I lived my life in Denmark and now a global citizen in fashion. I have attended the American University in Texas and hold master degree in Media & Communications. I have also spent 4 years of formal training in clothing and fashion. I love travelling around the world and being in different artistic environments has helped me discover more and more about my passions which is fashion.
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Optimizing the Checkout Flow with WooCommerce
Learn how to optimize your store's checkout for the most completed sales possible, regardless of which industry you're in or what you're selling.
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eCommerce in Italy – How to Sell Online in the Italian Market
Italy is the world’s eighth richest nation and the third-largest economy in Europe with a GDP of over $2 trillion (US). The context of 2020, with its connection to the COVID-19 pandemic, has accelerated digital transformation in Italy by increasing smartphone usage from the previous year despite the overall makeup of its population.
Italy’s prosperous population and its relatively untapped eCommerce market – only 55% eCommerce penetration in 2020 – make it an attractive opportunity for merchants selling online. With an expectation of a 21% increase in eCommerce users, Italy becomes a logical attraction for local and cross-border merchants.
Italy sees uptick in online shopping
Due to COVID restrictions, more consumers were driven to online shopping, accelerating the digital transformation of Italy that started in 2015 and reaching $58.3 billion (US) in 2019. Despite this, eCommerce turnover registered a slight 1% decrease in 2020 versus the previous year for Italy, a contraction driven by the onset of the global pandemic.
Mobile sales are on the rise, and customer experience is key
Analysts expect the market to continue its previous growth trajectory, however, backed in part by the country’s rapidly growing base of young smartphone users. At present, 40% of online transactions are completed on a mobile device, and nearly 93% of Italian users access the Internet via a smartphone.
For Italian buyers, a very important aspect of shopping is the quality of their online experience, and if they love it when they click on your website then they will spend an average of as much as $76 (US) per session, at the same level with their European neighbors.
For a cross-border merchant, it can be challenging to penetrate the local market and make their presence felt to consumers. Competition in the digital space is something to consider, as retail global players and local and national supermarket chains currently account for about 37% of all online retail purchases.
Global market is expanding
Italy’s urban centers in the North are more open to and confident with online shopping. Italian online shoppers spent over $8 billion on international sites in 2019, generating a decline for local online merchants but opening the doors for new services and cross-border sellers. This generates fresh and healthy competition among merchants, increasing their need to upgrade their services to attract more customers.
Italians prefer a range of products for online purchases
The increase in smartphone usage has been sustained by younger users who are used to navigating the internet and, in general, do more online shopping. Some of shoppers’ preferred products for online purchases include:
Fashion and beauty (17.6%)
Electronics and physical media (17.53%)
Toys and hobbies (10.2%)
Food and personal care (8.95%)
Digital products and services are also very popular in the market. Digital music services, for examples, are growing at an accelerated rate, recording 33% extra growth in the first half of 2020 alone. In spite of taking a step back in 2020, the software market is also forecast to continue its development path, with analysts expecting a 3.77% CAGR through 2026, when it will reach $9.54 billion.
Source: Statista
COVID acted as an accelerator for newly launched services, and motivated existing merchants to tailor their models to better accommodate the needs of consumers, which increased online spending.
Italians prefer a wide selection of payment methods
Online purchasing is still a sensitive subject for Italians because of their long struggle with online fraud and limited internet network coverage. Despite this, more than 94% of Italians do hold a bank account which means merchants can offer a varied selection of payment methods.
Debit and credit cards lead in Italian’s preferences for online payments, chosen for 28% of online transactions. The rest is split between digital wallets/mobile payments – with PayPal being the top favored eWallet – bank transfers, and cash.
Cross-border merchants can include domestic debit and credit issuers like CarteSi (Nexi), Postepay prepaid debit card, mobile wallet PagoBancomat, and even Bitcoin. For online businesses located in the Euro currency zone, SEPA can also be used as a payment method.
Fraud prevention is top concern for Italian consumers
When you prepare your business to enter a new market, it is important to take a closer look at your online security system. Italians appreciate a friction-free, fast, but also secure experience while buying online.
Using 3D Secure and 3DS2 protocol is a great tactic to assure increased security. According to the Bank of Italy’s report and statistics, 73% of purchases were made using 3D Secure in 2020 while the remainder (27%) were made through the 3DS2 protocol. This authorization protocol can help reduce online fraud and chargebacks and can speed authentication and increase the acceptance rate of online payments, which stands at 90% currently in Italy.
Stringent data privacy policies are a priority
As a European Union member, Italy carefully observes the protection and security of user personal information. With online methods of payment, it is paramount that all the GDPR measures are in place and respected when selling in the country.
If there is a problem, the Garante is the Italian institution that will take charge and investigate to resolve the identified issue. This institute is known for acting if there is a deviation from the rules.
Keep in mind cross-border taxing
In 2021, all taxable goods and services have a 22% VAT, although some items can have a reduced rate. The taxation of B2B sales is handled through the reverse-charge mechanism, where the buyer is expected to provide a valid VAT ID during checkout so no VAT rate will be applied to their purchase.
Closing words
Italy offers a great opportunity for cross-border merchants looking to grow their businesses. As forecasts point to 40 million online Italian shoppers by 2024, it’s a good time to focus your efforts on entering this market and tapping into its potential.
For more insights about selling online in Italy check out our eBook “eCommerce in Italy: A Merchant’s Cross-Border Guide to Online Sales.”
The post eCommerce in Italy – How to Sell Online in the Italian Market appeared first on The 2Checkout Blog | Articles on eCommerce, Payments, CRO and more.
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How To Create an Effective Ecommerce Return Policy and Process
Running an ecommerce business can be incredibly rewarding, especially when you’re able to provide shoppers with the perfect product they need or a gift that they love. However, not every purchase will turn out to be exactly what the customer was expecting, which means that you also must handle requests to return products that are no longer needed. Invesp reports that at least 30% of all products ordered online are returned (for brick-and-mortar stores, the number is a much lower 8.89%).
Fortunately, a well thought-out and presented return policy can make the returns process relatively seamless for both business owner and shopper. Read on for a quick guide on how to create a return policy for your ecommerce store that makes life easier for both you and your valued customers.
1. Prevent returns before they happen.
The most important step you can take is to do everything you can to present the product as accurately as possible—this way, customers will have more realistic expectations of what they are ordering before it arrives on their doorstep.
Optimize your product pages by including high-quality product photos from multiple angles and including well-written product descriptions that provide as much detail as possible. The more accurate a concept customers have of the product before they buy, the less likely they are to purchase something that doesn’t quite fit their needs—and then try to return it.
2. Make your return policy prominent and accessible.
68% of online shoppers view a business’s return policy before they decide to make a purchase, which means that making it easy to find is crucial. When it comes to online storefronts, most businesses include a link in either the header or footer (or both) to a dedicated landing page that details their return policy.
To make it even easier on customers, include a link to your return policy landing page on every order confirmation email. If you include a paper invoice with your shipped orders, consider including a hard copy there as well.
3. Ensure that your terms are clear and comprehensive.
Conduct research on your competitors to see what types of terms they include in their return policies to help inform what you include in yours. Make sure you spell out everything you can, including:
All applicable return charges (flat fee or location-based? No cost?)
The timeframe returns are accepted (up to 30 days after delivery? Up to 90 days after purchase?)
Condition of the item (new and still packaged? Any condition?)
Method of refund (back to the original payment method? Store credit?)
Any other necessary stipulations
Detail the requirements for an acceptable return as thoroughly as possible so that customers are not unpleasantly surprised by unexpected fees or deadlines later.
4. Adopt a more customer-centric return policy.
Considering the enormous number of ecommerce businesses in operation today, online store owners have some stiff competition when it comes to winning over customers. Those that offer a more flexible or forgiving return policy can give themselves a leg up on the competition, giving customers more reason to purchase from them rather than someone else.
While it may seem like a difficult expense to absorb, free return shipping is expected by 79% of consumers. If you’re concerned that offering free return shipping will eat into your revenue, consider folding some of the cost into your product prices, or offer a low, flat return shipping fee. Even if you incur some expense, the more you show shoppers that you value your business, the more likely you are to gain loyal, repeat customers.
5. Convey your return policy in an easy-to-understand manner.
The last thing shoppers want to see when looking for a return policy is a long, text-heavy page full of legal-sounding jargon. Make sure that your policy is written so that your customers can actually understand it, and consider illustrating it (when possible) to break up larger and more overwhelming-looking blocks of text.
Not only will making your return policy easy to read reflect well on your business—it will also likely reduce the amount of calls, emails, and chats you receive asking for more information about your returns process, saving valuable customer service time.
6. Make the process simple and straightforward.
Consider the steps your customers will need to take to make the return, and try to make the process as seamless as possible. List each step with links to applicable label templates, accepted shipping providers, and more (bonus points if you create a shipping label for them!). You might also include a link that lets them find the closest drop-off location of major carriers in relation to their location.
Got a brick-and-mortar storefront as well? Consider saving both parties money by allowing in-store returns for locals, and make sure this policy is featured prominently as it can be a major competitive advantage.
7. Get feedback on why the return happened.
Customer return reasons can vary, and you may not always know what caused a return to happen in the first place. Include a method of collecting feedback in your return process, whether in the request itself or as a follow-up email after completion. This can help you discover if there are any issues with your shipping process, product descriptions, and more—or whether the customer simply likes to see options in person before making a final decision.
If the reason for the return was a poor experience with the product or delivery process, let them know that you appreciate their help in making your business better and offer to make it up to them. A discount off or free gift with their next purchase can go a long way in showing you care, rebuilding trust, and gaining brand advocates.
8. Review and update your return policy as needed.
Once you have your ecommerce return policy written and in use, make updates as needed based on customer feedback and how the process works for you operationally. If, for example, you continuously receive the same questions about returns, find a better way to incorporate those answers into your return policy landing page—or find a way to make your policy more visible.
Watch your profit margins as well—if your implemented process is costing you more than it’s helping, don’t be afraid to update or change your terms. At the end of the day, your process needs to make sense for your business more than it needs to bend to buyers’ every demand.
In Conclusion
With an easy-to-find, clear, detailed, and competitive return policy in place, you are on your way to experiencing fewer returns and leaving customers satisfied. Need help getting started? Check out Volusion’s free Ecommerce Return Policy Generator.
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Industry Buzz – October 2021
Hi sellers!
The holiday season kicks off today with Halloween, and plenty of other festive opportunities will follow until the end of 2021, so get ready to choose the ones you want to target and maximize your online sales.
Whether you’ve already planned your holiday campaigns or are putting together a last-minute plan, we’ve compiled some useful tips to keep in mind. They will help you get started with the nitty-gritty of seamless payment processing, then perfect your checkout, overcome the taxation challenges when selling cross-border, and even personalize your campaigns. Equipped like this, you’ll be ready to stand out from the crowd during the busiest shopping days of the year.
Happy selling!
Are You Ready to Ramp up Your Holiday eCommerce Sales?
Given the Covid-19 context, the upcoming holiday season is expected to be one of the most lucrative yet for eCommerce. Get into the game with these 15 tips to delight customers and maximize returns on all your marketing spend.
5 Ways to Do Your Best eCommerce Business This Peak Shopping Season
It’s a good time to optimize your eCommerce operations for the peak shopping season. Here are 5 useful steps you can get started with!
Personalizing the Customer Journey in the Age of GDPR
Personalization is a major aspect of modern digital marketing, but the increasing concerns for customer privacy may pose some challenges for marketers trying to use this strategy. Watch this on-demand session featuring Einat Etzioni, CMO at Namogoo, to learn how to navigate the regulatory landscape for privacy and create top-notch campaigns!
Why Software & SaaS Shoppers Abandon Shopping Carts
Discover the most common reasons why SaaS customers abandon the shopping cart, as well as actionable tips to encourage them to complete their purchase.
Revenue Per Visitor: RPV Formula + How to Improve It
Revenue per visitor (RPV) helps you track your customer acquisition efforts and provides context for other metrics like the conversion rate. Check out these 7 useful strategies to improve it!
Taxation for Digital Goods in eCommerce in Europe
Taxation is often one of the most challenging aspects of cross-border eCommerce, but we’ve got you! Learn how to navigate the tax landscape for digital goods in the most sought-after European markets and ultimately scale your business globally.
Impacts of Failed Payments Matter More Than Actual Hard Cost
In addition to the financial impact, the real cost of failed payments is also related to customer retention. Learn why it’s crucial for an online business to use multiple tools to address this challenge and improve the customer experience!
Give Me 5 Tips on How Integrating with a CPQ Solution Helps Your B2B
A Configure Price Quote (CPQ) solution can help B2B companies quickly and accurately generate quotes for orders, while also providing flexible pricing, service, or product configuration. Check out our latest “Give me 5” episode to discover all the benefits that such a solution is bound to bring to your B2B business!
2Checkout B2B Commerce Platform
B2B commerce has registered significant growth over the past years, bringing new dynamics to the market. Learn how 2Checkout’s all-in-one digital commerce solution can enable B2B companies to strive and connect traditional and new sales channels.
Merchant Trends Survey 2022
2021 has been an interesting year when merchants had to learn, adapt, and thrive in the new normal. We now want to draw some conclusions and understand how eCommerce will look in the upcoming year. Share your experience by taking part in this short survey!
We’re curious to learn how you are preparing for the long-awaited holiday season. Feel free to share your tips and campaign ideas in the comments below!
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2Inspire Series – Interview with Tamara Grominsky, Chief Strategy Officer at Unbounce
We are back with another episode of our 2Inspire Interview Series, where we feature entrepreneurs, managers, experts, and creatives from the eCommerce landscape who are eager to share their insights, stories, and know-how to help you scale your online business.
For this episode, we had the pleasure to have an engaging talk with Tamara Grominsky, Chief Strategy Officer at Unbounce. Tamara helps companies unlock their growth potential by identifying their winning segments, pricing model, and product strategy. She has built actionable frameworks that have allowed her to drive significant impact at some of the best-in-class SMB companies, such as Yellow Pages, FreshBooks, and now Unbounce. Tamara also coaches the next generation of product marketers and strategists to embrace a new philosophy to product marketing. On top of that, she is a top-rated speaker at the Product Marketing Summit, Product-Led Summit, and Product Marketing Festival, where she shares her knowledge on driving business growth and building and scaling PMM teams.
This episode is jam-packed with actionable product marketing tips and insights, including the most important steps to follow when developing your customer segmentation strategy, myths regarding product marketing as a business function, as well as the most effective growth levers in B2B SaaS. Make sure to watch the interview to learn all about these and much more!
Check out the full interview below:
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Interview Excerpts:
Q1: What was the turning point in your professional journey that got you into product marketing? (00:15)
“I actually started my career in publishing. But while I was doing my Master’s Degree, I fell in love with technology and got a series of different jobs managing online content, and I loved this idea of being able to turn around stories quickly. Then, I just ended up in a role where I needed to help manage a social media product. So, it really appealed to that content creation side. But it was also all about product marketing – bringing that new product to market, growing it, identifying customer segments, learning about monetization. It was a role I didn’t know that I was looking for, but it kind of just stumbled across my path.”
Q2: What is a myth that you’d like to debunk regarding product marketing? (00:58)
“One of my least favorite things people think about product marketing is that it’s a really executional role, and there’s this saying that product managers put products on the shelf, and product marketers get them off the shelf. I completely disagree with that philosophy. Product marketing is a strategic business function, and it’s meant to be there the entire lifecycle of product development. I actually think that product marketing is like the linchpin to all business growth.“
Q3: What are the steps involved in your customer segmentation process? (01:32)
“There are three steps that I call the MAP model. The first one is to measure volume. Here you really want to look at who you have in your customer base, who you have in your past customer base and start to build clusters of customers who have things in common.
The second step is to analyze performance. And here, you want to look at those different clusters of customers and understand which clusters of customers are performing better than or equal to the average type of customer.
And finally, you want to prioritize potential. Once you have an understanding of whom you might want to go after, you want to assess your potential to actually win that market, should you choose to focus on them. Look at things such as the size of the addressable market, or whether that size of the market matches your growth ambition, as well as at the competitive landscape.
And at the end of that MAP model, the output is one to three customer segments that, if you choose to focus on them, you’re actually going to drive up all of the business results for your business because you’ve proven during that second step that they have just as good of, if not better business performance than the average customer.“
Q4: Any tips on how to leverage customer segmentation in building ICPs? (02:41)
“There are tons of ways that you can do it. I think about ICPs, I think about customer segments, I think about personas, and they’re all a little bit interchangeable. So, I would say that your target customer could be an ICP. But the difference here is that we’re taking a qualitative and quantitative approach to that. I always suggest rather than building a typical persona, which I find a bit light and fluffy – you know, usually, they just have a picture, maybe they have some fun facts – I recommend that you build segment profiles, which are more focused on data.
So here, we will pull in some stats about their business performance, and we will also spend time understanding their willingness to pay. We’ll then build a customized positioning right for those customer segments that we know the value that we’re positioning to customers is highly aligned with the value that they’re looking for.“
Q5: Based on your experience, what’s the most effective growth lever in B2B SaaS? (03:43)
“I would say that I’m a huge fan of monetization. If I’m going into a business or a new role, I always start by understanding their monetization strategy and how it’s serving them. I’m also a huge fan of Price Intelligently and ProfitWell. They’ve done a bunch of studies on the impact of each of these three pillars – acquisition, monetization, and retention. And what they’ve proven is that if you’re able to improve monetization by just 1%, it’s actually going to have more than a 12% impact on the bottom line, which is way higher than the impact of improving acquisition or retention.”
Q6: What are some lessons you learned from the pricing overhaul at Unbounce? (04:20)
“First of all, I learned that monetization and pricing are fun. I feel like so many people are intimidated by them, but it’s actually super juicy, and it’s a good blend of execution and strategy work.
But the two big takeaways I got were that you need to blend qualitative and quantitative data to get an effective pricing strategy because surveys and charts aren’t going to tell you so much. You also need to talk to customers to understand the emotional response that they have to a pricing strategy.
The second thing that I learned was that pricing is more than just a price point. A good monetization strategy considers things such as your value metric, your packaging, as well as the price point. And now, when I think about monetization or pricing work, I think about it a lot more holistically and a lot more strategically than perhaps I have in the past.”
Q7: What is an online tool you rely on the most and can further recommend? (05:21)
“I’d say Notion. Over the past, I’ve tried a ton of different note-taking or project management tools. But Notion is the perfect way for me to organize both my professional and personal life, it’s free, and there’s a bunch of different ways that you can use the product. That’s the number one product I recommend right now.“
Q8: Who are some inspirational people you look up to and why? (05:43)
“When I think about the people that really inspire me right now, one person that comes to mind is Kyle Lacy, the CMO at a company called Lessonly. He’s doing some interesting things in marketing and has been open and building out loud; he has a huge LinkedIn presence. He’s always talking about what they’re trying at Lessonly, what they’ve learned, what they’ve failed at. He has just really put a lot of effort into building this online community of other marketers. So, he’s definitely someone I look up to.
Another person I look up to is Wes Bush. He’s also from Canada and built the ProductLed community from the ground up. He wanted to learn a bit more about what it was like to be at a product-led company, did a bunch of research, and realized that he could build a community around it. And he’s just so humble and always willing to share what he’s learned or what he’s working on.”
Q9: What is the best book you’ve read lately? (06:54)
“I’ve just finished reading a book called Play Bigger. It’s not a brand-new book. It’s been out for a few years, but it’s all about category creation, and I’m really into category creation right now. This book is about how to build a category that allows you to define the rules with which your product exists. And so, rather than trying to play someone else’s game or fit within a specific category, how do you create your own and build the conditions that will allow you to win?”
Q10: What is the best advice you’ve ever received? (07:35)
“One of the most important pieces of advice I’ve ever received was that you really need to advocate for yourself. It doesn’t mean bragging or looking for ways to always bring them up. But I feel so many people are afraid to say ‘yeah, I worked on that project,’ or ‘look at this cool thing I did.’ But being willing to advocate for yourself and having the confidence to do so will really help you get ahead and refine what it is that you’re good at.”
Q11: Looking back at your professional growth, what is your advice for fellow women in tech? (08:12)
“Definitely, advocate for yourself! It goes right back to that last question.
I would also say to keep an open mind. Stay focused, but follow your curiosity, if that makes sense. If I were to have been really strict about the path I wanted to go on, I would probably still be working in publishing right now. But instead, I started to follow my curiosity, and that led me to a series of different roles in different types of companies, different sizes of companies. And along the way, I was able to refine what it is that I’m looking for and I think I’m exceptional at. That led me to my CSO role, but a decade ago, I didn’t even know what a CSO was. So, I would have never actually built a career path that would have gotten me here.”
Stay in the know
We hope you found this episode insightful and that you found at least one takeaway that you can leverage when boosting your product marketing game. Until our next episode, you can replay our previous 2Inspire interviews:
2Inspire Series – Interview with Tim Soulo, CMO of Ahrefs
2Inspire Series – Interview with William Harris, Founder and CEO at Elumynt
2Inspire Series – Interview with Matt Bilotti, Product Lead at Drift
The post 2Inspire Series – Interview with Tamara Grominsky, Chief Strategy Officer at Unbounce appeared first on The 2Checkout Blog | Articles on eCommerce, Payments, CRO and more.
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Three Great Reasons to Offer ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ for the Holidays
Not only do customers love it, it’s great for stores, too. See how you can grow sales with minimal risk by implementing BNPL options for the holidays.
The post Three Great Reasons to Offer ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ for the Holidays appeared first on WooCommerce.
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Use an Omnichannel Approach to Create the Ultimate Customer Experience
Omnichannel commerce, a multiple-channel, integrated approach that gives shoppers an optimized, integrated and seamless experience no matter whether they are shopping in-store, online, or with various devices, is here to stay.
The sizable growth of digital shopping, driven by technological advancements and the onset of the global pandemic, has escalated the need for businesses to consider an omnichannel approach, if they haven’t been using one already.
2Checkout’s fifth CommerceNow online event featured presentations from industry experts on eCommerce, digital marketing, fraud prevention, conversion rate optimization, customer retention, global payments, as well as the need for omnichannel market strategies.
In this article I’ll share the main takeaways from my CommerceNow’21 presentation, “From No-Man’s Land to Wonderland: The Journey to Omnichannel Success.” (You may also register to watch each of the recorded webcasts here.)
Omnichannel, is key to success, but there are hundreds of definitions of what it is – the key, however, is customer experience. The basic features of omnichannel are simple:
Customers move between channels while shopping
They expect an optimal experience with each interaction
Channels and touchpoints need to be managed as a unit
The reality is that your customers will switch channels no matter what you do. An omnichannel approach focuses on creating the best experience with every new interaction those customers have with your product and brand.
The statistics are compelling, as I revealed in my presentation: customers interacting through an omnichannel experience spent 4% more in-store, and 10% more online, with those conversions leading to a 30% higher lifetime value (LTV) overall. In-store purchases for retail are still exceeding online purchases – by $15 trillion worldwide– but the in-store shopping experience is getting more sophisticated with the use of omnichannel strategies.
These new strategies blur the lines among channels, and in-store tactics work to their advantage in the following ways:
In-store product catalogue
Physical store as display location
Sales occurring on every platform
While companies may still opt for a single-channel model (physical store or website shop), or a multichannel model (a purchase-centric approach where only one channel can be used at a time by the customer), the omnichannel model is increasingly the most successful approach. The bottom line is that the secret to any model, including omnichannel, is to follow a path on three essential “stepping stones,” which are part of a continuum.
These stepping-stone components, consist of multichannel, channel personalization, and finally, the omnichannel ecosystem. Ultimately, we shared what it takes to get to omnichannel success, using Amazon and Disneyland as examples of two top companies who use these components in concert to create the ultimate customer experience:
Consistency in every customer interaction
Availability, by offering choices
Channel neutrality, with no competition among channels
Context optimization, where the value of your omnichannel approach is maximized by using different channels for different things
Seamlessness between channels, which requires effective back-end integration.
For companies wondering how to begin – or optimize – their omnichannel approach, here are some “do’s” and “don’ts” of implementing it:
DO align on a North Star metric based on strategic and customer goals
DO look beyond the horizon; focus on the mission of the company and how you can differentiate
DO remember that customer expectations and brand positioning matter
DO set up cross-functional teams right from the beginning of your omnichannel journey
DON’T build a “funhouse” that will only disorient your customers. Think about what channels really matter
DON’T take the meaning of omnichannel too literally; it’s not ALL the channels, it’s the key two to three players
DON’T forget to focus on what parts of omnichannel to prioritize first
DON’T neglect approaching your investments with critical thinking involved—make sure they are in line with your overall strategy
You can find my entire session here if you want to learn even more about reaching omnichannel success. And if you want to get more insights from some of the greatest minds in eCommerce, digital marketing, CRO, and customer experience shared at CommerceNow 2021, sign up here to access all the sessions.
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Merchant Stories: Airframes Alaska
We love to hear stories about our merchants’ ecommerce journeys, so we’re sharing them for you to enjoy as well. Read on to learn about how Airframes Alaska has found success with their online store (via Ryan Kedzie, Marketing Director).
What inspired the business to open an online store?
It was mostly a logistical decision. Our business is located in Alaska, and having a brick-and-mortar store is important for reaching our local customers—shopping online is less readily available up here because shipping charges can be so expensive. However, we knew that there was a customer base outside of Alaska that would be interested in our products as well, and an online store gives us the opportunity to reach people outside of our region. Adding an online component to our brick-and-mortar store allowed us to increase both our sales and our footprint—we now have customers across Canada, Europe, South Africa, and more.
What is the best part of operating an ecommerce business?
We definitely enjoy the wide variety of people we get to serve. In Alaska, we can be pretty isolated from other populations and outside cultures, so selling our products online allows us to reach customers globally who are doing unique things. One of our target audiences is aviation customers, and it’s interesting to learn about the various needs, rules, and necessary certifications of different regions. We also sell outdoor gear like hauling sleds and tents, so we are able to provide products for customers who are traveling anywhere from Antarctica to the Gobi Desert.
What do you like most about Volusion’s ecommerce solution?
We have used Volusion’s Design Services Team often to help us achieve specific design-related goals. Whether integrating a video into our homepage in place of a slideshow or incorporating pop-ups into our site, it has been helpful to have custom solutions at our disposal. It feels like we have endless opportunities, especially on the backend, to make our site successful.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve received regarding the business?
To stay customer-focused. It’s easy to think locally because of the isolation of our location—our local customers can’t just drive across state lines to get what they need, so we’re always willing to help solve that problem. With an online store, we’re also able to help customers 10,000 miles away get what they need, and we always remember to remain customer-focused in the solutions we provide.
What does the future hold for your business?
We look at ourselves as a global brand, so we plan to continue expanding our footprint and innovating our product lines. While we currently focus on aviation and outdoor gear, we want to offer even more products to more people across the globe. We’re never complacent—we believe that our business is important, and we’re going to continue to dominate digitally.
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Are You Ready to Ramp up Your Holiday eCommerce Sales?
Updated in October 2021.
Every annual holiday is an opportunity to engage with your customers and drive sales, yet nothing beats the celebrations streak during the last quarter of the year.
The holiday “commercial” season formally begins in October, with Halloween, continues with Black Friday and encompasses a slew of holidays up until Christmas. You definitely don’t want to miss the seasonal promotional opportunities to maximize your online sales, especially considering your competitors have probably started preparing already.
It’s worth noting that following Covid-19, more than 50% of Americans plan to shop online on Black Friday and Cyber Monday—compared to less than a fifth looking to shop in-store. Across the board, consumers are becoming more and more interested in shopping online. While this is great news for eCommerce, it means the landscape is more competitive than ever.
To help you plan for the festive season, here’s a list of the major 2021 year-end holidays to keep in mind:
October 31th – Halloween
November 4th – Diwali
November 11th – Veteran’s Day
November 25th – Thanksgiving
November 26th – Black Friday
November 28th – First day of Hannukah
November 29th – CyberMonday
December 13th – Green Monday
December 14th – Free Shipping Day
December 25th – Christmas Day
December 26th – Boxing Day
December 31st – New Year’s Eve
That’s a lot of special days to pick from and plan for, but they’re also great opportunities to tap into this year’s projected holiday sales online revenue of $207 billion—an 11% increase compared to 2020, despite the pandemic.
Once you’ve decided which holidays to target—and don’t worry, our guide will help plan and execute optimally—and have your product stocks ready, it’s time to get into the game! Whether you’ve already started planning your holiday campaigns, aren’t sure how to begin, or are simply looking for ideas to squeeze those last dollars out of customers, we’ve compiled 15 tips to guide your holiday eCommerce sales in 2021.
Rather than adding to the holiday noise, let’s look at how you can delight customers and maximize your returns on all marketing spend this winter.
#1 Start planning your campaigns now
The best time to plan your holiday campaigns was 6 months ago. The second best time is right now.
Last year a National Retail Federation survey found that 42% of US shoppers had started their holiday shopping earlier than usual. By early November, more than a quarter of all holiday shopping was already complete.
While certain blockbuster days will continue to dominate the headlines (looking at you, Cyber Monday) holiday shopping has been moving earlier for years. But in 2021 we’re expecting an even bigger leap. Global supply chains are in disarray, tech goods are facing a global shortage of parts and processors and shipping is an unqualified disaster—in spite of these aspects, holiday readiness is at an all-time high and shoppers will be working as fast and efficiently as possible on their shopping.
Successful campaigns take time to prepare
The second—and arguably even more vital—reason to plan your campaigns early is that executing a top-quality advertising, social media or marketing campaign takes time. Rushing any part of the process is likely to impact results.
Finally, holiday marketing is a busy season. The more you can plan, strategize and tick jobs off the list before the real rush comes in winter, the better placed you’ll be to implement the rest of our tips.
#2 Give your website a holiday makeover
Show consumers that you’re embracing the holiday spirit by using your homepage to feature special deals and holiday-themed products. You should strategically show off your best products and make the offerings as appealing as possible. Remember that sale items are the main thing shoppers look for when browsing a website during the holidays, so your discounted items should be prominent.
There are some subtle changes you can make to your website in order to build that festive hype:
Change your logo to incorporate the upcoming holiday (especially powerful at Christmas and Halloween)
Add festive “trimmings” to your website (e.g. snow at Christmas or poppies on Veterans Day)
Adjust your color palette and site imagery to match the season or holiday
Touch up your copy with festive words, phrases, and even puns to create an appropriate tone
#3 Optimize your website’s performance
Once your website is looking good, it’s crucial to optimize its performance. While Amazon’s much-quoted stat, “for every 100 milliseconds of webpage load time there is a 1% drop in sales”, might not be totally accurate, the message is still relevant today.
More than half of shoppers will abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. While there are a few tips & tricks you can employ in-house (see below) we strongly recommend bringing in outside help to make sure your site is fast, bug-free and ready to roll with the punches. Simple load testing at 500% traffic (or more) will help determine whether you’re ready for the holiday rush.
The cost of hiring speed optimization experts pales in comparison to what you could lose due to server failure or slow loading. Giants like Walmart and fashion brand Lululemon both experienced site crashes during Black Friday, missing out on huge revenue bumps. In 2019 Costco lost a predicted $11 million in revenue after a 16-hour post-Thanksgiving outage.
Google has even made mobile page speed a search engine ranking factor. So you are doubly incentivized to speed things up as it will positively impact your site’s SEO.
Emergency DIY speed optimizations
Asynchronous loading—Synchronous loading means that the web page only appears when every element is fully loaded. Switching to asynchronous loading can give the illusion of faster loading speeds (with segments appearing as soon as they’ve loaded) and help deter would-be absconders from leaving your site.
Image optimization—Large image files cripple your site. Create web-appropriate versions of all images to keep the site as unburdened as possible—users will not notice any quality difference and will appreciate the rapid browsing.
Third party integrations—Keep front-end third-party apps to a minimum. These integrations (for example, social media feed plugins) can add value to visitors, but they can also slow down your site.
Bonus: Here are more tips to improve the performane of your eCommerce website!
#4 Optimize everything for mobile
You absolutely must prioritize mobile user experience on your website during this holiday season. Mobile spending over the 2021 holidays is set to hit $70 billion, claiming just under a third of all online holiday shopping in 2021.
Optimizing your website for mobile is partly the technical robustness we mentioned above, but it’s the user experience that lets most retailers down.
Your website needs to offer a streamlined shopping experience all the way through to your shopping cart and checkout. Here are some mobile website and shopping cart best practices to maximize your conversion rates and revenue growth:
Make your product search box larger and more prominent
Allow autofill of contact and card details in the cart
Emphasize product reviews & social proof—remember that product reviews are one of the most important factors influencing the decision to buy in 2021
Show the price in the buyer’s local currency, both on the website and in the shopping cart
Make sure the discounts on your website are reflected in the cart
If you have a mobile app, you need to repeat everything you’ve done for the website: stress test extensively (to make sure it’s functioning properly and capable of handling the increased demand over the holidays) and go hard on the user experience design so it’s as easy as possible for shoppers to buy from you.
#5 Get your discounts right
If all you do is dress up your website a little and offer a few small discounts, you shouldn’t expect any miracles. During the holiday shopping season, customers are counting on getting crazy good deals, more of the “you’d be crazy not to grab this deal” or “offer you can’t refuse” type than just a generic 10% off.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean offering an 80% discount; it can also involve cross-selling and up-selling, bundling items and so on. Most people are looking for the right price for them, at that moment in time—not necessarily the lowest price ever. You can also add exclusive or time-limited deals, thus creating a sense of urgency.
Offer value without discounting
As well as cutting prices, there are multiple holiday eCommerce promotions you can launch without “discounting” per se:
Raffles—Partner with a third party (to create something unique) or put one of your products up as a raffle prize. Entries to the raffle are awarded for “free” following any on-site purchases during the promotional period. The number of entries can scale with the size of purchase.
Gift Certificates—Offering gift cards as a purchase reward is an excellent way to increase average order value, by incentivizing spending a certain amount (e.g. “Spend $45 and earn a $5 gift card”), or customer lifetime value, since a customer with a gift card is very likely to return and spend in future.
Free shipping—Free shipping has become a bit of an artificial discount for many companies. Because free shipping is now expected as standard, companies usually offer it for purchases above a certain level, e.g. “Spend $50 and we’ll ship for free.”
Special discounts—This one is a little different: only offer a discount once the order total reaches a certain level. For example, $10 off if you spend $100.
You should always calculate the magnitude of your discounts based on your financial model, previous sales results and ROI forecasts, to make sure the deals will actually generate profit instead of net losses at the end of the holiday period.
#6 Make sure your analytics are running smoothly
If you’ve promoted your campaigns well, you’ll likely receive a lot of traffic over the holiday season that leads to conversions and micro-conversions. It’s important to make sure everything’s working fine with your analytics so you can monitor your website’s performance, traffic, purchase flows, and so on.
This will allow your team to effectively optimize campaigns on the fly. If you notice certain flows are performing better than others, for example, you can put more funds behind them. You can launch cart abandonment email campaigns with deadly accuracy (since you know exactly when carts are being abandoned, and with which products) and even use your analytics to accurately forecast and manage your supply chain.
To take things a step further, you could implement dynamic tools which help forecast demand, plan inventory, automate certain operations and even optimize prices in real-time. Such technologies can facilitate a more seamless buying journey for customers, especially if your business combines both eCommerce and physical retail stores.
#7 Get personal
It’s more important than ever for brands to stay consistent across channels and provide personalized experiences.
Personalization doesn’t mean creepily using the prospect’s full name; the most impactful thing eCommerce businesses can do is leverage shoppers’ previous browsing behavior to personalize offers. Either on your website or through paid social media and search ads.
Not only should you see good conversions from this targeting, you’re also increasing raw traffic to the site and can use up-selling and cross-selling with related products and accessories on cart pages. Building campaigns that focus on customers who either haven’t purchased in a while, or those who engage particularly well with emails, is another option.
Get personal to improve brand engagement
You can also interact with your customers by encouraging them to share their purchases and reviews through their own social channels, in order to extend your brand awareness and trust. Buyer behavior surveys have shown that brand reputation and product reviews are some of the most important factors that influence the decision to buy.
Finally, give shoppers reasons and opportunities to tell you about themselves. The more you know about them, the better you can personalize their experience. This isn’t necessarily about increasing holiday eCommerce sales in 2021—but in 2022, these might well be valuable customers!
#8 Make a big splash on social media
The holiday season is a great chance to engage with and expand your company’s following on social media, both to improve your brand’s reputation and directly impact sales (in a positive way, of course). Let’s look at how you can nail both.
Social media for brand engagement
This is one of the few times every year where you can let loose on social media. It’s crucial to understand that over the holidays, shoppers expect creative, enjoyable interactions with brands. So let the shackles off and get creative:
Run festive contests—Put up a product or special offer as a prize, then run an easy and fun contest that, rather than focusing on generating leads with contact information, just tries to engage as many people as possible. Try to get them invested, make them laugh, make them think—these interactions can put your brand front-of-mind when it comes time for shopping.
Let the banter flow—No joke, simply sitting behind your Twitter or Instagram for a few hours replying to messages, poking fun, “warring” with other brands, and providing social commentary can create seriously good vibes for the company.
Create amusing holiday ads—You don’t need a big budget to cobble together a funny or emotional video. These always have the potential to go viral and, if not, can build a stronger bond with your like-minded followers, reminding them that you’re the kind of brand they should be getting behind.
Of course you need to keep up the effort post-holidays to keep your new cohort of fans engaged!
Social media advertising
Here’s where some companies go wrong. They know that the holidays are a great time for whimsical humor and festivities—and so they pile this into their paid advertising too.
Be careful with festive ads!
All year round, your company has a focus on building ads based on data: purchase history, demographics, pain points, objections, competitor analysis, etc. Your ads need a good return or you’re just burning money.
So during the holidays, you must remember to still be strategic in your paid advertising. Try to personalize (see previous section) if you can; address known pain points of your audience; inject festive spirit only if you think it will resonate and help conversions on these specific campaigns.
Because while festive cheer is huge over the holidays, it doesn’t need to bleed into every aspect of your business. Sometimes, even at Christmas, the most effective ads are those which don’t mention the holidays at all—they just focus on selling the right products, at the right time, to the right people, at the right price.
#9 Create and promote a holiday shopping guide
The basic idea of a holiday eCommerce guide is to make buying decisions easier for shoppers—and in 2020, over 45% of people said they’d be looking for one! This tip is aimed at online stores which typically offer a wide variety of products.
An incredible number of people are determined to buy gifts and have no idea where to start. Your shopping guide is what they need: it simultaneously creates ideas, provides buying options, and converts shoppers into customers. It’s a great add-on for marketing campaigns and a useful tool for re-engaging past customers or cart abandoners.
To create the guide, you just need to follow basic marketing principles:
Choose the right products—Speak to customers, review historical sales data, ask stockists which products are trending. Find the products most likely to be popular this winter (or summer, if you’re targeting shoppers from the Southern hemisphere).
Categorize your products—If you’re making one shopping guide, you’re probably making several. Categories could be by:
Age
Product type
Interest or personality
Budget
Gender
Virtually anything, depending on your specific business
Choose a format—Landing pages, downloadable lead magnets, PDFs, blog articles, hard copy for direct mail; the format isn’t too crucial as long as it’s easy for shoppers to access and reference.
It’s then time to stock up on the products you’re advertising and start sharing the guide. Like any campaign, this can be done organically (through social media, SEO, word of mouth) or using any form of paid advertising.
Holiday eCommerce guides are designed to capture those buyers that don’t really know what they want, and who want the thinking done for them. And there’s a reason so many eCommerce businesses publish guides—they work!
#10 Leverage affiliates
The holiday season is the loudest, busiest time of the entire year when it comes to marketing. Remaining visible and cutting through the noise can be difficult when shoppers are sick to their back teeth of ads!
One brilliant way to get your products seen is to go through third parties that prospects actually want to listen to: affiliates. If you haven’t previously engaged niche brands, popular websites or influencers as affiliate partners, now is the perfect time to start.
Bonus: Here are some tips on maximizing eCommerce sales using affiliates.
Affiliates already have a firm grip on their audience’s attention. By arranging a mutually-beneficial deal, both sides can benefit from increased profits over the holidays. There are two basic “keys” to effective affiliate marketing:
Audience fit—You need to be putting your products in front of the right people. This doesn’t mean existing customers (that would be redundant) but those with an active interest in your niche. For example, if you sell online courses, you might target bloggers or YouTubers in the personal development niche.
Audience size—Bigger does not always mean better when it comes to affiliates. The reason? Smaller followings are usually more engaged and trusting of the affiliate; therefore it can make sense to spread funds around 2-3 smaller affiliates than a single giant.
If you want to stand out and be seen (and by “be seen”, we mean “have your products fly off the shelf like startled pigeons”) then an affiliate partnership could be the way to go.
#11 Leverage existing customers and old prospects
We’ve already explored multiple ways to prepare for an onslaught of new shoppers—but don’t forget about the audiences you’ve previously marketed to. These split into two groups:
Your existing customers;
Prospects who didn’t purchase, but did show interest, in previous campaigns.
You should be retargeting your existing customers anyway—upsell offers, discounts, personalization, the works—but many companies abandon this second audience. In earlier campaigns you probably had prospects engaging with your marketing, visiting the website and even abandoning their cart.
In marketing you need to hit the right prospect, with the right offer, at the right time—but you can only control two of these variables. Allocate some of your holiday marketing budget to those prospects who showed interest but never made a purchase earlier in the year. Get as personal as you can—there’s a good chance the holiday season will be the right time for them!
#12 Provide stellar customer support
During the holiday season, one issue is perennial: customer requests for support tend to surge dramatically. Companies might get overwhelmed by the increased number of orders and customer service tickets and requests.
The first thing you should do is check last year’s trends, to know what to expect. Also, narrow down the main channels that customers are using to ask for support or send complaints—email, social media, your helpdesk platform?
If you think adopting a new channel will bring a net benefit to customer support (even if it’s temporary over the holidays) then make the decision early enough to integrate the channel and train your staff. Live chat, for example, has become the de facto standard for eCommerce support in recent years.
Make sure your customer support team is very well trained and prepared to deal with difficult customers and stressful situations, and that your escalation infrastructure works properly. You might need extra hands on deck, or extra hours of work, at all levels of the company. If customers don’t get the help they need, when and where they need it, they may well avoid your business in the future; you might also acquire a negative reputation online.
As long as your team is prepared and understands how to use any tools & software at its disposal, the holiday rush should cause minimal ruckus. Implementing our other advice such as optimizing the website will also contribute to smooth festive sailing.
#13 Optimize your site for search
Enabling effective site search is not a UX box-ticking exercise: it’s a mission critical part of your online sales capability. Conversion rates through site search can be up to 50% higher than the average.
Site search is becoming the dominant way in which shoppers find specific products in your store. For some eCommerce sites, as few as 10% of shoppers using the search function can account for 40% of revenue. Effective site search brings:
Lower bounce rate
Higher conversions
Better user experience (especially for mobile users)
Valuable analytical data (for future campaigns)
A faster shopping experience
There are a few simple optimizations you can implement to create much more effective site search:
Use query suggestions (aka Smart Autocomplete) to help customers fine-tune queries and connect with your products faster. This simple change can boost sales and conversions by as much as 24%.
Provide relevant filtering options for every search.
Design for user experience. Colors, fonts, microcopy—there are lots of minor adjustments which, combined, can significantly improve ease of use.
Bonus: Here’s how to perform a thorough SEO audit for your eCommerce store!
#14 Optimize checkout and payment infrastructure
If you think shoppers clicking “Add to basket” then “Go to checkout” means you’ve got a sale, you’re wrong. Roughly 70% of shoppers abandon their carts; some sources put this as high as 90% during the holidays.
There are many reasons why this happens. Some of them you can’t control (like shoppers getting distracted by an emergency phone call) but the vast majority can be addressed. Here’s a quickfire list of extremely common checkout problems and how you can fix them:
Forced account creation—The argument against guest checkout (where shoppers don’t need to register an account) is that you lack customer info which makes future marketing more difficult. However, it massively increases cart abandonment—and you can’t market to shoppers who never bought from you! We recommend guest checkout with the option to register post-purchase.
Unexpected shipping costs or taxes—You absolutely must show both product and shipping costs (even an estimate) before reaching checkout. When a shopper reaches the checkout page and the numbers don’t match what’s in their head, they are instantly mistrustful.
Payment security concerns—People don’t spend money if websites look suspicious. Displaying trust seals and security badges, including a link to your terms & conditions, showing the highlights of your refund policy, and displaying short reviews can all allay customer security fears.
Discount code failures—If your company releases a promo code it has to work. Shoppers are not going to pay full price when they’ve been offered a discount. Again this will cause mistrust and possibly an unpleasant storm on social media.
Product no longer in stock—There’s nothing worse than reserving an item in a cart, shopping around a little more, then seeing a message at checkout saying “Sorry, this item is out of stock”. Invest in accurate, real-time stock monitoring for your eCommerce store to improve conversions.
Payment option issues—Always offer a variety of payment methods—debits cards, credit cards and some of the most popular global digital wallets, like PayPal or Google Pay, are a must. With so much shopping done on mobile, it’s common for shoppers to make purchases without their physical wallet, expecting a simple digital solution.
Poor returns policy—As we discuss in point #15, managing returns is exceptionally important during the holidays. Free returns has become the standard: seeing your expensive or awkward returns policy can make users abandon checkout and go elsewhere. Try to make returns as attractive as possible for your customers; if you can’t offer free returns (this is a common problem for small and boutique retailers) then explain why and try to connect with prospects emotionally.
#15 Prepare for Returns Season
We know this is probably the last thing you want to hear after putting so much effort into your holiday marketing…but customers will return items. Doesn’t matter if you’re selling cars or theater tickets or digital subscriptions: come January, the returns will come thick and fast.
If that sounds daunting, here’s the good news: it’s a huge positive opportunity. Did you know 4 in 10 shoppers will make an additional purchase when returning a product online? Demonstrating world-class customer service is crucial to creating these additional sales. For some, the returns process is the first interaction they’ve had with your brand; this is an extremely important, impressionable moment.
Returns culture has changed
It’s also important to recognize that free shipping & returns has transformed how we shop. We return more products, but we also buy more products in the first place. Instead of experimenting with one dress, a modern shopper might buy 3-4, knowing they can freely return the ones they don’t want.
In reality, you’re always selling just one dress; it’s just packaged as selling 4 and refunding 3. Your goal with excellent customer service isn’t to prevent returns from happening—it’s to make them so easy that customers want to buy from you in future.
Some companies create convoluted returns processes to make customers give up on their return. Not only does this usually fail (people are very determined when it comes to returns) it’s horribly short-sighted: more than 8 in 10 online shoppers would stop using an eCommerce business after a bad returns experience.
Conclusion
To conclude, the online sales opportunities around the holidays are immense. Be ready to deliver and make sure you have a great festive—and profitable–season!
Special tip: try to “underpromise” and then “overdeliver.” This will help manage your customers’ expectations and always provide them with a positive experience.
Any tips or important holidays that we missed? Just add them in the comments!
The post Are You Ready to Ramp up Your Holiday eCommerce Sales? appeared first on The 2Checkout Blog | Articles on eCommerce, Payments, CRO and more.
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2Checkout Unveils New Zen Cart Connector
Our top priority is to continuously improve our offerings so we can help merchants expand their online businesses and increase their revenue. That’s why we recently introduced the new-and-improved Zen Cart Connector.
Zen Cart is a free, open-source shopping cart software designed to help merchants launch and maintain their eCommerce business with little to no programming skills required. Zen Cart started as a software fork that branched from osCommerce, and it was built based on the needs of both merchants and shoppers, offering benefits such as:
Support for physical and digital products, as well as services
A complete package of solutions for online businesses (features like billing, product display, multi-language options, different currencies, etc.)
Zen Cart is mostly used by small and medium-sized businesses that operate in the Retail, Restaurants, and IT Services industries.
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The new Zen Cart Connector strives to help eCommerce businesses attract more customers and increase their revenue, while providing a better experience for both merchants and shoppers. The new connector is designed to replace the older Legacy 2Checkout integration and provide online merchants with superior capabilities through new ordering engines like ConvertPlus, Inline Cart, and 2Pay.js.
ConvertPlus simplifies the process of collecting payments from your customers while offering them a straightforward buying experience. Meanwhile, InlineCart addresses the buying experience differently by seamlessly auto-advancing shoppers through the checkout, without redirecting them to extra pages.
You can also opt for 2Pay.js which collects payment sensitive data via API and directly sends it to 2Checkout, without passing the data through the merchants’ systems.
Switching over to the new Zen Cart Connector will bring many other benefits, such as:
Optimized eCommerce experience for merchants and shoppers
Highly improved ordering process, with more features and functionalities
Increased conversion rate, generating more customers and revenue
Better and more intuitive checkout flow for shoppers
The new Zen Cart Connector is available for 2Checkout accounts that use the 2Sell or 2Subscribe package. Existing merchants who currently use the Legacy 2Checkout Zen Cart connector can update their integration to the new version at any time.
Any questions regarding the integration with Zen Cart? Our Knowledge Center outlines the necessary steps to complete integration, so don’t miss out!
The post 2Checkout Unveils New Zen Cart Connector appeared first on The 2Checkout Blog | Articles on eCommerce, Payments, CRO and more.
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Give me 5 Tips on How Integrating with a CPQ Solution Helps Your B2B
Hello everyone, and welcome back to our “Give me 5!” series, where we share five useful eCommerce tips that will help improve your strategies and get you on the road to success.
In this episode, Lorraine Marquis, 2Checkout (now Verifone)’s Head of Digital Sales for Americas, will talk about how integrating with a CPQ solution will help your B2B business thrive.
CPQ, or Configure Price Quote, is a sales tool that companies can use to quickly and accurately generate quotes for orders. This tool is designed to help you build a buyer-centric experience for your prospects and clients. CPQ applications often work in tandem with CRM platforms, ERP programs, and other business technology, to help ensure that data is accurate and well-integrated. In addition to that, CPQ allows sales reps to deliver quotes faster thanks to a streamlined quoting process, while also providing flexible pricing, service, or product configuration.
Let’s dive deeper and check out these five benefits of using a CPQ solution for your B2B:
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1. Increased efficiency in client offer negotiations
When using a CPQ solution, your sales teams can move much faster with a deal and provide more quotes within the same allocated time.
When your clients request a quote, they usually expect to get it fast, and if they don’t get it as quickly as they want, they are more likely to look elsewhere for other solutions. They might even approach your competitors in the process.
By providing real-time accurate quotes, CPQ software supports your sales teams to streamline the acquisition process, even for custom proposals, and take advantage of automated ordering and fulfillment in closing more deals faster.
2. Close more deals, faster
The biggest motivation of a salesperson is to close as many successful deals as possible. A great help in that department are the CPQ tools. They can drive sales productivity in two important ways, by enabling your sales representatives to:
Form stronger relationships with clients.
CPQ software can reduce the administrative tasks of your sales reps, allowing them to focus their time on engaging with and satisfying more clients.
Close higher-quality deals.
CPQ automates the identification of targeted upsell and cross-sell opportunities and can help your sales reps increase their productivity by maximizing the value of every deal.
3. Greater accuracy and fewer errors
Sales teams usually have a substantial number of proposals and contracts to manually manage. Unfortunately, this sometimes results in paperwork with a couple of minor errors, such as wrong dates, missing signatures, or misspelled names. Other times, even major errors can occur, such as selling out-of-stock products or even mispriced items. These types of mistakes can lead to longer sales cycles, a potentially negative experience for your clients, or even worse – damage to your company’s reputation.
Tools such as CPQ can automate pricing and quoting, without any human errors in the process and fewer required quote revisions, ultimately streamlining your quote-to-order-to-cash processes.
4. Automated reporting in your CRM solution
One of the most important features of CPQ software is its reporting capability. You get real-time visibility into the KPIs that matter, by merging sales process data with back-end order and subscription metrics and statuses, which allows for faster business decisions and more flexibility for custom deals. The tool allows you to see if and where clients give up their order process, which customizations they prefer, if your discounts are successful or not, and other crucial insights for your business.
It also captures the client’s feedback directly within the CPQ environment. This way, your sales teams get instant notifications on any updates and have direct access to an archive of interactions with the clients.
These insights can offer you the chance to make significant improvements to your sales process, which then will lead to an increase in successful orders and client satisfaction.
5. Increase in total revenue
Ultimately, the goal of any sales team is to increase profitability, and there are a lot of examples of how CPQ software will help you boost your revenue.
For instance, given that the sales cycle is shorter, administrative time and labor will decrease due to fewer quote revisions required, and certain manual operational costs will be eliminated.
Through reporting, you will be able to get a clear understanding of what is working and what is not in your sales process, thus eliminating costly inefficiencies.
You also gain the ability to perform the sales process anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Being able to close deals faster, you will have more time available to drive sales and gain more opportunities to upsell and cross-sell your products.
Now that you have a better understanding of how CPQ solutions can improve your B2B business, it’s time to start integrating it in your commerce platform, boost your sales, increase your sales rep productivity, and, ultimately, make your customers happier!
Thank you so much for watching! If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop a line in the comments section.
Want to get extra tips on how to choose the right digital commerce platform for your business? Then make sure to watch our dedicated “Give me 5!” episode here!
The post Give me 5 Tips on How Integrating with a CPQ Solution Helps Your B2B appeared first on The 2Checkout Blog | Articles on eCommerce, Payments, CRO and more.
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Software Companies Interview Series: soft Xpansion
Recently, we had the chance to speak to Dr. Juri Stern, Managing Director at soft Xpansion, an experienced software company specialized in PDF technology, document and database management systems. He shared with us some insights into the beginning stages of his company, the growth process, and future plans.
1. Can you give us a quick overview of your company?
Since our founding in 1995, soft Xpansion has developed software libraries for developers, out-of-the-box products, and custom development projects, with a focus on productivity, tools, PDF technology and document and database management systems. We also develop utilities and individual programming. I’m proud to say we’ve developed more than 250 B2C software products, as well as over 100 projects internationally. Our B2B products like our PDF Xpansion SDK and special solutions are widely used in Germany, the UK, the USA, France, Japan, Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine and other countries.
2. The document management software market has evolved tremendously in the past two decades. Give us some highlights of the changes you’ve seen along the way.
PDF format is now the main document format for archiving and documents exchange. Long term archiving with PDF/A and e-Invoicing in Europe with new standards (ZUGFeRD, Factur-X, and XRechnung) are widely used.
Electronic document management systems and content management (DMS and ECM) based on platforms such as Microsoft 365, Alfresco, Documentum, etc. are now used in every business and state institutions. Microsoft 365, with its cloud SharePoint, Teams, and Azure solutions, is developing incredibly fast. Cloud software usage is helping unify processes in industry and society management today.
3. What were the main challenges and opportunities that you encountered in the process of growing your business?
The rapid growth of electronic document management, content management, and processes has led to increasing software volume and complexity as well as requirements for reliability and performance. Accessibility and ease of user interaction are also very important. The challenge for the developer of such systems is how to meet all these requirements, in one product.
To solve such a task, we’ve tried to combine different architectural, development, and support specialists on one team. Using such a constellation of specialists and benefiting from over 25 years’ experience has made it possible to achieve good results.
4. What sets your solutions apart from the competitors? How do you differentiate yourselves in the docu-management industry?
We try to use many different, widespread development platforms. We are also able to take into account regional specifics and government requirements. This is important, for example, when organizing electronic document management. Another example is the introduction in the European Union of electronic invoicing standards for PDF documents, which is likely to be extended to other countries in the future.
5. Have you always targeted both B2C and B2B clients? Can you give us the main differences of how you approach the two segments and, more importantly, how you’ve seen them evolve over the years?
We began with B2C products such as productivity, infotainment, and games. B2B began only as a service development of individual projects for large companies together with XEROX GmbH in Germany and some other customers. Our PDF line also began with a small end-user program, but after that it grew into a large PDF SDK library that is used by a lot of enterprise customers.
DMS and ECM long-term development allowed us to build our own platform and solutions.
Our PDF technology has also been growing since it began in 2002, via a B2C product that allows for PDF creation and processing (“Perfect PDF” ®). Now we have an advanced PDF solution for software development in DMS – PDF Xpansion SDK, a solution we use for private and business usage.
6. Can you tell us about any interesting projects or anecdotal stories on how your solutions are being used?
Yes, we’ve had some memorable B2C product stories .
Our Pearl Harbor game was our first large 3D game project. Michael Bay’s war drama Pearl Harbor was planned for German cinemas on May 7, 2001. On the day before the premiere, the action title of the same name: “Pearl Harbor – Strike at Dawn” was released. In the game, you gain control of various planes and fight dogfights with opposing hunters, and equip the aircraft with different weapon systems.
We localized Dorling Kindersley Children’s Illustrated Encyclopedia to German, all 14 volumes, covering physics, biology, chemistry, geography, sports, etc. Localization work is sometimes harder than development – we should process a foreign software, foreign databases, etc. In addition, the technical documentation is often wrong or not completed.
PDF processing and genealogy software both started in the early 2000s. PDF software has grown tremendously for both B2C and B2B product families.
7. How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your business?
As an IT company, COVID-19 has affected us minimally. Remote work for our team was organized very quickly. Fortunately, the world economy in our sector has not suffered as much as in other sectors. Document and content management is exactly the tool that helps people working without in-person contact.
8. What are your future plans?
Mostly we will combine PDF software and document management systems, make our enterprise content management solutions much stronger, and bring our sX-Space to European and world markets as a platform. Moreover, we would like to strengthen our sales activities, and continue working with Verifone in developing new initiatives.
9. What is the future of software in the cloud?
I think that is one of the main directions of IT development worldwide. In a few years, we should use software completely cloud-based, and aim to be paperless, especially in document and content management.
It was a pleasure for us to learn more about soft Xpansion and we hope you enjoyed it too. Stay tuned for more exciting interviews!
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Last Minute Black Friday and Cyber Monday Planning
Easy ways to prep for Black Friday & Cyber Monday marketing — even if you’ve run out of time! Top tools to do things fast & make it a great year.
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Composing Re-engagement Emails that Convert
Many online business owners are laser-focused on improving their business’ visibility online to amass as many new customers as possible. With the plethora of knowledge available covering creating effective PPC ads and keeping your store SEO-savvy, this is a great move for brands that are looking to grow. However, attracting new customers should not come at the cost of ignoring (or simply forgetting about) those who have purchased from you in the past.
On average, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer. For this reason, wise business owners balance their marketing strategy to cover both audiences so that they can maximize their ROI. One relatively inexpensive way to regain lapsed customers is to include re-engagement emails in your marketing playbook.
What is a Re-engagement Email?
A re-engagement email—or win-back email—is sent to customers a certain amount of time after their last purchase, opened email, or other reference point to try to convince them to resume interactions with your business. Marketers are not fully aligned on the best time to send this type of email—an appropriate cadence will likely depend on your business’s industry and how often you interact with customers already—but the general consensus falls somewhere between 16-60 days after the most recent reference point. While there will always be leads that die out over time, research shows that 45% of those who receive re-engagement emails will read successive emails.
Different Approaches to Re-engagement Emails
There are several techniques you can use when crafting the overall tone and copy for your re-engagement emails. Here are a few commonly-used approaches:
1. Simple Question Re-engagement Email
An email that asks a simple question is sometimes all you need to re-engage customers—plus, with decreased attention spans becoming the norm, shorter might be better. Inquire whether the customer would like to continue receiving emails from your business while expressing that you would love for them to stick around. Avoid asking directly if they would like to STOP receiving messages—from a psychological perspective, it is more rewarding to suggest a positive action rather than a negative one.
Source: Morning Brew
2. What’s New Re-engagement Email
A “what’s new” or “what you missed” email fills customers in on any business updates or new product arrivals that they may have missed by not engaging with your business up to this point. The goal is to re-inspire and excite readers, reminding them why they were interested in your business in the first place while also demonstrating how it has grown and expanded. If you can, focus on changes you have made that could address the reason(s) they stopped engaging with your brand in the first place.
Source: Lowe’s
3. Incentivized Re-engagement Email
Giving customers a reason to re-engage that benefits them is often a very persuasive way to drive additional purchases. By pairing such an incentive with a message that you would love to have them back, you demonstrate that you greatly value their business. Consider giving lapsed customers a special discount, free rewards points, or even a small credit toward their next order so that they will feel compelled to make a new purchase.
Source: Pottery Barn
4. Emotional Appeal Re-engagement Email
Sometimes simply appealing to your readers’ emotions can be the best way to get your point across. Many marketers use humor or sadness (typically in a humorous way) to catch readers’ attention and re-establish an emotional connection with the brand. “Break-up” emails, as well as images of sad animals, are fairly common—you’ve likely gotten one or two of them in your own inbox.
Source: Brooklinen
5. Feedback Re-engagement Email
You won’t always be able to pinpoint what caused customer drop-off from your data alone. In cases like these, a feedback email is a great way to gain valuable information and show customers that you care about improving their experience. While generally used in feedback and review campaigns, feedback emails can also be helpful as a last resort in your re-engagement campaign to learn how to get customers back on board.
Source: MOO
6. Urgent Action Re-engagement Email
Creating a sense of urgency is another proven way to elicit action from your customers. This can be achieved through an incentivized offer (mentioned above) with a close expiration date; however, there are other ways you can spur your customers to act now. Inform them that their account will be deleted soon or that their email address will be removed from their list unless they act now—and make sure to convey why they shouldn’t want to be removed from your database.
Source: HubSpot
7. Creative Re-engagement Email
While those listed above are relatively common, there are many other regularly-employed approaches to re-engagement emails. But don’t be afraid to try something new or unusual! You know your customers better than any marketer, so think about what might appeal to them specifically and convince them to re-engage with your business.
Source: Grammarly
Quick Tips for Creating a Winning Re-engagement Email
Creating a re-engagement email that has a chance of inspiring lapsed customers requires a meaningful and thought-out strategy. Here are a few quick steps you can take to ensure that your re-engagement campaign reaches its full potential:
Consider drop-off reasons: Have you had complaints about your order process? Do your products simply not need to be replenished often? Do you send too many emails in general? Is your product offering more of a one-time need? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and consider what might keep them from interacting further, and use that to inform the rest of your strategy.
Show that you value your contacts: Make sure that the overall message of the email conveys that you truly value your customers—that you appreciate their continued patronage and want to make their experience with your business great. Although it may be the overarching goal of your re-engagement emails, don’t let your customers feel like you just want to make another buck off them.
Personalize your copy: This is a great way to show that you value your contacts. Address the email recipient by name, and try to add references to items or categories they have viewed or purchased previously to show that you are paying attention. The more tailored your communications are to the individual customer, the more they will feel like you care about them individually.
Provide an opt-out option: Some customers simply do not like receiving emails. Others, unfortunately, have already made up their mind not to purchase from your business in the future and won’t change it. To avoid incurring unnecessary friction, always include an “unsubscribe” option at the end of your email to generate goodwill (and to comply with email marketing laws).
Send a sequence of emails: With the prevalence of emails these days, you always run the risk of any emails you send getting lost in a full or infrequently monitored inbox. Consider creating a drip series rather than a single re-engagement email that is triggered by inaction. By adding in additional touchpoints, you can counter the possibility of your emails not even being seen.
In Conclusion
Winning back lapsed customers can be difficult—and you shouldn’t expect them to come back in droves. However, by building out a thoughtful re-engagement email strategy, you can save time and money prompting new purchases while also establishing a more loyal and passionate customer base.
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Google Ads Basics: How to Create an Effective Google Ads Strategy
Note: This article assumes the reader has some familiarity with using Google Ads but may not have focused on Google Ads as a major part of their advertising strategy. Brand new to using Google Ads? Read this article to learn more about creating a Google Ads account, understanding terminology, and developing your first ad. A […]
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Can WooCommerce Scale?
Is WooCommerce a good option for large stores? If you have thousands of products or millions in revenue — or plan to — here’s everything you need to know.
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How PayPal Increases Conversions for Ecommerce Store Owners
If you’re familiar with online shopping from a consumer point of view, you know that PayPal allows shoppers to easily manage and move money online. And if you have your own online store, you know that PayPal can be a quick, convenient payment option for potential customers. However, you may not feel that you have the sales volume to warrant the transaction fees that come with a business PayPal account.
But if you’re selling anything online, you know that conversion rates are key to the success of your ecommerce business. Online retailers and sellers live and breathe by this metric, and thousands of articles exist online to help online merchants attempt to optimize it. Fortunately, PayPal has been proven to lift conversion rates for ecommerce stores. Consider the following findings from this Nielsen study:
At the point of purchase, PayPal converts 28% higher at checkout
Incorporating PayPal results in higher average order values
When checking out with PayPal, consumers are 13% more likely to make a repeat purchase from the same merchant
PayPal leads to an increase in NPS by an average of 8 points
How are these results achieved? Read on for three ways PayPal increases conversion rates for online store owners.
1. PayPal streamlines the checkout experience for customers.
As estimated by Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.8%. That means that almost 3 out of every 4 shoppers who begin the checkout experience in an online store will likely abandon their cart rather than completing a purchase. There are an infinite number of reasons why a shopper may get cold feet, but the bottom line is that the more clicks and keystrokes it takes to check out, the more opportunities you give shoppers to change their mind.
PayPal speeds up the checkout process by auto-populating shipping and billing information, eliminating crucial clicks and keystrokes from the checkout process. A PayPal user enters this data once when they create a PayPal profile and never has to enter it again, no matter what online store they shop on. Saving this valuable time makes the decision to purchase quicker and easier for online shoppers.
2. PayPal offers customers flexible payment options.
PayPal has grown exponentially since its beginnings. Originally simply a provider of digital wallet services, PayPal now offers a wide variety of payment options that store owners can offer their customers (depending upon geographic location of the business). Customers who are met with a variety of different ways to pay are more likely to convert—in fact, 56% of consumers expect a variety of payment options on the checkout page. When PayPal is incorporated into the checkout experience, some payment options customers can choose include:
Their existing PayPal balance: Customers who have an existing balance in their personal PayPal account can use some or all of it to pay for their purchases.
Their connected bank account: Customers who have connected their bank account to their PayPal account can send money directly to your store.
Any major debit or credit card: PayPal offers the ability for your store to accept debit and credit cards from Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express.
PayPal Credit: Customers who have been approved for a digital credit line through PayPal can pay your business using that payment method.
PayPal Pay in 4: Customers can pay for purchases in four interest-free payments (while you get paid upfront by PayPal!) to lessen the immediate financial burden.
Venmo: Currently in the U.S. only, customers who use Venmo can now pay for their online purchases through their Venmo accounts as well.
3. PayPal offers consumers a sense of trust and credibility.
On top of speed, simplicity, and accessibility, PayPal also gives shoppers confidence in their purchases by providing them with a reliable, trusted payment method. PayPal has been around since 1998, and almost any online shopper who has purchased from (or even sold through) popular reselling platform eBay has used PayPal previously. Shoppers know from experience that PayPal has a history of great service supported by a robust customer service team happy to assist with any issues.
In other words, when shoppers see PayPal, they know their payment information will be in good hands. Since purchase anxiety is a constant obstacle for online businesses to overcome, using PayPal is an easy way to assure shoppers that their payment information is safe and secure, giving them confidence in purchasing from a store they haven’t bought from previously.
In Conclusion
Enabling PayPal as a payment option in your shopper’s checkout experience is a surefire way to increase conversions. Making the checkout experience as quick, simple, and trustworthy as possible by adding PayPal into the mix results in much higher checkout conversion rates and, ultimately, much higher online sales for your business.Interested in adding PayPal’s suite of payment methods to your Volusion store? Check out this page for more information about the benefits of PayPal and how Volusion VOLT merchants, as well as Volusion merchants using the Premium Checkout feature, can connect their business PayPal account to their store.
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