Category: Small Business Improvement
February 13th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Becoming an e-commerce entrepreneur is an increasingly attainable dream for many aspiring business owners, as new online sales platforms and Web design tools continue to emerge. While just about anyone can launch an online business, it takes a dedicated salesperson to actually succeed, and that means staying on top of current marketplace trends.
If you’re ready to take your e-commerce business to the next level in 2014, watch these five current trends in online sales:
Access through smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Major gains seen in e-commerce usage of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, especially during the holiday season. Trend to accelerate as mobile adoption continues to increase and more mobile technologies become available. Small businesses should have a mobile version of their website, with mobile-optimized checkout to help facilitate a better mobile experience. Small retailers should also look at their site across multiple mobile devices and pay attention to new technologies, such as smartwatches.
Goodbye, traditional SEO. Google is constantly updating its algorithm in an effort to serve the best, most relevant content to its users. This means that traditional (SEO) search engine optimization tactics are falling by the wayside, and an increased push toward quality, unique content — along with social media signals — will be of huge importance in 2014. To help stay ahead of the SEO curve, small retailers should focus less on Traditional SEO Tenets like keyword usage and density, and instead aim efforts toward creating content that is tailored and useful for their target audience. Example, create more lifestyle-oriented content in the form of blog posts, videos and other types of media that encourage sharing by readers.
Increased dependence on data. Smaller online businesses continue to expand their presence across channels, the need to turn to performance data from both a channel-specific and holistic standpoint becomes even more important. Google Analytics is a good tool for this, because business owners can measure their site traffic from multiple devices and referral sites.
Small shops squeezed by larger merchants. Mega-retailers like Amazon continue to steal market share from other big-box retailers (both online and offline), smaller online businesses will need to become more nimble in how they compete, from a price, customer-service and marketing standpoint. This involves identifying true points of difference from larger merchants, showcasing these points in marketing and branding, and delivering personalized experiences.
The importance of multichannel selling. Customer shopping behaviors become more fragmented, so must the presence of small online businesses owners. Simply having an e-commerce site is no longer enough. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) should begin looking for efficient ways to expand their presence, including integrations with various shopping feeds and other outlets that can reach more consumers.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit card Processing, e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Internet Payment Gateway, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Point of Sale, Small Business Improvement, Smartphone Tagged with: content, e-commerce, integrations, mobile adoption, Mobile Devices, mobile version, mobile-optimized checkout, multiple devices, online business, online sales, search engine optimization, shopping feeds, Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), small online business owners, small retailers, Smartphones, smartwatches, social media signals, tablets
February 10th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Impact on 2013 Holiday Sales’s Big Data
Holiday season has ended and the analysis has begun to understand what worked and what did not for ecommerce merchants. Cyber Monday became the biggest online shopping day in history with a 20.6 percent increase in sales over 2012, according to the IBM 2013 Holiday Benchmark Report. Retailers are increasingly tapping into the avalanche of data from their own sites and from third-party sites to drive sales and better serve their customers. This article will address five key ways Big Data impacted the 2013 holiday shopping season.
Contextual Promotions
The use of Big Data has enabled contextual promotions – mostly real-time push notifications based on consumers’ social media activity, tracking their locations, or capturing their interactions on the web and mobile devices. This holiday season contextual promotions were heavily used. IBM’s Cyber Monday Report states, “On average, retailers sent 77 percent more push notifications during the five day holiday shopping period when compared to daily averages over the past two months.” Retailers invested in social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram (among others) during the November and December holiday season. This led to higher referral sales from these sources.
Several physical retailers, including Best Buy and Kohl’s, also deployed location-based promotions to push notifications while the consumer is in or near the store. Some retailers tracked consumers’ locations without their knowledge, raising privacy concerns. Other retailers required an opt in by consumers to receive these promotions.
Additionally, some retailers used mobile apps to send contextual promotions based on tracking shoppers’ activities on the app and their physical locations with using it. Macy’s and J.C. Penney, for example, partnered with Shopkick (a shopping app provider) during this holiday season to reward brick-and-mortar shoppers with discounts or song downloads for trying on clothes, scanning barcodes, or making purchases.
Gift Selection
Holidays are all about gift giving. Some retailers used their Big Data recommendation algorithms to make it simpler to select gifts. These retailers built predictive models that process data from multiple sources like social media, wish lists, gift registries, and past purchases to predict the right gift for an individual.
Improved Customer Service
The holiday season results in more traffic for ecommerce merchants, which naturally leads to an increase in the volume of customer service issues. To keep customers happy during this time and manage customer service costs, some retailers implemented Big Data solutions to monitor customer activity and proactively respond to negative social media posts or issues. After all, one negative tweet can significantly impact business during this time of the year.
Real-time data feeds inform retailers in advance if customers will experience issues like a slow site, out of stock products, or delayed delivery. Retailers can either proactively correct the issue or notify the customers afterwards. Fab.com, for example, automatically credits a customer the difference if a price of an item drops immediately after purchase. T-Mobile USA has integrated Big Data across multiple IT systems to combine customer transaction and interactions data to better predict customer defections. By monitoring social media interactions with transaction data and billing systems, T-Mobile USA has reportedly reduced customer defections in half in a single quarter. Dell uses Big Data solutions to analyze real-time feeds from weather reports, delivery trucks, and orders to proactively resolve delivery problems before customers are aware of them.
Integrated Analytics
Most large retailers serve customers across multiple channels and devices. This makes it critical for those retailers to have a single view of all customer and product activity using data from all sources. Some retailers are already using such solutions and several more deployed such solutions before the holiday season. This one capability is crucial to track other Big Data uses, such as contextual promotions, gift selection, personalized customer experience, and improved customer service.
Personalized Customer Experience
Retailers have used Big Data to personalize their site content for several years. This was a competitive differentiator during this holiday season, however, as indicated by pre-holiday survey by Baynote, a personalized customer experience solution provider. The survey noted that eighty-one percent of retailers planned to upgrade ecommerce platforms to focus on customer experience, and to increase engagement, revenue, and ultimately lifetime value from improved relationships with shoppers. Retailers can categorize each shopper into a segment of one with its own customized landing pages, product catalog, campaigns, and even content. The result is an enhanced customer experience and an improved conversion rate.
Amazon.com continued to maintain its dominance in this space by using its extremely rich data set to personalize the shopping experience for its millions of shoppers. Another benefit from personalizing the customer experience is increased impulse buys, which become more important during the holidays as shoppers are in the right frame of mind to spend money.
Posted in e-commerce & m-commerce, Electronic Payments, Internet Payment Gateway, Merchant Account Services News Articles, Small Business Improvement Tagged with: analysis, analyze real-time feeds, barcode, benchmark, big data, brick and mortar, credits a customer the difference, customer service issues, customer transaction and interactions data, ecommerce merchants, large retailers, location based promotions, making purchases, online shopping, physical retailers, real-time data feeds, retailers, rich data set, shopping season, social media activity, transaction data and billing systems
January 30th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Some employers might think that setting limitations on things like mobile devices and Internet access is the answer to get more done during workday, but many companies have found that giving their workers more freedom and flexibility through certain policies is the key to increased efficiency.
Progressive companies are evolving their benefits programs and finding ways to drive employee productivity without breaking the bank, said Chris Duchesne, vice president of global workplace solutions at Care.com, a care provider matching service. They are providing tools to help reduce the amount of time employees spend on personal issues, giving them time back in their day that they often designated back to working.
Duchesne suggested a few policies that can be implemented to boost productivity, morale and culture among employees: Ways to improve Work-Life Balance Today
Demonstrate Leadership. There’s a trickle-down approach to how supervisors mentor. It starts with human resources departments and top executives recognizing and rewarding employees for their advances and their contributions. Public shout-outs, spot awards and profiles in regular company communications demonstrate company values and reinforce them across the workforce. The most productive companies have a policy and culture in place where the appreciation for each employee is apparent.
Some companies are hesitant to implement changes because they are concerned about costs, but these policies are often not as expensive as employers may think. Even if they do cost money, they don’t have to happen all at once.
Change happens gradually, and employers should feel comfortable implementing new work-life policies in stages. They should figure out what the actual costs will be and even have pilot programs before rolling them out company-wide. There is also a misperception that employers will have to bring on additional staff to support these new programs. You likely have existing employees who can fit these new programs into their current job responsibly. Most people are passionate about work-life issues and will be happy to help you implement new policies to make their lives easier.
In the long run, these types of benefits programs and policies can actually have a positive impact on company’s bottom line as well.
Employers lose billions of dollars each year in total productivity loss when employees take unexpected leave due to personal issues. Work-life and culture programs will be a critical differentiator in the new workplace and have the ability to drive innovation, creativity, loyalty and increased productivity.
Encourage breaks. Creating mandatory fun sounds like a contradiction, but celebrating birthdays, allowing budget for team lunches, holding quarterly group activities or even having a beer or snack cart for random holidays can boost team spirit and culture. A break for forced fun can reduce mental fatigue, increase collaboration and morale, and offer employees the opportunity to clear their heads.
Provide flexible work options. With respect to both work schedule and work location, as long as work gets done, it shouldn’t matter where or when it was accomplished. Recent Gallup research found that employees who work remotely even part of the time are both more engaged and more productive. If it’s possible for your employees to complete their tasks outside the office, give them the option to do so.
Reduce stress through family-care programs. Help employees manage their personal and professional lives with programs and services that help them address the most pressing and stressful needs in their lives, their families. And it’s not just about child care, either. Think about how you can help them take care of their aging parents, their pets and their households, too.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Small Business Improvement, Smartphone Tagged with: boost productivity, communications, employee productivity, freedom and flexibility, human resources, implement, internet access, leadership, Mobile Devices
