Trending Now

Virginia and Baltimore Companies Unite to Solve Shipping…

New Articles

7 Little Things to Improve an eCommerce Business

e-Commerce: Last mile delivery india profit 8fig amazon logistics
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Warehousing

7 Little Things to Improve an eCommerce Business

Leave a comment

An eCommerce business is more dependent upon the goodwill of its clientele than brick-and-mortar stores. It is very simple really. In an average real-world store, once a customer walks in they are more likely to purchase something. After all, they have made the effort of reaching the store and checking the products. Few people walk out of a physical store empty-handed. However, the same does not apply to an eCommerce outlet since they can simply close the link and go to another site.

Here is what you can do to make sure that this doesn’t happen frequently.

1. Downtime is off time

One of the best things about an eCommerce site is that it’s always available,  24/7. Now that more and more people are logging on to the net to buy products, you can take advantage of it by selling your wares even when you are fast asleep. However, that won’t happen if unfortunately, your site crashes repeatedly. If the site is offline, it is likely that your target audience won’t wait and simply move on to another site.

2. Slow sites don’t get many customers

The average attention span of an online buyer is around 3-4 seconds. If the site doesn’t open fast enough, it is likely your customers will simply move on in search of other options. And why not? After all, there are millions of other online eCommerce outlets out there. If you want your customer to stay with you, make sure your site is as fast as possible.

3. Make sure the CTA is always accessible

Why should your customers come to you instead of your competitors? It is because of your CTA. This is basically the ‘call to action’ that attracts people into the web marketing tunnel. If this call to action is not available or accessible, you will lose out on a lot of customers. Your shopping cart should also be easy to see so that the customer knows how to buy the product.

4. Get rid of slow-selling products

In every store, there are products that sell fast and those that don’t. Concentrate on the former and eliminate the latter entirely from your store. They will stop your cash flows and over the course of time, bring down your business. Of course, you don’t have to throw them away. You can offer them at a real sale (as opposed to one where retailers inflate prices and then cut them down to give an impression that they are on sale). Once the customers see that you are offering a brief opportunity to add real value to their lives, they will buy your slow-moving products and help you clean your shelves. This way, you will also be able to get your cash flows moving.

5. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

The number of people shopping with their smartphones has increased dramatically in recent months, and there is no sign that the trend will be slowing down anytime soon. In fact, 79% of smartphone users have made an online purchase using this mode within the last six months! This means a site that is not mobile-friendly will lose all of that vast potential market. It is absolutely imperative that your site should be mobile-friendly so it can be easy to see even on a small screen. Apart from that, you should also work on your SEO (search engine optimization) techniques so your site will show up on organic searches on the search engines.

6. Add a live chat option

Live chats will help to gently nudge your customers towards the purchase decision by answering all of their questions. It is a great way to boost your conversion rates and keep your target market happy. Even if they don’t buy the product, the speed and excellence of your response will make them come again. At the very least, they will bookmark your site.

7. Consider using residential proxies

Using residential proxies for market research will give you great insight into the buying habits of your target audience. At the same time, they will allow you to remain incognito.

If you are really interested in increasing your sales and improving your eCommerce business, you must make sure there is no downtime or latency on your site. You should also use residential proxies to help you with your market research with regard to your target audience.

translating
Archives, Global Trade Daily, Special Reports

E-commerce Success: 5 Ways Translating Your Website Content Can Boost Your Sales

Leave a comment

For your business to survive the competition in today’s global market, you must adopt a more strategic business plan that will take it beyond the local market. One way to achieve this is to have a multilingual website.

Translating the website content of your e-commerce business will help you meet market expectations and boost your sales. However, to translate your website content, you must consider your target audience and make sure to answer the questions below.

-What county or city are you targeting?

-What are their needs in that area?

-Do they speak more than one language?

With the above questions considered, you can then decide how best to target your audience through the translation of your website content. Let’s take a look at how translating your website content can help boost your e-commerce business.

Your Brand Reaches More Audience

The essence of translating your website is to reach out to an audience not from your local market. As cross-border shopping is on the rise and e-commerce stores are accessible anywhere on the globe, you can communicate with an international audience to ensure consistent sales. With your translated website, people from the targeted area tend to visit the website, which helps generate more traffic to boost your sales.

Build Brand Trust and Image

When people visit your website and the content is in their language, they feel more comfortable reading and searching for their desired product on your site. Even though you are on the other side of the world, your audience and customers will feel more connected to your brand due to the translated website. They will appreciate and value your effort and reward it by giving your brand their trust. Also, a multilingual website ensures a better customer experience for your brand. Building a reputable brand image speaks volumes of your brand. It makes your target audience recognize and trust your brand more.

Boost Sales and Conversation Rate

People tend to buy products or pay for services rendered in their language. This can be termed the main reason for translating a website in the first place. When the audience can easily relate to the content of your e-commerce website, there is a high chance of them purchasing their desired product on your website. You can’t convert visitors to customers if they don’t understand what you are selling. Research has also shown that more people tend to buy a product in their currency. Hence, the proper translation of your website boosts sales and improves the conversation rate.

SEO Optimization

With a translated website, you will rank high on the local SERP of the targeted area. When the content of your website is SEO-optimized, your site is visible whenever people search in their language through google or other search engines. Some effective SEO strategies are:

Keyword: This is achieved by making local keyword research and then integrating these words into your content when translating.

Local Search: With the right URL structure, search engines will identify your website and show your webpage among other local businesses in the targeted area.

Relevant Content: Visitors tend to spend more time reading quality content. Search engines will make your content visible on the SERP when users search for related content with your content-generating more traffic.

Use Certified Translation Services

In contrast to what many may believe, website translation isn’t achieved by just installing some automated translation plugins. Certified translation services create them by carefully preparing the content in a localized way, bearing in mind the culture and language of the targeted audience. With the expertise of certified translation services, your website content can be efficiently translated to generate more website traffic and boost sales.

Conclusion

The translation of website contents is an advantage to your business to ensure it survives competition within the internet market. It boosts your business by not allowing you to target the local market only, but international as well. It has been proven that customers are most likely to buy products translated to their language from a site. Hence, the need to get certified translation services to work on your content. These certified translators help translate the content so well in such a way that makes your audience feel like they are reading locally created content.

CPG
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

CPG e-Commerce without Business Intelligence

Leave a comment
We’re more than a year now into a new era for CPG e-commerce.For years, CPG e-commerce has lagged behind retail e-commerce. Consumers who ordered clothes, shoes, and gadgets online without a second thought still relied on the Target, Costco or grocery run for CPG staples like personal care and consumables. Why? Old habits die hard.
 

Now, everything has changed—and fast. E-commerce took a leap into the future during COVID-19. At first, it was about contact avoidance and social distancing, but now it’s becoming about convenience. We’re simply ordering more and, during the last year, circumstances have changed old habits.

In this new e-commerce era, these shifting patterns are making demand harder to predict, and they are creating new challenges while also opening new opportunities. Businesses need better insights to make better decisions, or they are going to lose out.

This is where Line Item is a game-changer. This performance analytics platform gives consumer packaged goods (CPG) and e-commerce marketing managers business intelligence on e-analytics and product attributes to drive revenue and profitability.

With Line Item, CPG brands can revolutionize their ability to respond to the market and gain valuable insights into changing demand patterns to unlock growth.

Without this kind of business intelligence, they risk being left out in the “new normal” of CPG e-commerce. Here’s a closer look at the risks of CPG e-commerce without business intelligence.

Risk: Missing out on key trends
Yes, the way consumers shop has changed, but understanding this at the meta level and the category level are two different things. It’s essential to understand what trends are shaping the category for your brands and products—and this is almost impossible without business intelligence.

Line Item tracks hundreds of items in each product category, helping e-commerce managers monitor new products, brands, and competitors. Line Item also reveals which items are newly trending to enable new insights into the competition.

Risk: Missing out on buying behavior
Understanding how, when, and where consumers are buying is critical in a market driven by demand fluctuations. Brands that can gain visibility into how product attributes, pricing, and promotions perform can understand how to adjust their strategy to maximize marketing activity and grow their online sales.

Built especially for CPG and e-commerce, Line Item makes this level of insight possible, providing deep e-analytics that reveal more about promotion strategy, third-party activity, and attribute-level data.

Risk: Missing out on sales
When demand can change daily, it can be difficult to balance inventory. Overstocking eats into the bottom line, but understocking does, too. No one wants to wait when they’re ready to buy. When your product is out of stock, consumers will buy something else.

Line Item can provide insights that tell you if out-of-stocks are hurting revenue. This business intelligence can help CPG brands grow online sales.

Risk: Missing out on personalized marketing
Personalized marketing requires understanding consumer behavior and preferences. With better business intelligence across a product portfolio, brands can create unique offers, cross-promotional campaigns, and upsells.

Line Item can enable superior insights, including integrating data with AMZ Brand Analytics, Retail Link, Partnersonline and more to provide better insight faster.

Risk: Missing out on better decision-making
Going forward, the most successful online brands will be those that have visibility into how product attributes, pricing, and promotions perform, so they can optimize their e-commerce strategies. They must understand what is driving value, especially in a market that can shift rapidly.

Line Item enables a deep dive into each product, capturing all attributes to determine what is driving value for better decision-making. This insight can also help e-commerce marketers monitor competitor activity and see new market entrants.

Ultimately, better business intelligence is a business imperative for CPG brands. Without BI, brands risk missing out on trends, competitors, opportunities and more—and this affects the bottom line. Line Item empowers you with a single platform for better insight into what’s driving sales or what’s working against you. It’s your lifeline to more profitable CPG e-commerce.

____________________________________________________________

digital
Archives, Global Trade Daily, Special Reports

Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for eCommerce

Leave a comment

Running an eCommerce business needs extra attention and energy towards your marketing strategies. This is because apart from targeting new traffic to your platforms, you are also working to ensure that you entice existing customers to keep coming back to your store.

Even though we live in a digital age, there are still many challenges that eCommerce sites undergo. As the competition remains unforgivingly fierce with millions of shopping options, it becomes a lot harder to convince online shoppers to purchase products from you.

There have also been various developments in the eCommerce world, thanks to search engine giants such as Google. This is because people can easily check out the prices of products much quicker, compare the goods with those of competitors, and they can decide on who to settle on, even before approaching your site.

To ensure that you remain relevant and close more leads, you may need to relook your marketing efforts and stay ahead of the trends. Here are five effective digital marketing strategies for eCommerce sites that will ensure you capture your share in the $2.8 trillion annual online sales.

1. Define your sales cycle

Before you embark on any digital marketing campaigns and even before writing your business plan, the first thing you’ll always hear is that you should understand your audience. In the eCommerce world, going in without defining your user personas would be heading for doom, as the chances of your business failing are pretty high.

Every business is unique, and therefore, you ought to define your sales cycle before launching any marketing strategies. In essence, you need to know how long it takes for a customer to make a purchase on your website. Learn their journey and understand how they move through your sales process. This is the only way you’ll be able to come up with relevant eCommerce marketing strategies that will actually work.

Without a clear understanding of how long it takes for a customer to complete the entire sales cycle, you will find it a little more difficult, trying to pinpoint the areas of improvement and what platforms you need to focus on the most.

Furthermore, with such information, you are also able to know how to target and qualify leads, how to move them onto the next stage of the sales funnel, and what needs to be done to keep them coming back. Fortunately, all these can be done on a trial and error basis so you don’t have to be perfect with your first findings.

2. Optimize your checkout process

One of the biggest mistakes made by eCommerce business owners is the failure to have a seamless checkout process. Getting your prospects to the checkout page takes a lot of convincing and they are satisfied that your products would actually help them solve their pain points.

However, if your checkout process isn’t smooth, then you may end up noticing a high bounce rate emanating from your checkout page.

Ensure that all actions and buttons are clearly visible and that the visitor knows exactly what to do after they have added their preferred products to the cart. There are some methods that you can easily learn by registering to some of the best distance learning platforms, and get to know the different ways you can optimize your checkout page for higher conversions.

3. Provide helpful product descriptions

Having clear product descriptions will help a prospect throughout their sales cycle. They’ll be in a better position to understand exactly what the product is all about and make a decision if it would be helpful to them.

As for the seller, you will gain customer trust if you know how to correctly label your product. This will establish you as an authority, which can boost the customer’s trust in you.

Furthermore, apart from helping to convince your customers, having clear product descriptions can help your site even further through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). By using the right keywords within your product descriptions, search engine crawlers would be able to rank your page as an authority site, helping you to appear on the first page of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This will ultimately enable you to land on more leads and conversions.

4. Invest in retargeting

The hard truth is that 98% of website visitors do not make a purchase on their first visit. Most of them will be window shopping on your site, or maybe trying to compare you with a competitor. Another batch of individuals would actually add the items to the cart, and leave it half-way, even before they proceed to the checkout page.

If this is the case, you need to invest in retargeting marketing strategies. With this type of marketing, whenever someone visits your website and fails to make a purchase, and you could check on your dashboard that they were interested in a particular product, you reach out to them using other means.

For starters, you can use retargeting ads on other websites that the prospect may visit and bring to their attention your deals and offers on the specific product. Furthermore, if they had subscribed to your website, or had put in their email addresses, you can use these details to reach out to them and offer a personalized offer. By doing this, they will feel appreciated and can end up making the purchase from you.

5. Boost product visualization

People love what they see and if you’re an eCommerce business site owner, this is one of the first things you need to understand. Although content is king, you should beware of the type of content to add to your website. Although blog posts will be a boosting factor, they are not the key selling points.

Ensure to invest more in having quality images of the products you wish to sell. You should also use advanced methods such as 3D technology, where customers are able to view the product from all angles, including rotating 360°. One company, Fourth Source, has recorded increased conversions and sales from 25% to 30% when they used 3D images over flat surface photos for their products.

Conclusion

Having a concrete eCommerce digital marketing strategy will not only be vital for your company’s success through increased sales, but will also ensure you remain relevant to the changing trends and stay ahead of the competition. These five tips are just a starting point for you to up your game and get a piece of this elusive market share.

___________________________________________________________________

Lidia S. Hovhan is a part of Content and Marketing team at OmnicoreAgency. She contributes articles about how to integrate digital marketing strategy with traditional marketing to help business owners to meet their online goals. You can find really professional insights in her writings.

Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

How Technology can Improve your Logistics Operations

Leave a comment

Like most other industries, the logistics industry faces a gradual transformation towards adapting to the internet age. The advent of new technologies invalidates age-old approaches and processes, creating the need for modernization. And with the logistics industry being as massive as it is, it’s understandable that it can be notably lucrative. Between risk mitigation and automation, there are many ways in which adaptive technology can benefit this $4 trillion industry. With that said, let us explore just how technology can improve your logistics operation.

The significance of efficiency

Before delving into specifics, it is vital to note the undisputed value of efficiency in the logistics industry.

As mentioned before, this 4$ trillion industry is massive, and its interconnectivity with other industries is apparent. Thus, efficient logistics operations can yield considerable productivity gains across the board. Not only can they provide a competitive advantage, but they can also guarantee better overall operation cohesion. Logistics software can greatly enhance one’s control and oversight of supply chains, increasing response times to potential disruptions. After all, customers of all industries value a swift delivery of goods and services, as well as quality customer support. Such software can augment all of those aspects, ensuring that potential challenges are easier to overcome.

Shipment Tracking Systems and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

A technology that has already caught on, albeit to varying degrees, is shipment tracking. As customers would previously be unaware of their order’s status, shipment tracking systems have rectified this somewhat. With 24/7 access to shipment status information, customers can rest assured that their order is indeed underway. Some tracking systems even offer additional information and shipment notifications for additional insights and convenience. This solution can indeed improve your logistics too, no less than customer experience. Constant monitoring can save your time and money, as well as unclog your customer service channels.

Likewise, on the front of cargo management, RFID technology has also seen use in recent years. In essence, RFID tags or sensors allow companies to keep track of their inventory. Both labor-saving and cost-effective, RFID tags are often used in distribution warehouses as a means of monitoring containers. Such industries as the apparel industry are also using RFID technology for tracking purposes, with very notable success. Should you be contemplating how technology can improve your logistics operation, RFID solutions could be a reasonable step to take.

Automation and robotics

On the subject of warehouse optimization, then, technology has provided another asset; automation. Naturally, automation can yield many benefits to many industries, but logistics is unquestionably one of them. From increased performance to reduced labor costs, automation is undoubtedly a valuable asset.

Automation offers to improve operational efficiency in machines, and has already seen effective use in such trade hubs as Holland’s Port of Rotterdam. Namely, its use of fully-automated terminals allows it to reap the aforementioned benefits in terms of unloading cargo. It’s estimated that this approach increases overall productivity by as much as 30 percent – a very notable net benefit.

Similarly, robots have facilitated the rapid growth of online sales across many industries. While they are quite dissimilar from automation in many regards, they too can automate operations and thus decrease labor costs. Most notably, as far as e-commerce is concerned, Amazon has been innovative in this front. Its use of Kiva robots has reduced the company’s expenses by as much as 20 percent. A notable feat, enough so that other companies also seek to employ robots in their warehouses.

Drones and autonomous vehicles

In much the same way as automation and robotics, technology has provided logistics companies with drones and autonomous vehicles. Similar in function, both can be fine examples of how technology can improve your logistics operation.

Drones have seen surges in functionality in recent times, elevated from a niche solution to one with potentially global applications. This development was understandably followed by an array of eager high-profile adopters, such as UPS. A potential innovation in terms of product delivery indeed, drones can expand delivery options to both urban and rural areas. More fortunately still, their nature allows them to also improve logistics, by removing the factor of human error.

Likewise, autonomous vehicles can offer similar convenience. In part due to relatively lower regulations and easier testing, self-driving vehicles have been an accessible technological advancement for many logistics operations. Of course, it’s notable that this technology is currently mostly limited to warehouse management, such as autonomous forklifts and trucks. However, with rapid advancements, it may not be long before autonomous trucks can traverse the world’s highways. Both in their current and potential future forms, autonomous vehicles can quite possibly be a massive asset to any company.

Conclusion

As technology makes rapid strides, one can realistically expect vast logistics optimization potential. From warehouse management and monitoring to shipment tracking and delivery, the possibilities seem endless. When contemplating how technology can improve your logistics operation, both the present and the future hold much promise. And as supply chains expand and grow, it will be vital to adapt to such technologies to remain competitive.

_____________________________________________________________

James Clarkson is a freelance web designer and author. He often writes analyses of the shipping and moving industries, and of the SEO needs of both. He’s a frequent writer for Verified Movers, as well as other companies.

supermarkets
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

From Physical Retail to Online Business: Marketing and Logistics Principles for Supermarkets

Leave a comment

Supermarkets and retailers around the world began distributing goods via order channels over a decade ago, often as a future-oriented addition to a minor business segment, complementing standard services. As such, ordering online and receiving groceries via delivery is nothing new. Caught off-guard by the COVID-19 outbreak, however, supermarkets and food-retailers today are facing the challenge of switching their business model from physical retail to online order and delivery with unprecedented urgency. With physical distancing measures in place across entire countries, people increasingly prefer to avoid purchasing their groceries as walk-in customers to safeguard their health and well-being.

In this situation, the supermarket industry finds itself in a fundamentally altered market environment. The changes required from them are profound. Their typical infrastructure, such as buildings and storage centers, was strategically designed to walk customers through a supermarket, positioning products on shelves as per marketing and product placement logic, factors that become obsolete in an online retail world. What matters now is safe, reliable, and fast supply of customers’ online orders via dedicated distribution services. Logistics is at the core of addressing these challenges and the interface between marketing and logistics indeed becomes vital for fast implementation in the current scenario.

For a swift short-term switch, the prerequisites are two-fold: On the one hand, the supply of selected products needs to be covered either through local production or through available imports. On the other, a functioning online ordering front-end needs to be made available to customers. Yet, especially for supermarkets, it is the seamless and efficient operation of the “pick and packing” functionality that has now become the bottleneck.

This has several consequences that can be addressed: First, online supermarkets cannot provide the full portfolio of goods to their customers, at least for the time being. Sales analysis is required to meaningfully reduce the portfolio of products available online, and hence decrease the complexity of assembling orders later on. Amid the current circumstances, food and canned products will have higher importance than non-food items, and any of the latter to be upheld would need to be chosen sensibly. While customers may have less choice, portfolio reduction will help significantly in maintaining capacity for faster, more reliable physical delivery.

Second, shortened product portfolios can be divided into two categories: High runners and low runners. High runners are regularly purchased in high volumes, and their turnaround is quick. Low runners might be appealing in the physical retail world, but have less meaning in the current landscape. Third, high-running products within a simplified offering need to be stored differently for now. Usually, they would be placed decentralized along strategic points throughout the supermarket to attract attention. In a recalibrated setup, identified high runners need to be stored centrally in a dedicated area of the market where employees have unhindered access for fast “pick and packing”. Fourth, the commissioning time needed for workers to assemble an incoming order, needs to be kept as low as possible by minimizing physical distances required to walk.

Fifth, in packing the online orders received and getting them ready for dispatch, standardized package box sizes can be used to further reduce complexity. Just like in a game of “Tetris”, utilizing uniform cubic sizes will allow for packages to be stored in delivery vehicles in the most effective fashion. This is particularly relevant for food retailers that do not rely on third-party logistics providers for reasons of quality and food safety assurance.

Sixth, physical delivery of the commissioned orders should be prioritized and planned in a calculated way. Typical linear concepts such as “first order in, first delivery out,” will not be efficient under the current circumstances. Seventh, because of the reduced product portfolio, the products offered should not be static, but optimized on a regular basis. In other words, the now required short-term shift should not limit the industry to short-term thinking. Requiring customers to order in excess of minimum order amounts, imposing high delivery charges, expecting customers to accept long delivery times, accepting the jamming of orders, amongst others pitfalls – all of which we are currently witnessing internationally, can be avoided by emphasizing the outlined marketing and logistics principles.

While it is clear that supermarkets are at the heart of consumer goods supply during the current pandemic, it would not be reasonable to compare them with established online giants such as Amazon and others. Their business model and logistical setups are different, from the outset. This naturally calls for customers to exercise patience and good-will with their supermarkets for a while. Supermarkets are logistical hubs, run by people, for people, through people, even if for the time being, they may appear as an anonymous online screen only.

____________________________________________________________

Frank Himpel is a faculty member of the Engineering Management and Decision Sciences division at College of Science and Engineering at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. Prior to moving to Qatar with his family in 2018, Frank served as a professor of business administration and logistics in Germany, where he also received his academic degrees. His research into aviation and air transportation management has taken him to several countries around the world.

 About Hamad Bin Khalifa University

Innovating Today, Shaping Tomorrow

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF), was founded in 2010 as a research-intensive university that acts as a catalyst for transformative change in Qatar and the region while having global impact. Located in Education City, HBKU is committed to building and cultivating human capacity through an enriching academic experience, innovative ecosystem, and unique partnerships. HBKU delivers multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate degrees through its colleges, and provides opportunities for research and scholarship through its institutes and centers. For more information about HBKU, visit www.hbku.edu.qa.