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Mobile – First Indexing of Ecommerce Sites

Mobile – First Indexing of Ecommerce Sites

Categories
Ecommerce

Mobile-first indexing has been a popular topic over the past few months. We’ve seen a lot of articles on the subject, discussing how it may impact site appearance in search results. It’s important though not to confuse mobile-first indexing with ranking – remember the basics of indexing and ranking when it comes to this topic.

  • Indexing vs. Ranking

Search engines perform two main tasks – indexing and ranking. The mobile-first index means that mobile pages will be crawled first, and Google will revert to desktop pages if no mobile page is available.

The factors Google use to determine search rankings include mobile usability (mobile friendliness). Mobile-friendly content will be ranked higher in search results when a user is searching on a mobile device – this has been a factor that’s been around since 2015.

Keyword rankings differ based on whether the searcher is using mobile or desktop. This is due to Google ranking factors and roadblocks that exist in their mobile results, such as mobile page speed as a ranking factor and the intrusive interstitial penalty

 

  • How Can Ecommerce Companies Adapt?

The obvious: Make sure your site is mobile optimized

The first step you need to take, if you haven’t already, is to switch to a responsive website as soon as possible. There are other options for optimizing your site for mobile, including having a separate mobile site, but responsive design is generally recognized as being the easiest to maintain.

To check whether your site is currently mobile friendly, check out Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool.

Mobile Friendly test

Start thinking mobile-first With their move to a mobile-first index, Google is effectively stating that mobile is leading the way in search. If they haven’t already done so, brands need to follow suit.

Thinking mobile-first doesn’t mean mobile-only. As we discussed in the previous chapter, desktop still has a key role to play in search and the overall conversion funnel for many industries.

A mobile-first strategy will take into account the types of searches typically undertaken on mobile, and will develop content best suited for those searches.

Google’s micro-moments explain the typical search intent behind different types of query, and show how this might affect the search results returned in each case.

Google’s micro-moments

As an example of how ecommerce companies can implement strategies to target mobile users, a search for ‘contact Shopper Stop’ on mobile should return options to contact the company quickly and easily.

Through the use of click to call markup, ecommerce sites can provide search engines with the data they need to offer this feature in their results:

 

  • Report on Performance Between Mobile and Desktop

Reporting on desktop vs. mobile performance is easily and clearly accomplished in Google Analytics.

Measuring rankings and organic channel performance for mobile separate to desktop can give you a better picture of how things are working across both channels. As search usage continues to shift toward mobile, this will become increasingly important.

The vast majority of ecommerce sites need to adapt and work to improve the current situation of how their sites perform for mobile users. When designing a mobile-friendly site, certain mistakes keep popping up, even among top e-commerce sites.

We searched for the most common mistakes made on mobile websites, and found that the vast majority of sites were plagued by significant problems.

 

  • The five biggest errors we found were:
  • 4xx error codes, which impact a user’s ability to utilize or access the site correctly.
  • Slow page loading speed, which will drive users away and negatively impact SEO.
  • Issues with mixed content, which will negatively affect user experience and reduce confidence in your website.
  • Missing or empty title tags, preventing Google from identifying the content correctly.
  • Redirect chains and loops, which prevent users from getting to the correct destination quickly
Why Search and SEO is Important ?

Before we can understand why search is important, we need to take a step back and understand why people search.

 

  • Why People Search?
    In the early days, people searched to find a list of documents that contained the words they typed in. That’s no longer the case.

Today’s searchers search to solve problems, to accomplish tasks, and to “do” something. They might be searching to book a flight, buy something, learn the latest Taylor Swift lyrics, or browse cat photos – but these are all actions. Or, as Gates referred to them, verbs.

When a user starts a search, they’re really starting a journey. Marketers love to talk about something called “the consumer journey.” It’s just a fancy way of referencing a user’s path from the inception of their task to the completion – and most of these journeys start with a search.

The consumer journey has been gradually playing a larger role in search over the last decade. Originally depicted as a funnel wherein users move from awareness to consideration to purchase, this old consumer journey has become outdated (although we still use this model for illustrative purposes and to make persona research easier).

 

  • The Evolution of Search & the Consumer Journey

The modern consumer journey no longer represents a funnel, but looks more like a crazy straw – with various twists and turns representing the various channels, mediums, and devices that users interact with today.

In order to fit this new model, search has had to evolve from simply words on the page to understanding the user intent at each phase of the journey. Search is no longer just about keywords, but has evolved into providing the right content to the right user at the right time in their journey to help them accomplish their task.

For the users, it’s all about the verbs. For search marketers, it’s all about helping the user on their journey (and, ideally, influencing them a bit along the way.)

Sticking with the crazy straw model, today’s consumer journey no longer happens on a single device. Users may start a search on their mobile device, continue researching on their tablet or work laptop, and ultimately purchase from their desktop at home.

Search isn’t just limited to computers or phones. Users can now search from a variety of devices, including watches, smart glasses, bluetooth speaker assistants, and even kitchen appliances. In today’s world, even my fridge has its own Twitter account and search marketers need to be cognizant of how various devices relate to each other and play a part in a user’s search experience.

There’s some healthy debate as to whether this has always been the case, but in today’s always on hyper-connected world, SEO has morphed into what we’ll call “real marketing.”

Gone are the days of hacks, tricks, and attempting to reverse-engineer algorithms.

Today’s SEO focuses on:

• Understanding personas.
• Data-driven insights.
• Content strategy.
• Technical problem-solving.

The 3 Main Tenants of Any Marketing Strategy or Campaign Search touches all three of these areas:

1. Attract.
2. Engage.
3. Convert.

But search concentrates heavily on the first phase: Attract.

“If you build it, they will come” may apply to baseball fields, but it doesn’t work with websites.
It’s no longer enough to have an awesome product. You must actively attract customers via multiple channels and outlets.

This is why, despite some claims to the contrary from clients or design agencies, every webpage is, in fact, an SEO page.

If a webpage is involved in attracting visitors, engaging visitors, or converting them, there should be an important SEO component to that page.

  • The 3 Main Tenants of Any Marketing Strategy or Campaign

    OK, users, journey, search, verbs, got it. Users are important and many of them start with a search, so search is important.

But why is SEO important? Isn’t SEO just a developer thing? I heard there was a plugin for it. Can’t Google and Bing just figure out my website?

We started this story with a Gates quote, but it was Google rather than Microsoft that took the philosophy to heart.

Things like Hummingbird, Panda, Penguin, RankBrain, Mobilegeddon, Possum, Pigeon, entities, and AMP essentially have all been attempts by Google to adapt its search algorithm to move from words to actions, and help users accomplish whatever tasks they may be focused on but they aren’t that simple to understand.

SEO has come a long way from the days of meta data. Sure, there’s

a lot of best practices involved that “should” be covered by the development team or a plugin (or built into a framework cough cough angular, react, I’m looking at you guys) – but often they aren’t.
Today’s websites are more application than they are a website, and applications come with lots of fancy features that don’t always play nicely with search engines (hi again, angular and react.)

  • Good SEO Today

A good SEO can not only focus on content, but also help:

• Navigate through multiple versions of the same page.
• Solve tech issues that render content invisible to search engines.
• With proper server settings.
• Integrate with social media, content, creative, user experience, paid search, or analytics.
• Find ways to speed up your site.

A good SEO professional not only understands the searcher, but the competitive landscape as well. It isn’t enough to just understand the user’s task, search marketers need to understand what other options are in the marketplace, and how they can fill the gap to provide a better solution for the user’s task.

We’ve come a long way from keywords on pages to full-service marketing. SEO pros get to wear multiple hats as they help connect development, information architecture, user experience, content strategy, marketing, social, and paid media teams. It’s a game of give and take all in an attempt to create something that works for search engines and users.

There are plenty of cautionary tales about things as simple sounding as a site redesign or new CMS system causing a site’s traffic to drop or disappear leaving businesses scrambling. The simple fact of the matter is, most website changes these days affect SEO and only by including SEO up front and throughout the project can a business hope to see positive results.

  • So Why Is Search Important?

Search matters because users matter.

As technology continues to evolve, SEOs will constantly deal with new ways of searching, new devices to search on, and new types of searches (like voice search, or searches done by my oven) but the one thing that will remain constant is why people search. The verbs aren’t going away.

One day we might be overrun by AI or upload our consciousness into the singularity – but until then we’ll still need to solve problems and accomplish tasks – and some form of search will always be involved in that.

Why Search and SEO is Important ?

Categories
Ecommerce
#BeyondTheBasics – Social Media!

What was communication before the domination of digital media? Very few of us would remember, isn’t it? Come on, we all know how Social media has taken communication to a whole new level. It’s safe to accept that people’s experience can make or break future business through more than just word of mouth.

And that’s exactly why it’s really essential to hold an upstanding image online as well as communicate effectively through social mediums.

Pro-Tip : If you are going to be on social media platforms, do it right or don’t do it at all.

How , you ask? Go beyond the basics. These crucial steps are sometimes neglected by advanced social media users too. Check out what we think can help you best :

 

1. Make sure your social profiles are complete and up to date:

Many of the people who see your business (or personal) profile on a social network are seeing you or your business for the first time.

What they see and read – their first impression – will influence what they think about your business and/or you personally.

That first impression will play an important role in determining whether they want to know more about you, or not.

Ever tried googling about yourself? Ever noticed the social networks that rank on the first two pages? Well, pick those & make a note of it to further scrutinise.

Visit each profile to make sure all of your information is filled out and up to date. This includes updating your website information if you’ve added anything new, such as a blog or an online store; adding your location; adding your story or journey in brief; and also your interests to help like minded people connect better.

 

2. Be consistent with your branding & communication:

This is so important – you must pin it ! Ensuring that your branding represents your business well and is consistent across all your online networks and print materials is often overlooked.

However, it’s supposed to be well taken care of as visitors would like to easily recall your website, your social networks even if they see some print advertising.

Consistent branding also means that your profile picture is consistent across your various social networks. Whether your logo or your photo, ensure you’re using a high quality, professional looking , share image across all social networks.

Remember : You want people to be able to easily recognize your brand (or you) on not just one social network but everywhere your branding or image appears. Including when they meet you or visit your office or store.

 

3. Cross promote your social profiles:

Nobody can promote you as better as you can. Whether it’s adding links from one social profile to others or giving redirects on blogs, or promoting in your email signature , smart cross promotion can take you a long way.

For example : Instagram helps you connect to Twitter , Facebook & Tumblr; YouTube offers a spot for Twitter , Facebook & Google+; Google+, allows you to link to as many of your other social profiles as you choose.

 

4. Respond / Engage with your customers frequently:

There’s no better way to connect with your user at such ease than at social media. This means communicating with your customers quickly and in a timely manner. Not responding three days later because you don’t check your social platforms that often is not acceptable.

Social platforms are almost as important as your website because of the way people communicate. It’s easy to discuss the good and the bad with just a button click away. Even if we know that the person on the other side of the account may not be a manager, it is their job to maintain customer satisfaction. Of course, this increases the power any consumer has with messages via instant communication, along with reviews that are being left.

Again, each network is somewhat different as to what is acceptable but as with most things customer related, faster (within a few hours) is always better.

 

5. Check your email contacts for new people to connect with on social networks, and do this periodically:

Who better to follow or befriend than the ones you’ve already engaged with. If nothing this leaves you with an opportunity to reconnect. Whether it’s been a few months or a few years since you last checked your email contacts for new people to connect with on social networks, it’s always a great idea to initiate now.

 

6. Stop buying followers and fans:

If you thought simply inflating your number of social followers shall guarantee you success, you’re surely mistaken. Much to your surprise, social networks like Facebook are already removing fake likes from pages; and tools for Twitter are exposing accounts with a high volume of fake followers. So remember that it’s not worth it – fake followers and fans will do nothing for your engagement or your bottom line.

 

7. Use Google Analytics to measure your social media efforts:

Wait! Before you get started on that you must first set up goals in Google Analytics & only then use the new social reporting features of Google Analytics.
This shall ensure that you are getting results from your social media marketing campaign. You may not be able to measure some benefits of social media like engagement and the resulting consumer loyalty with your social media followers, but you can measure how much traffic social media brings to your website and how much of that traffic results in conversions.

This data shall act as a fuel to your upcoming marketing strategy & give you the much needed push for your plan of action.

 

8. Evaluate , learn & keep improvising as you go along the way:

Who’s a better teacher than your past act? Whether it’s a rewarding attempt or a failure, your activities prove to become a foundation of your next step. Each move that you make teaches you something new, the key is to keep a watch out. Evaluate all the efforts you’ve taken so far, draw some learnings out of them & improvise to strive better.

Remember , innovations & adaptations are always well embraced by the consumers. No matter what’s that one new thing you’re attempting, make sure you’ve thought through it.

 

9. Persevere to succeed:

Real progress or growth with social media is a slow, steady and sometimes a little painful. This is especially true when you are just getting started with social media. Like most anything of value, social media requires time, attention and especially perseverance to produce results.

To wrap things up, you can’t overlook that social networking doesn’t work on autopilot. You should guarantee that no stone is left unturned along a brand’s image. Social networking has turned into a foundation of digital marketing. While it doesn’t make a difference what industry you’re in, it is a device you ought to utilize each day to communicate with customers.

So, don’t wait, get started today!
Need help with your social media marketing? We offer a variety of digital marketing services based on the unique needs of business clients. Wave us a hello in comments below or write to us at : mktg@binaryic.com

#BeyondTheBasics – Social Media!

Categories
Ecommerce
Time To Say Hello To Instagram Stories!

The audience was just getting hooked to the various filters & dynamics of Snapchat Stories that we got a sweet surprise from Instagram! Ever since its launch, it has spread like a wild fire. Whether its personal endorsements, daily routine updates or brand announcements, both the viewers & the uploader are equally in awe & love of this darling feature!

What is the BIG DEAL?

While, in the beginning Instagram received a lot of flak for copying “Snapchat”, it definitely has a lot more to offer. Honestly, the biggest difference is that unlike Snapchat, users can add text and stickers, draw on them, and even include a link or mention other users. It’s the last two features that help Instagram’s version stand out, though.

With the ability to add links and mention users Instagram creates a culture of inclusion, rather than secrecy and exclusion that is often the draw of Snapchat.

S vs I

With the ability to add links and mention users Instagram creates a culture of inclusion, rather than secrecy and exclusion that is often the draw of Snapchat.

Instagram Stories are also searchable and appear publicly on a profile if a profile is set to public. This stands in contrast to Snapchat, which doesn’t have “profiles” for users to see previous content or view Stories. You must follow someone on Snapchat to discover his or her content.

That’s not all, more recently, Instagram moved Boomerang directly into the app. Now, users can create a Boomerang directly in a Story.

So, how do we LEVERAGE this?

One of the most important reasons for businesses to use Instagram Stories is relevancy in your followers’ feeds. Since Instagram updated the feed to be & algorithmic in June of 2016, having stories always appear at the top of a follower’s feed helps your brand remain top-of-mind. Popular Stories also appear at the top of the Explore page, helping gain an even wider reach.

insta-blog

The most common mistake that content creators or users make is missing out on opportunity of building a larger audience.

You’re creating Stories, but do you think that’s enough? Well sure, you can use relevant hashtags and tag as many people as regular images but that’s not the key.

Check out our recommended tactics and strategies below :

1. Repost or prepost content from your Stories to your feed

About to have an event? Post an announcement image to your regular feed letting users know to be on the lookout for the upcoming Stories that are sure to come.

Create a great Story? Before you post it, press the “save” button in the lower right and post it again as a regular image. You can save images after posting them by opening your Story and swiping up. If you’ve posted more than one image, it will save as a video slideshow.

2. Go live often

Alongside other popular trending Stories in the Explore page are the “Top Live” posts. Live video is becoming an arms race and Instagram is pushing it just as hard.

If you’re going live and providing great content, more people are going to tune in. These videos often rotate as more viewers tune in, and live videos end. So by going live often, you’re giving yourself a chance to appear and gain more followers.

Dr.Pradeep Gadge, diabetologist in Mumbai is often seen interacting with his audience LIVE on Instagram on various topic linked to #Diabetes.

3. Mention people

It’s no secret that people love attention, especially on social media. Give the people what they want by using the mention feature in your Instagram Stories. You can tag customers, followers, or those who inspire you with a personalized message. This sends a notification to the user who will more than likely see the content. Be careful with this one, though. You don’t want to wear out your welcome by over-tagging people.

IISM , India’s Pioneer in Sports Management Education, using the tag feature to promote the sponsors for their Life@IISM initiative :Junoon Sports Fet

4. Give out all the relevant information

Where was this picture taken? How beautiful was the location? Were you eating some amazing food or dancing to your favourite album? These little details can intrigue your audiences to know more & engage.

Softsens Baby, organic baby care product & apparel comapny using the LOCATION feature to promote its store at Banglore.

5. Gain more followers

This one seems pretty straightforward because it is. The more followers you have, the more potential your Instagram Stories have to be seen. Follow other users, use relevant hashtags on regular posts, and engage with the content of those you would like to follow you back.

6. Create great content

Again, not groundbreaking but still the best way to organically grow your following. The more accounts that are watching your Stories, sending messages, and engaging with them in other ways, the better chance your brand’s account has of appearing on the “Explore” page alongside other trending Stories.

Use interactive gifs, ask some cool poll questions, conduct a Q&A , just ensure your content is driving the user towards you & not pushing them away.

Binaryic, a digital marketing firm, interacting with their audience by using the POLL feature..

7. Sponsored Instagram Story Ads

This one is more indirect, but running ads is a good way to increase both followers and engagement on your account. Plus, it can provide a boost to your algorithmic score. In turn, this can make it more likely that your Stories will appear on the Explore page.

SoulTree- Organic beauty,skin & hair care provider promotes its festive offer with Sponsored Story Ads

What’s Next?

• Strategise :

Use this knowledge to develop a strategy for promoting your brand, inviting followers behind the scenes, and broadening your audience with high-quality live video and stories.

• Define A Goal :

There are many creative ways brands are using Instagram already. Ultimately, it comes down to what your campaign goals are for Instagram.

  • Do you want to help a promotion gain a wider audience?

  • Are you attempting to drive more traffic to a blog post, landing page, or video?

• Get, Set, Go!

Whether you’re a casual Instagram user or leading a social media team looking for more ways to engage your audience, Instagram Stories can benefit you and your company.

Now is the time to capitalize on a well-thought-out strategy before your competitors do. Engage your audience more with Instagram Stories and be sure to drive them to a relevant, dedicated landing page.

What’s your take on this? We’d love to know, share below!

Time To Say Hello To Instagram Stories!

Categories
Ecommerce Technology
The country’s come together to save God’s Own Country

Kerala are witnessing their worst floods in almost a century and the entire nation has come together to ease the pain of God’s Own Country. The nature’s fury has seen a loss of five hundred civilians while a number are being reported missing each passing day. The scare of epidemics have increased after the rains have subsided with a number of patients reported with Rat-fever and other communicable diseases.

Heavy rains which started on August 8 has seen widespread loss of life and property. An estimated loss of INR 19,500 crore has been identified. The floods which have bee the worst since the 1924 floods in the state has put the entire region on red alert. Transport services have been badly affected with both air and train services suspended. Northern district of Kerala are critically low on even the availability of clean water.

the county

The Central Government launched massive relief operations after the Cabinet Secretary together with senior officers of Defence Services, NDRF, NDMA conducted meetings with Kerala Chief Secretary. In corresponding actions and what became one of India’s biggest relief and rescue operations, 40 helicopters, 31 aircrafts, 182 teams, 16 medical teams, 58 NDRF teams and 7 companies of Central Armed Police Force were deployed along with 500 boats. Local Fishermen came out in huge numbers to support the relief teams, more than 4500 fish workers helped in rescue operations with 669 boats. They rescued almost 65000 people from different parts of the country.

the county

Extensive digital initiative and campaigns were setup by the government, NGOs and private companies in the follow up of the natural disaster. While the Prime Minister announced an immediate relief fund of INR 500 crore in addition to INR 560 crores allotted to the SDRF and INR 100 crore sanctioned by the Home Minister. This was an intermediate relief with government assuring more relief funds after damages have been successfully analysed.
The Govt. Of Kerala started an online donation website which helped raise INR 1031 crores as on August 31. Different states also came together with a combined relief fund of INR 212 crores.

the county
the county

Corporates joined hand-in-hand with the government and NGOs to setup donations on their platforms and help out with the relief ad rescue operations. Big players like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Flipkart, BigBasket, Airtel Payments Bank and Paytm integrated donation links on their websites and app.

the county
the county

Major Oil companies(BPCL, HPCL, IOCL) of the country also donated a combined sum of INR 25 crore. Star India created a campaign coming together with superstars like Kamal Hasan, Irfan Pathan and Arjun Kapur in a series of TV commercials urging people to donate generously. The campaign gained huge traction all around the country and people came out in large numbers for donations.

the county

While donations have been pouring in from all around the country, the ground work from volunteers and NGOs have touched and saved millions of lives. ‘Goonj’, an NGO has been at the fore front of relief operations with volunteers supplying relief materials collected from all over the country to the worst affected areas. Volunteers have been working tirelessly arranging and transporting these relief materials in addition to helping out in relief operations. Relief material counters have been setup in almost all mojor cities of the country asking people to donate things useful in daily life like utensils, candles, match-boxes, food supplies, etc.

the county

Goonj also partnered up with BigBasket which created a special donation kit worth INR 146 with essential items. Zomato also teamed up with Akshay Patra Foundation to ease the distress of Keralites.

the county
the county

The relief and rescue operations for the Kerala floods have been one of the biggest disaster relief operations in the country’s history. Government, Non-government and private institutions have all come together creating massive awareness programs, digital campaigns and providing relief materials to the state. The selfless community service has moved a lot of people and urged them to donate whole-heartedly.

the county

While the rains have subsided in the region, Kerala is still far from coming back on its feet. The huge loss of lives cannot be countered however a small step from each one of us could prove to be a long way in helping out those in distress and pain. #AllForKerala

The country’s come together to save God’s Own Country

Categories
Ecommerce
Business Lessons from Auto-Anna

Inspiration comes from the most unlikely of sources. Annadurai, a 26 year old autorickshaw driver and more commonly known as the Auto Anna is giving successful corporates a run for their money with his innovative marketing and customer techniques.

A share auto driver who runs in OMR-Thiruvanmiyur area, Chennai, rose to national and international fame with his incredible marketing strategy helping him give three Ted-Talks in the process. Anna earns around INR 2500-3500 per day and ends up spending INR 12000 on newspapers, magazines and other amenities he offers through his auto-rickshaw. Up to date with technology and himself being technology savvy, Auto Anna also keeps an i-pad and a laptop for his customers. His eye-catching auto-rickshaw is Wi-Fi enabled and fitted with a small screen which displays important news clips of the days. Anna saves these clips when he’s back home watching news.

Anna’s customer retention would put big firms to shame with customers, mostly IT professionals waiting hours to take a ride in his auto. He is active on social media handles and has more than 12000 likes on Facebook while also running his own website.

business lesson

Auto Anna rose to overnight national and international fame after his story went viral on Facebook by a group called – ‘Photos That Shook The World’. The post was shared more than 10000 times all around the world opening up unexplored and rewarding paths for Anna. He also featured in a short-film on a prominent YouTube channel – Pocket Films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR-6FfiUraU

The short-film garnered 200000+views with more than 6000 likes. While the love has been over-whelming for Anna, he feels the customers who ride through his rickshaw are gods. It’s because of them that he’s able to take care of himself and he wants to put in the extra effort to give back to his customers in whatever way he can.

business lesson

Anna received more than 2000 calls o the day his story broke out on Facebook and was up all night receiving and acknowledging them.

business lesson

Auto Anna’s strategy and customer relations is a handy lesson for even the biggest of companies who struggle with consumer expectations and retention. Anna who started transforming his regular auto-rickshaw by putting daily newspapers for commuters. He slowly and steadily started modifications by adding magazines, integrating a display and Wi-Fi. To help riders who didn’t have a mobile or laptop, he bought a tablet and soon upgraded to an I-pad.

Anna’s customer loyalty schemes are also innovative. He started a customer relationship contest for regular customers with a quiz of five questions. The winner takes home INR 1000. Similarly, every rider boarding Anna’s auto gets a token. The customer can redeem the tokens for cash, 20 tokens give you INR 250 back, 30 tokens give back INR 500. Anna truly believes in giving back to the community and plans to sponsor the education of at-least ten homeless children in addition to opening an old-age home.

business lesson

Anna’s customer loyalty schemes are also innovative. He started a customer relationship contest for regular customers with a quiz of five questions. The winner takes home INR 1000. Similarly, every rider boarding Anna’s auto gets a token. The customer can redeem the tokens for cash, 20 tokens give you INR 250 back, 30 tokens give back INR 500. Anna truly believes in giving back to the community and plans to sponsor the education of at-least ten homeless children in addition to opening an old-age home.

The success and growth of any business are imperative to innovations and technological advancements and Auto Anna keeps striving to experiment new things to offer his customers. He is presently working on an app which would book auto rides in advance, order food on the way and help build a community of auto-rickshaw drivers.

Anna’s approach to a meagre business of running an auto-rickshaw has already transformed a number of lives and given unforgettable experience to countless commuters every day. He is an inspiration for everyone who have lost heart and run out of ideas in increasing and expanding their businesses. He story helps us understand it’s the little things you do for your consumer that creates a massive difference.

Business Lessons from Auto-Anna

Categories
Case Studies
Landing Page Optimization

Before understanding the importance and impact of landing pages, it is essential to understand what it is and how it works. A landing page is a standalone page created especially for marketing or advertising purposes. A visitor lands up on this page after clicking on a Google Adwords ad or any other click bait. The landing pages are created with a single objective to get the user click the Call-To-Action (CTA). Many people confuse the landing page with the homepage. While homepage is the opening page of any website giving insight about the site containing a number of links, the landing page usually contains only one link (CTA) to take the user to another designated page. Adding a landing page to a website helps drive traffic and acquiring leads and advertises the expertise of the website.

Optimizing the landing page is a long and complicated process but it is extremely essential to Search Engine Optimization (SEM). If done wrong, landing page optimization could have adverse effects on the traffic of the website but a few pointers could boost quality score and incoming traffic like never before:

  • One main Call-To-Action (CTA)

The purpose of a landing page is to get the user to take action. A laser focused landing page with a single CTA button which caters to the expertise and domain of the website converts better. Using benefit-oriented CTA also goes a long way in appealing to users, e.g. using “Get Free Sample” in place of “Download” or “Add to Cart and save 20%” in place of “Buy Now” instantly attracts people and could boost in traffic and actions taken.

  • Benefit-Oriented headline

A recent study showed that benefit oriented headline increases conversion rate by 4.3%. Users are always drawn towards freebies and benefits. The positive effects of the products rubs on the consumers.

  • Understanding Customers

The landing page needs to be in-line with the motivation, needs, desires and frustrations of the customers. The design needs to be user-centric and eye-catching yet simple with only a single CTA.

  • Relevant Content

Content is probably the most crucial part of any page and is more relevant in the case of the landing page. After creating the content, one needs to assure if it successfully answers the relevant customer questions. What is the product about? Does the page provide necessary information? Will the user trust the webpage? Is the time-taking long enough to frustrate a new user? These are vital questions which make or break any website. A lot of websites design with place-holders like Lorem Ipsum in place of real copies and content. Creating the content should be a priority and the design should be in line with the content and not the other way around.

  • Design

The look and feel of the landing page is what attracts a new user in the first place. A visually attractive design which is pleasing on the eye helps get new traffic and marketing through word-of mouth.

Optimizing a landing page is a time taking process which requires a team effort including a graphic designer, content developer and the IT team. There are a number of potential bottlenecks which could disrupt the traffic of the website but if planned and executed right, landing page optimization could do wonders to your website and business.

Landing Page Optimization

Categories
Ecommerce
Flipkart to shut down Ebay India

Ebay.in was one of the first ecommerce giants of the country. It was launched back in 2004. However, it couldn’t hit off the roof with the coming of Amazon and Flipkart; life will come a full circle when Ebay.in closes operations on August 14.

With Walmart’s biggest ever $16 Billion investment for 77% stakes in Indian giants Flipkart in May, minor shareholders like Naspers and eBay have sold their holdings in the company and the announcements are a way to move ahead. eBay had acquired 5.44% ownership of Flipkart back in April 2007 after a cash investment of $500 million and selling Ebay.in. Flipkart had acquired $1.4 billion from eBay, Tencent and Microsoft.

With Walmart’s acquisition bringing a fresh infusion of $1.1 billion, eBay plan to launch a new platform which will focus on cross-border trade. They’ll not be in direct competition with Walmart and Flipkart but Amazon who also do cross-border trading with Amazon Global Products Marketplace.

Meanwhile, Flipkart will be launching its new platform for refurbished goods to replace eBay. Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy conveyed the same to all the employeesin an email.

“Based on our learnings at eBay.in, we have built a brand-new value platform launching with refurbished goods – a large market which is predominantly unorganised. As part of this launch, we will be stopping all customer transactions on eBay.in on 14 August, 2018 and transitioning to the new platform,”

“We will keep evolving and bringing newer formats, categories and features which cater to the needs of our value-conscious middle India. The new platform has a different value proposition compared to Flipkart and will cater to a different target audience. We are committed to investing in this independent brand,” he pointed out.

New investments have also opened up doors for Flipkart who are facing stern competition from Amazon in the e-commerce sector. Spreading into an unorganised furbished goods sector is a bold move which could bring unexpected results. Despite facing curbs from the government who are proposing a bill to mandate the e-commerce industry, investments are pouring in for Flipkart and Amazon who have emerged as the leading players in the modern retail sector and marketplace.

Flipkart to shut down Ebay India

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Ecommerce
Govt. increases export incentives to Rs. 5 lakh/consignment

To boost exports and encourage small scale e-commerce platforms, the government has increased the export incentives from Rs. 25000 per consignment earlier, to Rs. 5 lakh per consignment now for sales taking place through online platforms. The increased incentive will provide major boost to exporters and the relaxed norms is set to benefit handloom products, books, leather products, fashion garments and toys.

The Government of India introduced the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) through the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) in April 2015. It seeks to promote export of notified goods manufactured/ produced in India. MEIS is a major export promotion scheme of GOI implemented by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.Rewards under MEIS are payable as a percentage (2, 3 or 5%) of realized FOB value of covered exports.

The low cap earlier at Rs 25000/ consignment often resulted into mismanagement of export data with exporters opting to categorize the product as a gift since they would have to file a shipping bill and go through customs. A cumbersome task for small scale exporters with low-value shipments. The increased incentives would attract more small and medium scale exporters and the governments expects the change to bring and encourage more number of exports which boosts local handlooms and products.

Govt. increases export incentives to Rs. 5 lakh/consignment

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Ecommerce
Is Cash On Delivery illegal?

Cash on Delivery (CoD) was an instant hit when it was introduced by Flipkart in 2010. Almost every e-commerce giant had to follow and bring in a CoD option despite increased cost of operations. A recent RTI reply from RBI about the authorization of CoD payment collection and disbursement created huge uproar about the legality of CoD.

“Confirm if cash-on-delivery payment collection and disbursement to ecommerce merchants by ecommerce marketplaces such as Flipkart and Amazon (are) covered under the definition of payment system and system provider of the Payments and Settlements Systems Act, 2007, No. 51 of 2007 by acting as intermediaries and system providers. If yes, are these payment systems authorised as per Section 8 of the said Act?” was the query filed in the RTI by Mr. Dharmendra Kumar.

The RBI had the following reply to the RTI: “RBI has not issued any specific instruction in this regard, intermediaries would include all entities that collect monies received from customers for payment to merchants using any electronic/online payment mode, for goods and services availed by them and, subsequently, facilitate the transfer of these monies to the merchants in final settlement of the obligationsof the paying customers.

Now, the Payments and Settlements Act 2007 came into effect in August 2008 to regulate and supervise all the payment systems in India. The PSS Act, 2007 provides for the regulation and supervision of payment systems in India and designates the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as the authority for that purpose and all related matters. The RBI is authorized under the Act to constitute a Committee of its Central Board known as the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems (BPSS), to exercise its powers and perform its functions and discharge its duties under this Act. The Act also provides the legal basis for “netting” and “settlement finality”. This is of great importance, as in India, other than the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system all other payment systems function on a net settlement basis.The Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems Regulation, 2008 deals with the constitution of the Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems (BPSS), a Committee of the Central Board of Directors of the RBI. It also deals with the composition of the BPSS, its powers and functions, exercising of powers on behalf of BPSS, meetings of the BPSS and quorum, the constitution of Sub-Committees/Advisory Committees by BPSS, etc. The BPSS exercises the powers on behalf of the RBI, for regulation and supervision of the payment and settlement systems under the PSS Act, 2007.The Payment and Settlement Systems Regulations, 2008 covers matters like form of application for authorization for commencing/ carrying on a payment system and grant of authorization, payment instructions and determination of standards of payment systems, furnishing of returns/documents/other information, furnishing of accounts and balance sheets by system provider etc.

The RBI has given no clarification on the issue. While CoD conforms to the law of accepting money on someone else’s written behalf, it does leave a grey area under the Payments and Settlements Act 2007. With the government which is keen on bringing a new legislation on e-commerce would also be keeping a keen eye on the regulation of the CoD payment mechanism.

Is Cash On Delivery illegal?

Categories
Ecommerce
Reliance Retail gears up to face Amazon and Flipkart

Reliance Retail, who have recently step into the online sales of smartphones and electronic appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and televisions with the launch of their new online platform. Smart phones and electronics sales which account for 55 to 60 % of the business in e-commerce have been dominated by Amazon and Flipkart. Reliance Digital plans to rival them using their offline store and smaller Jio stores as fulfilment centres for the online orders and.Reliance Retail has now an incredible reach across more than 5,200 towns and cities, with 8,533 stores.

“The commercial operation has just been launched across India. While this is an omnichannel expansion of Reliance Digital, there will be a dedicated focus on making the online operation successful,” an industry executive was quoted as saying by The Economic Times.Reliance has identified four key pillars to achieve its expansion plans and that includes — augmenting geographical reach, innovating newer store concepts and channels, enhancing customer experience and leveraging technology.

Recently, Reliance Retail reported an over three-fold jump in pre-tax profit of Rs 1,069 crore for the first-quarter ended 30 June, 2018. Revenue from RIL’s organised retail segment during last quarter grew over two-fold to Rs 25,890 crore as against Rs 11,571 crore from the last quarter.

It became the first Indian company to enter the world’s top 200 retail chains to cross $10 billion in sales and rapidly continues to expand in new cities.

In late March, it was reported that Reliance Retail were aiming to raise Rs 4,000 crore via a rights issue to fund their expansion plans. The move is widely seen as the company’s attempt to beat competition from global giants Amazon and Walmart. While a fund raise would help them offer deep discounts and expand their online services, how Amazon and Flipkart cope up with a major emerging competitor would be worthwhile to see.

Reliance Retail gears up to face Amazon and Flipkart

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Ecommerce
Time’s up for heavy online discounts?

Have you ever wondered how major gameplayers in the e-commerce industry offer over the top discounts in so many products? This phenomena of providing unrealistic discounts is called “Deep-Discount” which has put companies like Amazon and Walmart-Flipkart in a complex loggerhead with the Rest of India.

The e-commerce market has almost reached to 100 billion dollars and is set to almost double in the coming decade. Indian government has proposed an “India First” policy, a draft which proposes the end of “deep-discounts” from a specific date. Food Deliver sites like Swiggy and Zomato will also be covered in the proposed legislation. The draft has been brought in after numerous grievances from micro, small and medium enterprises of unfair game from e-commerce giants. The legislation has a number of proposals:

-Group Companies of online marketplaces to be barred from influencing prices

-Bulk buys by related party sellers to be banned

-A ‘Sunset Clause’ defining the duration of discounts

-FDI: Restricted inventory based-model for funder/foreign companies

-ED to look into violations

-CCI to overlook competition distorting M&As

-Data to be hosted in India

The Indian law restricts foreign companies from holding inventory although it allows 100% FDI in market place model. The new policy proposes that Indian-owned and Indian controlled online marketplaces shall be able to hold inventory provided the product are 100% domestically manufactured. There is also a plan to instil a Consumer Protection & Grievance Redressal system. The proposal would not please Amazon and Walmart who have invested 5 billion and 16 billion dollars respectively. It will significantly intervene in their business, decision making and slowing down business operations. Local etailers are also in a limbo with the ambiguity of the draft.

The heavy discount mechanisms of these e-commerce giants are complex. The three major e-commerce companies, Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal, all operate as marketplaces since the law doesn’t allow FDI in e-commerce sites selling directly to customers while the same is allowed in a marketplace which links sellers and buyers. A marketplace also provides payment, storage and delivery something which is not possible for a foreign funded e-commerce site. Direct Retail is banned in India and marketplaces are forbidden to exercise control over the price of sellers, including discounts.

Non-regulation of the prices and discounts have impacted small-scale business adversely and the draft will come as blessing in disguise for many who feel e-commerce giants have gained the monopoly of the retail sector. The proposed legislation is set to overhaul the e-commerce industry in India and it would be interesting to see how it impacts both the Small-scale business and heavyweights of the industry.

Time’s up for heavy online discounts?

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Ecommerce
Planning your E-Commerce and SEO migration

Migrating your e-commerce site could be a tricky thing. Migrating a site to a better design, algorithm, theme or platform is done with the expectations of positive impact on growth, engagement and organic hits on the website but it could have negative impacts and the hits might even go down than the number before the migration.

Site Migrations are done to make substantial changes in the website to enhance search engine visibility. These changes could be to the overall code, design, theme, UX or content. There are a lot of misconceptions around the impact of migrating a website. Migration is a huge task with many nuances which if not taken care of, could lead to devastating results after spending a lot of money. Although, if migration is done right, with a strategy and a plan it could reap unprecedented benefits and could increase the business multi-fold.

Migrating to a new website is a process including three phases: Pre-launch, Launch Day and Post Launch. The platform, structural, content and design changes, integration and other technical elements and the testing for vital checklist for the Pre-Launch phase. Most of the work done during a migration is done in the Pre-Launch Phase. There are a number of things which could possibly go wrong. Transferring your content from the old website and adding or modifying it in the new one could lead to missing pages and errors. Lack of SEO-consultation and a slow-responsive domain could also be major pitfalls. Thorough functional and domain testing could yield massive results after the website migration.

The Pre-Launch phase needs to be meticulously planned to ease out the rest of the process. A scope of the changes including the list of URLs on the present website along with the modifications should be prepared and a conducive timeline must be assigned. The redirection map to the new site is often missed out.

A few ways to avoid a migration failure on the launch day are:

  1. Setting Objectives – Setting an objective and growth opportunities is essential. It will help the team strive towards a goal.
  2. Testing and Forecasting: Testing is the most crucial part of a migration. The look, feel and performance of the website is what will drive more consumers and testing helps eradicate related bugs and glitches.

Planning the Launch Day is crucial for a migration. Successful bug-free implementation, marketing and running third party services could boost the expectations. Measuring rankings using tools and monitoring the engagement could help in planning for the coming days. The post-launch monitoring is also crucial if the outcomes are not as expected because it helps identify reasons early. Post-launch marketing is also another major checklist for the Post-Launch phase. More visibility is bound to help in the engagement and buy rates.

Migrating to a new website is an involving process. It needs a lot of time, planning and patience however there’s nothing to be afraid about it. Planning and Identifying present short-falls to your business model could be the ideal way to start. Migration, if done right could escalate your business beyond expectations and might go adversely wrong if not done with precise planning and execution.

Planning your E-Commerce and SEO migration

Categories
Ecommerce
Content Creation

Your website content is the first thing to work on if you seek enhance visibility and engagement. Relevant, up to date, concise and appealing content could bring in new users and help boost business. Content is a broad spectrum that covers everything from keywords, website content, social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) handles, blogs, images, infographics, and videos.

Google is the most commonly used search engine in the world. Terabytes of content data is processed by Google complex search and ranking algorithm every day. Relevant, trustworthy and unique content could help increase website rankings on Google considerably enabling more hits from new visitors.

Content is the first information being displayed to any user about the website and the user experience could, in turn, decide if he’ll revisit the website again, making Content Creation an essential pillar of any successful website. Marketing stats reflect a huge impact of content on business:

  • Companies with 15+ blogs every month get three times more visits than companies publishing four or fewer posts per month.
  • Almost 60% of online sales are result of customer reading a particular blog.
  • SBMs using content marketing get around 126% more leads.
  • Most importantly, content marketing costs 62% less than other marketing options.

Content creation involves a number of steps. A strong and concrete content strategy is the base of any content creation. Content Strategy covers everything from content goals, brand, tone, and promotions. Identifying the target audience should be prioritized and creating personalized content could gain more recurring customers.

At the very base, content creation involves five basic steps: research, ideation, writing, editing, and publishing. While there are a number of Content Management System (CMS) software available in the markets helping huge websites manage their content efficiently.

Social Media has truly revolutionized the content industry. Social media platforms have made it easier for firms to bridge the gap between them and consumers. Engaging with users, sharing innovative content and campaigns are doing wonders to companies all around the globe. Analyzing your social media and website are essential. Content Audits and analysis help in identifying things that might need re-work, promotions or a completely new strategy. Audits help in realizing the content which are working and gaining traction or not.

Content Creation

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Ecommerce
SaaS Metrics – Key to Growth

Software-as-a-service industry has been steadily growing for two decades now. The industry is expected to grow at a rate of $76 billion per year with SaaS IPOs doubling over the last decade. The industry has grown exponentially and is also witnessing fierce competitions in an ever-changing industry. It’s not easy to make and break as a SaaS company. According to a recent study, a software company that grows only at a rate of 20% has a 92% of ceasing operations in the coming future. Even 60% yearly rise could lead to a 50% chance of surpassing $1 billion in revenues.

In such a demanding market and competitive environment, it is important to maintain and study essential metrics. These metrics could help in improved customer satisfaction, increased revenue and better management. The three essential steps to become a successful SaaS Company is to acquire, retain and monetize customers. We’ll discuss about the key metrics derived from these steps to successfully run a Saas company:

  • Revenue:
    Newly founded Saas companies have to bear heavy losses in forming years in lieu of acquiring customers and promoting the product. Customer retention heavily affects the revenue and growth rate and analysing your revenues closely could prove a long way in
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV):
    Any software has a or a subscription in it has a lifetime after the expiration of which the customer is expected to renew his account to avail the services. This is the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). It is the average amount of money the consumer pays the company during the entire engagement. Finding out the ‘average revenue per account’ could also be instrumental in increasing profits.
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC):
    The average cost spent on acquiring new customers is called the Customer Acquiring Customer Cost (CAC). CAC along with the CLV determines if any business is profitable. The number of sales divided by the marketing expenses gives the Customer Acquisition Cost. CAC is one of the most important steps for a new SaaS company.
  • CAC to CLV ratio:
    The CLC to CLV ratio determines the growth of any SaaS firm. It displays the lifetime value of your customers and the total amount spent on acquiring them in one metric. The CLC to CLV ratio helps in identifying successful and unsuccessful campaigns and products.
  • MQL & SQL:
    Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) are the base of the SaaS company as it helps them identify potential buyers. The process is time-taking and could range from few days to years. Thorough grasp of lead’s qualifications could boost the business.
  • Customer Churn
    Tracking losses is vital for any business. The customer churn are the consumers who have cancelled their respective subscriptions. Tracking components and reasons behind customer churns helps sales immensely.

Inculcating Data Science and the SaaS Metric could give wings to your new or struggling software business. Taking care of minor nuances could result into big time profits and save huge capital and effort.

SaaS Metrics – Key to Growth

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Ecommerce
Identifying ideal leads and the world of marketing and sales

Before understanding the complex mechanism of MQL, SQL and how they work it is paramount to understand what a lead is. A lead is essentially a potential consumer who has shown interest in one or other form of promotion. The marketing and sales team are pillars of any organization as they analyze and covert leads into potential buyers. The process of converting a lead to a consumer is a process and often leads to differences between the sales and marketing teams.

Most of the quarrels between sales and marketing revolve around leads. Around 61% of B2B marketers send all their leads to the sales, however only 21 % are qualified. The leads covered by the marketing team are the MQLs(Marketing Qualified Leads) while the leads covered by the sales team are the SQL(Sales Qualified Leads). The marketing team analyses a lead(MQL), if the MQL qualifies as a potential customer, it is forwarded to the sales team as an SQL. While marketing teams are found forwarding irrelevant or dis-interested leads, sales team on the other hand fails to capitalize on a certain lead and tend to ignore around half of the marketing leads.

While there are a number of influencing factors to help speed up the process of transition from an MQL to SQL and eventually a consumer, keeping note of small things could do wonders and bring unexpected boost. The image below shows a few influencing factors and a lead scoring system according to a study from SnapApp:

Lead Scoring is an essential if you want your business to grow. The scoring helps the lead team avoid bothering leads who are not ready to turn into customers yet. It helps in identifying the leads which need attention from the marketing team and helps the sales team identify leads who are ready to buy.

It’s evident that the transition from MQL and SQL is time sensitive. Thorough study and analysis of the buyers or visitors’ journey and qualification cycle could massively help a sales team. Intense auditing and scrutiny of MQLs by the marketing team could also increase efficiency and success rates. Knowledge about the target markets, profiles of existing and potential customers and their behaviours should be updated and analysed regularly. A sync between the sales team and marketing team could lead to better strategy and growth.

Identifying ideal leads and the world of marketing and sales

Categories
Ecommerce
ROI Of Social Media

The return on interest of social media handles is a complex process to evaluate. While audience reach, the number of hits on site or pages, total engagement rate and the conversion rate are the most looked forward and tracked metrics, it is still difficult to co-relate the returns through social media because of a number of factors.

Marketing agency are finding it difficult to evaluate social media returns. Almost 28% of marketing agency suggested they struggled to measure ROI, wile only 17% boasted of accurately quantifying the revenue of social media. There are a number of challenges faced by marketing agencies. Measuring ROIs are in themselves an ardent task and often agencies focus on the number of engagement rate than checking the conversion rates. Publishing relevant content timely is also a huge challenge and often agencies run out of schemes or hit a threshold. Developing strategy and campaigns centred around the theme is the most difficult thing and that is why we see innumerable campaigns failing devastatingly for the lack of message or appeal. Lastly, tying realistic business goals to the social media and actively studying the effects of it on the revenue is para mount and often dreads the marketers.

In a recent study, more than 44% CMOs claimed they had not been able to measure the impacts of social media on their business. While 36% agreed that the there had been positive impact on business but couldn’t quantify it, 20% were successfully able to quantify the impacts of social media on their revenue.

Analysing social media accounts and its effect on the business would not only help save irrelevant money on ads but also help plan relevant content and campaign which is the most essential thing to get a healthy ROI on social media handles. ROI of social media depends on a number of factors and companies need to handle multiple aspects for tireless and effective results.

ROI Of Social Media

Categories
Ecommerce
Top Content Marketing Trends to look out for in 2018

After reading and Experience of last year’s working closely with clients, we have found out that there are two things which very much critical for any Brand to stay on top in 2018

1) Relevant Content Creation as per Customer Persona
2) Mapping or Distributing Content according to Buyer’s Journey

So let’s find it, which are the trends to watch for the year 2018

1) Creation of Niche content

This means if Brands wants to stand out then they have to drill down or have to take deep dive to understand their ideal customers and its behavior. They have to do customer segmentation and deliver the content according to the journey customers are into.

What Brand can do to follow this trend?

So for Exp: If you are targeting Travelers then instead of targeting “Top Travelling Destination” Brand has to be specific on “Top Adventure Vacation for Couples”

Or

A Brand who is into fitness and bodybuilding should explore niche target audience to start with rather than generic. What we suggest by this, instead of targeting Bodybuilding they can identify targets like Bodybuilding for 40+ Dads

2) Adaptation of Voice based search or Content

According to Garner predication, the world is moving to screen less search, recent trends have been seen that younger people have started using voice search on their mobile. It means that your future customers are more likely to use Voice search or Voice Assistant like Google or Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa.

What Brands can do?

Since there is always a difference between the way we speak the way we type, brands have to adapt to natural language search. Instead of focusing on particular keywords, a brand needs to focus on long tail phrases or answering questions the way Human speak to each other.

Few thing a Brand can do

  • Create more relevant content with long and specific phrases
  • While keeping in mind keywords they have to keep word which speaks to naturally
  • Majority of Voice search is from mobile so have to see content presented very on Mobile devices (Mobile Friendly)
  • For Local “near me” searches, brand has to optimize their content as per local language

3) Smaller but relevant content

It was recommended earlier that if your article is long and having more than 3000 words, it’s more likely be featured on search engines. This is all good if your intention is to rank in SERPs, but remember nowadays social is driving more traffic then lengthy content.

People prefer to consume same content via Videos or Visuals rather than reading them on mobile

What Brands can do?

  • Create Infographic
  • Create Videos related to relevant topics, which can be shared via Social Media Channels easily

4) Change of Influence Marketing

Past all research shows that 90% of people trust on a recommendation by individuals over brands. Even Google trends show steady growth on the influencer marketing YoY basis we are not denying that influencer marketing is one the key areas of the Brand which needs to be addressed while they make their marketing strategy.

But we recommend that instead of aiming for volume, a brand needs to identify influence which has common values and target audience. So key aspect needs to be addressed rather then connecting them only for promotion of Brand or product, a brand needs to collaborate with them for a long-term

What Brands can do?

  • Identify Kep influencer based on Product or objective
  • Create a Campaign directed to that Influencer
  • A Brand can create secondly campaign for influencer to drive awareness
  • Regularly track metrics related to awareness, sales, and Engagement

5) Transparency to Customer

Younger Audience is tired of Push Advertising. They want to associate with Brand which has a transparent approach in terms of communication. So For Exp if the Brand is talking about Organic Food then they want to have more information as well as want to see practically brand guidelines related organic living, health or food

What Brands can do?
A Brand can associate or accredited themselves with some government authority for regulations.
Even Brand release certain research or whitepaper, or do events on a line which they want to position themselves. This way customer directly associates with brand

6) Video will continue rise

Rather than reading large content people prefer to consume video on that natural languages, they can associate them very well. All the content which Brands is creating in form of text should be transferred and convey via video.

What Brand Can do?

A Brand can create Youtube channel where they can explain the feature of products or Application of products or Unboxing and Product demonstration can be done. A video has always been a very interactive form of communication on the internet.

Brand can also cover their events or seminar via Live Video on Facebook or Educate Customer by taking Seminars

Even Interactive Question and Answers Sessions also going to be very helpful

7) Creating and Marketing Content Mapping Buyer Persona

Nowadays cost of acquiring a new customer and retaining them is very vital for Brands. CRM play an important role in retaining existing customers. It becomes necessary for a brand to create a content strategy which engages the audience throughout their life cycle if form email or connecting them to Social media or traditional channels.

Here is what brands can do

  • Creating details buyer persona with their Demographic and Psychographic
  • Mapping the Content around customer Journey and communicating with them on each stage Reach, Action Covert, and Engagement. All stages will require different set of content to be created for customers

That’s all for now

Let us know your feedback on above content marketing trends? Which one do you prefer for your Brand? and Why?

Top Content Marketing Trends to look out for in 2018

Categories
Ecommerce
7 Reasons why Indian Brands looking for growth in their E-Commerce business should opt for Shopify Gold

Shopify has launched Shopify Gold in India in 2017, for rapidly growing and enterprise e-commerce websites in mind. These businesses require hands-on support and the ability to handle larger amounts of traffic and transactions to serve enterprise and high-volume customers.

Why we have taken this topic is, as we meet or interact with many brands on a weekly basis and they always ask us why they will opt for Shopify gold as the preferred e-commerce platform against the other platform or even why not they choose from other options which are given by Shopify only at a cheaper rate.

So here are the Seven reasons why a Brand need to Choose Shopify Gold

    1. The Technology:
      The key Benefit of choosing Shopify Gold is the technology they offer to their enterprise customer at Minimal cost considering the large investment brand need to do initially in terms of E-commerce Development, Implementation, Compliances, Hosting, UI / UX followed by Ongoing Maintenance in terms Integration, Database management, Security Patches, Upgrades etc.Imagine there no charge for extra bandwidth, unlimited SKUs, 99.99% uptime, 600,000 orders per minute, and 7000+ CPU Cores. 

      So mainly Brand can focus on their growth strategy and ROI in terms of Conversion optimization, Social or Inbound Marketing

       

    2. Option to Create Multistore:Shopify Gold gives facility to brand to create and maintain their multi e-commerce store.
        • Multistore option to serve their customers in different regions to give personalized product and maintain inventory or product listing for that particular region

       

        • Multi-currency is the need of an hour for High volume businesses to maintain price across region considering costing of Logistics, Payment gateway, customer support etc

       

        • Multi-Language to serve customer in their local languages give personalized touch by delivering content in their local language

       

 

    1. Integration of API with their existing Enterprise software like (SAP/ Microsoft Dynamic CRM etc)Normally Enterprise client always has their existing IT or System and process which generally they won’t like to get disturbed. So always it is advisable to have a solution which seamlessly integrates with their existing Applications. Shopify Gold is exactly suitable for such kind of requirement because, with their Advance API, a brand can integrate their e-commerce store within less turnaround time.

 

    1. Customize UI/UX, Development and Security CertificatesA UI / UX and Developer can give customize experience at the same time checkout experience of their own URL. Which gives them the freedom to build design and solution as per Brand requirement. Apart from this their entire site PCI Compliance with SSL certification with out any additional cost

 

    1. Access to Advance APIs:As Shopify Gold customer, a brand can access their APIs and Shopify Scripts, so their developers can create logic around the solutions they need for the brand for exp. through Discount APIs they can build conditional discounts product wise or Collection wise or Customer wise.

 

  1. Dedicate Merchant Manager:A Shopify Gold customer gets a dedicated account manager 24/7 with priority support who are based in India. So, if a Brand needs any help in terms of any integrations, support or queries. Even there are Indian based Shopify gold partners who can help brands in terms of any customization or integration.
  2. PricingYou will get details of their price from Shopify Gold site or by enquiring them or any partners with customization features but here is what they charge 

    0.4% of monthly sales or Rs. 65000/month,whichever is higher, to a maximum of Rs. 130,000/month.

     

    and Surprise to see if you compare with Shopify plus, which almost half Which is 0.25% of monthly store sales or $2,000/month, whichever is higher, to a maximum of $40,000/month

     

    With same Technology, Features, and Support

     

    Apart from this Shopify India team is constantly working on improving technologies and especially challenges faced by an Indian Brands. So in Near future, we can see many Big or aspiring brands with opt of Shopify gold as their preferred E-commerce platform.

     

    As of now more than 100 Business already using Shopify Gold which includes Brands like Raymonds, Meena Bazaar, Joh and Jacobs etc

     

    All details are available on their Shopify gold website but apart from that if you need any details, Please feel to connect with us.

     

7 Reasons why Indian Brands looking for growth in their E-Commerce business should opt for Shopify Gold

Categories
Ecommerce Shopify
Great traffic but no conversion on your Ecommerce Store

First of all, merchant who go online, need to concentrate on developing Brand. Remember one this give your visitor reason to come back to your site, once they visit to your store they should remember you. Try build story around your Brand and product. A Brand needs to think about what sets you apart from all the rest.

The steps a brand need to follow to market their ecommerce store

    1. Define your buyer persona. This means really narrowing down who your customer is and speaking to them

 

    1. Take some time to learn about your target audience and ideal customer and start working towards marketing to them. Build Content around your Buyer Persona you have created

 

    1. Publish your content on all the channel based on where your TG or Buyer persona comfortable in form of Video/Image/Gif/Text. Once you know more about your audience, you can start focusing on ways to encourage sales that would work for them specifically and show you better returns. Don’t be pushy on selling you product instead try to educate them

 

    1. Analyses/Evaluate your activities and modify strategy based on the learning you have got on from your pat activity (This is a constant process)

 

    1. Once they covert engage them with you brand

 

Apart from above there are other things which needs to be done to get conversion on your ecommerce store.

“You can’t wait for customers to come to you. You have to figure out where they are, go there and drag them back to your store.”

 — Paul Graham, Y-Combinator

    • Always test your product by selling them on different marketplaces like Amazon/Ebay etc. do over all analysis in terms of competition, pricing, Service Quality , Demand vs Supply etc. By doing this you will able to know how your product is accepted by your customer and what modification needs to be done while you will launch and market your store. Ask your friends, family, Collegus and employees why or why not they will buy from you through your website.

 

    • Most of merchants in India we have seen are not concentrating on product image and its content. Please note too many stores out there right now look the same and utilize the same layouts and stock photos. It would also give your prospective customers a lot more confidence in your store when they see the extra polish that comes with having good photos. At end of the they waste their energy on paid marketing or even after generating enough traffic their site lacks good user experience.

 

    • You can also set up Live chat / Cues which are basically automatic messages to your site visitors as they land on your store (a greeting message, or a prompt to check out a limited time sale) or when they are about to leave (prompt them a discount). These are some things you can do to improve customer conversion and engagement.

 

  • As we mentioned above create some stories, testimonials… give it some life even social media will help. It goes without saying that social proof is a core driver of consumer confidence. Establishing a loyal user base that’s willing to provide reviews, ratings, and testimonials takes time and hard work. We will cover topic on Social Media and Ecommerce on another blog
  • Try to give unique service around product you offer for exp: customize product, Subscription offer, Cross promotion etc.

To Summarize above Define and Understanding customer and their behavior is an important part of running any business. If you haven’t already revisited your growth strategies in order to attract more customers and sales, there’s no better time than now

Connect with us for free analysis of your Ecommerce store or discuss with us about your pain points.

Great traffic but no conversion on your Ecommerce Store

Categories
Ecommerce
Best way to create high quality Backlink in SEO

“Natural” Editorial Links that are given naturally by sites and pages that want to link to your content or company. These links require no specific action from the SEO, other than the creation of worthy material (great content) and the ability to create awareness about it.

Manual “Outreach” Link Building The SEO creates these links by emailing bloggers for links, submitting sites to directories, or paying for listings of any kind. The SEO often creates a value proposition by explaining to the link target why creating the link is in their best interest. Examples include filling out forms for submissions to a website award program or convincing a professor that your resource is worthy of inclusion on the public syllabus.

Self-Created, Non-Editorial Hundreds of thousands of websites offer any visitor the opportunity to create links through guest book signings, forum signatures, blog comments, or user profiles. These links offer the lowest value, but can, in the aggregate, still have an impact for some sites. In general, search engines continue to devalue most of these types of links, and have been known to penalize sites that pursue these links aggressively. Today, these types of links are often considered spams and should be pursued with caution.

Best way to create high quality Backlink in SEO

Categories
Ecommerce
How to keep yourself updated on Digital marketing Trends and Techniques

To keep your self Updated on Digital Marketing Techniques you should always follow Latest Trends /Channels / Platform related to industry you are in or if you are working with an agency or freelancer then better to research and update your self on accounts you are handling.

At the same time, you can keep your self-updated by visiting News and updates site related digital marketing like. Most of the sites given below are Indian sites to get better understanding and updates related Digital Marketing in India

Go through current Digital Case studies of Advertising, Media, Marketing, Digital & Agencies. Participate on Active FB and Linked Group/p>

You can follow Sites like Digital marketing strategy advice – Smart Insights Digital Marketing and enroll for latest tools.

Majorly we would recommend you to follow site based on your interest and Topics such as

  • Content marketing trends
  • Big Data
  • Marketing Automation (including CRM, behavioural email marketing and web personalisation)
  • Mobile marketing (Mobile advertising, site development and apps)
  • Social media marketing including Social CRM and Social Customer Care
  • Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) / improving website experiences
  • Internet of Things (IoT) marketing applications
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO or organic search)
  • Wearables
  • Paid search marketing
  • Online PR (including influencer outreach)
  • Communities
  • Display advertising
  • Partnerships including affiliate and co-marketing

 

Succeeding at digital marketing has a lot to do with trying new tools, techniques and strategies. You should not hesitate about experimenting by testing something you haven’t tried yet.

If you’re borrowing another company’s strategy, bear in mind that what worked for them may not necessarily work for you; but at least you will know where you went wrong and improvise accordingly.

As technology changes, it is important that you, too update your knowledge to devise better strategies.

One of the easiest ways of doing so is via continued training. Through persistent learning, you will know of the latest digital marketing possibilities available to you, which you can employ to stay one step ahead of your competitors.

 

How to keep yourself updated on Digital marketing Trends and Techniques

Categories
Ecommerce
What is composer?

What is composer?

Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you. Composer deals with packages or libraries and manages them per-project basis by installi it in directory (e.g Vendor).

You can install it locally or globally depending upon the requirements. By default it doesn’t install anything globally.

Composer is strongly inspired by node’s npm and ruby’s bundler.

Composer

  1. Enables you to declare the libraries you depend on.
  2. Finds out which versions of which packages can and need to be installed, and installs them (meaning it downloads them into your project).

System Requirement

Composer requires PHP 5.3.2+ to run. A few sensitive php settings and compile flags are also required, but when using the installer you will be warned about any incompatibilities.

To install packages from sources instead of simple zip archives, you will need git, svn, fossil or hg depending on how the package is version-controlled.

Composer is multi-platform and run equally well on Windows, Linux and OSX.

Installation Procedure

Installing composer on Linux/MacOs

Most PHP developers use either their Macs or Linux-based operating systems for development, making this section relevant to the majority of readers. The process is very similar on both OS. You have to run the same commands on your system’s terminal in order to get Composer.

There are two options for Linux/Mac users when installing Composer:

Local Installation

Not the most common option, but you can choose to install Composer locally. This means that your operating system will not be able to run Composer from anywhere; you will have to specify the path from where it is installed. To do this, follow these steps:

  • Run the following commands
php -r “copy(‘https://getcomposer.org/installer’, ‘composer-setup.php’);”
php -r “if (hash_file(‘SHA384’, ‘composer-setup.php’) === ‘669656bab3166a7aff8a7506b8cb2d1c292f042046c5a994c43155c0be6190fa0355160742ab2e1c88d40d5be66
0b410’)
{ echo ‘Installer verified’; }
else { echo ‘Installer corrupt’; unlink(‘composer-setup.php’); } echo PHP_EOL;”

The first command will grab the Composer installer as a PHAR (PHP Archive) file, while the second ensures that the installer is free from any errors or corruption.After executing these commands, you will have the latest build of Composer’s installer on your drive.

  • Install composer via command

php composer-setup.php –install-dir=bin –filename=composer

You can change the installation directory and filename through the –install-dir and –filename parameters. Here you can see that the directory has been named bin, and the executable is installed by the name composer.

Now that you’ve installed Composer, you can run it by typing the following command:

php bin/composer

Global Installation

After the local installation, we recommend making Composer accessible globally. This will ensure that Composer can be executed from anywhere on your system, regardless of the path. We do this by adding Composer to your PATH variable.

To do this, you have to:

  • Follow the instructions given in Local Installation.
  • Run the following command afterwards.

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

  • Now you can boot Composer independent of your current path in the terminal.
  • To run composer, execute the command.

composer

What is composer?

Categories
Technology
Why Shopify is an Ideal platform for Indian Ecommerce Start-ups

Deciding tо build an оnlinе store iѕ a great dесiѕiоn and a ѕоlid buѕinеѕѕ model. Onсе уоu’vе dесidеd on a рrоduсt tо sell, your nеxt big decision is сhооѕing a grеаt e-commerce website tеmрlаtе in India and the rest of thw world. Shорifу оffеrѕ оnе оf the bеѕt е-соmmеrсе website tеmрlаtеѕ and рlаtfоrmѕ when уоu tаkе рriсing, template options, style, аnd еаѕе-оf-uѕе intо соnѕidеrаtiоn.

Features аnd Benefits оf Using Shopify fоr уоur E-Cоmmеrсе Stоrе

Free Triаl:
You can trу it frее fоr 14 days. Tаkе advantage of thiѕ оffеr bу еxрlоring thе many e-commerce website tеmрlаtеѕ they have tо сhооѕе from. Lооk undеr thе hood and diѕсоvеr how еаѕу it is tо get уоur оnlinе store uр and running fаѕt.

50 eCоmmеrсе Templates / Store Frоntѕ tо Chооѕе Frоm:
Shорifу hаѕ 50 fantastic themes / tеmрlаtе ѕtуlеѕ tо сhооѕе from. Yоu саn аlѕо easily customize аnу thеmе or template уоu gеt tо еnѕurе уоu gеt thе рrесiѕе look аnd feel you wаnt fоr уоur buѕinеѕѕ.

No Cоntrасt Rеԛuirеd:
Whеn уоu uѕе Shopify уоu dоn’t need to соmmit to аnу durаtiоn. You рау mоnth-tо-mоnth. I don’t need tо tell уоu hоw аdvаntаgеоuѕ thiѕ iѕ. Aftеr all, when you’re ѕtаrting uр – the lаѕt thing you want to dо is gеt committed tо long-term еxреnѕеѕ.

Nо Computer Coding knоwlеdgе Needed:
Yоu dоn’t nееd tо knоw hоw tо build wеbѕitеѕ to set up a Shорifу е-соmmеrсе ѕtоrе. Shорifу mаkеѕ it ѕuреr easy to сhооѕе аnd set uр any of itѕ 50 templates ѕimрlу bу сliсking buttons.

Pаymеnt Prосеѕѕing:
Shорifу makes it ѕuреr easy tо integrate with a сrеdit card gateway аnd/оr Pаураl. If you ѕеll digitаl рrоduсtѕ – nо problem – you саn deliver them thrоugh аn integrated арр inсludеd with your Shорifу ѕubѕсriрtiоn.

Uѕе Yоur Own Dоmаin:
I саn’t stress thе imроrtаnсе of building your ѕtоrе on your оwn domain. Yes, уоu can use a Shорifу dоmаin – but fоr thе long-term it iѕ much, much bеttеr tо ѕtаrt building уоur store on уоur оwn dоmаin. Shорifу mаkеѕ it еаѕу tо build an е-соmmеrсе ѕtоrе оn уоur оwn dоmаin.

Whу uѕе your оwn domain? Bесаuѕе if you start gеtting linkѕ tо your store (grеаt fоr search еnginе rankings аnd highlу rесоmmеndеd), then if уоu switch dоmаinѕ – thоѕе linkѕ you get tо a Shорifу dоmаin are wasted. Stаrt уоur buѕinеѕѕ оn thе right fооt bу invеѕting the $10 it costs tо get уоur own domain.

Lоw Mоnthlу Cоѕt:
Onсе уоu dесidе tо uѕе Shopify, it оnlу соѕtѕ $29 реr mоnth fоr a bаѕiс рlаn. Yоu саn ѕеll up tо 100 SKUs with this рlаn, which in mу view iѕ a tremendous оffеring. There is nо setup fее еithеr. If you еvеr need tо upgrade your рlаn, thаt’ѕ vеrу еаѕу to dо. Shорifу = flexibility.

In аdditiоn, however, you аlѕо pay a 2.0 реrсеnt trаnѕасtiоn fее as раrt оf уоur соѕt (when you uрgrаdе рlаnѕ, the trаnѕасtiоn реrсеntаgе lowers). This allows Shорifу to charge low mоnthlу fixed cost rаtеѕ. Being able to limit fixеd costs аnd hаvе a vаriаblе cost орtiоn (i.е. costs dirесtlу linkеd to уоur sales) iѕ a trеmеndоuѕ fеаturе and аdvаntаgе аѕ you gеt уоur оnlinе buѕinеѕѕ оff the ground.

SSL Checkout:
Yоu dеfinitеlу wаnt to оffеr уоur сuѕtоmеrѕ ѕесurе ѕhоррing. With all оf Shорifу’ѕ е-соmmеrсе website templates and рlаnѕ you automatically get tо оffеr ѕесurе shopping for уоur сuѕtоmеrѕ with thе induѕtrу standard 128 bit SSL еnсrурtiоn.

Bаndwidth: Unlimitеd.
Thiѕ mеаnѕ if you gеt a flood оf visitors your site won’t ѕhut down. Obviously this iѕ critical tо running a ѕuссеѕѕful online е-соmmеrсе ѕtоrе.

Diѕсоunt Cоdеѕ for Your Cuѕtоmеrѕ:
Yоu hаvе tо upgrade tо a $79 / mоnthlу plan in оrdеr to оffеr соuроn соdеѕ. If уоu’rе just ѕtаrting, thiѕ isn’t necessary. Once you ѕtаrt gеnеrаting ѕаlеѕ – then уоu’rе in a position to mоnitоr уоur ѕаlеѕ аnd then decide if coupon соdеѕ can help build уоur buѕinеѕѕ.

Automatic Back Ups:
Shopify bасkѕ up уоur ѕtоrе ѕо you dоn’t hаvе to be concerned аbоut lоѕing any data.

Add a Shорifу E-Commerce Tеmрlаtе tо Yоur Existing Website:
If уоu аlrеаdу hаvе a blоg оr website and wiѕh tо аdd a ѕtоrе – it is no problem with Shорifу. Yоu ѕimрlу еѕtаbliѕh your Shорifу ѕtоrе оn a ѕubdоmаin (ѕubdоmаinѕ cost nоthing tо ѕеtuр).

Customer аnd Tесhniсаl Suрроrt:
Yоu саn contact Shорifу for hеlр, uѕе thеir Shopify fоrumѕ, аnd сhесk оut dеtаilеd tutоriаlѕ in the Shорifу Hеlр Wiki. Yоu wоn’t bе stranded tо ѕtrugglе.

Drор shipping Intеgrаtiоn аnd Pаrtnеrѕ:
If you dоn’t wаnt tо pack аnd ѕhiр your orders you саn uѕе a partner drор ѕhiрреr ѕuсh аѕ Fulfillmеnt bу Amаzоn, Shiрwirе, аnd Webgistix.

Availablity of Shopify Experts

If you think of any Solutions related to Shopify in term of set up, support or customise your e-commerce store, you will get a lot of option available from Shopify Expert Directory.

Why Shopify is an Ideal platform for Indian Ecommerce Start-ups

Categories
Ecommerce Shopify
Snapchat Influencer Marketing

Social mеdiа mаrkеting hаѕ bесоmе a hugе ѕоurсе of traffic for mоdеrn соmраniеѕ, раrtiсulаrlу those tаrgеting the уоungеr demographic. It’s rаrе to find a ѕuссеѕѕful соmраnу thаt doesn’t engage with Facebook, Twittеr, and other ѕосiаl mеdiа рlаtfоrmѕ. But оnе рlаtfоrm that isn’t typically viеwеd frоm a mаrkеting perspective iѕ Snарсhаt, thе social mеdiа арр thаt allows uѕеrѕ tо ѕеnd limitеd-viеwing-timе, self-destructing vidео and рiсturе mеѕѕаgеѕ.

It might not ѕееm likе аn idеаl platform fоr marketing, but the ѕtаtiѕtiсѕ might ѕurрriѕе уоu: Sumрtо, a соmраnу fосuѕеd оn mаrkеting tо соllеgе-аgе individuаlѕ, found thаt 73% of соllеgе ѕtudеntѕ wоuld ореn a Snapchat frоm a familiar brаnd, and 45% wоuld ореn оnе frоm an unfаmiliаr brand. The арр hаd 30 milliоn users аѕ of Dесеmbеr, hаd ѕurраѕѕеd the number оf uѕеrѕ оn Inѕtаgrаm in thе US аlоnе, and has grоwing uѕаgе abroad. Thе picture messages dо diѕарреаr as soon as a user viеwѕ thеm, but thеrе are still ѕоmе intеrеѕting, аnd novel, marketing possibilities.

The most intеrеѕting thing аbоut Snарсhаt is thе immеdiасу of thе еxреriеnсе. Whilе thеrе аrе workarounds tо ѕаvе thе imаgеѕ, thеrе’ѕ ѕtill a timе limit оn hоw lоng it will bе оn thе app. Aѕ a marketer, уоu can add a ѕеnѕе оf urgеnсу. Trу Snарсhаtting ѕоmе limited-time discount соdеѕ, fоr еxаmрlе. Kеерing in mind thаt the рiсturеѕ саn оnlу bе ѕhоwn fоr uр to ten ѕесоndѕ, keep thе соdе ѕhоrt and еаѕу to rеmеmbеr. Kеу tо thiѕ ѕtrаtеgу, thоugh, is giving a short dеаdlinе fоr using the codes: a fеw hours, оr a dау аt mоѕt. That wау, uѕеrѕ will know thаt thеу hаvе to open mеѕѕаgеѕ from you ѕhоrtlу after they get them to аvоid missing thе goodies.

Keep in mind thаt mаnу uѕеrѕ uѕе Snарсhаt fоr itѕ high entertainment factor, ѕо kеер соntеnt аѕ funny, ԛuirkу, оr surprising аѕ уоu can tо kеер users’ аttеntiоn on your Snaps. Snарсhаt itself саn mаkе thаt еаѕiеr, аllоwing уоu inсludе сарtiоnѕ аnd еvеn draw on thе рiсturе in different colors.

An еxаmрlе of a соmраnу that uѕеd Snарсhаt vеrу well wаѕ 16 Handles, a frоzеn yogurt сhаin. Thе соmраnу сrеаtеd аn account аnd advertised аn оffеr for сuѕtоmеrѕ to ѕеnd a Snарсhаt оf thеmѕеlvеѕ аt 16 Hаndlеѕ, and thеу wоuld thеn get a Snар оf a соuроn соdе thеу соuld оnlу use whilе the Snарсhаt was on thе app: thеу соuldn’t ореn it until thеу went tо рау. To аdd tо thе fun, the соmраnу sent diffеrеnt соuроnѕ tо diffеrеnt uѕеrѕ: 16% оff, 50% оff, and 100% оff, so they didn’t know whаt thеу wоuld gеt until thеу used thе coupon.

Thе takeaways here аrе uѕing thе Stоrу рlаtfоrm fоr lоngеr mеѕѕаgеѕ and, аgаin, giving an incentive for ореning уоur Snapchats: it might be behind-the-scenes infо inѕtеаd оf a diѕсоunt. Thiѕ соuld take thе form of a quick tоur of аn imроrtаnt part оf thе buѕinеѕѕ, a ѕhоut-оut frоm someone (Snарсhаt vidеоѕ аrе sound enabled), or just pictures of fun thingѕ related tо уоur buѕinеѕѕ that thе рubliс wouldn’t see оthеrwiѕе.

Anоthеr wау to uѕе Snapchat iѕ giveaways. Whеn уоu’rе firѕt launching уоur Snарсhаt, уоu wаnt tо gеt реорlе tо add уоu on the app. Onе way to dо thiѕ iѕ to give tickets to a еvеnt аwау, fоr еxаmрlе. Advertise the givеаwау on уоur site аnd оthеr ѕосiаl media, telling аnуоnе whо wants tо enter thе givеаwау tо аdd уоur business оn Snapchat and ѕеnd уоu a Snapchat with thеir uѕеrnаmе аnd a hаѕhtаg уоu determine to rерrеѕеnt уоur соmраnу. Thеn, thеу hаvе tо get fivе of thеir friеndѕ tо аdd уоur buѕinеѕѕ аnd Snapchat уоu аn imаgе with the ѕаmе hаѕhtаg аnd thе uѕеrnаmе оf the friеnd thеу’rе helping еntеr. Thiѕ both hеlрѕ уоu gain nеw Snарсhаt соnnесtiоnѕ аnd disseminate a hаѕhtаg rерrеѕеnting уоur business tо uѕеrѕ whо might nеvеr hаvе ѕееn it bеfоrе.

Thе benefit iѕ thаt уоur offers wоn’t bе buriеd undеr a flood of other similar оffеrѕ, and уоu can rеар thе rеwаrdѕ. Kеер in mind thаt thе main dеmоgrарhiс аt thiѕ роint iѕ teenagers аnd 20-ѕоmеthingѕ, so уоur аdvеrtiѕеmеntѕ will hаvе to be сurаtеd ассоrdinglу.

Snapchat Influencer Marketing

Categories
Ecommerce
What is on-page SEO

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals. For those new to on-page SEO, highly recommend reading Rand Fishkin’s A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO. On-page SEO has changed over the years, so it’s important to keep up with the latest practices. Below are the latest post about on-page SEO from the Moz Blog, and we chosen our favorite resources to help you along your journey.

Check out the link Given on On Page SEO

https://moz.com/blog/on-page-topic-seo

What is on-page SEO

Categories
Ecommerce
How to Boost Ecommerce Sales on shopify

The best thing is to check out Shopify’s marketing guide called 50 Ways to Make Your First Sale – it is full of tips and marketing ideas to Boost your store.

Apart from that i would recommend

  • Build Content Strategy based on your Customer Persona (Target Audience)
  • SEO and Social Media always gives long term return and its worth investing if its targeted very well
  • Some of the Marketing Apps you can use form Shopify App store for example Loyalty, Reward , Instagram follower app etc
  • Even you check with Kit, lot merchant uses very well you can check out their videos and functionalities. Kit can now create Dynamic Product Ads that retarget shoppers on Facebook who left your site without purchasing. You can find a step-by-step guide here on how to use Kit’s retargeting features and I would definitely recommend setting this up for increasing your sales.

How to Boost Ecommerce Sales on shopify

Categories
Ecommerce Shopify
SOSTAC Model of Marketing planning

Knowing where to start can be the toughest part when creating a digital marketing plan or a wider-scope marketing plan for the first time. By using PR Smiths’ SOSTAC® model you will have a clear structure that makes it quicker and easier to create the plan

So This is how it gets structured (SOSTAC)

SOSTAC

  • 1. Situation Analysis
  • 2. Objectives
  • 3. Strategy
  • 4. Tactics
  • 5. Actions
  • 6. Control

Now once you structured your Digital Marketing Plan you also need to Plan Framework for Digital Marketing Practices which is critical to develop customized, agile, and strategic approach to your business’ unique needs. We can call it RACE.

1. REACH

2. ACT

3. COVERT

4. ENGAGE

SOSTAC Model of Marketing planning

Categories
Ecommerce
Automation and its impact of Digital Marketing Job

I would like to drive home a few points for your

  1. Its is now too late to be even worried about this

    2. Automation, especially in Digital Marketing, has been around for longer than you think. I think since its inception, we digital marketers are trying to automate things as much as we can so that we can focus on bigger things and not waste our time doing menial jobs. There are tons of bots out there that automate pretty much everything.

    I can easily say that the guys who were into DM back in the day are pioneers in terms of online automation.

    But i think there is hope.

  2. Your biggest asset is your randomness

    3. Mainly a large part of the digital marketing workflow revolves around creativity and evoking emotions through human connections.

    At the end of the day artificial intelligence is, after all, artificial.

    I am pretty confident that a robot will not be able to write the way I have written this, let alone an amazing copy for your FB Ad.

    Of course, it might be able to automate it and churn out multiple “templates” by analyzing copies across the web. But then again, this can turn out to be counter-productive for the bot cause then it is levelling the playing field again since pretty much every copy out there will pretty much have the same essence to it.

    This brings me to my third point.

  3. ”Handmade” sells

    4. You probably know, Bentley still stitches their upholstery with their hands.

    It always been perceived value of something that is hand made is far more than for something that is automated. So Special Automation o DM will not leave that kind of personal impact in comparison with human touch

    The biggest advantage you have as a human is that you are inconsistent, sporadic and random. And this is what makes you unique and stand apart.

  4. Career in Digital ? More then a job its a SKILL.

    5. Once you have this skill, you can apply it whenever and wherever and make a living off it.

    You can be a Youtube, Influencer, consultant, Copywriter, Visualizer, Strategist…. The possibilities are endless.

    Just to make you more feel more better, a recent study conducted by McKinsey, only 13% of your job can be done by a robot and a marketing job is 85% safer than other jobs.

    Main thing is Continuously invest in ourselves and always be innovating.

    The way I see automation/AI in Digital Marketing, is that it is creative destruction. It is making way for something bigger. New jobs will and are created for which new skills are required.

    I still remember my school teachers telling me that computers will take away all your jobs and it will be very difficult to get ourselves a job. And what has happened?

    Computers are Internet has helped humanity take a leap into the future. I have a feeling the same will happen with Automation/AI.

Automation and its impact of Digital Marketing Job

Categories
Ecommerce Technology
Tools we love & use to monitor our SEO progress

23rd September

There are many tools which can be used SEO Campaign but as of now use below tools

SEO MOZ

If you’re looking for a truly all-in-one solution, Moz Pro is a good option. It includes robust analytics that help you keep track of all things search, social media, and content. It also has research tools that allow you to analyze your competitors through link profiles, brand mentions, and more. Finally, Moz Pro provides insights for how to better optimize your site. It’s on the pricey side but all in all, a well put together collection of tools

Wordracker

Do you need to figure out what keywords would be the best to optimize for on your latest website? Then Word-tracker is a tool you need to know about. It helps you pinpoint the best performing keywords in your niche within minutes after starting a basic search. Often, it helps you find keywords that are doing well without a ton of competition. And as any SEO knows, that’s the most coveted thing you can come across

Google Analytics

Where would any of us be without Google Analytics? Seriously, this free tool is something we come back to time and time again to track website traffic, mobile app data, conversions and more, all within one convenient dashboard. And now with mobile versions available for iOS and Android, it’s a tool you can take with you anywhere to impress any client

BuzzStream

BuzzStream is a really nice link building tool that makes it pretty straightforward to automate the process of researching link prospects so you can spend more of your time reaching out to them and building relationships. It also comes equipped with PR and social media tools for better managing relationships with industry influencers on social. It keeps your contacts organized and readily accessible at all times, too.

Tools we love & use to monitor our SEO progress

Categories
Ecommerce Technology
Simple and effective workflow for building and maintaining Shopify themes

Today one of our team member (Ms Runali Patil, Shopify Developer Expert) shared a link on Shopify Theme Development Workflow. We found it very useful for anyone who want to develop theme on Shopify Platform.

Shopify Theme Development is little bit different then developing themes on WordPress. Shopify you do not run a local server instance or database because you don’t have to worry as, Shopify made a choice to reduce complexity by hosting and guaranteeing the quality of the data model. So, you don’t have to worry about ever updating your server. And Instead of that, you work locally and use a syncing utility to push your changes to the server instantly, where you can view them. If you are comfortable with the command-line, I highly recommend the shopify theme gem.

A typical workflow for a single feature branch:

 

    1. Pull from master and checkout a new branch

 

 

    1. Log into Shopify store admin

 

 

    1. Duplicate the published theme

 

 

    1. Rename the duplicated theme to the name of your branch

 

 

    1. Click “Customize Theme” of your new branch theme

 

 

    1. Note the theme ID in the URL (example: /admin/themes/9542224/settings)

 

 

    1. Edit the theme_id in config.yml to point to your branched theme

 

 

    1. theme watch and do your work

 

 

    1. Preview your work by navigating to that theme in Shopify admin and clicking preview

 

 

    1. Pull Request

 

 

    1. Rebase onto master, push to master repo

 

 

    1. Delete your branch (local and server)

 

 

    1. Delete your branched theme in Shopify Admin

 

You can also check this Video on Shopify Theme Development Workflow


This workflow makes use of the command line. It is not anything too intensive, but being comfortable with common commands will help. Firstly, You need to install Theme kit, it is cross platform command line tool for Shopify Theme Development.

Other then that you also check out couple of more resource on related to Shopify Theme Development, Which give you an insights from the Basic

https://robots.thoughtbot.com/shopify-theme-development

https://help.shopify.com/themes/customization

if you have any feedback or queries reach out us on

Twitter

If you are looking for any Shopify Theme Development reach out to us on shopify.binaryic.com

Simple and effective workflow for building and maintaining Shopify themes

Categories
Ecommerce Shopify
How to take advantage of the booming Ecommerce markets across the globe

Ecommerce markets across the globe are buzzing with a lot of profitable returns and finding out new innovations to overcome the hurdles. Online retail is growing amazingly and hence the predictions are up that it will further keep growing at the rate of 8 -12 percent every year. The estimated sale to reach by the end of the year is expected to be between $427 and $443 billion as per the reports by National Retail Federation. Online retailing has taken a new high by focusing on efficient automation, seamless branding and giving excellent customer service. Let us discuss few of the strategies that one can keep in mind to make the best of the booming ecommerce business globally:

Brand Building

Marketers follow varied procedures and take steps to improve the reputation of their companies. Brand building is one of the most crucial parts to build customer loyalty. Whatever call to action plans they are contemplating to take, customer communications is the key and every marketer should include it in their strategy model. Building brand awareness and hence getting recognition are important pre-requisites for any brand growth; it also helps in gaining new customers and gets conversions for existing customers.

Automation

Automation is a must in today’s hi-technology world since with Ecommerce order fulfillment is an important priority hence to keep up pace, one has to have processes automated for example having automated shipping software, order management and shipping. This will reduce many work hours and reduce labor costs too. Repetitive tasks are completed before time since automation makes it faster and quicker. Many organizations are already using marketing automation strategies that will help them deliver and process faster. Savvy retailers are already using automated software systems in their business and are truly getting much benefit from the same.

Customer Service

Ecommerce means online business; brands will readily loose the charm if they do not stay up to the expectations of their consumers. A Great customer experience helps the users to stay loyal to the brand and also helps in building trust and healthy business relationships. Online retailers need to state clearly their returns policy and any other bigger policy that is related to the product. This makes it easier for consumer to reach out to brands and have smoother interactions post the sales cycle.

Online retail shopping is going to grow in the coming decade; hence it is of prime importance for brands to make themselves reachable to the people without any disturbances. Consumers get comfortable if the policies are transparent; they go for repeat purchases if there are customer-friendly returns policies and processes.

How to take advantage of the booming Ecommerce markets across the globe

Categories
Ecommerce
4 ways on How to Optimize YouTube for Ecommerce Marketing and Business growth

Over the last one decade, there has been a steady increase in the amount of Video content that is shared online. May it be Facebook or YouTube? YouTube is today the most used video sharing service and it has incredibly changed the way people ever looked at things. People love watching videos rather than someone going through boring paragraphs one after the other. Videos are the easiest medium for marketing today and its every marketer’s favorite online tool. Although videos are growing on every network and success rates are also too high, it is worth noting, marketing videos are not an easy wavy tasks, as it may seem. It takes a lot of effort, determination and understanding what customers expect from the brand. Start Video Marketing for your Business today by following proper optimization methods.

The broadband Internet usage has grown stupendously and it is now widely accessible across the world. The growth of video content is inevitable and still growing at rapid speed. Major Internet users today rely on videos as a means to understand things that wouldn’t otherwise have been understood by them. Here are some of the top methods that help to optimize YouTube Videos online and helps to boost your marketing efforts:

  1. Relevant Content: Every word the company markets relays some message from the brand to the final consumer. So content is an important source where customer gains attention towards the brand. Forming video content is highly challenging, as it requires right use of words, picture objects that give the right message to the audience. If the video is very appealing for the users, they will start instantly sharing the video online. Social proof is a powerful tool that helps other users to rely on the brand because people rely more on others reviews before buying the product.

  2. Technicalities: There are lots of things involved to help reach your content to the final consumers. First of all, you need to start with basics on how to start a YouTube channel and understand technical aspects of it. First thing to start is to have a channel name; it should be self-explanatory, catchy, and easy to remember. Users should be able to find your channel easily for rapid publicity you should put links on your website and any prominent place you feel will catch users attention.

  3. Optimization: Along with putting excellent content, it is highly important to optimize it so that the users can easily find it. For this you need to make use of keywords and title words that people find on the web. Do not make it too much to irritate the users for the same.

  4. Collaboration with the Industry – For a brand to raise itself up to already where the industry leaders are, there needs to be come kind of collaboration. Industry influencers are good people to start with, once you collaborate with them with smallest of means; it makes a lot of difference to your business beginnings.

YouTube is an important marketing tool for your business. The research states that video content are shared more as compared to textual content. Internet traffic is thriving on video content as the most looked after medium online and is further slated to increase more.

4 ways on How to Optimize YouTube for Ecommerce Marketing and Business growth

Categories
Ecommerce
Improving SEO by Detecting and Correcting Duplicate Content Pages

The main concern that any web retailer ever faces is the fear of Duplicate Content. For raising organic traffic to any website, Duplicate content is one of the biggest enemies since Google rankings are based purely on Original Content created. Many sites copy content from other sites that is no good for their online business growth as they can penalized and also taken off the rankings for indefinite period. If you are looking forward to remove duplicate content from your website than you should do quickly since it requires few technical changes. In a matter of few weeks, you can see your website is fairing better and has got improved rankings. Removing duplicate content is not just about removing penalties but helps for building the links. Links are a valuable resource for better SEO performance.

The given below is an example of Diluted Links because of Duplicate Content. The same content when searched by several URLs dilutes the online reputation. The image shows three different pages of the same product. When searched by users, search engines scans through each page checking the popularity of the pages and how often the users have visited it. They consider overall quality and quantity from third party sites as the kind of endorsements. Search engines use the links to prioritize how far they search, what is the ranking, what is indexation, how much they rank and how higher they rank.

Google

Source: Google

The main page reputation is hampered because the other pages receive some reputation online because they are having the same content. They may even have same set of keywords that are searched. By consolidation of the duplicates, we increase links to main page and hence boost the reputation.

Now, the main question is HOW does one Detect Duplicate Content. This is a very simple step by which you will know whether your site reputation is hampered or not. To determine, type in Google – yoursitename.com and you will see the list of sites listed having duplicate content.

To determine if your site has duplicate content, type in Google site:yoursitename.com, and check how many pages are listed. Usually the products on your site make up the pages that are listed on search engines and if it shows bulk pages with given keywords it shows that it has duplicate content. XML sitemaps are comprehensive hence Google search console could be used to compare number of pages indexed in XML sitemaps as opposed to the number of total indexed pages in your Index status.

Goole_1

Blocking duplicate pages by making use of robots.txt, the duplicate pages are still able to accumulate links and it doesn’t hamper their page reputation. It’s basically an outdated technique that does not consolidate reputation of duplicate links in canonical pages.

RewriteEngine On – it will help enable Rewrite capacities

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on – the command helps to make sure the connection is not already HTTPS

RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://www.webstore.com/$1 [R=301,L]

website

This is done to check the connection whether it is already HTTPS or not.

HTTPS

The rule is applied to address rare IP duplication where site is available through the IP address.

RewriteEngine On – helps to rewrite the capabilities

%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f – This command makes sure that slashes are not added to the files. i.e., /index.html/ would be incorrect.

OUTPUT

This rules helps to add missing trail slashes. The given below helps to remove them:

Webstore

This is perhaps one of the most common duplicate file cases, it is the director index file. We have to remove the directories index.php and .NET systems to avoid the duplication.

NET

In the above example, one can note that the product IDs are same for both the URLs. The canonical version and the other one is the duplicate. Because of this, one can use single rule to map all product pages. The product IDs are not same and new URLs don’t use same IDs, you will require one-to-one mappings. The available tools online helps to map and rewrite the products.

Improving SEO by Detecting and Correcting Duplicate Content Pages

Categories
Ecommerce Technology
Understanding HTTP Codes for your Ecommerce Business

HTTP codes are important elements that inform browser the address to target a webpage or a resource. When the user clicks a link, it is asking the web server for the page that it is linked to. The resulting display with the status code of 200 means that the page was found successfully. There are several HTTP status codes that are used for different files used. They are used on webpage image, CSS Stylesheet, Javascript, web pages, etc.

Status

The above is an example of the home page of Practical Ecommerce that shows 200 as the status code that returned 83 times. The common status codes are of significance to all web developers. All of them may be not looking for the same but to recognize an error page 500 instead of redirect 301 is a talent, developer should know. This is typically useful also for the non-developers to be aware of their status codes. Codes are basically the language through which the whole web works so it is highly important to be fluent to be able to understand the store functions. It is also important if the store use or consumes or interacts with an API. HTTP status codes are the switchboards for an API.

HTTP Status Codes

Status Code groups and the Codes within the group are important for an Ecommerce site.

Items in progress – 100 Group

Successful responses – 200 Group

Redirect – 300 Group

Browser errors – 400 Group

Server errors – 500 Group

The above group helps to identify the general status codes even without knowing the exact code. 403 errors would let know that it was an URL related and a 511 would be related to the server.

100 Group – These are rarely used outside the data streaming so kindly ignore 100 group status codes.

200 Group – it is common generic 200 OK responses, which means 200 OK is fully accepted and successfully implemented with no problems.

201 Created (API) means something was created.

204 No Content (API) helps the server to process request but nothing to show.

300 Group – consists of two common redirect responses of 301 and 302.

301 Moved permanently, it means, the browser should use different URL it actually includes a new URL. When the browser gets the code, it opens new redirected URL from the server.

304 Found is a temporary redirect, its function is same as 301. 304 Not modified states that the browser has latest version of URL and it should be using that version. This often commonly happen with caching to speed up repeat views of the page or a file.

400 Group – These are the Client Errors, it includes half of the error codes, 400 group error represents to the client or a browser.

400 Bad Request shows it is a generic error when the browser requested wrong information; there are also specific error codes.

401 Unauthorized (API), it happens when the browser isn’t authorized to use the page. It helps protect private information.

403 Forbidden (API), it is similar to 401 Unauthorized error. The only difference here is 403 error is logged in correctly but lacks permission for access to something.

404 Not Found means the server cannot find any URL.

405 Method Not Allowed (API) – It is a common error with API Development, it usually occurs when HTTP is incorrectly used such as the form trying to send the data to a URL.

429 Too Many Requests (API) – Some APIs limit other APIs in the way it can be used. When it is used too quickly, the error is returned to let know that you have reach the limit.

500 Group is meant for the Server Errors. There are not many of these and they are not generic and 500 Error is common.

500 Internal Server Error shows that there is generic error if something is wrong on the server.

502 Bad Gateway (API), server communicates with other servers if they do not get any response than the code is sent to the browser.

503 Service Unavailable, it is when the server gets overloaded and fails. It will show this message; it means one should try later.

504 Gateway Timeout (API) it is very similar to 502 Bad Gateway, the error is more specific and deals with other server that is not responding at all.

Understanding HTTP Codes for your Ecommerce Business

Categories
Ecommerce
PHP tips to help you get started

PHP is one of the most popular web development programming languages that is practically used everywhere. PHP has now its presence on major platforms that includes open source projects like WordPress and Drupal. Given below are few of the PHP coding insights that will help you get started:

  1. Make use of PHP Core functions

    2. Before you start coding, making your own program, you already have a fair idea of what to program and how to program. But, we suggest you take up a PHP function or class. There are many resources available online solely dedicated to PHP learners. Check PHP manual before you start making your own functions. To remove the white space at the beginning and at the end of the string, you do not require a separate function. You can simply trim the function. You can make use of XML Parser function for RSS feeds.

  2. Make a configuration file

    3. Create one master file that has all database connection settings and use it for your PHP scripts. If you need to make any changes later on, you can do the changes with one single file instead of several files. It is also very useful when you need to use other constants and functions throughout multiple scripts.

    language

  3. Sanitize your Data

    4. Understand what SQL Injections are and then think of the common problems that may occur if you do not sanitize your data. Firstly, learn about the ways through which your app data can be compromised. You can read online examples of SQL injection attacks and learn how you can avoid possible attacks

    There is one magical PHP function that can lead you completely out of all problems. The code mysql_real_escape_string will take regular string of all data types with the help of PHP variable guide and sanitize the data for you. The function “htmlspecialchars” that convert reserved HTML characters like

  4. Leave Error reporting Turned On in Development stage

    5. While building your application, turn on display errors to check for any run-time errors that will help to quickly identify the root of the errors. You need to have access to override directives of the file, set them on top of PHP scripts, use ini set () function to set display_errors to 1.

    Reporting error is quite simple, once you start detecting errors you can fix them faster. PHP often keeps giving warning messages that you may take it lightly. These errors signal towards memory-related issue that can be rectified. When you are done with error reporting and display errors, you can turn the function off.

  5. Avoid Over-commenting on the Code

    6. Documentation of the code in your scripts is a good practice but it may not be necessary to comment on every single line. Comment on the complicated parts of source code you can revisit so you can quickly remember what is going on.

    code

  6. Keep your favorite Code Snippets ready

    7. Most times you will be coding similar things throughout your PHP development career. Keep Code snippets ready with you so that you can save your time programming same stuff. There are apps available that can help to keep and sync the code snippet; you will always have snippets available. Some apps that help you to save your Code Snippets are Snippet, snippely, Snipplr and Code Collector.

    Exposes

    Many integrated development environments such as Eclipse store code Templates and Dreamweaver have built-in features for storing code snippets. A well-organized directory with the name snippets consists of text files and PHP scripts; these can possibly be synced in the cloud using an app called Dropbox. This especially helps if you are using multiple computers.

  7. Use Good Source Editor

    8. Editor is the place where you are going to spend much of your time, so use something that will help you save your time. Highlight the syntax files and look out for software feature. Other points beneficial here are code hinting, built-in debugging tools and code navigations. These features help to save a lot of time.

    PHP

    Get familiar with source code editor features, read the documentation and read the tutorials online, invest a little time in this area that can help to streamline your coding workflow.

  8. Make use of MySQL Administration Tool

    9. Use graphical user interface like phpMyAdmin that will help to speed up database development and administration.

    Demo Server

    It is one of the most wonderful open source database viewers, it allows for viewing of your MySQL databases in a graphical manner. With this, you do not have to waste the time doing things through command line. You can build database, export the database in SQL files, and run it.

  9. Using PHP Framework

    10. While using PHP, you will learn a lot many things than you expected, and doing web application development is no joke. You will have to do a lot of reading to learn how the API framework works. Once you start using it, you will get to see amazing productivity and efficiency. PHP Framework helps to do better web development patterns that you may not need it right now.

    PHP Framework helps when you are working with someone and you have to set up a standardized platform for building web applications.

    CakePHP

  10. Connect with other Developers

    11. Join an Online PHP community that will help you to learn more things by interacting with others. By connecting with other PHP developers, you will be at a better position to learn PHP. Any basic level learner can become a master by learning basic things first. PHP is very popular programming language, it’s an open source so any one having Internet access have access to PHP codes that are available to them. PHP can be embedded into HTML to see varying outputs.

While you are Coding PHP, you may encounter many problems, the solutions are easily available on the Internet to fix the bugs. Do not get frustrated if something doesn’t work out the way you targeted. Go through different learning material online, take help from experts, discuss with other PHP people online and start coding.

PHP tips to help you get started

Categories
E-commerce Website Technology
Natural Language Processing: Right path towards E-Commerce Conversions

Today, Ecommerce is growing at faster pace than ever thought of. Marketers are ever so wandering to tune into what is latest and introduce them into the world to selling. Smarter tools like Artificial Intelligence, chatbots, IoT are there to furnish everything automated and quicker than what Humans can do. Natural language processing commonly known by the term NLP is a component of AI that helps computer programs to understand human speech and then function accordingly.

Bigger commercial portals are already on the brink of utilizing NLP on their websites and apps. NLP is a meaning based search that allows shoppers to search products in their own language and getting relevant results. Given below are the best means to apply NLP in Ecommerce.

Tips to apply NLP in Ecommerce:

Product Description

Awareness of the product means looking at the actual term and identify with the primary item and the descriptions that have secondary importance. NLP recognize the words in the primary data. When an item is searched, it checks for perfect name and doesn’t take into account the terms that do not match even if it means item having more adjectives.

After the primary product is recognized, NLP applies machine learning to understand the description that is important elements to seek individual items.

Linguistic Nuances

NLP in ecommerce site – searches and recognizes similar terms based on the choices of an individual. Shoppers may be searching for one item with different terms. NLP should have the capability to identify that these are one item only that give same results regardless of the terms used.

NLP is a powerful tool that should also help identify the synonyms; it should even let go off the dissimilarity in the spellings. Consumers are really annoyed when they do not get the item they are looking by putting a search term especially when they know that the item is present in their list. Most commerce site cannot really afford to miss out on potential conversions. Hence, NLP should be geared up to correctly predict what the user might be looking for.

NLP Personalization

Most organizations today are combining NLP with personalization approach and this is proving to get bigger benefits. Customer expect customization at every step of their shopping journey, they had prefer a physical store than virtual since they get personalized attention. Online searches also offer the same benefit but nothing befits the satisfaction of touching and feeling the product and then buying it.

Brands prepare customization based on the user preferences that are previously seen in their shopping. The main aim here is to give great shopping experience to the users.

Natural Language Processing: Right path towards E-Commerce Conversions

Categories
Ecommerce
How Facebook Chatbots are changing E-commerce?

E-Commerce has grown stupendously over the last one decade and the idea of Live Chats has been used for quite sometime now. Although, it has not been prominently used. But with developments happening, Live Chats are soon going to be the norm, its Chatbots that will act like Humans talking to Humans!

Chatbots will completely change the face of Ecommerce; consumers will now be getting answers for their queries online through live chats. Chatbots will answer all customer queries that are related to brand or a product or a service. Customers appreciate this new approach and according to the recent reports by eMarketer Survey reveals that 63% of customers are likely to return to the site having live chat feature.

Live Chats services are often offered by brands on their E-Commerce platforms, it consists of most advanced features including survey forms, queuing up, transcripts, analytics and reports. These are mainly useful to handle customer queries and concerns about the products. Chatbots are bringing in a new revolution of a kind that brings entire Ecommerce to one subject topic of “Live chats”. It not only helps create social awareness but also helps to build brand loyalty too mainly because customers can directly interact with the brand without waiting for emails to be answered or calling the company.

Conversational E-Commerce is in!

Messaging apps are now being targeted for use in Business. Facebook messenger has taken the first official step; it is one of the most viable channels for business interactions that help to connect to customers. Billions of people are using Facebook and messenger service as a means to connect with each other. Facebook made available its messenger platform for developers so that developers can embed it on their sites or apps.

Talking of Messenger Apps, it has long been used since 2015 when Uber tapped Facebook Messenger on its app that allowed customers to book their ride through the chat window. It was then first coined as “Conversational Commerce”.

Improved Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is one of the latest developments in Digital commerce where lots of things are happening at one time. AI has reached the level, where things are meant to be worked without the use of Human brain. The bigger tech players have already started investing in machine learning and natural language processing to be part of the big boom in the making. Artificial Intelligence bought a Digital revolution marking a new beginning.

Chatbots are learning a lot of things that seem very natural in a learning process; they are learning human interactions and trying to accommodate the future interactions too.

Chatbots can help in multiple ways to facilitate the buying journey of a consumer, they are programmed to help create awareness, solve queries, educate the potential customer and influence them in making a buying decision. Chatbots are programmed to handle after-sale activities or providing any further service the customer is looking for.

Facebook have continually supported Business Ecommerce through varied means, its recent plan of launching Whatsapp for Business truly marks the beginning of a new revolution where Business will solely be conducted through live chats whether they are Chatbots or consumers chatting online. The recent developments truly reveal Facebook Messenger will encourage sale of Physical products in the era where more and more businesses are getting online.

How Facebook Chatbots are changing E-commerce?

Categories
Ecommerce
How to start with SLATE in simple steps

We are very much aware of how Shopify works and how it can get tremendous benefits to your Ecommerce store. However, it is important to note how to start using SLATE and how to get maximum benefits from the same. SLATE is a front-end framework that helps to build Shopify themes. There are usually a number of theme options and with modern tools and the command line the tasks become simpler and better. This helps in faster developmental processes especially for theme developers. Lets start beginning with the basic steps for using SLATE platform and understand the features of Slate:

  1. Installation of Node.js and Slate

    2. To start using Slate, the first step is to install Node.js and npm installed on the computer. As we know Slate is an npm package, it does require its parent file. You can check if the version is up and running-by-running the “node” function on the computer. Usually, Slate runs on v.4 or higher versions if you have low version than you may want to install the latest Node version.

    Installing Slate

    For installation of the Slate, you will need to run the given below command from any directory by using the command line or running a terminal app on the computer:

    npm install -g @shopify/slate

    In the above, -g shows that you are running Slate globally on the machine and it indicates that it is working in any directory. Troubleshoot by checking Node.js, if you face any issues while running.

  2. Creating a New Theme

    3. The next step you need is creating a scaffold theme by using Slate. You can run the below command from the directory:

    slate theme [theme-name]

    Do not include any spaces in your theme name the first name in the theme directory will be your new theme directory name. The final command should look something like below.

    slate theme my-custom-theme
  3. Uploading the Theme

    4. Run a command from inside the local theme directory, navigate in your theme directory and type the below command line:

    cd [theme-name]

    cd command stands for “change directory” and it takes you inside of the directory path that will specify after it. Inside the directory you can run following command:

    slate zip

    The above command will help compress a directory in a zip file for easy handling of the manual that is uploaded to client’s store. After running, you can see the upload having a zipped theme.

    Shopify admin can follow this process by going to theOnline store > Themes > Upload theme > Upload the new Zip file > Publish the theme once it is uploaded on your store.

  4. Connecting Store to local

    5. After uploading Shopify theme made with Slate, you are now able to connect the local version that has been uploaded.

    Rename the file as config-sample.yml

    Here, you can add your store information and also you can add private information.

    Password – For getting the password, you will need to set up API key for adding config.yml that helps to create connection between the client store and local theme store. One can create a private app. Go to Shopify Admin, click on apps and click on View private apps. Click on Generate API for creating a private app.

    Theme_id – It is the unique id used in the theme to write for deploying to the store.

Let us start discussing the things that are of utter importance while working with SLATE:

Slate start – Slate is a front-end framework hence it is highly important to know its commands before you fully start using it. The command “slate start” runs slate build, slate deploy and slate watch features that help to develop faster. The command runs all the three commands so if you have made changes to client’s store and you haven’t made those changes locally then the local version may potentially wipe out those settings. Consider that the files have changed on your client’s store and they do not exist in local version of the theme.

Style Sheets – while you are importing style sheets it is to be noted that import statements that are found in Slates theme.scss are not Sass import statements. The imports build your stylesheet while running slate commands; they do require a build script to make a proper compilation. For adding additional Sass files, start to create new files in appropriate directory in the styles folder, add a new import line for newly created files having a correct. You can then run slate watch and see the changes that are reflected.

How to start with SLATE in simple steps

Categories
Ecommerce Technology
Tips and sources to start learning PHP

PHP is a wonderful programming language and as you dig deeper into its different aspects, you find more interesting things in store for you. For newcomers, who are looking to get into programming world may wonder in amazement as to why one should learn PHP, what are its benefits and how it helps them. Let us start right from the basics and get a deeper grip into the world of PHP.

PHP stands for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”, it is the most common server side language that is used in programming today. It is an open source platform hence it is widely popular, any person can access it through the power of Internet. It is a free access tool to everything PHP online. The reasons and justification for using PHP go far beyond the reasoning fact that it is the language any programmer uses to not only develop their programming skills but using a free implementation. This language can be embedded in HTML. Learning is learner’s passion hence it is highly important to know where to start and how to start.

To start with PHP, one obviously needs PHP installed on their computers where they can write the code. Visual Studio Code is good platform to start with, download and install the program and save it like the way we usually save a notepad document. The extension for PHP file would be .php. Go to Open with > Select Studio Code > Open a Blank template for using. PHP coding always use PHP tags so do not forget them.

The starting of the tag looks like ‘<?php’ (<? This is outdated and hence it may create some problems. To run PHP program, one requires software where they can run it. Most people use Xampp, once you download it, there are some modifications that can be done to make it run smoothly. If no changes are made, Xampp will be saved in C:\ drive of your computer. When you open the file, it will open up many options but save all of your files in ‘htdocs’ folder. When you click on the Run option, you will see two numbers under the ports that appear, the numbers that you can see are 443 plus a second one. We would be considering second number that is displayed. Now open a web browser and type localhost: 801/hello-world.php. You would write the second number where I have put 801. Once you hit the enter button, you will be taken to a white blank page. The next step is to confirm whether the browser that we are currently using is programmed to read PHP tags or not. For this, you will have to open hello-world.php file and in between PHP tags, you have to write “Hello”. To check this on the browser, go to the browser and reload the page.

Finally, now that we have installed PHP, and the way to write its code, we have to start learning how to actually use PHP. There are a number of online resources and books available online, some resources are freely available. There is a lot of information available online to learn so many things, search with keywords like PHP programming, PHP free online resources, mySQL Web development, etc. some programs and books will be quite lengthier than you think, but do not get nervous. Lengthier the pages, the deeper understanding of the programming and the processes they have used. There are ample of books available that will give you good amount of information to learn PHP section wise.

PHP is a smart language, once you dig deeper into it, you shall see how tremendously useful this language is. Sometimes, you may be utterly frustrated if codes do not work what you programmed them for. But, do not give up, scan through online courses, mark different solutions that you get to fix your problem and try again.

Tips and sources to start learning PHP

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Ecommerce Technology
The Rise of the Digital Experience Platform

Most consumers today are digitally inclined getting served exactly what they are looking for. There is emergency of multiple digital touchpoints allows consumers to check the product on one device, and buy it from the other and still give reviews on another. Brands are giving umpteenth liberty to consumers to reach out to them however and wherever they want. The interactions are usually experienced through the texting mode, phone apps, social media that leads to business growth and profitability. Companies are optimizing consumer digital experiences to enhance brand reputation in the longer run.

Industrial analysts are able to see resurgence of projects and investments with flexible technologies reliably demonstrating abilities that helps to generate sales, improve loyalty, save money and solve customer service problems. The most wanted out of them all are the integrated digital experience strategies.

Most often than not companies make the mistake of overinvestments in features and underinvesting in integration. The new channels coming up with architectural strategy will continuously keep testing. The new touch points have regular problems because they are hard-wired. Custom integrations make the accommodation a little difficult with new channels.

Flexible Integration strategy and execution plan serves as cornerstones for digital experience platforms. Integration is not the term that is usually used by marketing or digital experience leaders. The stakeholders are anyway aware of the pain points preventing teams from working across the aisle. Architectural strategies are the key selection factors while choosing the technology components for your Digital experience platforms.

Important Integration questions one should usually ask are: are the systems that I am using for CMS modular? Can I extend legacy systems by using reusable services and APIs? Is the solution truly best of breed? Could there be deployment alongside existing systems? A flexible integration strategy is need by any medium of organization. Without such integrated strategy approach it is either going to be left hanging or be completely implemented.

The Rise of the Digital Experience Platform

Categories
Ecommerce
Grow your Search traffic by adding JSON-LD

If there is one objective that every Ecommerce has in common is the search for Organic traffic on their websites. Although, there are many limiting factors with search engines, the choices to get Organic Traffic are vast. Search engines often face the problem of analyzing huge quantities of HTML data that is complex and non-standardized. Search engines extract data and present it to the users for the queries they ask in the search box. They do it with the help of Structured data, one may wonder how structured data helps for search engines to recognize and analyze the query.

Structured data is the information about a web page that helps search engines to understand the contents of the page. Search engines do not have to parse entire HTML document, they can analyze the page through structured data. Let us understand the Role of JSON-LD in getting Organic search traffic:

What is JSON-LD?

Google highly recommends making use of structured data in all of the sites and JSON-LD is one format of the structured data. The biggest benefit of using JSON-LD amongst other type of structured data is that it doesn’t have to be interspaced within HTML coding. As compared to this, other formats require you to change HTML, add the elements and attributes to show where each part is located in the page. Sometimes it is difficult to detect any errors due to which it may affect the search results. With JSON-LD, the code is embedded in HTML that acts as a block to JSON data. This doesn’t affect how HTML looks and is invisible to regular users.

How to Add JSON-LD

JSON is a popular data format and JSON-LD is based on it that many developers create or update it. Developers’ find using JSON-LD easy if they have already worked with other structured data formats like microformats or RDFs. Other benefits of using JSON-LD is, that it works with stores having dynamic backend that helps to create web pages. JSON-LD is the data that is separated from the actual page. The stores using dynamic data are able to easily create a template for JSON-LD; they can then re-use it across all product pages.

code

A person not having technical background is easily able to check the details of the product page details like the name, description, brand, image, url, sku, condition, etc. Other things that can be checked about the offer are price, condition, currency, availability, etc.

Easy Updating

All the data combined together help the search engines understand the product for sale. Some data are duplicated in both the product and offer section. JSON-LD format allows listing the details of the product page. Try to give as much data as possible to the search engines when you set-up JSON-LD, they can use it for search results.

Include Core Data

Core product data is highly important to include in your product JSON-LD. Product element terms like name, description, itemcondition, availability, price, pricecurrency, aggregaterating, offers, etc are used to provide for organic listings. Adding JSON-LD helps search engines to parse the products and offers available on your online store. They greatly help to increase organic search traffic.

Grow your Search traffic by adding JSON-LD

Categories
Ecommerce Technology
How to prepare yourself for Google’s Mobile-First Index

Time and again Google have been coming out with different SEO updates, Algorithm updates and mobile updates. With the type of announcements that Google is coming every time, it is pretty much clear that they are in much favor of Mobile websites. Google’s Mobilegeddon update has brands initiating to make responsive websites. Responsive websites are the need of an hour with much of users shopping and browsing online through their mobile devices.

So now let us understand what is Mobile-first Index and why is it important:

Technically Google’s current index is the one in which people continue to keep getting results from. Desktop content is indexed and is used for showing listings to mobile and desktop users. For Mobile, a special mobile friendly ranking system is used that helps to boost content for Google’s mobile listings. A study by Stone temple consulting shows that 55% of traffic comes from a mobile device and it will continue to keep growing year after year.

Desktop

As more and more users are transitioning from desktop to mobile use, it makes sense for the brands to come out with mobile friendly pages.

Google Indexing

Initially, Google indexed the site based on Desktop experiences

When

With the new update, Google will index and rank your website based on the content of your mobile experience. The image given below shows desktop and mobile experience for same pages and the way content is displayed on both the pages:

This is your

The above states that both versions show same content so when Mobile-first index kicks in, it wouldn’t make any impact to the site’s page. Google will see similar thing as the site is built up on responsive web design.

Uh-oh

Similarly, the above image shows the site having negative impact because Google will use mobile experience on the right for indexing purposes.

Tips to help you prepare for Mobile-First Index

Learning and implementing about Mobile-First Index requires a detailed analysis and studies, here are the steps that help you get through update when it releases:

  1. Google’s Webmaster Blog Post

    2. Google has always been open about the changes that it wants to bring and encouraged people to learn from the blogs and news. Webmaster’s blog post is a good starting point to plan your activities when the update kicks in. However, there are two important points to note here: If you are already having a responsive website where primary content is similar to content seen on the desktop than you do not have to change anything. If the site shows different content on desktop and mobile, then it means that primary content needs to be changed and it requires some changes to your site.

  2. Responsive Website design

    3. Responsive websites are the ones which are mobile friendly; their primary content is similar to what content is seen on the desktop version. If your website already shows same content on desktop as well as mobile than you do not need to make any changes.

    If your website is not responsive than there might be indexing issues and Google will not give good ranking to your site. In such cases, you can put primary content on your mobile site as Google will check primary source of content first.

  3. Hidden Content in Tabs and Accordion menus

    4. Google has always been very clear about its update; they do not like to hide their content. According to their past update, they had strictly stated that the hidden content in tabs or accordions will not be considered for ranking purposes. But with Mobile-first index update, they plan to take it loose; it rightly derives from the following statement by John Mueller:

“So the mobile-first indexing will index the mobile version of the page. And on the mobile version of the page it can be that you have these kind of tabs and folders and things like that, which we will still treat as normal content on the page even. Even if it is hidden on the initial view.”

This is advantageous from the design and UX standpoint of view; it will also help organize large pieces of content.

Mobile friendly website design are the future, so it is greatly recommended to make a responsive website design that will help millennials easily browse through webpage across any possible devices you can merely think of

How to prepare yourself for Google’s Mobile-First Index

Categories
Ecommerce
How customers prefer to shop; online vs In-Store

E-Commerce has led to many uprisings and has taken e-retailing to newer heights. Although there has been a major shift from retail buying habits to online buying, larger US consumers still rely on buying from physical stores. According to the reports by eMarketer, an estimated over $5 trillion disposable income of US population is said to be spent on physical store buys by 2020.

Over 85% of those surveyed said that they like to touch and feel the product before they buy; hence they buy it from the stores. It helps them make a purchase decision. A research stated that one-third that is 36% respondents do not like to wait for items to be shipped and 30% like to get advice on product features, services and products they should buy. 90% of consumers stated they would buy items if they receive knowledge based advice from representatives regarding the product.

With millennial generation, we know that shopping online is the norm; the new buying habits are somewhat very similar to earlier generation buying offline. The adult populations of United States heavily rely on physical buying from the stores, states the research done by Walker Sands Communications. The survey was done in March 2017 on 1,662 consumers above 18 years of age. 54% of respondents stated that they would prefer buying from physical stores where as 33% would prefer buying from online shop on computers, 12% prefer mobile device and 1% prefer using voice-controlled devices.

How do

Youngest consumers in the age group of 18-25 and the oldest in the age group 61+ preferred buying in-store compared to online buying.

Percentage

83% respondents stated they bought product from physical store last year, 69% purchased online and got it delivered through regular shipping and 41% purchased online and picked up from the store.

Purchased

80% of consumers stated that they would opt for shop online on the website or an app if they are offered free shipping.

Which of the

Conclusion

Retailers providing high value interactions will give satisfying experiences to customers. Retailers should understand customers’ needs and wants if they want to survive in highly competitive business markets. They should use modern technology to empower their store representatives.

How customers prefer to shop; online vs In-Store

Categories
Ecommerce
Beyond Amazon and Alibaba: what’s next for E-Commerce

Ecommerce businesses have rolled out in whatever fields, we can merely think of. The biggest consumers of Ecommerce goods are the US and Chinese markets. Although the switch from physical stores to online retail has been tremendous, the shift is for good and according to reports there are still unexplored places and diversions. The technological advancements have led to many new insights which industrial experts are yet to be aware of. With the popularity of Ecommerce giants like Amazon and Alibaba, the world is assuming that the game is over. In fact, these giants are evolving day after day commoditizing product categories at different stage of advancements.

Amazon has taken a swift approach by first targeting the books, then houseware, electronics, clothing, grocery and so on. Where as, Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao platforms have been capable of capturing market shares and have popular imagination with millions of SKUs creating a global store. The growth is tremendous when one compares from where it started and up to where has it reached today. With every evolution, people thought that it is the end but it never was. The emerging trends are never ending and if you closely look at Greenfield territory, you will find there are billion dollar start-up companies thriving simply on opportunities created. One can understand these emerging trends through redefining of what we call “mass market”. Today, we see buyers and sellers are equally constrained for selling their goods in every vertical possible at lowest price point being an “all available store” selling “all at lowest prices”.

Many bigger E-Commerce brands have constructively made use of resources available to provide improved customer experiences. These brands and vertical market places are using personalization and community help for curating experiences for prevalence in the US and Chinese markets.

01

Let us get a brief idea on how these giants have a purpose and how they are still going strong. Amazon and Taobao are gigantic warehouses that heavily rely on purpose based shopping. People visit their sites; find the product they are looking for, order it, find the delivery the next but overall experience are cluttered especially for people who are disoriented. In comparison to this, E-Brands and vertical marketplaces are not going to compete with similar warehouse searches. They are rather focusing on the discovery and curating of products in specific categories that a customer want to use it for occasional purchase. More of mobile shopping has evolved and people are having enjoyable experiences with the brands. The apps are targeted for shoppers who feel they need access to each and every product right now. They offer curated experiences to consumers of the brand to help them discover affordable products to build a good shopping experience for smartphone users.

Creating a Social Flow

People love Amazon and Taobao for the user experiences they get by browsing these Ecommerce store. Customers treat these stores as tools where they can shop online and not as an “Identities”. E-Commerce brands such as AirBnB, Houzz, Xiaohongshu and Pinterest offer expert social profile for brands and also help to develop followers. These Ecommerce giants have built upon a platform, where people look up to for information and buying products.

Different E-Commerce brands build value infused branding depending on the type of products they are dealing in. There are diverse industries that follow different tactics for consumers to follow them either on social platforms or through mobile apps. The consumers do not necessarily log on to Amazon or Alibaba for buying brand items. On the flip side of it, bigger outlets like Walmart are finding it difficult by the changing customer buying habits.

Jet

So, what’s up next!

Is Walmart looking to battle bigger Ecommerce giants like Amazon or the likes?

There are several advantages for small enterprises or startups to follow new plans and strategies and take learnings from already established Ecommerce stores. With Alibaba and Amazon in comparison, there is still unexploited vast amount of growth that needs to be realized for Ecommerce markets.

Undoubtedly, Amazon and Alibaba take up much of market share in the US and China that only amounts to 8% and 16% of the total $9 trillion retail markets. There are again larger developments uncovered that could lead to tremendous increase in business. The new markets are open or rather unexploited till date; there is good scope for E-Commerce expansion and appeal to next-Gen millennial consumers. The communication channels and models are improving thus opening up more channels for buying and selling. E-Commerce markets are growing and evolving over time, even start-ups are making full utilization of the resources available that helps them to curate, personalize and optimize the experiences.

Ideally, E-Commerce market segmentation seems like a traditional retail business but it’s altogether a new approach. With the use of AR/VR Technology, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, etc in place there are bigger solutions available. A new twist and approach is in place to encourage larger and bigger dollars pumping into E-commerce industry.

Beyond Amazon and Alibaba: what’s next for E-Commerce

Categories
Ecommerce
11 Cost Effective growth hacking for Ecommerce

Ecommerce is everywhere and so does its competitiveness! Retailers and marketers are submerged in a pool where there are so many tactics to be followed. Organizations should look forward to solutions that best suits their business needs and explore the growth hacks that they can implement in their business to get more sales. Given below are creatively churned out best hacking ideas that you can use in your Ecommerce business:

    1. The use of ad extensions

Ad extensions are the best possible ways through which you can target your ads especially on Google and Bing. These types of ads help to provide uniqueness to viewers compared to other ads that only show Headline and the URL. Ad extensions help to give more robust and interactive ads as given below:

the Use

The different elements that you can add to your ads to make it look more attractive and help consumer easily get through to convert are sitelink extensions, call extensions, location extensions, review extensions and callout extensions.

    1. Prepare Creative content and create market buzz through giveaways

Content Marketing takes the lead when it comes to create customer engagement, it helps to increase good number of subscribers and boost the sales. Giveaways are a great way to create awareness about the brand and generate website traffic.

iphone

Choose something that will grab users’ attention, there can be a variety of items that the brand can give to its potential customers like sample products, offer coupons, introductory products, reward based incentives, etc.

    1. Create a sense of Urgency through FOMO

Fear-Of-Missing-Out (FOMO) drives a good amount of traffic by creating user engagement and social activities on platforms. A study revealed that 56% of consumers are afraid to miss out on important announcements if they are not active on social networks.

Create FOMO

Marketers can leverage the FOMO by creating good offers, highlighting the contests with the limited time promotions that mark a sense of urgency in audiences.

    1. Build your own Life time value (LTV)

The important learning lessons and essential for business growth is to retain your customers. Use your instincts and give excellent customer service. It is much costlier to acquire a new customer as compared to an existing customer. Harvard Business school study states that a 5% bump in customer retention increases your profits by 95%.

LTV

A good customer service program creates loyal relationships, interact with your customers and find what is that they are looking for.

    1. Use of Influencer Marketing

Every industry certainly has influencers that are followed by masses; look out for the influencers belonging to your industry and check if they are promoting similar products. Influencer marketing has been tremendously successful in apparel and retail industries. Social influencer marketing is strong marketing and is induced by word of mouth marketing method. It can drive tremendous visibility to your website and create traffic. Below chart shows how brands work with influencers to connect with customers.

Protoypical

Influencer marketing is one of the smarter moves by brands, it encourages trust and engagement because influencers belong to your industry and have higher probability to drive traffic.

BDMI

For searching the right influencers, select the influencers, who belong to your industry, build a personal connection with them. Send our samples, talk to them if they are ready to promote your product.

how to

    1. Simplify the checkout process

Cart abandonment is ever so common! Why? The reason being most customers gets frustrated with checkout process and leaves their carts. This is the bigger problem faced by Ecommerce industries today, optimizing the checkout process is a big challenge. The study shows, 68% carts are abandoned having an estimated value of $4.9 trillion on a global level.

Cart

Easy navigation helps the users to browse and navigate through the website easily and effortlessly. Reduce the elements on the page to give clarity to the browsers of the page especially the checkout process. The common friction causing reasons for cart abandonment are shipping costs, pricing, separate logging accounts, complicated checkout process, etc.

    1. Psychological pricing

Most times when consumers buy anything it is the brands who have sold out to them through the means of tiered pricing. SaaS platforms use this method most times that is highly beneficial. Listing too many expensive and non-expensive items does it, there by making customers choose item exactly that brands want you to select. It is psychological pricing.

Psychological

A MIT study and University of Chicago tested similar tactic with women’s clothing found that most consumers select the products in the middle price point.

    1. Build social sharing offline

Social shares are the fastest means to help you do word of mouth marketing, make the maximum use of this opportunity. As soon as the customers open their new purchases, prompt them to share their new buys online with hashtags and share their experiences on the brand page with relevant hashtags by incentivizing them.

Incentivize your audiences with a number of options like promotion codes, discount, using custom hashtags, etc. this will help to create User generated content that helps to do brand promotion.

    1. Referral programs

This is another great way to create branding at its best. A study from Texas Tech University found that 83% of customers are willing to refer friends and family to brand if they have positive experience with the brand. In reality, only 29% makes a referral. Customers would not share by themselves; the idea of this campaign is to ask for a Referral and to so wisely. According to University of Chicago studies, non-cash incentives are more effective as compared to cash incentives by 24%.

    1. Retargeting strategies

Retargeting is an essential part of any marketing program; the research by AdRoll stated that 2% of customers actually convert in their first visit. The experience of a customer on its purchase journey is the implication how further it is going to be. Consumers buy their purchase across different devices. They select from one device and purchase from the other.

Reg

Retargeting helps to gain your customers back by 27% of lost prospects and gain 70% back with help of retargeting for customers who were shown relevant ads.

    1. Segmented Email campaigns

Email Marketing is one of the main channels to boost your Ecommerce growth. 77% consumers rely on email communications for doing permission-based communications as compared to any other mediums. Over 80% of retail professionals feel that email marketing is the biggest driving factors for customer retention. Drip campaigns can be designed on the basis of customer triggers.

Example

Always follow 80/20 rules for content sent to your subscribers and be cautious about the number of emails that you are sending out to your customers.

Most of the businesses today heavily rely on acquiring new customers to boost their business growth. But retention is also one far-sighted element to continue the profits of your business. There are several ways to hack your business growth by engaging your customers more.

11 Cost Effective growth hacking for Ecommerce

Categories
Ecommerce
BINARY ENTREPRENEUR LEAGUE

Introducing an inter-organisational business incubation event focused on enhancing our team’s entrepreneurial spirit’s and ambitions.
Binary Entrepreneur League is designed in such a way that its character targets to give a new lease to Binarians thought patterns, help in developing their creative thinking element and get their innermost entrepreneur desires up and running.
Here are our 5 final teams:

1. Dresskart

Dresskart
Introduction: Every color says your mood and reflects your personality,Dresskart provides all the shades and patterns for enhancing your beauty.Vision: Our vision to be the No. 1 retailer for dress materials in India
Our Mission: To expand our business both offline and online and have a powerful presence on both fronts.
Our Value: Integrity, Respect and Passion for excellence, working together.

2.Happy Feet

Happy Feet
Happy Feet brings to you a wide range of ladies footwear ranging from trendy Chappals to cool Sandals.
If you are looking for happiness for your feet as well as to your wallet, this is where your hunt ends!!!
Vision: To bring happiness to ladies who wish to buy comfortable and trendy footwear at economical prices.
Mission: To help ladies who wish to buy comfortable and trendy footwear at economical prices find their fitting pairs of Chappals & Sandals

3. Fashion Hub & Crafts

Fashion Hub & Crafts
Fashion Hub & Crafts is our Fashion idea of giving our esteemed customers the best in terms of Design, Style and Quality.
We keenly look forward tying up with prominent designer houses to add value to our on-going business.
Vision:To bring exclusive designer pieces that are one of a kind having best quality at its core.
Mission: to churn out the best design pieces directly from manufacturers and bring it to final consumers at very affordable rates.

4. Masala Makers:

Masala Makers
Mission: We ensure to deliver high quality premium spices with the right mix of health and taste
Vision: To make Spices and Mix “Taste Like Never Before”

5. Classy Desis

Classy Desis
Classy Desis, is a fashion brand that brings to you, meticulously chosen contemporary as well as traditional jewelry.
Vision: We envision ourselves as people’s choice of the go to brand, when it comes to artificial jewelry.
Mission: The mission of Classy Desis is to have something in store for ever

BINARY ENTREPRENEUR LEAGUE

Categories
Ecommerce
Effective Email Marketing tips for Ecommerce

If you are running an Ecommerce business, we sure know that you are looking for varied strategies that will help boost your business growth. Email Marketing is one component of your Ecommerce strategy that helps to get good number of conversions. Ideally, there are several options that help to grow your Ecommerce business online by the means of social media, Content Marketing, SEO and others. Email Marketing is one of the best means when it comes to creating customer engagement and build brand loyalty. According to a recent study, 33% of consumers have reported that emails are main motivators to shopping online. Given below are few of the Email Marketing tips that can give good effective results:

    1. Offering Subscription incentive and welcome series emails

A smart marketer will absolutely know the importance of email lists. You can offer your subscribers some incentive by giving them offer coupons, discounts on the products they buy for subscribing in your email lists. After they subscribe to your list, it is now time to send them your first welcome email, followed by a series of emails. With the first email, the primary objective is to form a brand impression. The second email can be sent to build a brand identity and the third email should be targeted towards getting conversions.

    1. Make your subject line attractive by including FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Subject line is the most important since it’s the first thing a viewer sees after signing in, in their email accounts. You can grab user’s attention by creating curiosity in subject line. The use of FOMO that is Fear of Missing Out makes use of the phrases like “don’t miss out”, “last chance to grab” creates a sense of urgency amongst the users.

    1. Engagement and Personalization in your emails

Make your email engaging by creating stories, after all people love reading stories. Your email should be entertaining and should sound natural when readers are reading them. Customize your email to suit the requirements of your users, simply making use of first name encourages a deeper connection and helps subscribers to have trust on the brand.

    1. Ask customers feedback and give them something valuable

Your customers are special to you, give them something valuable by sending vouchers and discount off. The study states that almost 34% redeem the vouchers sent to them. Ask customers their valuable feedback, what they are looking for and if, is there anything missing and how would they want brand to serve them better.

    1. Strong Call-to-Action plan

Be very precise and straight in your message, include actionable CTA that stands out and create a sense of urgency in your message. Use words like “Today”, “now”, “Free”, etc that will motivate them enough to take some action.

    1. Wake-up inactive subscribers

Your email lists may look pretty much longer but there may be inactive subscribers too, to get them back send them personalized email that will reactivate communication. As Neil patel suggests in his infographic, “sending emails to people who are opening them and the people who are not opening, put them in re-engagement campaign to make them active”.

    1. Personal email for Cart Abandonment

People often leave their online shopping carts that they had picked items and placed it in their carts, brands need to play with strategies to gain the customer back and push them into finishing the purchase. A cart abandonment email can surely help to recover the lost sales. The brands may include discounted coupon on the product they had selected or offer a coupon that they can utilize if they complete the purchase.

    1. Integration of Social media channels in your email campaigns

Social media is very wide and infinite; use this benefit to pump up your email marketing campaign. Include social media links in your emails where the users can directly get onto your landing page or whatever product pages you want to direct them to.

    1. Subscription options

People get more frustrated with the amount of emails they keep getting from brands, you can use a smarter side to this by giving your customers chance to make their own selection. this will not only reduce unsubscribe rate but also your customers will appreciate you. Include in your emails, a preference center where users have control over email frequency, update information, change the content and even unsubscribe.

Effective Email Marketing tips for Ecommerce

Categories
Ecommerce
Facebook Messenger for Ecommerce to sell more Physical Products

We already know how selling online is critical to brands objective of using social platforms for selling. Today, consumers are looking much more than traditionally what it used to be. They need someone to resolve their confusions, solve their queries and address their unique needs. Hence, one may wonder how you do that. It is in fact, part of a learning process for brands and people are using and finding varied mediums to buy and interact with the brands. The recent research suggests that 32% of online people showing interest in mobile ad get converted on a desktop and over 60% of consumers shop from one device and continues on other. The data is quite fulfilling to pay deeper attention to what is missing here; consumers today are using different devices for different things and purposes. The best way to bridge the gap here is by the means of Facebook Messenger Marketing and the results are astonishing!

Facebook Messenger is simply great for your Ecommerce marketing since it allows one-on-one interaction with the prospects. The users can converse with the brands the way they want and are comfortable in. Facebook is a powerhouse that can help to convert the prospects into actual customers. Facebook messaging has taken Ecommerce to bigger heights by making available brands wherever and whenever the customer desired. The huge popularity of messaging apps have created demand for Chatbots that converse intelligently with the users and give answers for general questions asked. Chatbots are going to be hugely popular in the near future providing greater relief for organizations to do automated work of chatting and resolving queries of the customers. Given below are three tactics that will help to sell more physical products on Facebook messenger:

    1. Retargeting through BOFU (Bottom of your funnel)

Bottom of your funnel are the audiences that are close to purchasing your product, it includes the people who have visited your website, the people who have chosen a product and put it in the cart and the people who have checked out your product. These are good enough reasons to realign marketing strategy and give your prospects the offer to come back and buy the product. You can retarget the people to buy by offering them coupon code that they can use for buying or redeeming the discount.

Given below are simple steps to get more BOFU sales using Facebook Messenger:

Setting up your Facebook Campaign

Create a new Ad campaign within Facebook Ads page and set objective to “Traffic”

Retargeting

In the Ad set window, edit the placements excluding all except Facebook feeds.

Cart_visitors

Set the traffic destination to Website or Messenger.

Traffic

The target should be on people who have already visited your website and excluding who made the purchase.

New_audience

Next step is to Optimize your Ad delivery for Link Clicks and not Conversions

Optimization

With this new Campaign and Ad set, it should be configured correctly to create the Ad. You have the choice to select any type of Ad, just make note to select “Messenger Text” under “Destination” given below:

C1

Write a message that explains your users that they get a Coupon when they reply to your message with the word “Coupon”. Given below is how your finished Ad looks like:

boom

When the user sends the message, they will receive pre-written message given below:

boom By Cindy

If you follow the above processes, you are almost half- done.

Setting up the Chatbot

For setting up the Chatbot, you will have to log into your ManyChat account and click on Automation option given on the left side.

Manychat

Add “Coupon” as the new keyword

Keywords

Also change the targeting message to “Message contains” as keyword, it should look like the image given below:

Message

Also, you can add common misspellings that the user may have typo. You can write automated message that includes coupon code and link to the shop.

Edit_keyword

Your automation step is complete here. As the user types the word “Coupon” in response to automatic Facebook message, they get automated response with the coupon code:

coupon

The campaign is powerful enough to track people who have abandoned your shopping cart, it sends coupon code with the link to your product to complete the purchase. Facebook messenger campaigns are running high and dry with good click through rates.

Contains_coupon

By this stage, you may already be seeing a high ROI Facebook messenger remarketing campaigns

Adjusting Timeline to Maximise Revenue

The common questions marketers come across is, that the brand may miss out on revenues if they keep offering coupon to all and in any case consumers are going to buy the product. For this, there is an easy way out,brands can adjust their timelines to target only those people who abandon their carts more than three days ago.

You can check what works best for your brand and for your customer to get you maximum benefits with overall good results.

The above is smarter way to optimize your bottom funnel.

    1. Automated Onboarding Message

The main focus in this is to focus on how you can use Facebook Messenger Chatbot to increase the engagement with brand new visitors. Customers are looking for information online so when they ask some query they are looking for a human touch response but that would not always be possible. Hence, onboarding messages are used that will shoot when the user asks common questions. The Onboarding messages are used to answer common questions like FAQs, Provide information, Help people find information they are looking for, Brand engagement. Given below is a good example of an automated Chatbot message:

Welcome_Massage

Let your prospects know that their message has been received and they will be answered shortly, you can send them useful links based on their queries.

To setup this inside – ManyChat, click on “Automation” and “Main menu”

Main_Menu

Finally, you will be able to check which buttons are getting most clicks.

Meet_cindy_Joseph

The information can be used to make your options useful by identifying what your visitors are looking and creating.

    1. Shopping Platform Integrations

Facebook Messenger is one of the most basic shopping platform integration used for order confirmation. It is available on Shopify platforms. The below image shows how it exactly looks like:

Jean

The best thing about this type of order confirmation is that it triggers a good response from your customers by keeping them engaged with your brand.

is_this_about_delivery

You can also send money through the use of Facebook messenger by sending peer to peer payments. Facebook is working on process where users can store their credit card information for quick payments. This will help the users to see the ads on feed and with one click; they will be able to make that purchase.

Facebook messenger for Ecommerce is at a very early adoption stage and not much of your competitors may be using it. As it gets more popular, you are more likely to see lower response rates but as far as your brand conversation goes you can see good click through rates. These metrics are sure to fall down once people starts getting too many of messages just like it did for emails.

Facebook Messenger for Ecommerce to sell more Physical Products

Categories
Ecommerce
How brands can maximize sales by using Amazon 1P Multichannel Marketing

Amazon is one of the largest Ecommerce portals with over 100,000 sellers and hence faces immense competition within the dealers. Amazon provides multiple options for vendors to showcase their products and hence exclusive vendors get an access to their marketing tools to build their online presence. But, like every great thing takes time, to get verified conversion it takes time to build audiences over running campaigns. Let us step down to few of the marketing basics, as it’s commonly known as first party (1P) marketing.

Being a 1P vendor can get you many, many real benefits – it increases consumer confidence since shoppers will see the products as being sold by Amazon. This will enhance the product reliability and it is seal of approval that no third party gives. The vendors get to use more marketing tools on Amazon retail as compared to third party platforms. Vendors will be able to use 1P marketing only by invitation from Amazon, only after that they will be able to access Vendor Central portal.

Marketing Services

Amazon Marketing services (AMS) provide PPC ad solutions to its vendors that help them to reach new customers and drive their sales. This advertising service is for suppliers on Vendor Central and Vendor Express. Vendors can use headline ads and product display ads along with sponsored products that are offered to 3P sellers.

Sponsored Products

These ads are the PPC keyword based program that gives 1P vendors opportunity for more promotions. The ads appear on product pages and below the search results. Sponsored products are the best places on Amazon to increase your product exposure. Sponsored ads will land your ad on the first page when the users are searching for your product category. The ads are only displayed only for items where the vendors own the buy box.

Headline Search Ads

Headline search ads are the targeted Cost per click (CPC) ads that appear at the top of first page of search results on desktop and mobile pages. These ads give more visibility to brands and chance to interact with customers right from the start of purchase process.

Product Display Ads

These CPC Ads appear only on related product pages, these ads are not targeted by keywords. The ads are useful if your target audience’s interests are very specific to product that the brands sell.

Following are the key AMS Campaign strategies you can use:

  1. Match your keywords with Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASIN), combine your brand name with high level product category items.
  2. Manually add the keywords and prepare a good keyword list adding relevant misspellings. Aggressive bidding will help to capture relevant traffic to your ads.
  3. Reach out to new customers and promote high-level product categories, make use of product display and headline searches.
  4. Review your performance by reporting metrics; analyze ASINs, check for relevant and matching keywords.

Advertising Options for 1P Merchants

1P merchants can benefit by using promotional programs and other marketing tools made available by Amazon. The promotional programs include subscription service, Deal of the day, Lightening deals. There are thousands of vendors that are working with Amazon so brands should note the fact that their brand may not have guaranteed access.

Amazon Vine helps to send your product to top reviewers before it is put on sale. As consumers trust UGC more than ads, it can help to boost your sales.

A+ Content Pages helps to form a bulleted list of your product, brand can use logo, embedded video and other interactive feature for consumers to look at product and connect better. Amazon reports states that A+ helps to increase the sale on an average by 3 to 10% where brands can provide information and users are better able to connect through the use of improved SEO and content.

 

How brands can maximize sales by using Amazon 1P Multichannel Marketing

Categories
Ecommerce
How Apparel retailers embrace new strategies, counting beyond just conversions

Apparel markets have seen a major shift in last one decade or so. The reason is rapid commercialization; retailers are growing beyond just four walls and leveraging the idea of online business reaching more audiences online. The advertising structure has completely changed keeping in mind the purchase intent and advertising methods. Newer marketing tools and technological developments have led to more competitive markets globally showing a good revolution across buying and selling industries.

Google often changes its search result type keeping in mind the user intent; this helps users to make searches in specific verticals. Search engine results page or SERP as is commonly known display videos or related articles based on users’ intent. Accordingly, apparel retailers need to optimize content based on SERP display of targeted keywords. Today, advertising and marketing go beyond the measure of simply looking at conversions. Apparel brands are looking forward to set goals and measure success in the way they interact and engage their customers. It has become highly important for brands to take into account newer marketing methods, ideas and measurements. Apparel industry as a whole has seen bigger competitive landscape with shifting search trends. The massive change have led to more online conversions by including latest digital methods and devices, it tremendously helps to improve on User Engagement that goes beyond simple purchasing power.

Significance of Brand voice

Brands must purportedly engage its audience by providing them with personalized content. This helps brands to understand their users and create a content strategy that well aligns with SEO and social media goals.

Brands relevant tone and message should align with their organizational objectives and they should use key insights from audience data and purchase data to appeal to people. Seasonal announcements help to engage with audience by offering them relevant product offers. Take the case of Nordstrom, the company crafts content around important events and seasons. Their content often revolves around events like wedding seasons, prom, swimwear, seasonal work attire, etc. the below example shows how Nordstrom formats its content putting user intent in mind. While searching for “wedding guest” query, Google knows the user intent hence it can derive that the user is basically looking to wear something for a wedding.

weddingguests

Nordstrom have remarkably engaged its audience with creative marketing strategy. Nordstrom is equally leading on Facebook pages for discussions that are relevant to new wedding looks and work attire. The brand have clear objectives that are simple and sleek through images, post the copies and links that provide better engagement and visibility amongst the users. Through this type of marketing it will lead to better engagement through word of mouth and increasing the conversions.

nordstrom

The main marketing key lies in knowing what customer wants to interact with, hence content message should be written keeping the purchase intent in mind along with marketing strategy. Another very good example of an online male apparel brand is Chubbies. It’s a niche brand selling men trunk and shorts, they have created a distinct and very clear marketing message across all digital channels as a unified brand image.

Finding your Influence

Influencer marketing is one of the most upcoming forms of marketing because today people trust “people” more than any brand advertisements. Influencer marketing campaign helps to expose your brand to newer audiences that will be more excited about your product brand. For example, take the case of BlackMilk Clothing; the influencer often shares her favorite items on social circles and answer user questions that help to spread the brand awareness.

blackmilkclothing

Inluencer marketing does not only relate to social media, it also takes into account other activities and platforms that influencers use. Many influencers run their blogs that has massive following hence when an influencer belonging to your industry or product niche feature your product in their blog, it can have direct impact on the visibility of your brand in SERPs. Brands must consistenly try to shift their communication to potential customers to push through all mediums, for web properties belonging to them or that of influencers. The culmination of different media can help bring a bigger outcome and help brand work towards a specific goal like increasing the engagement and expand the reach and visibility.

Product Listing Ads

Today brands are going beyond what was just ordinary, along with Facebook ads and traditional search ads they are recognizing the power of Shopping Ads. These are basically Product Listing Ads (PLAs), appearing on the top of Google mobile search results having visual impact. The ads shows to user a photo of product complimenting with color, size, store name, price, etc. more details can be added through ad extensions.

Benefits of using Shopping Ads

Shopping Ads can provide long lasting benefits for your business profile, it helps:

  1. To promote inventory and enhance in-store traffic
  2. To Nurturing the leads who are looking to buy the product

It is highly important for brands especially apparel brands to evolve themselves out of traditional strategies and market their efforts towards latest digital tactics. Different marketing efforts like content strategies, influencer marketing, facebook ads, shopping ads and other types of ads help to stay on par with competition.

How Apparel retailers embrace new strategies, counting beyond just conversions

Categories
Ecommerce

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