Recent Articles
How to Take on the Holiday Retail Season Like a Pro
With consumers spending more and more online each year, you want to learn the best ways to get your website up to speed, recover from the high-volume shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday and most of all, keep your customers content and coming back. Keeping Your Customers Happy The holidays tend to create anxiety among consumers. They are no longer only trying to find the best deal, but with the never-ending buying options, they need the quickest and most seamless shopping experience out there. Think about your strategy for the upcoming holiday retail season and consider implementing the following: Email Marketing & Planning Having a successful email marketing strategy can really help during the holiday retail season. Feel free to get creative with promotional emails that highlight specific deals for certain holidays. Most importantly, gather as many emails as possible so you can promote more when the busy time hits. Start planning ahead by finding a way to bring customers back. Avoid shopping cart abandonment by looking into adding extra features to your business model, like Bigcommerce’s cart closer
5 Reasons to Offer Free Shipping
Imagine yourself searching all over for the perfect product online, and you finally find it. The moment is here; you add it to your shopping cart and proceed to checkout - until you realize shipping is ridiculously expensive, almost nearing the price of the items you need. Who really wants to complete a purchase if the shipping costs are close to or exceed the price of the products? Where’s the sense in that? Since 'free' marketing incentives are so popular among consumers, free shipping is almost expected among buyers today. “According to 77% of online shoppers, free shipping remains the most important option during checkout - more than half have added items to their shopping cart to qualify for free shipping." -comScore study This, along with the need to compete with brands like Amazon and eBay, increase orders or attract new customers, makes up just some reasons why more and more retailers feel the pressure to jump on the free shipping bandwagon. Free shipping is part of managing your customer’s experience for a seamless shopping experience. So let’s get to it. What are
5 Ways to Get Rid of Excess Inventory Once and For All
Is excess inventory weighing you down lately? Maybe a customer cancelled a huge order or your demand forecast is far from clear. Maybe your inventory just isn’t moving as quickly as you’d hoped. Not to worry, these 5 strategies can help you get surplus items out the door faster, allowing you to keep your inventory flowing smoothly, and free up as much space as possible in your back office or warehouse. 5) Retarget Like No Tomorrow An estimated $4 trillion worth of merchandise will be abandoned in online shopping carts this year, according to Business Insider. Keep your customers engaged by using more mediums to promote your products, and keep them clicking by using apps like Bigcommerce’s shopping cart closer. It is vital to always look for more and more ways to retarget your products, especially if you only have an online store. Google has some helpful retargeting programs, but Facebook and YouTube are two of the most overlooked retargeting strategies for retailers. Facebook Custom Audience is just one example of how you can reach customers you may already know with ads right on the platform.
How Kits and Bundles Can Solve Your Ecommerce Woes
Every retailer needs to be sure their customers find the exact items they need, in the fastest time possible. And, managing your supply chain is not a simple one-size-fits-all approach anymore. As competition continues to grow, eCommerce immediacy will follow suit. Giving your customers the accessibility to purchase as many products as possible in the fastest time is the way of the future, so why not jump on board? Adding eCommerce kits & bundles is a quick, simple solution to expand your product offering, and increase online store sales. What Are ‘Kits’ aka ‘Bundled’ Products? If you’re not familiar with these types of products, a ‘kit’, or ‘bundled’ product is made up of various components or items, sold as a set or group, also known as product bundling. That’s what makes adding kits to your product mix so easy. You already have the individual components, but instead of offering each product on its own, you create a new offering by grouping similar or complementary products together. 1) Increase Store Sales There are a number of ways you can increase sales by adding kits to
How to Build a Drop Shipping Business
Starting a business can be expensive, confusing and time consuming, but what if there was a way you could start selling products all over the world without having inventory, a warehouse or a complicated supply chain? Here's where drop shipping comes into play. With drop shipping, you can setup a business without even seeing the products you are selling. But, before you quit your day job, it's important to learn some vital steps on how to build a drop shipping business. Like any other business, there are always pros and cons. To reduce your risk and ensure the greatest chance of success, follow these 4 important steps when building a drop shipping business: Step 1: Find a Distributor Research. Research. Research. Since this distributor will be shipping all of your products for you, it is important to choose the right one for your business. It is often difficult to find the correct information about how to start a drop shipping business, as a number of terminologies are thrown around across various industries. Don’t let those confuse you; we’re here to help. Terms like “supplier” or “vendor,” are often used,
Cons of Using Amazon to Manage Inventory
When you sell on multiple sales channels, the task of fulfilling orders through different channels becomes complex. You need the right amount of products on hand to fulfill multiple orders, and if you sell on Amazon, maintaining inventory levels is a requirement, not a request. In a previous post, we explored the Top Reasons Why You Should Use Amazon To Manage Inventory. Now let’s look at some of the drawbacks to using Amazon to manage inventory. While there are excellent reasons to take advantage of Amazon, there are some downsides to consider as well. We know that the Amazon marketplace gives online retailers of all sizes the opportunity to sell to millions of potential customers, significantly increase sales, and gain loyal customers in the process. Whether you’re an Amazon seller exclusively selling on the marketplace or it's just one of your sales channels, you need to manage inventory. And, when using Amazon to manage inventory, you have options. So what are the disadvantages to using Amazon to manage inventory? 7) Retaining Customer Service If Amazon fulfills your orders and ships them, they also handle customer