Ecommerce-Steps to follow for a successful online venture

Over the recent years, internet has gained significant momentum and enabled lot of businesses of various scale on both B2B and B2C ecommerce fronts to compete aggressively in this tough business environment. Some are just trying to catch the glimpse of the future, while others ponder if this model is really a retail scenario of tomorrow. Ecommerce technologies have helped several brands and manufacturers to get into the business retailing online. Commercial transaction carried out electronically is called Ecommerce. In simple terms, “buying and selling online”.

India is amongst the quickest developing ecommerce market in the world. In spite of the fact that thousand of ecommerce startups are launched each year, very few survive in the first crucial year. Why is it so? Here are some key focuses each ecommerce business person must remember when beginning the venture:

1.       Planning for Ecommerce startup.

Planning an effective business strategy is making the correct decisions that will help achieve the expressed business goals. There should be a clear vision, mission and target about what goal will be accomplished, in how much time, within what budget, identifying the correct resources and limitations of the strategies mentioned in business plan, and what components will be considered for roadmap.

The deep understanding and knowledge of digital marketing techniques and tools that helps in acquiring and reaching customers is very much required. Remember your business must reach to the customers who are online across multiple platforms..

2.       Technology selecting, Website Audit and Analysis.

Keeping in mind the end goal to give the greatest advantage to the end client, your picked ecommerce technology should be completely equipped for being adjustable and customizable, and have the capacity to supplement the plan of action. If you are a retailer and taking a first step into ecommerce pond, various functionalities on ecommerce website should be carefully planned based on industry, target audience, and customers who may buying the products and services. It is equally important to analyze and monitor the Ecommerce process regularly.

3.       Customer Acquisition.

Popular or online digital marketing encompasses multiple tools for connecting era of customers who are effectively engaged in utilising multiple devices through search engine optimization, search engine marketing (paid advertisement), social media marketing, setting up email campaigns and displaying advertisements using multiple ad networks.

The cost of customer acquisition is very high for the brands and retailers that are newly establishing their products online. 

4.       Customer Engagement

Connecting with clients through different online networking channels likewise ingrains higher trust in the minds of customers. Customers nowadays are effectively trying to engage with brands to understand their core advantages and a unique value that brand offers also discounts and special offers on various seasonal occasions, their support for queries regarding product and customer care services for returns and exchange of product, etc.

5.       Optimizing key metrics.

A portion of the key points to measure the ecommerce venture are the aggregate income created, cost of customer procurement, % of customer changed over and % of customers entering the site through different channels. However, these metrics may vary essentially in view of the business objective thus every business needs a completely modified approach for characterizing the key metrics and further analysis.

6.       Customer insights and business analysis.

The last stage in the whole procedure is about fine tuning and understanding the categories of products that have performed very well compared with different items showed in the web store.  Surveying this is essential since each of these categories and items inside those categories occupy the stand in the online world – the web store.

Ecommerce strategy, if arranged and executed well, can be a vital methods for reinforcing revenues, increasing brand awareness, giving best in class support and shopping experience to the new generation of customers. 

Business Automation: Need for IT solutions to manage our business

Business Automation: Need for IT solutions to manage our business

Business Automation is the technology-enabled automation of various complex and redundant activities of any business in order to simplify and streamline it. Business processes which include daily company activities, human resource, sales, management, supply chain, order processing, etc are the most crucial aspects of any organisation. These processes forms the basis of daily activities being carried out in an organisation. In order to streamline & simplify it, we need the help of various IT solutions which will help in managing these processes in a more optimized and effective manner.

There are many reasons & benefits why each business needs IT solutions to automatize its processes:

·         By automating your business using IT solutions you gain more control over your processes saving time of both the employees & management. It increases efficiency as everything is real time and it helps managers to change strategies if any mishap happens like delay in project or a cancelled consignment.

·         Your communications are streamlined. Using emails or sticky notes have become older. An automated workflow helps both the manager and team to streamline things. It offers visual dashboards to see what's going in real time and what the progress status on an activity. All communication is recorded and can be tracked for increased efficiency of a process.

·         Everyone in the company is more accountable. When you automate your business process using IT solutions you create ownership at every level of the process. Each stage is processed by approval of the level owner, thus enabling transparency in the process. It also enable you to monitor your entire process and makes you analyze which tasks eats up more time so you can fix them for better performance.

·         IT solutions help you to automatize your business helping you save cost and also avoid manual errors.

·         Helps you better serve your clients/customers by increasing efficiency. Less error in the process means more customer satisfaction. IT solutions like having an ecommerce website for your products increases your brand reach. IT solutions like having a company blog helps your customers get the latest news and happenings about your company.

IT solutions are the need of the day, it is become more of a necessity if you want your business to thrive and stay alive in this competitive world. Automatizing the business can help save you lots of time and efforts increasing throughput which will help your business grow rapidly.

Why should small business have a website?

We live in a fast moving world where every business is getting digitalized and coming over the internet. No business whether big or small would like to be left behind in this rapid growth age of digitization. If you have a business and you want to grow your brand you will need to have a website. Many people have a misconception that small business does not need a website due to their less tech-savvy nature or maybe their potential customers do not use the internet. Some even think their business type is not meant to be on the internet or maybe they do not have enough budgets to get a website developed or maybe they believe their business cannot benefit from having a website. But all these age old misconception have been washed off if you seen the latest trends in website market. Today's many small businesses are getting their websites developed due to various reasons and are benefiting from it irrespective of the niche they belong to.

Website development now-a- days are faster and more convenient. You do not need huge amount of money to get a website developed. Also with various tools available online, the task of designing and building a website has become easier. With much small scale businesses opening up an ecommerce site are breaking the barrier of business hours restrictions and are doing business round the clock. 

We bring you 10 reasons why small business should have a website.

1. Brand Identity

Every business today is either into a product based industry or a service based industry. Each business wants to create their brand awareness and wants to reach out to maximum number of people in less amount of time. By having a website, you can let your customers easily find you over the internet and enable them to get knowledge about your product or services with much ease. Having no website means losing business.

2. Another Marketing Channel

You may use various marketing techniques to gain leads and generate business through door to door marketing, reference, newspaper ads, pamphlets etc. Having a website acts as an additional marketing channel. Also it helps you collect customer data like email, phone no, etc by using your website's contact us forms where interested people can enter their details to enquire about your service.

3. Saves You Lot of Money

Having a website is ideally a very cost effective way to promote your services. As having a newspaper ad daily can cost you more money in long run than having your website developed up and running.

4. Your Digital Catalog

Every business has a catalogue of their product or services in order to showcase their work to clients. A website acts as a digital catalogue which includes portfolio or image gallery which can be viewed by your customers from any part of the world with an internet connection.

5. Acts as Your Advocate

Your website acts as your advocate who speaks on behalf of you whether you are physically present in front of your client or not. Since a website is always up and running 24X7 and 365 days a year, you can let your customers see it by giving them your website URL.

6. Enables You to Target a Wider Audience

Irrespective to your business location, a website gives you the power to do business at any other location. If you are a retailer and build your own ecommerce website, you can sell your products to a much wider market geographically at any location around the world.

7. Helps Your Customers Stay Updated

Since your entire website data is dynamic in nature you can keep changing it anytime depending upon your business need. So if you change your phone number or your address, you always let your customers access the most updated information about yourself. You can inform your customers about the arrival of a new product or service, any upcoming event or promotions easily and effortlessly by simply updating it on the website.

8. Acts as A Social Proof

New customers always do a proof check online before buying any product. The product reviews on your website and service testimonials by your customers creates a social influence over the buying decisions of other potential buyers.

9. Your Business Shows Up In Google Search Results

If you are a small business and you have a website, you increase your chances of getting featured in the Google search result about a customer search query which is matching your business products or services. With no website, your chances are zero. If along with building a website you do the Search Engine Optimization for your website, you increase your visibility to your potential clients searching on Google.

10. Ecommerce Market Is Booming

Gone are the days of window shopping, now -a-days people prefer to buy online as it gives them more variety in less amount of time and from their comfort zone. This has given rise to the ecommerce spending creating new business opportunities for small scale business to go online.