to the audience.
• 6. Create a good design that works well on both computers and mobile phones.
• 7. Choose a topic or theme and stick to it. Write a catchy subject line that reflects the theme best.
• 8. Keep the content simple, informative, engaging and visually appealing.
• 9. Including a clear call for action.
• 10. Measure the impact of the email marketing campaigns through various indicators like conversion rate, return of investment, revenue generated through the campaign, etc. Learn from experience and tweak the campaigns to improve effectiveness.

Best Email Marketing Software For eCommerce Companies

There are various email marketing software available in the market to manage your mailing lists, send emails as per a pre-determined schedule and measure the impact with detailed insights. Some of the most popular email marketing platforms are as follows.

1. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is an easy-to-use and highly customizable email marketing software that allows you to not only create effective email marketing campaigns but also SMS campaigns.

2. Hubspot

Hubspot is a popular email marketing platform that offers a comprehensive set of features and tool sets to create, automate and track email marketing campaigns effectively. It offers well designed templates and helps you deliver a good user experience.

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an industry leader in email marketing. It offers small and medium businesses a flexible yet powerful email marketing platform that comes with well-designed templates. It also enables tight integration with many of the popular ecommerce platforms.

4. Smartr mail

Smartr mail is a simple but effective email marketing software. It enables you to quickly create appealing emails and automate the deployment. It is also rich in features, providing you with the ability to send Welcome emails, abandoned cart emails and other automated emails based on trigger events. It also comes with comprehensive testing features and analytics tools.

What is BOPIS and how it can help drive in-store traffic

Online shopping has increased with time. According to Statista, worldwide retail eCommerce sales in 2021 rose exponentially to $4891 billion, putting retail businesses with brick-and-mortar stores under pressure. Extended lockdowns due to a raging global pandemic forced even those customers who preferred physical retail stores to consider online shopping. It pushed retail businesses into rethinking their business strategy.

However, it is not always a smooth sailing when customers choose eCommerce over a conventional retail store. There are numerous issues with regard to stock, purchase and returns, refund, shipping delays, shipping costs, etc. Moving to eCommerce hurts retail businesses too, as they have to relinquish the brand experience they had built for years around their physical store and reinvent their identity. So, both customers and retailers want a middle ground, where the benefits of both the online and offline experiences intersect. BOPIS is an ideal solution that appeals to both customers and the retailers.

What is BOPIS?

BOPIS stands for Buy Online and Pick-up In-Store. BOPIS allows the customers to order online from the convenience of home, but lets them pick up the purchased items directly from a retail store. As a result, the customer gets a great online shopping experience and an in-store experience at the same time, while avoiding the problems in both. From the retailers’ point of view, BOPIS retail increases footfall, brings new customers and helps them retain the in-store brand experience. BOPIS benefits both the customers and the retailers.

There are three sub-categories in BOPIS. They are:

BOPAC

BOPAC stands for Buy Online and Pick-up Curbside. It enables the customers to get their online purchases delivered conveniently outside the retail store in a cubside pickup point, without getting out of the car. It makes delivery of products much safer during the pandemic, since it greatly minimizes the chance of exposure. Retailers can offer customers the choice to pickup their purchases from any of their multiple curbside pickup points. All they need to do is select the ‘curbside pickup near me’ menu while ordering, and choose the location nearest to them.

BORIS

BORIS stands for Buy Online Return In Store. BORIS is designed exclusively to address the return and refund issues in a typical eCommerce store. When the customer orders something from the eCommerce store, it is delivered right at the doorsteps. But if the customer wants to return it and get a refund, BORIS lets him/her to directly go to the retail store and return it. The customer also gets the choice to get an instant refund or to exchange the product with something else in the store

ROPIS

ROPIS stands for Reserve Online and Pay In-Store. With ROPIS, the customer can reserve the product on the site and pay only when he/she picks up the item from the store. This gives the customer the flexibility to choose a convenient payment method and lets him/her pay only when she gets the purchased item in hand.

Depending on the business strategy and the customers’ needs, a retailer can customize BOPIS with different pick-up solutions, return and refund processes, etc.

How does BOPIS Work?

BOPIS is a hybrid model, where a brick and mortar store and an ecommerce site work together to create a unique experience for customers, giving them the best of both worlds. When a customer purchases from a retail business with BOPIS feature enabled:

1. The customer orders from an eCommerce site run by the retail store.

While doing so, he/she selects the time of pickup and the pickup point from which he/she wants to collect the ordered items; the pickup point can be the retail store itself or the nearest curbside pickup facility. The local inventory at every pickup point is displayed live when ordering. The retailer can also bring those items from the warehouse. So, there is no confusion over the availability of stock. The customer can choose a payment option convenient for him/her while ordering.

2. The store fulfills the order.

The retail store confirms the order, sends the order information to the customer, and processes the order. The staff identify the ordered items from the inventory and pack them. The inventory is instantly updated. BOPIS retail gives customers the ability to track the status of their order. If the ordered item is in a different location, the store sends it to the pickup point. When the order is ready for pick-up, the customer is notified and sent a unique code for identification.

3. The customer picks up the purchased items from the selected pickup point.

The customer can go to the selected location, i.e. the retail store or a curbside pickup point and collect the purchased items. The customer needs to follow the instructions sent along with the unique code, in order to find the right pick-up spot and collect the items.

What are the requirements to allow you to offer BOPIS?

There are three important components in a BOPIS solution.

1.Website/app

In BOPIS retail, the customers order online, and it requires an intuitive site/app to place orders. The BOPIS retail site/app should make navigation quick and easy, and enable the customers to search and find the products with a few clicks. It should be paired with a robust back-end that can process the queries of the customer quickly and efficiently to provide a seamless experience.

2.A Physical Retail Store for pick-up and processing returns

BOPIS requires atleast one physical pick-up location from which the customers can collect the purchased items. It can be further expanded to multiple pick-up points across localities and curbside pickup facilities for the convenience of the customers. More pick-up options enhances the reach and ability to serve the customers better.

3.Real-time Inventory Management

Showing the stock availability accurately is a pre-requisite for BOPIS. There should be a real-time inventory management solution to display availability of stock in the store as well as the warehouse and pick-up points. The inventory management system should be integrated to workflows, order statuses and cancellations so that the stock remains always updated.

In addition to these, it is crucial to have staff trained on how to execute all the operations involved in BOPIS retail. There should be essential infrastructure in place, including warehouses, pick-up locations, parking spaces, etc. The retail business should also have mission-critical mechanisms to manage orders and payments, process returns and refunds, communicate with customers and fulfill orders quickly and efficiently.

For Retail Businesses

1. BOPIS enables retail stores to customize the solution to suit the business and customer requirements.

2. It increases footfall and brings new customers.

3. It helps businesses, directly interact with customers, understand their requirements and personalize their offerings based on customers’ preferences.

4. It enables businesses to create unique in-store brand experiences for the customers and earn their trust and brand loyalty.

5. It helps businesses upsell, by drawing customers to the retail store.

6. It gives detailed insights for businesses to understand what customers want and fine-tune their offerings accordingly to achieve sustained growth.

Retailers who have successfully adopted BOPIS

More and more retailers are embracing BOPIS and integrating it in their business strategy. Following are some of the popular retail stores that have already enjoyed a great success with BOPIS retail.

Arizon Digital’s BOPIS solution

Arizon Digital offers state-of-the-art BOPIS solutions to customize and integrate BOPIS feature in your retail business. We have a dedicated team of experts who can assess your needs and create BOPIS retail solutions that suit your needs. With Arizon Digital’s BOPIS solutions, you can create a great brand experience for your customers, increase footfall in your retail store and achieve growth in a highly competitive business environment.

7 must-have features for B2B eCommerce Platforms

The B2B eCommerce market seems to be growing exponentially. These figures from Forrester seem to say just that. A recent study has quoted that U.S. business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce transactions will touch $1.8 trillion by 2023. It accounts for over 17% of all B2B sales in the country and has prompted many B2B brands to increasingly looking at digital to boost sales.

So, what is driving the growth?

First and foremost, the demographics of the B2B customer. Today more than half of the B2B buyers are millennials. They have grown up alongside technology and are very comfortable making personal purchases on the internet. They expect the same comfort, experience, and options while making purchases at the workplace.

Secondly, like in consumer brands, the buying process in B2B starts with an online search. Studies show that a B2B buyer engages in extensive search, identifies 12 options, compares them before purchasing a specific brand. So there is no way for brands but to invest in the digital space and get more visible.

Thirdly, the availability of multiple channels. Today, B2B buyers have access to different platforms selling the products they require. Company websites, marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, etc are a few of them. It just shows that B2B sellers need to be present on multiple channels and adopt an omnichannel sales approach to remain relevant and grow.

How is a B2B eCommerce Platform different from a B2C?

B2B Selling is a more complex process than B2C. For example, the purchase decision does not rest with one individual. In most cases, it is a collective process where there is more than one person involved in the decision-making process. Also, in B2B selling, the purchase process is not an impulsive one. The buyer needs to get multiple quotes, compare the product features and pricing and then choose the best one that fits the requirement. Very often, some negotiations happen before a purchase is made. Also, products are often bought in bulk, and repeat purchases are common.

A B2B eCommerce Platform should offer all these features to enable a B2B business to sell effectively in the online space.

Seven must-have features for B2B eCommerce Platforms

Request for Quote

The Request for Quote feature enables an authorized buyer from a company to start a price negotiation process by requesting a quote from their shopping cart. The buyer can add all the products he is interested in in the shopping cart and instead of proceeding to checkout ask for a quote. This feature makes the buying process easy. With this feature, you can avoid getting on a call with the company’s sales representative to request a quote for the selected items. Now the company is free to respond with a customized quote depending on the size of the order, how long the customer has been with them etc making the buying process easier and more efficient.

Access Restriction Options

This feature allows you to display different information to different customers. In a B2B business, you are competing with other players in the market for orders. In such instances, you do not want your competitor to find the price you are quoting to the customer. Or there are instances where you extend a discount or offer bulk pricing based on order quantity. The information is confidential, and you would not want to expose this special pricing to your B2C customers. Access Restriction comes in handy here. There are options to build different pathways for your B2B and B2C customer, or you may build a functionality that requires customers to register before they can access the various product and pricing details.

Customer Specific Catalog and Pricing

A ‘One Price for all’ strategy does not work in B2B business. B2B companies work out special pricing based on customer type – How long have they been associated with you, what they are buying, how frequently they are buying etc. Very often, B2B businesses have customer-specific product catalogs. B2B platforms should be able to execute this online where the B2B companies can set different base prices for various in their catalog and assign these to specific customer groups.

Volume purchase and bulk discounts

In the B2B segment, sales often happen in bulk. One feature that is a must in B2B platforms is the ability to list certain products in bulk and not as individual items. Very often, B2B companies sell products in multiple quantities and often come in packs or boxes and carons.

It makes it easy for the buyer to add them to the cart and proceeding to checkout. Also, there should be an option to apply different discounts based on the quantity ordered.

Quick order option

Once B2B customers identify a seller and start buying from them, they have clarity on what they want to purchase, the specifications, how much to buy, and the price offered during the last purchase. The Quick Order Option provides the customer with a form where they enter the item or SKU code, quantities required, the previous price offered, etc without having to spend time browsing the site again and searching for the product every time. It is a time saver and makes the whole buying process super-efficient.

Content delivery

In B2B business, content plays a critical role in the purchase journey of a customer. Customers bank on content to arrive at decisions – right from product features, technical specs, comparisons, etc. The eCommerce platform should be flexible enough to quickly make content corrections, update new content, roll out special offers, etc with little effort. It should be able to support images, videos, technical documents, etc. It should also provide businesses with low-code and no-code page development options so that non-technical

users can add content to the site easily. They should be able to drag and drop text, images and change page layouts as required.

Self-service account management tools

Transparency is key to success in the B2B business. Customers want visibility regarding products, their availability, the order status, delivery details, etc. Self-service account management tools are a must to address this need of a customer. An option to create an account, log in and have access to a dashboard that displays all details regarding their orders, including historical transactions, will ensure transparency and the visibility customers demand.

So, if you are looking to develop a B2B eCommerce site, connect with Arizon Digital.

About Arizon Digital

Arizon Digital is a technology leader in retail and eCommerce solutions. We offer innovative services and solutions for B2B and B2C eCommerce businesses. We enable them to run their store better and achieve success and growth. Our solutions power the sites with the latest designs and functionalities that will enhance the customer experience. Arizon Digital operates out of Sugar Land, Texas. To know more about Arizon Digital, visit: https://arizon.digital/

The rise of Social Commerce and how major social platforms are gearing up to integrate eCommerce functionalities

Every technology matures at some point of time, and it is essential to innovate and evolve the technology as it inches towards a point of diminishing returns; eCommerce is no different. eCommerce has seen a steady rise through the years in the past decade. The global pandemic has further reinforced the position of eCommerce as the most popular sales channel. But it is slowly moving towards a point where it needs to innovate to reach out to the customers in radically different ways.

Challenges with conventional eCommerce

Necessities and opportunities determine the trajectory of evolution of any technology. eCommerce has had a few challenges.

It does not necessarily provide the space for customers to interact with the brands; so, it is hard to build brand loyalty as customers are spoilt for choice. Finding new customers, bringing them to an eCommerce site, learning their preferences and serving them with the right products to achieve conversion is a challenge. Marketing efforts go into achieving that. In other words, brands need to find customers with great effort. There is no readily available pool of customers that businesses can tap into. There is limited scope for personalization and providing an immersive experience.

Social Media offers what eCommerce is missing

On the other hand, social media has become a part of the daily life. It is the place where people hang out and consume digital content, interact with brands and express their preferences. While people do not necessarily look to buy things through social media, the foundation for achieving sales is already there is social media. As traditional retail stores suffered due to lockdowns, there was an opportunity to reach out and serve those customers. Social Commerce helped businesses fill the gap left by the brick-and-mortar stores.

What is Social Commerce?

Social Commerce is the amalgamation of social media and eCommerce. It integrates the strengths of social media – namely a readily available pool of potential customers, space for interaction with brands, immersive experience and massive scope for personalization, with the strengths of traditional eCommerce – namely online reach, digital payments, ability to find products and purchase from an online shop.

Through social commerce, marketers can: Take brands to the customers through online content that can be interactive and immersive Stream product launches and product-related content Promote the brand and products through targeted ad campaigns and through influencers Push relevant offers to customers Enrich the customer experience through various challenges and other ways to engage with the customers.

The rise of Social Commerce

Social Commerce has grown exponentially after the pandemic. The rise of social commerce started first in China, with the introduction of an array of features in social media ecosystems specific to China, such as WeChat.

The WeChat ecology, for instance, includes subscription messages, campaigns, direct customer service interaction and content marketing, WeChat Moments and community advertising via WeChat Ads. The platform offers comprehensive social commerce features through WeChat Stores, WeChat Mini-Programs and WeChat Good Product Circle, and is now incorporating live streaming features as well. This paves way for a more targeted approach towards marketing brands trough social commerce. It was further capitalized by other platforms such as XiaoHongShu and Pinduoduo.

These changed the way how people in China buy things online. With Social Commerce, they could find products and brands, buy them, pay for them, get customer service and interact with brands, all within these social media/messaging ecosystems.

These trends were embraced by the businesses and customers in the US. Social Media giants are quickly adapting to the changing ecommerce landscape and are integrating powerful Social Commerce features to meet the expectations of the customers.

Some statistics

• The global market size of social commerce was $474.8 billion
• Generation Z discovers 52% of brands only through social media
• 62% of responders tell friends on social about local deals
• Women between the age of 25-54, who are the core audience of Pinterest, make 80% of purchase decisions within U.S. households
• 92% of marketers in the US are using Facebook ads to promote their brand and special offers
• 31% of online shoppers say they are using Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest for searching and buying products.
• 35% of users follow brands on social media to decide when they should shop next.

Initiatives by social media platforms to cater to social commerce

With the rapid rise in social commerce in China, the social media giants have woken up to the opportunities it presents, and are introducing a plethora of social commerce features in their platforms. Following are some of the social commerce platforms and how they are gearing up for social commerce.

Twitter

Twitter has a strong potential for integrating social commerce features. It is one of the most popular platforms where people get to interact with the brands directly. Twitter has partnered with a handful of businesses to test the feature. It has introduced a ‘shop module’ that enables businesses, brands and retailers with business accounts to create detailed profiles, add product listings in their own profile and allow customers to directly shop from it.

Twitter is testing its social commerce features for customers in the US, limited only to iOS users in English. They will see a carousel of product listings on the brand profile. They can purchase it directly within twitter, without leaving the platform. Customers will be able to enjoy a good user experience with their ability to purchase and interact with the brand in the same platform, providing them with a more seamlessly integrated social commerce experience. The platform further incorporates typical ecommerce features such as option to revisit purchased items and act upon them.

Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp

Facebook is in a unique position to provide a great social commerce experience. The company owns two of the most popular social media and one of the most popular messaging platforms. Instagram and Facebook have had Social Commerce features incorporated in them since 2016. So, they are more mature and better positioned to capitalize on the rising demand for social commerce. Facebook further reinforced these features with a recently added ‘Facebook Shops’ feature that has enabled full-fledged online shopping experience in the social media.

Facebook and Instagram offer businesses the ability to put up online shops and display personalized ads based on people’s preferences and demographic profiles, and get influencers to bring new customers to the store. They integrate content delivery relevant to the products and services and provide an immersive experience to the users based on their personal likes and preferences. They enable customers to interact with the brands and the content in many ways.

The company is now leveraging the power of personal messaging through WhatsApp to integrate further social commerce features in their ecosystem. Now, retailers and brands can create business account, deliver catalogues and handle interactions with customers on WhatsApp. So, these three platforms come together to provide users a comprehensive social commerce experience.

Tiktok

Tiktok is an app that has enjoyed huge amounts of success of late. The platform collaborates with Shopify to integrate storefronts designed on Shopify and to link the in-feed shoppable video ads to targeted user groups. The platform enables tracking and ability to optimize the campaigns.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a visually rich platform that displays users relevant content depending upon user preferences. It allows users to discover content, and this makes it ideal for the platform to influence purchase decisions and discuss with fellow members to get feedback. It helps users discover brands. The social commerce features in this platform are still in their infancy.

Twitch

Twitch is the most popular live streaming platform. By its very nature, Twitch creates space for influencers to produce and post content and provides scope for live interaction with customers. Twitch provides an integrated checkout feature that allows gamers to send alerts and sell products while live streaming games. Sponsored live streams help promote and build brands. Experimental efforts have led users to participate in customized interactive exercises related to the brands and helped the brands establish a close connection with the customers.

7 rules to follow for an effective eCommerce UX design

eCommerce has seen an unprecedented growth in the last five years. Worldwide retail eCommerce sales rose from 1.3 trillion USD in 2014 to 4.8 trillion USD in 2021. The pandemic further made eCommerce indispensable for the customers and businesses alike, as lockdowns brought retail businesses to a standstill, making people who usually bought everything from retail stores to find alternatives. While this created an opportunity for the businesses, it also posed many challenges.

As businesses ramped up their eCommerce strategy, online retail has become a crowded space. The brands have to fight for visibility. They need to stand out from the competition more than ever and become endearing to the customers by adding value and providing a good user experience. The eCommerce UX design has become one of the most crucial determining factors in the success of an eCommerce strategy. According to UX planet 2020, for every $1 spent in UX, the company can expect a return of investment up to $100.

What is UX design for eCommerce?

eCommerce UX design is the process of carefully creating an overall user experience for the customers by addressing a multitude of factors to make shopping on the eCommerce site easy, intuitive and straightforward. Ideally, a good eCommerce UX design creates trust and appeal for the brand and an increased user engagement and convenience, so that customers will regularly come back to purchase from the site. The best eCommerce UX design is a combination of various factors such as:

• Striking, simple and consistent design
• Good structure and flow
• Quick and easy navigation
• Easy to use interface
• Fast loading times
• Optimization for multiple devices and platforms
• Ability to search products and find them easily
• Clear and correct product description with good product images
• Easy check out process
• Hassle-free transactions
• Good customer support
• Robust security features
• A transparent returns and refund policy
• Personalization

Seven eCommerce UX design best practices

Following are some of the UX design trends and best practices in US that have helped retail businesses find success and growth in the crowded eCommerce space.

1. Optimize the mobile UX design for eCommerce

According to eMarketer, the mobile share of eCommerce worldwide was 72.9%, and the total sales added up to USD 3.65 trillion in 2021. The mobile share of the eCommerce sales has been disproportionately high, and the disparity is expected to increase in the years to come, as more people start using smartphones and get easy access to internet. So, it makes sense to optimize the eCommerce UX and UI design for mobile devices. But there are many challenges in it, and all of them should be addressed in order to provide a good user experience on mobile.

• The display size, aspect ratio and the distance from which the users view content all vary on a smartphone compared to the desktop devices. So, merely fitting all the content in a smaller screen will not make a good eCommerce UX design.
• The layout needs to be simplified and should be scalable so that everything looks clean, sharp and remains well laid out on all devices.
• The information on the webpages need to be reduced, as more information leads to too much scrolling, which affects user engagement.
• The placement of clickable objects in a mobile screen is important, and everything needs to be in the right place and reachable with a single finger.
• Since the screen is small, it is crucial to scale the fonts accordingly and provide proper spacing so that the contents look legible and readable.
• The store needs to be designed in such a way that it automatically detects the nature of the device it loads on and automatically directs you to the mobile or the desktop site.
• Mobile phones are limited by their processing power and memory. 47% of users expect websites to load in 2 seconds or less. So, the site should be mobile-optimized with lighter and less demanding code so that the page loads fast on mobile devices, giving a good user experience to the customers.

2. Take measures to make your site trustworthy

Unlike a conventional retail store, there is no direct interaction with the customers in an eCommerce store, and the scope for building a unique brand experience is less. As a result, there is always a certain amount of distrust amongst the customers initially, especially when they buy from an eCommerce store for the first time. It is imperative to take measures to improve the eCommerce UX design and gradually build trust to get the customers’ approval.

• First of all, the eCommerce site should be secure, protected from malware and immune to hacking and cyberattacks so that the user information remains safe. The first and foremost step towards ensuring security of the site is getting an SSL certificate and following the HTTPS protocol. Any security risk will be identified by the browser and the customers will be warned.
• Users are skeptic about sharing payment information when they do not trust the site. To build trust, it is essential to integrate the most secure and reputed payment gateways and digital payment methods that users trust.
• Customers see Cash on Delivery as a safe payment option, and offering that in your eCommerce store can help build trust.
• Being transparent about the data you collect, how you plan to use them, and the measures you take to ensure privacy and to safeguard customer data give customers the confidence to shop on your eCommerce store. So, it is important to declare them in the privacy policy.
• Having a straightforward returns and refunds policy and a simple procedure to implement it go a long way in providing a good eCommerce UX design.

3. Make navigation quick and simple

When the products the customers want are poorly described, hard to identify and buried under a lot of menus and subcategories, it becomes impossible to find them. Providing easy access to the things they search for is vital for a good eCommerce UX design. For that you need to:

• Categorize products clearly and put them in shorter menus, clear subcategories and links that they can be easily found by the customers.
• It is indispensable to have a good product search tool with extensive filters that enable customers to filter down things they don’t need and find the products they are looking for.

4. Make a good first impression with the home page

According to a study by Ledgeview Partners, 66% of users prefer a beautifully designed website. 48% of visitors say that a website’s design is the most crucial factor in deciding the brand’s credibility. This makes the eCommerce UI and UX design for the homepage a determining factor for user appeal. Besides, the eCommerce store offers much less space to customize brand experiences and make an impression, unlike a retail store. So, the home page design has to make up for this deficit with a good first impression.

• It is extremely crucial to have a well laid out home page design with all the right information and elements essential to make the site engaging and trustworthy for the customers.
• It should scale up and fit into any screen without compromising on both the form and the content.
• The home page should convey the brand message and the core values of your business.
• It should have a good flow for easy navigation and a good logical classification of information in the navigation menu.
• It should have links to all connected web pages in the footer for easy navigation.
• It should have images, video clips and other interesting visual content at relevant spots on the page to make the site engaging.
• It can also have some testimonials to establish the credibility of the site.

5. Make product pages informative and interesting

The homepage design can draw customers to the site, but it is not enough to convince them to purchase from your store. In a retail store, customers can go and check out products in person; they can see them stacked in shelves and know more about them by handling them directly or by interacting with the sales assistants. But in a web page, customers are on their own, and the product description should be able to convey all the information they need. So, a good, concisely-written product description is essential to sell the product. The description should be accompanied by high quality product images, 360 degree view of the product and/or VR/AR renderings to let the users interact with the product visuals and experience them. The page should also show product alternatives and related/complementary products based on the customer’s search preferences, previously viewed items and previously purchased items. This helps in cross-selling related products.

6. Give customers a choice when it comes to payment

The sheer number of digital wallets and payment methods available today is astounding. Every customer trusts and prefers a different wallet or a payment method. Conversion rates can go down just because you do not have the customers’ preferred payment options. So, there is a necessity to integrate all the payment options possible to create a good eCommerce UX design. It helps in achieving conversion.

7. Make checkout process short, easy and straightforward

After the customers painstakingly find the products they need, read about them in the description and finally decide to purchase them, if the checkout process is complicated, they most likely won’t buy them. According to a study by Salecycle, 26% of customers abandon the shopping cart on eCommerce sites just because of the long and complicated check out process. If the checkout process involves asking for too much information or if it extends to screen after screen, or if it collects unnecessary user information, the customers will lose their trust and patience. That is not good eCommerce UX design.

To address these problems, you need to ensure that the checkout process is simple, short and intuitive.

• Eliminate any unnecessary steps in the checkout process.
• Make sign up/login forms easy with Gmail, Facebook and other third-party sign-in integration.
• Enable guest check out so that customers can purchase without having to register, create an account and login.
• Declare all costs involved before the checkout process. Adding taxes and additional shipping costs at the last moment result in shopping cart abandonment.
• Keep the customers informed about the expected time of delivery and enable shipment tracking.

About Arizon Digital

Arizon Digital is a company with in-depth knowledge and experience in providing eCommerce solutions across industries. We have deep expertise in building and delivering technology-based business solutions; and have successfully supported the eCommerce business of more than 250 customers. With exceptional client satisfaction, we have a proven track record of exceeding expectations and enabling businesses to achieve their full potential

If you are looking to optimize your site do explore our Site Audit & Discovery Services. We will help you compare your eCommerce business performance against key metrics, provide data on website technical performance, and delivers insights on what changes need to be implemented.

Optimizing for festive season

The most important time for a retail business to achieve their targeted sales is the holiday season. A series of festivals and holidays, starting from Thanksgiving and Black Friday, continuing all the way to Christmas and New Year, sets the mood for purchasing amongst the people. So, it is the time of year retail businesses sell the most.

According to Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast holiday retail sales are likely to increase between 7% and 9% in 2021. Overall, Deloitte’s retail and distribution practice projects that holiday sales will total $1.28 to $1.3 trillion during the November to January timeframe.

While the pandemic made shopping difficult, eCommerce filled the gap left by the traditional retail stores. According to a study by emarketer, the eCommerce sales growth rate during the holiday season, which ranged between 11% and 16.2% from 2014 to 2019, spiked to a whopping 32% in 2020! While the growth rate is not expected to be that high in 2021, the average growth rate that eCommerce retail has enjoyed in the last few years is expected to continue.

So, it is extremely crucial for eCommerce businesses to prepare for the rise in demand in coming days. Unlike a traditional retail store that has limited space for accommodating and serving more people and managing higher demand, an eCommerce store has a much better scope for meeting a sudden surge in the demand without causing bottlenecks and inconvenience to the user. This in turn makes it possible for an eCommerce store to have a better conversion rate and overall sales. However, the opportunity presented by the holiday season can be seized only if there is proper site optimization.

What is site optimization?

The ultimate purpose of an eCommerce site is to achieve sales. When users visit your eCommerce store, anything that creates a bad user experience can deter them from buying from you. eCommerce site optimization is the process of identifying those factors and addressing them. Steps involved in purchasing something from an eCommerce store starts with being found by the customer and extends all the way to payment, invoicing, shipping, tracking the order, returns and refund. Bottlenecks and poor user experience can occur in any of these steps. Site optimization involves identifying and addressing these issues.

Site optimization can be classified into:

• On Site Optimization and
• Off-site Optimization

On Site Optimization

Following are some of the measures you can take to tweak and tune your online store and achieve on site optimization.

1. Make it easy for customers to find your business
In a crucial period like the holiday season, getting noticed and found by the customers can determine how successful you are. Online space provides a lot of choice to the customers, and businesses need to place themselves on the top of the search engine page to drive traffic to get noticed. So, the first step to site optimization is improving SEO. SEO helps you to increase the exposure and makes it easy for customers to find you when they search for a product they need and that you have. Mobile site optimization also determines your search page ranking; the higher your page is ranked and displayed on the search page greater is the chance of driving traffic to your site.

2. Enable customers to find products easily on your site
Once you can draw the customers to the site, they should be able to find the product they are looking for immediately. Improving the product search is one of the core elements of site optimization. Even if you already have a good search tool in your eCommerce site, companies launch a plethora of new products aimed at the holiday season. So, updating the product search to display these new products on top go a long way in making customers’ favorite products findable.

There are site optimization tools that enable you to classify the products clearly into different categories and make them easily findable using a vast array of filters. Search filters help customers narrow down their search and easily find the products they are looking for in a few easy steps. This vastly improves the user experience and hence the conversion rate. You can also identify which products don’t get found on your site search, using site optimization tools that provide detailed insights and adjusting product listings accordingly.

3. Improve speed with site speed optimization

The holiday season drives a lot more traffic than in other days. If the site is overwhelmed by the sudden increase in the number of visitors using the site, it will make shopping experience slow and laggy for the customers. This can force the customers leave the site and look elsewhere to buy what they want. So, it is important to do site speed optimization and prepare for the increased traffic by increasing the available bandwidth, using a more responsive design theme and template and reducing the loading times of the site by simplifying the code. You can also include a caching plugin to load content quicker.

4. Make site mobile friendly with mobile site optimization

The eCommerce traffic from mobile is significantly higher than the traffic from other devices. 72.9% of the site traffic that eCommerce sites generated in 2021 was from mobile devices. So, even if your eCommerce site is fully speed optimized for desktop devices, it will not prove fruitful if it is not optimized for mobile devices. In order to do mobile site optimization, you may need to:

• Improve Render Start Time (RST) to speed up loading time
• Use AMP open-source library to make the site snappy
• Create a native app for mobile platforms
• Simplify the code to make the site responsive
• Use Content Delivery Network

If you are looking to do a site audit for you eCommerce store and undertake performance improvement measures check out https://arizon.digital/consulting

5. Optimize product page
Users are spoilt for choice with the sheer number of products that are usually available on an eCommerce store. It is essential to have a product page optimized in terms of code, layout and content. The product page should be well laid out with a clear description, features and specifications for customers to see whether the product has everything they look for. The pages should contain clear, high quality images that accurately depict the product. The product image can be accompanied by ALT text and tags for search engines to easily find the page. You can also integrate product comparison feature for the customers to compare the product with competing products and decide better.

6. Enable quick and easy checkout
A lengthy and complicated checkout process provides users with a poor shopping experience. It is one of the main reasons for increase in shopping cart abandonment. To help users with a clean and quick checkout process, you may need to –

• Provide good visibility of the cart button
• Reduce the number of steps in checkout
• Remove additional steps before starting checkout, such as mandatory login
• Integrate guest checkout
• Avoid adding additional costs during checkout
• Integrate multiple payment options
• Provide space to enter discount coupons

7. Personalize offers, discounts and introduce flash sale
Offers and discounts are a part of the Holiday season. You can celebrate the festival season with a theme that instantly conveys to the customers that offers, discounts and sale are on. While you can highlight the discount coupons and the percentage of discount available on specific products, it is equally important to personalize them by displaying offers from the product categories that specific user has previously searched for or browsed on the site. This can help you increase conversion. There are site optimization tools that can help you automate this and display personalized offers for every user. Flash sales are a great tool for keeping customers engaged, as these are time bound, and the customers have to be on the site to make use of them.

8. Follow up with cart abandonment reminders
You can use site optimization tools to automatically identify cart abandonment and remind the users that the items are waiting for checkout, after a specified period of time. This will remind users in case they have forgotten it and push them to revisit the cart. You can also offer a discount for the items in cart and motivate the customers to buy items in the cart at a more attractive price.

Off-site Optimization

Following are some of the off-site optimizations that you can carry out to drive more traffic and achieve conversion.

1. Announce the sale on social media and promote it with ads.
2. Identify the new products and the ones in demand, and proactively stock them in enough numbers.
3. Manage inventory better and make sure that users never manage to place orders for products that are out of stock.
4. Improve logistics and make sure that you can ship all the products ordered by the customers.
5. Provide free shipping atleast for select products.
6. Strengthen the back-end server to handle peak load.
7. Create segmented mailing lists for different product categories and conduct a personalized email marketing to push relevant products to the customers.

About Arizon Digital

Arizon Digital is a company with in-depth knowledge and experience in providing eCommerce solutions across industries. We have deep expertise in building and delivering technology-based business solutions; and have successfully supported the eCommerce business of more than 250 customers. With exceptional client satisfaction, we have a proven track record of exceeding expectations and enabling businesses to achieve their full potential.

If you are looking to optimize your site do explore our Site Audit & Discovery Services. We will help you compare your eCommerce business performance against key metrics, provide data on website technical performance, and delivers insights on what changes need to be implemented.

7 Workflow Automation Ideas For eCommerce

All eCommerce businesses, whatever be their size and the vertical in which they operate, are looking to boost their bottom lines. It is a fact that eCommerce businesses operate 24×7. But that does not mean you have staff taking orders and fulfilling them every hour of the day and every day of the week. eCommerce businesses are automating key processes and adopting technology wherever possible to streamline operations and reduce the dependency on people. Workflow Automation is one such step in the right direction.

What is Workflow Automation in eCommerce?

When you run an eCommerce business, you come across many tasks that are repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to error. These tasks are handled better by technology, for example, Inventory management. Keeping track of inventory and updating the stock details as and when sales happen can be tedious, cumbersome, and prone to error. When stock levels don’t tally, there are instances of stock-outs and overselling. It can result in a bad customer experience and lost sales. So in workflow automation, you replace a human activity with a digital alternative. If done correctly, this minimizes errors and frees up your resource, who can then engage in more meaningful work.

Many repetitive processes like email marketing, purchase order management, and customer support can get automated. In this blog, we will explore the benefits of workflow automation and some of the main processes that are getting automated.

Benefits of Workflow Automation

Enhance efficiency

eCommerce business owners often find themselves strapped for time and resources. Any improvements in the workflow that will enhance efficiency are welcome. For example, the fulfillment of orders can be quite time-consuming and repetitive. For order fulfillment, the same order details need to get updated in multiple locations for updating the inventory data, the back-end ERP system, generating shipping label, sending an order confirmation to the customer, etc. It can be a drain on the resources. The best way to increase efficiency here would be to automate the entire order management process.

Reduce Errors

eCommerce businesses handle large amounts of data regarding customers, inventory, transactions, etc. Consider the scenario where you have to enter the same data multiple times in various systems. You can be sure that errors will creep in, resulting in lost sales and a bad customer experience. Workflow automation eliminates manual data entry and reduces errors.

Save time and enhance productivity

Freeing your staff from doing repetitive jobs can help save time and enhance their productivity. They can focus on doing more important things that will help you grow your business.

Cut down on costs

With automation, you can complete tasks much faster and more precisely. For a small business with limited resources, workflow automation can help cut down on staff costs significantly.

Seven examples of workflow automation

So, in an eCommerce business, what are the areas in which we can use workflow automation?

Inventory management

All eCommerce businesses deal in hundreds of products. Keeping track of inventory and managing it plays a crucial role in the success of any eCommerce business. Adopting workflow automation in inventory management can be a lifesaver. There are automation solutions that connect the back-end ERP with the POS and the eCommerce store. It means that when you update the inventory in the back-end, it automatically gets updated in the POS and your eCommerce store. And, when a sale happens online, the information is captured, and the inventory gets adjusted in the POS and back-end. It ensures that inventory data gets updated in real-time and there are no instances of stock-outs and overselling.

Purchase Order automation

Once your inventory management is automated, you can set alerts to get notified whenever an item in stock falls to a predetermined level. You can then use automation to generate purchase orders automatically. You can even set first choice suppliers for each item and have the purchase order mailed to them. It ensures that stocks get replenished well in time. You don’t have to sift through stock sheets, vendor agreements, and emails every time you need have to reorder a product.

Supplier Onboarding

eCommerce businesses deal with multiple vendors for every product on their product catalog. Identifying the vendors, forming a relationship, working out payment and tax details is a long process. To further simplify, businesses are developing supplier portals that automate supplier identification and onboarding. All information regarding a vendor gets captured in the supplier portal along with the transaction details. With such supplier portals, managing vendors become easy, fast, and more accurate.

Order Management

Order Management involves all the steps in between receipt of an order and successful fulfillment. With workflow automation, you can automate many of these steps. Generating shipping labels is one of them. When you create shipping labels manually, errors are likely to creep in. Even a minor mistake can result in lost sales. Automating order management allows you to handle multiple tasks with a single click. You can send order confirmation emails, track the orders, and on successful delivery, the order gets marked as completed in the system.

Marketing

You need to spend time and effort in getting customers back to your site even if they are loyal customers. Regular customer communication is required to make this happen. But how do you keep track of customers, their purchase history, and what relevant communication will you send that will ensure that they come back to your site for more purchase. Here automation comes to your help. Automation helps you keep track of products that customers regularly buy from your site and send out reminders to reorder right when they are running out of it. That’s an effective way to nudge them to buy from you again. Yet another way to reach out to customers is by automating abandoned cart emails. Very often, people add products to their carts but don’t end up buying them. Cart abandonment emails are successful in getting a few of them at least to complete the purchase process.

Handling refunds and replacements

Product returns are part and parcel of the online business. What makes the difference is how you handle them. With automation, you can facilitate easy returns. You can mark products that can get replaced and those for which refunds will be processed. Automate the process for immediate action. How fast you respond to product cancellations will determine if the customers will return to your store for future purchases.

Customer support and service

According to estimates, by 2021, 85% of customer service interactions will get automated. It applies to eCommerce as well. Today you can configure your help desk to do an array of tasks. We are familiar with chatbots who answer customer queries effectively. But, automation can do much more than that. You can prevent canceled orders from getting into the fulfillment stage. You can send out relevant canned emails immediately based on keywords identified from customer emails. For example, delivery not received, wrong product delivered, etc. An immediate response helps pacify irate customers to some extent while the customer support gets about solving the issue.

To know more about how you can improve your eCommerce operations with workflow automation, connect with Arizon Digital.

B2B vs B2C eCommerce – The differences and similarities

We are all familiar with these two words – B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer). They are not new. They have been around for a long time and have been used to segment businesses broadly based on their customers. But we find a renewed interest in these terms lately. The reason for this is the growing online sales. There is a new word that has got added to them -which is eCommerce. And all discussions are happening around the growth witnessed, the differences and similarities in these two business models.

Now, smartphones have become an intrinsic part of our life. Internet access has reached all corners of the world and businesses are witnessing a sudden increase in their online customer base. The B2C businesses were the first to take advantage of this and make the transition into online retail.

We know that the eCommerce sector is one of the most rapidly-growing sectors worldwide, and today even the B2B segment is seeing a massive amount of potential in eCommerce. Building an e-commerce organization has become the top priority for many players in both B2B and B2C. In this blog, we discuss in detail the two business models, their key differences and similarities.

What is B2B eCommerce

When two businesses sell or transact online, it is called B2B eCommerce. For example, transactions between wholesalers and their retailers or manufacturers and wholesalers all fall under this category. With exposure to the internet and online sales, B2B customers have also evolved.

Earlier, a large part of the B2B industry had people from Generation X or even before. Today, more millennials are working in the B2B sector. Studies show that there over 73% of millennials are involved in the B2B buying process. They have grown up alongside technology, and all their buying happens online. And, they have come to expect a consumer-like eCommerce experience in their B2B purchase as well. Hence, all the big eCommerce platforms come built with powerful features that help you meet and exceed your customer expectations.

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Advantages of B2B eCommerce

Increased Reach: Once you have decided to sell online, you are no longer restricted by your geographical location. The whole world can become your market place as long as you market yourself well, and potential clients can find you through the various search engines. This opportunity to sell to anyone anywhere makes it lucrative and worth putting in time and effort.

Enhanced customer engagement: Quick custom quotes, swift re-ordering process, order tracking, and online payments all focus on engaging with the customer and providing a first-class experience.

Mirrors the customer buying process from the tradition channel: B2B eCommerce has evolved to accommodate all of the complex buying processes and transactions unique to B2B selling.

Improved visibility and transparency: You can integrate your eCommerce store with back-end applications like ERP and CRM. It will help improve internal operations, efficiency, and customer relations.

What is B2C eCommerce

B2C stands for “business to consumer” ie. in B2C eCommerce, products are sold to individual customers directly. Globally the B2C eCommerce market is anticipated to touch 6.2 trillion USD by 2027. The increasing disposable incomes, penetration of the internet and smartphones, and the ever-increasing online customer base are driving this growth.

Key differences between B2B and B2 eCommerce

Buying Decision: In B2C eCommerce, the decision-maker is an individual. While in B2B eCommerce, there are multiple people involved in the decision-making process. The book ‘Challenger Customer’ says that on an average there are 6.8 decision-makers involved in the B2B buying process.

Life time value of customers: In B2C, most of the purchases are impulse, they are one-off transactions, and hence the relationship is short-lived. With so many options available, customers are always on the search for the next big deal. In B2B, businesses are keen on building long-term relationships. Repeat purchases are common and businesses strive to provide personalized services to promote long term relationships.

Pricing – Fixes Vs Customized: It is one fixed price for all customers in the B2Cmodel. Also, in B2C, you will find the transaction value is a lot smaller while the transaction volumes are large. Compared to B2C, the volume of transactions in B2B is lower, but the value of each transaction is high. Studies show that the average order for a B2C is $147 whereas, for B2B, it is $491.

The purchase process is also very complex in B2B. Initial quotes are shared, negotiations happen, and prices are customized for each customer based on the quantities ordered, relationship history, location, etc.

Order quantities: In B2B, very often there are Minimum Order Quantities. The option of buying just one number of an item may not be possible on B2B sites. While it is just the opposite in B2C. Here, merchants often set a maximum order quantity barrier for items depending on the popularity of the product and inventories available.

Customer base – In B2C, businesses usually have a large customer base. While in B2B, the target market is mostly niche, and hence they have a smaller pool of customers. The customers are identifiable, and businesses can plan defined marketing activities to target them more effectively.

Similarities

While there are significant differences between these two eCommerce models, they are not entirely different. The line between them is slowly blurring. There are B2B companies who are looking to sell directly to customers to expand their customer base. There are also instances where B2C companies are branching into B2B channels. Many B2C players are putting up their products on wholesale marketplaces that operate almost on the B2B model.

Also, the customers for both B2B and B2C sites are more or less the same. The sites they visit, the way they search the internet, the channels they visit for product information are all similar. In other words, there is a huge overlap in the way the players in both segments should market their sites and where they need to be present to be visible.

Few examples of successful B2B and B2C eCommerce sites

Grainger is one of the largest B2B industrial suppliers, and Quill is a site created by Staples to sell office supplies to B2B customers. HVACPartsShop.com is one of the best sources on the internet for HVAC repair parts and has been featured by BigCommerce as one of the most Innovative Ecommerce Brands of 2020.

Bliss World and Brussels Bonsai have been powered by Arizon Digital.

About Arizon Digital

Arizon Digital is a technology leader in retail and eCommerce solutions. We offer innovative services and solutions for B2B and B2C eCommerce businesses. We enable them to run their store better and achieve success and growth. Our solutions power the sites with the latest designs and functionalities that will enhance the customer experience. Arizon Digital operates out of Sugar Land, Texas. To know more about Arizon Digital, visit: https://arizon.digital/

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