7 must-have magento 2 extensions for retailer business

There’s no doubt that E-commerce are now the hottest trend for any businessman to invest their money in. Come with online business, many E-commerce services have developed to make a better place for both sellers and customers. Among those services, Magento are slowly take position of the most succesful extensions providers all over the world.

With the support of many partner like : Magestore, Krish TechnoLabs, eWave, Wagento Creative,etc.  Magento has now become the most powerful retailer method to a large number of E-commerce retailers and developers. So, what is the most important magento 2 extensions that you must have if you are planning on going online? Check out the 10 extensions below.

1. Magento 2 One Step Checkout

This extension allows you to fully optimize checkout process of your store. To make it easier for customers on purchasing product, One Step checkout gather all checkout information that needed in a single page like: shipping address, shipping method, order review, gift messages, gift wrap,etc. One Step checkout extension was developed with the aim of helping store owner get order information faster and reduce time spend on checkout of customers. More than that, store owner can edit content of Terms and Conditions popup in backend design.

2. Inventory Management extension

Inventory Management is said to be suitable for small and medium online businesses kind. This extension will remarkably saves your budget as it keeps the messy stock under control with only few clicks. For more detail, Inventory Management helps you optimize UI/UX design with the ability to integrate with other exensions. Moreover, warehouse management and stock management is what exactly IM do best,you can view and edit warehouse by yourself. Beside that, many functions related to stock process like: stock transfer, physical stock-taking, stock adjustment, low stock alert are avaiable.

3. Magento 2 POS extension

Magestore is the first developers providing Magento 2 POS Extension for retail system. Magento 2 POS will help your customers have quick, smooth and accurate order processing with these advantages: checkout fast and accurately with technology of Knockout JS, quick and secure process payment at ease with multiple payment methods, connect with other extensions to strengthen your retail system power and make your customers happy.

4. Magento 2 Gift Card extension

Gift Card extension works as a system providing gift card or certificates’ templates for your store to give them to customers. Gift Card Extension offers store owner to choose perfect eye-catching gift card template among the 3 samples. It also creates unlimited gift card forms with different prices then allow store owner to set price with these modes: fixed price, price range, price dropdown. Gift Card extension can integrated well with most themes, templates and checkout pages.

5. Magento 2 Affiliate Plus

Making money online then you had to know about affiliate program, Affiliate extension come with the aim of setting up one for your store. With only standard version of affiliate, you can set commision, discount and payout easily. Beside that, your store management will not a problem because of banner and link management system. Want to pay fast? Ok with Affoliate Plus: Pay per sale, Paypal Mass Pay, Multiple Payment methods, all in on in this extension.

6. Reward Point Magento 2

May be you don’t recognize but having loyalty customers in hand is the most important priority. Reward Point for Magento 2 should be installed to “keep in touch” with your customers and call them back sometimes. All reward point would be set, customers would get them, your store would manage rate for earning and spending these kind of currency. You can also control it easily by importing and exporting information to CSV File.

7. Store Locator Magento 2

Your store couldn’t be too hard to find, it should have detailed guide on map, Store Locator will help you. With nice and friendly interface, each of your store will be filtered by tags: product line, style,etc. Customers can check distance, zipcode and state to find out which is the nearest store. Far more than this, all the information that customers need about your store: images, open time, special days, specials sale,… they can find them on facebook with comment box too….

 

Don’t forget to check out those amazing extensions for your store if you are using Magento or even planning on building store with Magento. Your business has never been easy and perfect with technology. We just need your idea and your passion to take action!

5 Ways Your POS Can Increase Your Holiday Sales

Just because everyone is programmed to purchase at this time of year, though, doesn’t mean they’re going to purchase from you. Or even if they are, it doesn’t mean you can’t get them to purchase more.

In fact, it’s even more important to do everything possible to increase sales this time of year. Just because you make it to the Olympics doesn’t mean you’ve got the gold medal, so to speak.

To make sure you’re maximizing your resources this time of year, here are five ways your POS can increase your holiday sales.

Want to know more, read Do you need a point of sale system in your retail store? and know more about Magento POS system.

1. It can perfect your inventory strategy

POSs these days are no longer just point-of-sale systems – they’re full-fledged retail management systems. They can run your store from the first moment you come into contact with your inventory, to when you sell that item. They can even manage your customer experience! Basically, your POS should be your best friend.

Given all that, you should check in with your POS and spend some time learning about what items have done really well in sales recently, which ones haven’t moved, and which ones sold out last year. Your POS may even be able to predict which items will sell really well this season.

Once you’ve got that information, you can order your products with a lot more accuracy. You can also use that data to decide how to set your store. You may want to put some of your best-sellers up front to draw people in, and scatter the rest about to encourage people to look through the whole store. You also can put the items that aren’t selling well in more visible locations. Often items can sit on the shelves purely because they’re hidden or in the wrong place. Of course, if it’s a totally hideous, puke-green sweater, that could also be the reason it’s sitting. (If that’s the case, maybe try running it as an ugly Christmas sweater?)

With inventory that’s sitting, you should get a bit creative in how you display it, too. For instance, for clothing items that aren’t selling, you may want to try working them into an outfit on a mannequin so that customers can see the items in their full context. This can liven up basics, and helps people understand how to wear trickier items like statement necklaces.

2. Your POS Can Make Sure You Have the Right Team in Place

Your POS should either have built in employee scheduling software, or should integrate with your existing scheduling software. Either way, you can use software to schedule your employees. (If, for whatever reason, you’re still doing it by hand, please let me convince you that software is soooo worth it – and you can get it for cheap!)

This scheduling software will be able to identify your highest sellers. It will also be able to predict your peak hours this holiday season based on what your peak hours were last holiday season. (If you’ve got software that’s newer than last holiday season, it can still make very good guesses on your future peak hours using data from the past months.)

With all that information, you can easily ensure your peak hours are staffed by your top sellers, while your down-hours are stocked with your best stock people. Heck, plenty of scheduling software options will even autoschedule all that for you to save you time!

3. Your POS Can Probably Ring People Up Anywhere in the Store

Most POS software these days not only operates on giant stationary desktop registers, but it also on mobile devices like iPads and Android smartphones.

If you haven’t gotten in on mobile registers yet, now is the time to do it! Mobile registers are insanely helpful for a number of reasons.

• You can ring customers up anywhere in the store. This means a reduction in boring, slow lines. It also means that customers who love something in the dressing room won’t have to deal with the fateful walk to the register, during which they decide that the item is out of their budget and their husband will hate them for buying it. Better customer experience = better sales, plain and simple.

• You can take your register anywhere there’s Wi-Fi. Many can even do all the basic sales functions you need without Wi-Fi. Which means you can start hitting the road with your merchandise. When your merchandise appears in more locations, you reach more shoppers. Go to farmer’s markets! Go to festivals! Start a fashion truck! Your sales possibilities are limited only by your imagination (and some laws against selling in certain public locations).

• Mobile POS gives your sales people access to your CRM anywhere in the store. Before mobile POS, sales people were only able to access your customer relationship management system at the cash-wrap, which typically meant disengaging with the customer, and fighting Bertha the cashier for the chance to just ‘pleeeease’ pop into the system between customers. Not pleasant. Why is this bad? Well, your CRM holds all your information about customers, like past purchases and sizes. This sort of information can be really helpful to your sales people on the floor. With mobile POS, a sales person can quickly check for these details after naturally disengaging with the customer to help inform their suggestive selling without causing any disruptions to their customer, or to Bertha and all her customers.

4. Your POS can take mobile payments

I know this one kinda sounds like the previous tip, but it’s not, I swear. Mobile payments are services like Apple Pay and Android Pay that allow someone to pay for a purchase by scanning their phone at your register. Many POS software vendors have updated their software to be able to take at least one of these types of payment.

How will it increase your holiday sales this year? Couple things:

• Mobile payments help reduce time spent at the register. Most people already have their phones out, so mobile payments are typically very swift.
• Mobile payments are here to stay, but many stores have yet to take them. By getting ahead of the curve, you’ll encourage shoppers who are already using mobile payments to shop with you.

5. Your POS can boost your marketing

Your POS should integrate with an email marketing or marketing automation provider. If you don’t already have that set up and an email strategy in place, stop reading this post and go do that. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways of nurturing buyers into becoming returning customers.

Once you’ve got your email integration up and running all you have to do is create a holiday campaign, to get customers excited for Christmas shopping with you! Here are a few ideas for emails to send out:

• Send out emails announcing your promotions as they happen throughout the holiday season.
• Have a countdown to Christmas. Send out an email every day with the current countdown number. With the number you can either give pictures and descriptions of products, or you could run a daily promotion relating to that number. (Think: ‘7 days ‘til Christmas, get every 7th item free,’ or something similar.)

Related Posts:

The omnichannel solution for Magento retailers

A Definitive Guide to Omnichannel Customer Experience

What is Omnichannel Retailing?

6 most important reasons why you should choose Magento for your E-commerce Website

It can not be denied that there are a large number of well-known companies who use Magento such as Lenovo, Fort Nike, Nestle, Fox Connect, Olympus, Sam Sung, etc. It is the reason why Magento has become the most popular CMS for e-commerce. In order to see more clearly, we can have a look the chart below about the distribution of platforms to compare them.

The market share of Magento is approximately 26%, compared with other platforms like WordPress, Joomla, etc. The large scale adoption and popularity shouldn’t obviously be without 7 strong reasons.  

1. Open Source

The most important reason it that Magento is open source and free. You can install, alter and use Magento Community Edition in any manner you like. You also can supercharge the Magento code and enhance the power of your the e-commerce website with new and amazing features and desired functionality by installing Magento extensions. All of them are made by Magestore marketplace that helps you to install more conveniently and quickly.

2. Built for E-Commerce

Although WordPress also can use to build e-commerce website, it does not have enough power to make the best e-commerce site for businesses. The reason is that Magento scores over ‘Wordpress + WooCommerce’ and ‘Drupal + Drupal Commerce’ combos. This e-commerce solution comes preloaded with scores of features and specs needed to put up a functional e-commerce website.

3. Support for Mobile Commerce

It is clear that Mobile commerce is the newest trend in the modern world. People tend to use the application in the mobile because of its convenience. Both Community and Enterprise editions of Magento e-commerce CMS are now incorporating multiple HTML5 capabilities, thus ensuring provision of superior mobile shopping experiences.

4. High Performance

Page load speed effects on not only the number of visits but also the website ranking when searching engine. A few hundred milliseconds of delay in processing user requests can literally kill an e-commerce website’s potential to convert site visitors into customers. Magento is the best solution for these problems because with high-end caching techniques such as Varnish and other DB optimization techniques, it leaves e-commerce enterprises with no complaints.

5. Easy Integrations

It is very easy to integrate with a multitude of third-party services including payment gateways, database applications, shipping, shipment tracking etc. Moreover, it is already associated with Google Base, Google Checkout and Google Analytics.

6. SEO Friendly

In order to get the top ranking of searching engine, the platform also supports the companies to do SEO activities for your e-commerce business. To be more specific, Magento is a highly SEO-friendly content management system. It has a number of SEO features such as search engine friendly URLs, sitemaps, layered navigation, URL rewrites, meta tags, descriptions etc.

How to start e-commerce business?

You’re likely to start e-commerce business? However, you still do not know how you should do it step-by-step. The reason is that there are too many steps and decisions in the process of working that makes you confuse and face a number of difficulties in deciding at the right time. The important tip is that each step will be based on the logical order: researching, building, launching and growing a profitable e-commerce business.

Choosing a Product

Finding A Product To Sell

It is clear that firstly, you need to identify the products which you need to provide for customers. Actually, it is one of the most challenging parts when starting a new online business. Before deciding to choose the product, you should find product opportunities, explore the ten best stores to look for product ideas and then, you will reveal ten trending products which you came up.

Evaluating Your Idea

Don’t make the decision immediately! How do you know whether it’s a bad idea or not? In order to answer this question, you will go through two exhaustive evaluations methods, evaluating both the product itself, as well as the market for your product choice.

Obtaining Your Product

After finding your product idea and evaluating them in the previous section, you must find out where and how you’re going to obtain your products.

Research & Preparation

Research Your Rivals

After applying 3 steps above, you’ve found your product, evaluated the potential and chose your supplier. It’s time to write your business plan. However, before getting into that, you’ll need to research your competitors thoroughly so you know exactly what you’re up against.

Writing Your Business Plan

With your competitive research, it’s now the perfect time for you to write your online business plan. A business plan will be your road map which helps bring your ideas and thoughts together. A business plan is indispensable so that you can determine how to move forward and compete effectively.

Registering Your Business

With a business plan in hand, now it is a good time to consider your options for registering your business.

Setting Up Your Business

Naming Your Business

Aside from finding an actual product to sell online, another difficult decision is determining your business name and choosing an appropriate and domain name. To be more specific, the business name need to include the keyword which involves your products  and the domain name has a reputation in long time. By doing that, it helps you to increase the website ranks in search engine.

Creating A Logo

Once you have solidified your name and registered your domain, it’s time to craft a logo. The logo could be simple and easy to remember.

Understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You’re almost ready to begin building your online store. However, before you jump into it, you should understand the basics of search engine optimization so that you can optimize your site for Google and other search engines like Bing.

Building Your Store

With a better understanding of search engine optimization (SEO), it’s time to build your online store. There are many important factors. You need to write captivating product descriptions, shoot beautiful product photography, and a list of some of the best tools to help you optimize those photos. Your website should be built on Magento platform which is open source content management system for e-commerce websites. It is clear that Magento is the best choice which is chosen by many leading e-commerce brands. It is supported by Magento extensions which helps you develop your strategy and manage your business easily and effectively.

Preparing To Launch

As you prepare for the launch of your new business, there are several necessary factors you need to prepare for. In this step, we have curated some of the most comprehensive posts on helping you determine your shipping strategy.

Moreover, it’s a good idea to define your key performance indicators upfront so once you launch, you know what to measure of success to track.

Post Launch

First Customer

Now that you’ve launched, the hard work begins. Your first sale is a great start point and overview of a variety of marketing tactics that will help you in your first months.

Marketing Your Store

You’re well on your way and now likely have some sales under your belt. It’s time to get serious and focused. You can choose the suitable marketing methods such as email marketing, driving traffic, optimizing conversions and using analytics ( Google analytics for e-commerce), etc to attract customers and build your brand.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that building your own e-commerce business is no easy task. From choosing a product, evaluating viability and sourcing, to building, launching and growing sales. There’s a lot of puzzle pieces to put together. However, following this resource roundup should provide you with a clear roadmap to help you build a profitable e-commerce business.

 

 

 

 

 

9 Tips to start a Successful E-Commerce Business

 Starting an E-commerce business has never been a simple story. We will face many difficulties in the process of running the business, therefore, in order to be successful and overcome these problems, you need to think about 9 things below

1.  Don’t rush the launch

One of the most serious mistakes which make e-commerce entrepreneurs unsuccessful is forcing or rushing the launch of a website. You just need to get one shot at launching your website but you can’t mess this up. The important thing is that you should avoid the big reveal about your website until you’ve laid some substantial ground work (social media, paid advertising, SEO, content marketing,  etc.). You are allowed to purchase your domain name and throw up some sort of “Coming Soon” page,

2.  Put the focus on the user.

The big weakness of e-commerce business is the inability to let their customers touch, feel, smell, and see (firsthand) products before making a decision. As a result, you need to solve it by providing other benefits such as offering appropriate pricing, giving free shipping and making the checkout process easy with simplified shopping carts to attract customers.

3. Test absolutely everything.

You should invest in testing and analytics before and after you launch any e-commerce business. You can figure out what the customers think and how effective your e-commerce business. For example, you can consider the A/B test tool for analysing.

4. Work closely with social.

If you tend to outsource social media or delegate it to other team members, it will be a crazy idea. The reason is that social media is the heartbeat of your business, as it gives you an uninterrupted glance into the lives of your customers. While it’s perfectly fine to have a social-media manager, it’s pertinent that you’re involved with it, too.

5. Incorporate social elements.

Going along with the previous tip, it’s a great idea to include social elements on your ecommerce sites. Things like product reviews and testimonials follow buttons and even social login options all help the conversion funnel.

6. Go mobile.

Bill Siwicki of Internet Retailer said that: “Tablets will play an increasingly important role as worldwide consumer spending via mobile jumps from $204 billion in 2014 to $626 billion in 2018…” If you aren’t building e-commerce businesses with mobile in mind, you may be irrelevant in three to five years.

7. Stay on top of SEO.

As the e-commerce economy tends to increase rapidly, more and more businesses will be entering this increasingly crowded space. It means that it will be more important than ever to stay on top of SEO in order to stand out from the competition. Connecting with a skilled SEO will help you stay competitive in the long run.

8. Collect information.

Unless you plan on launching a single site and stepping away (most entrepreneurs are tempted to keep trying), it’s critical that you collect customer information and build databases to aid future launches.

9. Continue evolving.

The final important thing is that you never stop evolving. Nowadays, technology, trends and customer tastes will change, and so must you if you want to succeed in such a variable market. You need to manage your time and plan carefully to catch your dream.

By using nine tips, your e-commerce business can be successful and overcome every problem.

Related Posts:

What is omni channel retailing? Definition and Examples

Omnichannel retail strategy

Omnichannel customer experience: A definitive guide

3 most important reasons why you need cloud inventory management software

You are too tired of spending time to update product stock every day? You feel uncontrolled the products in your warehouse? Using inventory management extensions and taking it into the cloud. It will help you to increase automation that makes the running of your business more smoothly. It also saves time for more important business tasks like  focusing the core of your business – customers!

Rise the automation

Whether you’re a single or multi-outlet store, cloud is the solution which helps you automate a range of your business processes that legacy systems either simply cannot do, or can’t do with the same speed and precision. Now through the cloud, having inventory across multiple stores – be it eCommerce or brick and mortar – is easier than ever. You can see how much inventory is held at each store at a glance, transfer stock between stores with just a few clicks. In addition also get an idea of what needs to be ordered now and in the future.

There is also no time lapse between what is happening in the store and what you can see in your records. Inventory management is in real-time. Cloud solutions combined with barcode scanning processes especially are making inventory counts a lot quicker, letting you see what your stock levels are at all times. The days of laborious pen and paper counts are out.

Furthermore, with increased visibility over your inventory levels, you will know what you hold in each line, whether it’s selling well or not and whether you need to order more. The ‘sold out’ sign will be a thing of the past.

Be more mobile

These days, you don’t have the time to be stuck behind a computer for long periods. You’re time-poor and you need to access your records on the go, no matter where you are. This is one of the biggest benefits of cloud-based inventory management. You can simply log in wherever you want – on a laptop, tablet or phone, and see all your data right there in front of you.

The flexibility of  accessible helps you to know exactly what’s happening with your inventory regardless of the situation. You could be in a meeting with a supplier, selling your products at a pop-up shop, or you could even be on holiday. It’s all there ready to go.

Never lose your data

Cloud solutions host everything online. It means that all your inventory which records and data are stored and backed up no matter what. You don’t have to worry about losing any bits of paper, nor do you have to hit the panic button if your laptop is stolen. You can be assured that you can access your most up-to-date records regardless of the circumstance.

Integrate all your software

With a cloud-based inventory solution, you can also start to integrate it with a host of other SaaS platforms. Everything like accounting software, eCommerce website, the point-of-sale system can all seamlessly talk to one another. And that’s just the beginning. This all helps to reduce the amount of manual and repetitive tasks that may have taken you or your staff hours. And it alleviates the pain when it comes to the end of the financial year, as everything is ready to go for your accountant.

With a cloud inventory management extension, you can also start to integrate it with a host of other SaaS platforms. Your accounting software, eCommerce website, point-of-sale system, they can all seamlessly talk to one another. And that’s just the beginning. This all helps to reduce the amount of manual and repetitive tasks that may have taken you or your staff hours. And of course, it alleviates the pain when it comes to the end of the financial year, as everything is ready to go for your accountant.

3 best ways to manage your inventory

Do you know that managing your inventory plays an important role when you tend to run your online store smoothly? Let’s try to imagine that your product is still in your warehouse but they are not listed on your e-commerce website or worse, product is displayed on your website, however, actually, it is not available in your warehouse. The result will be terrible, overselling and annoying customer will happen.

It is the reason why a well-managed is good for both your business and customers. It is easy for the customer to buy the product in stock whenever they place an order. Moreover, your business can also manage and control products quickly and you do not need to waste money on excess stock that you are unable to move.

So, three best ways to help you to manage your Magento inventory will be shown for you!

1. Magento inventory extension:

Nowadays, in E-commerce business, most sale platforms like Amazon, eBay and Shopify offer method for managing inventory which built-in or through addons. It is called Magento inventory extension which is the most useful solution for managing inventory.

Inventory Management extension is the ultimate stock control system for E-commerce website. It helps you  keep track of any products in backend easily. This module eliminates common mistakes arising when you handle stock availability, transfer and purchase more items for your warehouses.

The problem with selling on two (or more) platforms is that every time you sell a product on Amazon. For instance, you must log into your Magento store to decrease your stock levels of that product. Likewise, when you make a sale on Magento, you’ve got to log into Amazon to adjust your stock levels.

Using Magento’s inventory management extension to manage your inventory is great if you’re only selling on Magento. When you want to expand your business by selling on other platforms – something that’s often necessary in order to grow – then you need to take a different approach.

2. Manual management:

An alternative tool which helps you to manage your Magento inventory is the old-school way: by taking care of things manually. With this way, you don’t need to worry about managing the precise stock levels on each platform. As far as each platform is concerned, you’re either in stock or out of stock.
You keep track of your precise inventory your own way. This can be with pen and paper (not recommended, unless you’re incredibly organized – and brave), using a spreadsheet, by setting up your own database, or with inventory software.

The benefit of this approach is that if you’re selling on more than one channel, it can be less fiddly than constantly adjusting stock levels across all the platforms you sell on.

Its downside, however, is that it can still take a lot of effort and time. Once you become a high-volume seller, manually jotting down every product that leaves your stock room could become a challenging job which eats up a lot of your time.

Luckily, you have other useful option which saves your time and hassle of manual: Management inventory extension

3. Automate it

The final method to manage your inventory is using inventory management software.
This cloud-based solution means you manage your inventory from one place. When you add products to your stock, they’re added to every platform you sell on, so the moment you sell a product through your Magento store, stock levels are automatically reduced across all your platforms. Managing your inventory across Magento and your other channels becomes hassle free.

You could try each of these methods depending on your circumstance as a seller – what works for one seller might not work for another. As a result, it’s best to try them out and see for yourself.

.

 

9 Things to avoid when starting online business

1. Having high hopes and false expectations

People often get into the business with a lot of excitement and expectation, picturing the day their business success. However the truth is the more delusional they are, the more likely their goal will fail. Bear in mind that over half of small businesses fail within the first three years because of unthorough planning and underestimation. Building up a profitable and successful company takes a lot of hard work, continous effort and patience.

Running a business is not like you are having a day out, just hanging around, it requires a great deal of commitment and time investment. Your timeline has to be carefully planned in days and even re-written multipe times until the best possible outcome is achieved.

Talk to some entrepreneurs who have reached something close to what you want to achieve. Ask them for advice and experiences paying highly attention. Then ask yourself if you’re prepared for your own version of that.

 

2. Not actually thinking about the overall SEO strategy

SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results , the higher ranked on the search results page, and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. Therefore SEO is one of the most powerful tool to bring more customers to you or at least tell them about the existence of your business. SEO brings targeted traffic to your site daily once you have done it properly, unlike Facebook or other social networks, which depends on the fact that you are continuing your implement or not.

SEO takes time and effort to show its actual effect, it is not something you can expect immediate results from. This is the reason why you’d better set a decent overall strategy right at the early stages of your business before it becomes a afterthought. If you can list out top 10 keywords you are trying to target in the long time right now, it means that you are going on the right track.

3. Refusing to be different

As a person who is doing business, you must always be aware of your competition, marketplace is where you can be overshadowed anytime by other competitors if you are not trying hard enough to create something distinctive for your own company. Customers never run out of options and in order to get more clients, you have to  attract more potential customers, you have to give them the reasons to choose your products over a wide range of other offerings.

Safe ways rarely work, in fact it can become a disadvatage. You just cannot jump into some popular topics and mimic what other bloggers are aiming at. Shopper won’t take a look at your product when it is just like something they have seen before.

4. Underestimating the importance of About or Contact page

Many store owners make the mistake of underestimating the sales potential of their About page. Take a look at your own analytics and you’ll find your About page is in the top three most visited page. Visitors go to website and all they care about is an overview of your business which is supposed to be clearly stated in your About Page. Even though this is one of the most important pages for your visitors, many new online merchants tend to skimp on this page.

Let’s look at some of the most common mistakes people make on their About and Contact pages:

No Story – Who exactly are you? How did your store come to be? What’s the story of your products? How are they made? You don’t need to create an detailed story, however, a few paragraphs that store visitors can relate to are surely helpful.

No Location Details – You may think that since you’re an online store, an address may not be necessary. Thus the truth is many visitors still want to know where you’re located and where your products ship from. For many visitors, it’s a matter of trust, for others they want to know if they need to consider customs and duties if your products ship from another country.

Using A Generic Email Address – Gmail is great but that’s not helping your business. So many times merchants are guilty of using a generic, throwaway email address. Customers will feel like this email comes from a random person, which is not really reliable. Take the time to set up a proper domain name (youbrandname.com) and set up proper email addresses to gain trust your customers

5. Giving little attention to web layout or logo

A logo is usually the first thing a visitor sees and one of the first impressions of your online store. Most if not all ecommerce platforms will display your shop title in standard text if you don’t upload a logo yourself, but this isn’t good enough.

So why do so many people launch stores with no logos?

Usually it’s because most people still think that in order to get a logo made, they need to find a designer and spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. The fact is though, this isn’t true. Far from it. There are so many options available now for creating a free or very inexpensive logo that there’s no reason your shop should be using a default text logo.

6. Taking free path in social marketing

It is undeniable that social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, have become some of the most effective and popular marketing tools available today. All potentially successful online business should have at least one social media profile or page created, actively updated and made certain interactions with visitors/ followers. However, do not mistakenly assume that you can use social media brand pages effectively for free.

Take Facebook, for example. While it is free to create and publish a brand page, making that more outstanding than others, boosting exposure to the page is going to cost a lot of money. New businesses that have not built a massive customer base yet will need to spend the most money on Facebook advertising and social media marketing in order to generate the type of results expected from their efforts.

7. Not using your hosting

If you are still new to online business, setting up a blog using Blogger, WordPress or some other free hosting services is not a bad idea at all. It can help you gain experiences before actually jumping in the field.However, once you decide to take your business seriously, those are not a good choice anymore. Running an internet store using a domain like yourname.blogspot.com seems like a very unprofessional and untrustable business from customers’ perspective. A web hosting of your own is a sign to shoppers showing that you are now ready for a serious and well-prepared business.

Go to the right place, and purchasing your own domain and web hosting isn’t complicated or expensive. You can buy both from the same company – and get online with a few mouse clicks – for a few dollars each month without a contract.

8. Not asking for help from professionals

A successful business means that you have strong connections with many other people. No one can succeed alone. You need other people to help you sail that ship. Your customers are people, your suppliers are people, your service providers are people. Most importantly, you need support from other entrepreneurs who are at similar stages as you are, and from others with more experience. Whenever you find yourself land in an impasse, look at others and you’ll realize that they’re all facing obstacles just like you’re facing. If you insist on figuring out eveything on your own, spending hours each week on non-money making tasks, such as fixing annoying tech issues with your website or mailing list. You end up scared, overwhelmed and lost, and frustrated at the poor outcomes. Meanwhile, sharing your struggles and goals, and review your progress is a simple but powerful way to help you proceed your work more efficiently and smoothly. This assures you that you are not alone and  can even become a motivation for you to keep going on.

9. Messing up with your system

Another hidden trap that can pose a potential threat is simply not investing enough money in the technology used for the business itself. Keep in mind that technology is the root of an online business. An smart up-to-date system can help you optimize the work rate. Although it may create a dent in the bottom line figures upfront, these short-term expenses will boost productivity – allowing employees to do more work in less time. You need to be on top of your systems and you need to make it very easy for your customers to pay you and to do business with you. Whether these devices are used to satisfy customers, fulfill orders, there is no drawback as long as they are used effectively and in the best interests of the business.

10 astonishing facts about eBay

     1. The first item ever sold on Ebay was a broken laser pointer

When eBay creator, Pierre Omidyar, emailed the person who bought the broken laser pointer for $14.83 ($22.40 today) to make sure he knew it was broken, the man told him “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.”

2. The original name of eBay was AuctionWeb

AuctionWeb was simply one of four sites Omidyar ran under his eBay Internet, a domain he’d purchased well before ever coming up with AuctionWeb. He initially wanted to call this “EchoBay,” but a Canadian mining company had already taken this domain, so he shortened it.

3. In 2002, the town of Bridgeville, California became the first town to be sold on eBay

The tiny town went for $1,777,877, but has been put back on the market three times since.

 

4. Even NASA used eBay to acquire things

NASA used eBay and other similar sites to buy things like old Intel 8086 chips and floppy disk drives that are no longer being made, but were essential to keeping the space shuttle support hardware working. Without those parts, the shuttles would have been forced to be grounded while NASA created extremely expensive redesigns of certain of their systems, which they ultimately were working on, such as a $20 million replacement for the booster automated checking system using more modern technology.

 

5. The most expensive item to date purchased via a mobile device is a $265,000 PA-46-310P Malibu airplane.

 

6. Brits have more eBay sales per capita than any other nation

Though America is the first country to use eBay, Britain turns out to be the nation with the most items per capita on eBay in the world. The first item ever sold there was the album You and Iby the iconic German band Scorpions at the price of £2.89. We theorize that this big  deal caused the intense popularity.

 

7. The most expensive item to date ever sold on eBay was a “Gigayacht”

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought the 405-foot yatch at $168 million. Commented a yacht broker: “There’s definitely a ‘mine is bigger than yours’ syndrome in this industry and there is a desire to have the best. That’s the great thing about these yachts.”

 

8. In 2004, a new species of sea urchin was discovered while it was being auctioned off

It happened again in 2008 when a fossil of a previously unknown species was purchased from a Lithuanian seller. The British scientist who bought the fossil attempted to have it named Mindarus ebayici, but other members of the scientific community rejected it, naming the species Mindarus Harringtoni instead.

9. People have met on eBay and married

It was the case of Brad of Maggy. They got to know each other on eBay in 2001 and 3 years later the awaited wedding was officiated in New Orleans.

10. The original eBay had a page dedicated to Ebola information

It’s ambiguous why Pierre Omidyar put the information about this deadly virus on eBay, but his biographer speculates that it may have been to get traffic because of the similarity between the two names. She also thinks that it might have been just a little bit of dark humor.

Four oustanding challenges facing online retailers nowadays

Running a successful e-commerce business can be very rewarding, yet challenging at the same time.No matter how great your prducts is, if you don’t have a well-designed website or marketing strategy, then your business won’t be worthily acknowledged enough.

Technology has revolutionized the way things operate and what customers expect from retailers. Physical shopping in-store is still a popular habit, but with technology and the of the Internet, the modern customer tends to expect a better shopping experience inside and outside the store.This is why online retailers need to address their challenges in the Digital Age now so they can become successful in the future.

1. Consistent customer experience delivery across online and offline channels

Steadily effective customer service through multiple channels remains a significant challenge. Half of the retailers surveyed agreed that consistently marketing across all channels will boost sales conversions and basket value. consistent experience is attractive to consumers and helps differentiate your offering from your competitors.

2. Making your website trustable

Unlike the traditional physical shopping, for e-commerce business the very first impression of customers on a brand is not the products but the design of its website. A poorly designed website interface will probably loses the supposed good will from visitors towards the products, which may cause a considerable loss in traffic and increase in bounce rate – the enemies of any online businesses.

To build trust through your website, make sure it’s easy to navigate, include contact information, create a clean layout, and provide clear descriptions of your product. These basic elements will immensely increase the trust between your website and your customers.

3. Using “big data” to get a more thorough understanding of customers

Big Data is a buzzword, or catch-phrase, used to describe a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large it is difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques, according to Webopedia.

It can be seen that big data is growing as trend in e-commerce and online marketing. Big data enables businesses to gather insights about their customers through monitoring their purchasing habits and decisions.

By using big data, businesses find it easier to focus on customization and personalization for their customers’ shopping experience. This can be done by tracking customer browsing patterns and monitoring loyalty programs.

Big data is also very beneficial for creating sales forecasts. E-commerce businesses should pay attention to sales, website performance, and customer behaviors to determine what they need to improve in the future.

4. Mobile shoppers

The practice of checking competitor prices online while visiting a store (a practice known as “showrooming”) is gaining in popularity and causing traditional retailers a lot of concern.

Customer service and in-store experience play a massive part in consumer attitudes to showrooming. Most shoppers only resort to mobile shopping when there is a stock shortage or they receive poor service

Every e-commerce business has its unique challenges, however, these are some many face. By taking note of these challenges, even the smallest online business can become successful and continue to grow in the upcoming years.