The online phenomenon jumped from a predicted range of a respectable, albeit mere 17.8% of the global market, into a 5.5 trillion behemoth of 21% as of 2022 with even higher projections including a 14.7% compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2027.

Thus tapping into the eCommerce market has never been more accessible and yet, technically never more saturated. However, there are several ways to best target your market and disseminate your product and message to the many potential-adoring fans around the planet.

Beyond choosing a product, getting a domain, and setting up a website there are several key components on each that will lead to a subset of answers. Here are some of the best eCommerce platforms for your startups.

For example depending on your experience level then selling should be moved from platform to platform to set up your online business. Seems straightforward but given varying degrees of internet savvy and business acumen this can greatly vary where you fall on that x,y graph.

Shopify

In recent years Shopify has become the ideal startup site to launch your store into an online market space. It has incredible capabilities and can be tailored toward numerous business ventures and ideas. The web setup is easy and intuitive, which takes much of the guesswork and time out of the process.

Beyond the web drag-and-drop builder, there are opportunities that allow the store owner to connect apps to their store. This can be used to improve functionality and connect new features to the website. Additionally, you can sell digital products, physical products, dropshipping, and more. Even subscription plans are an open market for Shopify.

There are three main plans Lite, Basic, and Advanced totaling $9, $29, and $299 a month. The “Lite” plan allows for increased sales functionality to be run through an existing website or blog. The “Basic” plan allows for a totally new store/site to be built from scratch via the platform. The “Advanced” option allows for cuts in transaction fees, adding more staff accounts (5+), and can serve with improved shipping rate calculations.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a web-building platform that boasts a heavy visual component. There is a wide range of editing tools and software that allow for greater editing power and site impact. Additionally, Squarespace is one of the few platforms integrating CSS editing into the software allowing for unique, custom edits to be built into the site itself. Thus changing the site’s composition greatly.

However, there is currently limited app integration available to Squarespace presently, which makes diversifying your business as well as scaling a major issue on the site. Unlike Shopify however, Squarespace permits more realized capabilities more readily with its lower plans. Allowing more rapid ascension to the site’s full potential.

The pricing plans for Squarespace sit at $16 – Personal, $23 – Business, $27 – Basic Commerce, and $49 – Advanced Commerce respectively. Most features unlock at the Business Level, ($23) except it still maintains a 3% transaction fee.

Wix eCommerce

Another heavy hitter in the site building market, Wix has in recent years, built itself into a reputable eCommerce platform juggling its trademark ease of use and intuitive features with an integrated AI that focuses on optimizing your website.

While currently, there is a limited set of capabilities as far as the range of sellable items, the galleries and image capabilities of Wix match most online platforms. Given the ease of use of the site as well as its optimization features, Wix eCommerce can provide an initial edge to any business not looking to invest or spend the time to ruminate over their web’s design.

To get access to Wix eCommerce you need to upgrade beyond a typical Wix plan into a business-worthy plan, think along the lines of their “Unlimited Plan” – $22, their “Basic Business” Plan – $22, or “Business Unlimited” Plan – $32. There are other plans, but these are the cheapest and easiest for the fledgling business.

BigCommerce

This is the most scalable site constructing service which is why it is one of the best eCommerce platforms for startups. When you ultimately take your business online you need a platform that can allow for that huge growth. This means whether for rapid, short-term acceleration or for a more drawn-out metric of time.

BigCommerce, while less known than others on this list, is that site. BigCommerce is a fully integrated website builder, which means you do not have to worry about plugins as you may on other sites. This allows for the ultimate results in freedom and functional capacity. It does still, of course, offer apps for integrated actions if desired.

Like nearly all of its peers, BigCommerce has four tiers to its plan. The first tier is the simple Standard Plan – $29.95. Similar to Shopify. The next plan is the plus plan – $79.95 per month. After this, the plan is the “Pro Plan” at $299.95 monthly. And then the “Enterprise Plan” which like many others requires contacting BigCommerce for a specified quote. These prices are a little high but fall almost directly in line with Shopify. Plus, they follow a similar tier structure to nearly all other site programs.

Square Online

For the offline store moving toward an online market, Square Online is a natural choice. This site can automatically sync both online and offline orders and inventory. Small business around the world similarly uses their price syncing technologies to once again have a natural ease of transaction and commerce flow.

Of course, it still offers the option of an online store builder. With regards to this, the website designer offers all the typical features. These include blog capabilities, a customizable storefront, and customer service options.

The prices run far simpler and more competitive with three tiers: “Free” – $0, “Plus” – $29, and “Premium” – 79 USD. This is right in the typical sweet spot for this type of site and the free plan can offer the new user familiarity with the basic software and a solid buffer before they decide to up their game with a paid plan.

Branchbob

For many, price and presumed knowledge stand as the main barrier to entry among the considering entrepreneur. That is where Branchbob comes in as another best eCommerce platforms for startups. It is one of the sites on this list that is completely free to use and offers basic, simplistic features that are intuitive and easy to learn and pick up.

Again, no monthly pricing or transaction fee exists. The only billing occurs if you want to increase Branchbob’s features and capabilities. This of course extends to website themes. Overall Branchbob stands as a fundamental transaction site between the business and the customer. It also allows budding businesses with limited capital to break ground in the eCommerce market.

The post Best Platforms to Sell Products for Your eCommerce Startup appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

How Abandoned Carts Undermine Potential Revenue

Abandoned carts are precisely what they sound like.

They’re the digital equivalent of filling your cart with items at a store, changing your mind about buying your cart’s contents, and walking out without making a purchase.

It’s worth pointing out that, in this case, it’s even worse. It’s much easier to add items to a digital cart, close out a window, and never look back.

It should come as no surprise that abandoned carts are a common issue for online retailers. This is easiest to explain via a retailer’s “abandonment rate.”

Customer Cart Abandonment Rate in Simple Terms

Your abandonment rate reflects the number of carts visitors generate on your site. The abandonment rate compares that to the number of purchases they complete.

For instance, consider if 100 people visit your Etsy site on a given day and create a shopping cart. If 36 of those people complete their purchases, your abandonment rate is 100 – 36 = 64%.

That number may sound high, but Baymard Institute begs to differ. The research organization reports that the average documented abandonment rate for online shopping carts as of August 2022 was 69.99%.

Steering Clear of Making Hasty Assumptions

The good news is that this number doesn’t represent potential customers who have definitively decided not to patronize your brand. On the contrary, there are many reasons for people to abandon carts while online shopping.

Statista lists things like slow delivery, excessive extra costs (like shipping), and the need to create an account as the primary reasons people didn’t cash out in 2022. It isn’t until the fourth reason on the list (just 18% didn’t trust a site with their credit card information) that the issue becomes more connected to specific failures on the part of the retailer.

In other words, in most cases an abandoned cart isn’t a burned bridge. It’s simply a failure to complete a purchase. This naturally implies that, if handled correctly, following up on abandoned carts can be a legitimate (and profitable) source of revenue for an e-commerce company. The question is, how?

Reclaiming Cart Abandonment Income

With so many abandoned carts out there, it’s important to consider multiple ways to reclaim that unrealized cash. Here are some different strategies to consider heading into 2023.

Send abandoned cart emails.

This is one of the most tried and true ways to follow up on an abandoned cart. If a potential customer gives you enough information (including an email address), you can send them an email reminding them about an abandoned cart.

When a shopper is a repeat buyer or an older customer with an account or purchase history with your brand, you can even personalize the message.

Retention.com points out that there are also ways to engage with anonymous cart abandoners. On-site software can collect first-party cookies, allowing you to reach out to unknown website visitors who filled a cart and left it behind.

Fire off a text message.

E-commerce website giant Shopify reports that nearly a third of all U.S. internet users used mobile devices to purchase something every week in 2021. The significant number of mobile shoppers makes text messages a solid alternative to an abandoned cart email.

When a mobile shopper leaves items in their cart in your app or mobile site, sending an SMS notification can be a perfect way to draw them back in. These are quick, subtle messages — and they aren’t seen as spam, either.

Try exit popups.

Abandoned carts are a time-sensitive issue. If someone leaves your site, there’s a good chance that they’re still shopping and want to find a better deal or an easier checkout process. This sense of urgency means the sooner you connect with a customer after they leave a cart, the better.

Exit intent popups allow you to do exactly that — before they even leave your site. These popups trigger when a user is about to leave a website. Hubspot explains that these should include offers or information that can draw potential customers back to their carts, such as a discount or free shipping.

Reclaiming Abandoned Cart Revenue in 2023

Customer cart abandonment revenue should never be an afterthought. It’s a significant source of potential revenue growth for most businesses.

Remember, a consumer who has gone as far as putting an item in a cart is close to being sold. They are much closer to the point of purchase than a new lead. They are far closer even than someone at the beginning of the customer journey.

Make sure to keep this dormant income in mind. Leverage it as you create and adjust your e-commerce strategies for the year ahead.

The post How to Reclaim Revenue by Reducing Customer Cart Abandonment appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

But not all small businesses can afford to hire these specialists.

The good news is, that you can easily increase the conversion rates of your campaigns without spending any extra money on specialists.

The facts are, that there are many factors that make a potential customer take an action. If you tweak any of these factors, chances are, you’ll increase conversion rates.

What does ‘increase conversion rate’ mean?

In internet marketing, increasing conversion rates involves optimizing a page for higher response. If you run Facebook Ads, you want more clicks. Entrepreneurs using landing pages want more sales. You may want more subscribers to your email list, more clicks for your emails, or maybe even more sales for your Shopify store.

If you have low conversion rates, you have erratic sales and if you have erratic sales, you have no business. For startups, increasing conversion rates should be the main business.

Web traffic is a vanity metric, while conversion rates are a true metric directly tied to sales. Unless you’re a mainstream publication relying on sponsored ads for revenue, your focus should be on getting conversions.

How do you boost conversions on low-traffic websites?

The best way to increase conversion rates on new sites is to write a sales page around specific long-tail transactional keywords.

I consult with small tech businesses a lot because my goal is to apply the skills I’ve learned, from leading marketing agencies to small startups.

Most small businesses have good products. Some run ads and get significant traffic, but no sales. They often think they need more traffic so they can get more paid customers.

Not so. The truth is if you can’t get one out of 100 people to take an action, you can’t get 10 out of 1,000 people to take action.

For this reason, most startups misfire their marketing efforts. They get little to no results, end up discouraged and finally give up.

But with good conversion rates, even a low-traffic website is a goldmine.

As a freelancer, I can honestly say that 8 people out of 100 people who visited my site downloaded my free eBook.

Eight is a low number for a free eBook download. But in comparison with other B2B sites that get 0.01% conversion rates, I’m 800 times ahead. It may not bring a direct income since the eBook is free, but the conversion rate acts as a vote of confidence to scale my marketing efforts with a larger budget.

Because small businesses often rely on social media, you have to increase conversion rates at all stages of your funnel.

• If you increase conversion rates on your Ads by 1.4X (40% more), and on your landing page by 1.10X (10% more) — that’s a 1.51X increase in conversion rate and sales.

Checklist: Increase your conversion rate by 1.4X on Google Ads.

Whether you run ads on Google, Instagram, or YouTube, chances are, your ad will be ignored. Why? Well, customers are actually looking for information and people, not ads.

So the best use of search engines such as Google is to make your ad mimic an informational piece, a.k.a. an advertorial. For YouTube, use infomercials and influencer partnerships. This is known as social search. For Facebook, use infomercials and viral-type ads. And if you’re advertising in an official-like trade publication, use a corporate style.

The secret is to blend with the platform so you get their attention. You are there to seek attention, you should not be ignored.

The small business product for this demo is CRM software.

• Did I use an advertorial style…instead of typical ads?
• Does my headline appeal to self-interest rather than general appeals?
  • Can you be a better email marketer rather than the best CRM software for email marketers?
• Do I add some curiosity to my headline?
  • Lessons from Hilary Clinton: Use emails to make you a better email marketer.
  • Look to Quora headlines to get a sense of curiosity.
• For social ads, do my ads invite a conversation?
  • The goal is to engage. Filter top posts on Reddit or any platform…that’s how your advertorial should look.
• Do you push your ads organically?
  • If you have the best product, you will want to do everything to ensure it reaches everyone.
• Is your product unique?
  • This “wow factor” causes products to trend (and even go viral).
• Did you add some urgency?
  • Why should people click now? Limited availability, limited editions?

Checklist: Designing websites that convert.

So which methods can you use to increase conversion rates on low-traffic and new sites?

• Messaging: Does my landing page stick to the principle of copy focus…or are ideas all over the place?
• Do my hero area and headline solve an urgent problem, call out a target customer, and continue the conversation from the advertorial?
• Does my product/service have credibility and proof elements, education, statistics, examples, case studies, track record, and demonstrations to back up my claims?
• Do I make a big, believable, unique promise?
  • This is the only way to move a saturated market.
• Do I have a clear call to action, and an irresistible offer someone would be dumb to ignore? A.K.A. “value.”

You’d be surprised at how many websites fail at each of these.

eCommerce: How to Increase Your Conversion Rates

Unlike B2B businesses, eCommerce drop shippers could be D2C and B2C businesses. As a result, their product pages require less copy and should be more graphic-rich. The aim of every graphic is to increase sales.

• Do I use direct response design tips?
• Do my images show the fulfillment of the promise rather than a problem, i.e. show glowing radiant skin rather than acne skin?
• UX: Is my website loading fast, with 99% uptime, with 1-3 clicks to checkout?
• Do I practice up-selling — recommending higher-priced packages, down-selling for abandoned carts, and cross-selling — recommending similar packages?
• Does my ordering system use notifications?
• Do I use countdown timers and scarcity plugins?
• Do I use customization? Am I calling visitors by name, location, using gamification techniques?

Unlike SEO, conversion rate optimization doesn’t change. These timeless principles remain evergreen.

People buy because they have a problem. All you have to do is to present a solution, like a caring friend, with utmost trust and clarity.

The post Looking to Increase Conversion Rate 1.51X? Use a Credibility Checklist. appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

In comparison to brick-and-mortar establishments, an eCommerce firm is more reliant on the goodwill of its customers. It’s actually quite straightforward. When a customer enters a typical physical store, they are more likely to make a purchase. After all, they went through the trouble of visiting the store. Furthermore, they are looking at the merchandise with the intent to purchase something. Therefore, few consumers leave a real store without purchasing something.

An eCommerce business, on the other hand, does not have this advantage. Since they are not actually ‘in’ the store, the customer can just close the link. Moving on to another site, the customer leaves no trace.

Here are some things you can do to make sure this doesn’t happen in your eCommerce store.

1. Downtime for eCommerce means off time.

One of the best aspects of an eCommerce site is that it is constantly open, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Therefore, you can take advantage of the fact that more and more people are using the internet to purchase goods and services. As a result, you can be selling your wares even while you are asleep.

That won’t happen, though, if your site crashes on a regular basis. If your site is unavailable, your target audience will most likely move on to another site rather than wait. Therefore, do everything you can to make sure that your site is stable and secure.

2. Customers don’t flock to slow-loading eCommerce websites.

An internet buyer’s typical attention span is roughly 3-4 seconds. Therefore, if your site does not load quickly enough, your clients will most likely leave. They will go elsewhere for another solution. After all, why shouldn’t they? There are millions of other online eCommerce stores to choose from. Therefore, make sure your site is as fast as possible if you want your customer to stay with you.

3. Make sure that the CTA is clear and in plain sight.

Why should your clients choose you above your competitors? It’s because of your call to action. This is the thing that leads people down the web marketing rabbit hole. You will lose a lot of clients if this call to action is not easy to see or not there in the first place. In addition, your shopping cart should be easy to find so that the customer understands how to purchase the items.

4. Get rid of things that aren’t selling well.

There are things that sell quickly and there are those that do not sell. This happens in every store. Therefore, concentrate on the former. Furthermore, removing the latter from your store is a great way to clean up your website and make it look and feel better. Dead products can halt your cash flow and, over time, bring your business to a halt.

Of course, you don’t have to throw them out. Instead, you could have a real sale. This is, of course, not a fake sale where retailers inflate prices, then cut them down to give an impression that they are on sale. Customers will buy your slower-moving products once they perceive that you are offering an opportunity to provide real value at discount prices.  You’ll also be able to get your cash flow rolling this way.

5. Check to see if your website is mobile-friendly.

The number of individuals engaging in eCommerce shopping on their cellphones has risen considerably in recent years. Furthermore, there are no signs that this trend will slow down anytime soon. This means that a website that isn’t mobile-friendly will miss out on the entire market. Therefore, it is critical that your website become more mobile-friendly. That way it will be easily viewable even on a small screen.

Apart from that, you should improve your SEO tactics. This will help your site appear in organic search results.

6. Include a live chat feature on your eCommerce site.

By answering all of your consumers’ inquiries, live chats will help to gently encourage them towards making a purchase choice. It’s an excellent approach to increase conversion rates and keep your target market happy. Even if they don’t buy the product, they’ll return back because of the timeliness and quality of your response. They will, at the absolute least, bookmark your website.

7. Use residential proxies to help you improve your business’s eCommerce shopping experience.

You can use residential proxies for market research to gain valuable data on your target audience’s purchasing behavior. At the same time, they’ll keep your identity hidden.

If you truly want to increase sales and improve your business’s eCommerce shopping experience, you must ensure that your site is free of latency and downtime. Furthermore, you should employ residential proxies to assist you in conducting market research on your target audience.

Image Credit: Pixabay; Pexels; Thank you!

The post eCommerce Shopping Experience Enhancements appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Leveraging WhatsApp’s Functionality the Right Way to Facilitate Customer Communication

Identification and connection with prospective clients are essential components of effective brand communication.

WhatsApp’s widespread usage among consumers has become a popular platform for businesses to communicate with their customers. Brands can reach out to prospective consumers in a personalized manner and via a channel they are comfortable with. As a result, reducing friction to the greatest extent is feasible.

Market Opportunity for Using WhatsApp for Your Brand

WhatsApp helps communicate with the customers, and the fact that text messages are opened at a rate of 98% makes this even superior.

Additionally, the critical advantage of communicating with consumers using a messaging app like WhatsApp is that they develop a greater sense of confidence in you. For instance, 53% of consumers indicate they would purchase if they could only reach out by text or a chat app.

WhatsApp bridges this chasm by providing a secure, high-speed connection.

Apart from that, the following factors make WhatsApp a valuable tool in the marketing arsenal of profitable businesses.

• Use of WhatsApp to strengthen customer relationships.
• Use of instant messaging to accelerate the customer sales cycle.
• Ability to generate superior sales numbers.

How Can You Develop an Effective WhatsApp Marketing Strategy?

Having a solid marketing plan is critical to getting desired outcomes in the field of marketing. Read these suggestions on WhatsApp marketing strategy to help you prepare ahead of time and make tweaks if something doesn’t work out as planned.

1. Automated Messages

WhatsApp for Business allows businesses to use templates to develop and send customized messages. Users can automate messages based on the specific question a customer is asking, the information they seek, waiting time elapsed, and availability. This feature greatly reduces the burden on staff to respond to every single message. It also assures a timely response even if your support people are overwhelmed with other tasks. Based on a customer profile, your interactions can be personalized to acknowledge wedding anniversaries, birthdays, and other unique milestones. This adds a level of personalization that helps to cement trust and may also provide a CTA to the recipient.

2. Personalize the User Experience

Consumers benefit from two-way interaction between companies and their customers since it allows them to have a more personalized experience. This decreases the likelihood of drop-off, enhances engagement, and piques the customer’s curiosity. Communication through WhatsApp also allows firms to differentiate themselves by providing a unique after-sales experience, including monitoring updates to customer feedback.

3. Cross-Selling

As soon as a direct channel of communication has been established between a business and its customer, WhatsApp can be utilized by the business to offer product upgrades or bundled products in connection with potential or completed purchases. These suggestions might range from advocating more services to recommending alternative things of superior performance or quality than the original item.

4. Make Use of Multimedia and Voice Communication

To assist your consumers, you can use WhatsApp to share geolocations, send purchase confirmations, photos, and audios, and receive videos.

Videos and memes effectively inform customers about future events or new items, leaving a lasting impression on their thoughts. However, memes, videos, and audio snippets should be succinct and to the point. Additionally, you can try using WhatsApp’s new product catalogue feature, which is advantageous if you do not have a website. Create a WhatsApp product catalogue for your consumers to view up to 500 goods. They may contact you with questions about your product. You may also provide a link to the whole product catalogue and additional distribution channels if you choose.

Lastly, implement a WhatsApp video/voice call communication system to enhance engagement with new clients and address customer service issues. When clients communicate with you through video or audio chat, they get a more personalized experience, which boosts the likelihood of upselling. Reap the advantages of WhatsApp by delivering the correct voice messages to the right consumers at the right time, determining which voice campaigns work for you, and optimizing further for a greater customer experience.

5. Segment Your Audience to Provide Them With More Personalized Experiences

Using the WhatsApp Labels feature to segment your audience is a wonderful approach to guarantee that your users have a more personalized experience on your platform. Why? Because there are likely to be varying user demographics, one marketing message may not be as effective as another in reaching them. It is critical to provide the greatest possible user experience!

Final Words

In short, to retain current customers while also extending your customer base, WhatsApp Marketing is a smart method to cut down on acquisition expenditures. Consider taking advantage of this excellent, low-cost platform to improve your sales and income. WhatsApp Business offers exceptional levels of consumer engagement and the fostering of long-term ties with customers. A quick reply can assist in developing confidence and greatly enhance conversions. WhatsApp marketing can be personalized with numerous possibilities for specialized communications such as welcome messages followed by birthday greetings and incentive points.

The post 5 WhatsApp Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Brands in 2022 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The advancement of technology is changing how we interact with the world. There isn’t a single business globally that hasn’t been impacted by artificial intelligence in some way or another (AI). From virtual reality (VR) gaming systems to artificial intelligence (AI) robots in industrial production, technology is advancing exponentially. And that’s not even close to Q Commerce.

However, since learning technologies and algorithms are already transforming the industry, eCommerce is especially susceptible to artificial intelligence (AI) disruption. It could alter the way we buy and sell items on the internet.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can not only do jobs that humans previously performed manually, but it can also optimize the customer experience and give businesses the information they require to make intelligent business decisions.

Here are four ways in which artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the world of e-business.

1. Artificial Intelligence Copywriting

The emergence of automatic copywriting is transforming how brands generate their sales copy and marketing materials.

Writing technologies that use artificial intelligence may generate marketing text in seconds. Instead of engaging copywriters or advertising firms to write headlines, blog introductions, or product descriptions, brands may now use artificial intelligence algorithms to accomplish the task.

These systems, which use advanced artificial intelligence language models, can provide digital ad text, social media material, and other eCommerce copy.

The majority of automated copywriting still requires manual editing. But it is well on its way to becoming a standard feature of eCommerce.

2. Chatbots and virtual assistants are two examples of artificial intelligence.

Shoppers who choose to do their shopping in a physical store benefit from the presence of clerks. An employee or assistant can aid them in navigating the store and locating what they’re looking for.

While eCommerce has always had customer care employees available to provide phone support, it wasn’t until recently that artificial intelligence (AI) could fill in the gaps and give customers more instant assistance. As eCommerce merchants strive to provide 24/7 help to all of their online consumers, chatbots and other virtual service usage is becoming more commonplace.

However, the use of natural language processing (NLP) allows these chatbots to understand and comprehend voice-based interactions with online shoppers, allowing them to provide customized offers. As a result of being programmed with self-learning skills, they are constantly increasing their ability to respond to and satisfy the wants of their customers.

3. Personalization is the next stage.

Therefore, through accurate product suggestions and advertising, AI also gives clients a more personalized experience.

Artificial intelligence algorithms will sift through massive datasets to extract meaningful insights into customer behavior. These insights will allow them to predict better what a client needs when the customer needs it. Their recommendation engine can use the information from your buying history to propose products that are similar to what you’re looking for. These days, you can even use AI scheduling tools to map out your whole day!

To give you an example, if you recently looked for sponges on Amazon, the AI algorithms will propose additional cleaning goods that are similar to sponges on your page.

However, people can also apply this artificial intelligence technology across various platforms, including websites, email, and even mobile applications. AI can assist you in providing a more delightful and simplified experience to your clients. AI can tailor to an audience and increase your productivity.

Personalization is essential for a positive customer journey. So the algorithms of AI are present in a great deal of eCommerce advertising.

4. Inventory control is critical.

For example, inventory management is the second area of eCommerce where artificial intelligence’s predictive analytics is transforming the landscape.

Maintaining current inventory, storing it appropriately, and placing orders well in advance is critical, mainly when predicting client demand.

Storage facilities do not have the capacity or the resources to maintain everything in stock at all times. This is why it is critical to prioritize the things you require and order them in the order in which you need them. Therefore, artificial intelligence uses predictive analysis to generate educated guesses about what the future needs in the market will be like.

With the help of machine learning, artificial intelligence technology is becoming increasingly accurate at anticipating what inventory you will need to order. And how much of it you should keep on hand at any given time. These systems can anticipate rapid changes in demand.

Do preventive maintenance on your technology. Automate key packing activities to boost productivity.

In conclusion, artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly popular among eCommerce companies to improve their analytical insights. It provides a more tailored consumer experience, and raises their competitiveness. As the market for artificial intelligence in eCommerce continues to grow, they can leave you behind.

The post Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming eCommerce appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With the right email marketing software and a strategy to win over the hearts (and wallets) of your contacts, you could be raking in some serious cash this holiday season.

How to Boost Your Christmas Sales

Before we officially head into the New Year, we mustn’t gloss over the last major shopping season of the year. Consumers are ready to buy and they’re looking for the best deals on the internet. So how do you get their attention?

1. Shout out your website with a sense of urgency.

With wishes of “Merry Christmas” from family and friends filling up the inbox, there’s even more competition for your subscribers’ attention. For a successful bout of buying from your store, you’ll want to adopt a strong sense of urgency.

With copy that captures the essence of time is running short (but also points to a solution), your target audience will get the picture — your site is the perfect place for fulfilling any last-minute shopping this year.

2. Problem? Solution!

You want to create copy that’s clear and to the point. Keeping your email brief means your contacts are more likely to read it in its entirety and act on a compelling call to action. For the best results, we return to the problem-solution strategy.

The end of the year sets the stage for a major bout of last-minute shopping. The problem is clear…your shoppers are running out of time! Give them quick gift ideas by showcasing your best sellers or outline a current sale with helpful links.

3. Show off your customer knowledge.

It’s time to break out the flattery. With Christmas sale competition eating up valuable inbox space, your email campaigns will need to stand out with a bit of personalization. There are a few ways to go about this.

• Personalize product recommendations that capture your target audience.
• Capture cart abandoners with the old “get it before it’s gone” technique.
• Better yet, encourage would-be customers with a discount on the things they nearly purchased.

Personalized messaging goes a long way in email campaigns as it makes it easy for a customer to feel confident about a buy. Feeling like a company truly understands them takes the guesswork out of finding the perfect product to purchase.

4. Make your campaign website mobile-friendly.

Now more than ever, it’s important that your email message is compatible with multiple devices.

In this day and age, it’s likely that a good portion of your contacts will be shuffling through their inboxes on the go. With visually enticing and clickable CTAs, you invite your clients to swiftly follow through with an effortless click of the thumb.

5. Free shipping = a shopping cart follow-through.

Have you ever wondered why shoppers abandon their carts so frequently? The greatest influence is unexpected shipping costs.

The best way to get customers to complete their purchase this holiday season is clear: offer free shipping.

6. E-gift cards are here to stay (and for good reason).

They’re super convenient and don’t require any shipping wait time! Contacts that are really cutting it close with their last-minute shopping will be hoping for a solution this simple.

Give them a shout-out in your subject line, to the tune of, “We’ve got your last-minute gift right here.” With a clickable link that goes straight to your e-gift card options, consider the sale complete.

7. Go a different email route…with a huge shopping success rate.

SMS campaigns typically host an ultra-high open rate, so if you’ve had the opportunity to collect your contacts’ phone numbers, launching SMS automation might be the thing you’ve been missing when it comes to closing that sale.

Sending an automated text won’t do much good without a clickable link attached, so be sure to include one — and maybe even a photo if your platform allows!

In conclusion, what’s the moral of the story? Christmas isn’t over yet! Your customers still have time to buy! Employ those snappy CTAs. Whip up some attention-grabbing copy. Create clear, concise messages to get your point across. When it comes down to the final hours before Christmas, your contacts will be glad they opened your email.

The post The Best Ways to Enhance Your Pre-Christmas Sales appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Change upward will require technology. Using technology strategically will provide you with a competitive advantage.

You don’t have to be a scientist to use technology to expand your business. Just spend less time on useless stuff like TV and more time on things that can help your business. The material in this article is meant to help you start using technology to expand your business.

Here are some strategies to use technology to grow your small business.

1. Communication technology can lend a hand.

Communication is one of the numerous advantages of technology. This perk allows you to communicate more readily with potential clients and partners.

For example, you may utilize top email marketing tools to engage potential customers. There’s no need to go when you can call. Technology improves communication. You may use a video call to see the other person from afar.

2. Use technology to boost marketing.

If handled appropriately, technology may increase your marketing efforts. However, conventional marketing methods will never be as effective as technology-based marketing strategies. Like social media marketing.

A camper repair service, for example, may use a strong social media strategy to quickly contact new consumers and drive them to their website. Even if you lack education or experience, technology can help you write a business strategy. You can construct unique websites utilizing technology-based solutions even if you don’t know anything about web design.

3. Social networking will be useful.

Social networking accelerates business growth. It connects you to so many individuals from your home. Digital marketing is one of the best methods to use social media for business success.

Working with a social media marketing agency allows you to promote your products and services without having to advertise physically. The internet touches almost every country. So anything you share on social media is worldwide. Social media marketing also allows you to select your target demographic.

4. Remote employment saves on resources.

As a small business, you must save time, effort, and money. A remote office is one of the finest methods to do this.

It allows workers to work from home and will enable you to communicate with them without having to meet in person. If an employee is unable to report to your physical office, they can interact with you using remote work tools.

5. Create a website.

You will need a website to promote your services. So, if you want to develop your business faster, get a website.

Building a website is not enough; it must be adaptable and appealing to potential clients. An effective, responsive website will provide your company with a digital presence. It will also provide credible information about your company to anyone seeking it online.

To ensure that your website is both visually appealing and functional, consider partnering with a reputable b2b web design agency that can create a custom website tailored to your business needs and target audience.

6. SEO is your lifeblood.

It’s not enough to develop a website; it must be seen. Increased visibility attracts more customers, resulting in quicker brand growth.

This is only achievable if you optimize your online content for search engines. If you lack the necessary understanding, you may need to engage SEO specialists.

7. Protect your assets.

While technology might help you reach a global audience faster than traditional methods, it also has its drawbacks. For one, your website may be hacked, resulting in data loss or theft, as well as financial damage.

Securing a reliable internet company will help. Create active firewalls for your website and use encrypted passwords.

8. Use cloud storage.

Don’t keep everything on your PC; shift some to the cloud. Cloud storage frees up disk space and might even speed up your machine.

It can also make your data and files available if you need to view them outside of your office or at a remote location. This way, you have all the information you need at your fingertips.

9. Provide better client service.

Technology can help you noticeably improve customer service.

This may be done by offering live chat services where existing and future consumers can speak with you and receive rapid responses. You may also provide toll-free calling so that your customers don’t have to pay.

10. Automate mundane duties.

Automating duties can also help your small business. Customer service is one duty that may be automated.

Automated messages can address many of the questions customers ask. You may also schedule social media postings. And therefore focus on other elements of the business.

11. Video marketing always attracts eyeballs.

Another option is video marketing. But make sure the videos you create are linked to your products and services.

Search engines will give your website a higher ranking if you have connected videos. You may also share these films on social media.

Bonus Advice!

Content marketing is a great approach to promote your company online. You can submit SEO-friendly material to major websites like E-zine. You may also develop backlinks to connect with authoritative websites. If this is too technical for you, you can always employ an SEO specialist.

The post Use Technology to Improve Your Small Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Evolution is part of any business — what works this year may not be as profitable or as effective in the next. Without riding the coming wave of new trends, you run the real risk of getting left behind. In eCommerce, the industry is far more aggressive. Competition between companies and online merchants is fierce. Trendy products and services — other than essentials such as food and digital products — rarely last for years. Much like everything else on the internet, audience interest and attention are transient.

The entire eCommerce ecosystem became more frenetic in 2020. The global population was forced indoors and adopted social distancing protocols due to the pandemic. There wasn’t much room for in-person dining and shopping. Everyone turned their attention to online services. They utilized online stores to shop for everything from food to personal essentials. People had little choice but to get their needs met online.

As a result, the already saturated eCommerce market grew by up to 44%. It added up to 22% of the world’s total retail sales. But that was only the first stage. Eventually, the dust settled and the eCommerce industry found some footing. This transformation created trends in the products that customers shop for. It affected strategies and campaigns used by online stores and marketplaces.

Now that the market is so broad, customer experience rules the day. Companies now use chat support, eco-friendly packaging, personalized thank you cards, and more. The customer is solidly at the center of the eCommerce shopping experience.

The Purpose and Functions of eCommerce

Our evolution into a user-centric experience in eCommerce wasn’t sudden. It’s been gradual. However, the best practices have trended to revolve increasingly around user comfort and positive experience.

The purpose of successful eCommerce trends is to stimulate site users and visitors into making a purchase. Vendors hope to improve the conversion rate for their business. Moreover, happy buyers become repeat customers. They often encourage other customers to make a purchase. After all, one of eCommerce’s main tasks is to cater to the demand and solve the customer’s problem, satisfying their needs.

Another aim of eCommerce this coming year is to improve communication. Customers enjoy giving feedback. They appreciate the feeling of being heard by companies. Whether they’re happy or unhappy, they’ll let the company know. Today, they expect that their feedback matters.

Stay Ahead of Customer Happiness: Notable eCommerce Trends Projected for 2022

Maintaining and improving your conversion rate in the eCommerce industry is critical. Your business needs to stay on top of incoming eCommerce trends, particularly those that emphasize positive customer experiences. Start implementing them now if possible. Commit to adapt to these trends and you’ll future-proof your business.

Listed below are some of the biggest eCommerce trends that analysts and experts project to take root by 2022.

Prioritize an Omnichannel Strategy

This strategy refers to selling and marketing on multiple platforms. This is increasingly important as diversifying the ways customers can find your products makes you more visible. It also improves your conversion rate and reinforces your authority.

Suppose your name pops up on major selling sites such as Amazon and eBay or other specialty marketplaces that facilitate the distribution of products to your niche. In that case, it gives your business the appearance of size and authority. According to a study, 46.7% of customer searches come from Amazon, eBay, and Etsy. More than half of the units sold via Amazon come from third-party sellers. Visibility in social media is always a plus. Approximately 37% of users research products and brands through social media before making a purchase.

Optimize for Voice Search

In recent years, people have become more accustomed to interacting with voice-operated devices and features. Examples include Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Apple’s Siri. Using voice commands makes performing tasks such as searching for businesses, asking for directions, and even online shopping even more convenient.

As such, eCommerce companies should prioritize optimizing their sites and pages to be responsive. The goal is to be compatible with platforms these AI assistants search to improve conversion rates. More and more users will be looking into this technology to make their lives easier when they need information.

This technology isn’t fully developed yet. It continues to release updates to make its functionalities more sophisticated, but it’s already a great feature for users. Your brand needs to be prepared to adapt to it sooner rather than later.

Voice Shopping Will Take Centerstage

Along with voice search comes voice shopping. This has already taken hold within the U.S. in a “smart speaker market share.” The smart speaker market is projected to increase by a whopping 55% by the next year. This proves that customers want to use voice assistants in their homes to do more than just search for answers. One of the most common tasks they want voice assistants to perform is to shop for them.

It’s still complicated. Customers have to describe in detail what they want. They must articulate the product, product packaging, ingredients, and other vital information for the voice assistant to return proper results. Unless they have a device that comes with a screen, there are no visual cues. Vendors must make sure their website is optimized to contain the right indicators that allow people to find your products via voice shopping.

It’s also a priority to make the shopping process friendly to voice commands as well. Your website needs to be able to respond to the automated assistant. Product listings must be able to describe the steps a user must take to confirm.

M-Commerce

As mentioned earlier, mobile commerce is rapidly becoming the norm. Smartphones have become the most active form of internet access today. Mobile users are so numerous that Google’s algorithms have changed their priorities. The algorithm now scans and checks websites with mobile-friendly design and features and puts those at the forefront of SERPs.

M-Commerce has grown just as rapidly, with more customers making their purchases over their smartphones. To improve your conversion rate, adding features that will help mobile shoppers can give you an edge. Using filters as a virtual dressing room, geo-targeted promo codes, mobile GPS pins to the nearest branches, or even something as simple as a mobile payment option gives you a distinct advantage over the competition.

Green Consumerism

Eco-friendly practices have become one of the most critical trends in the past few years. More businesses and consumers are starting to understand how vital it is to use sustainable products and create eco-friendly packaging. One survey found that half of its respondents preferred products made of sustainable materials and companies that use eco-friendly components and packaging. Up to 75% of them wanted to do away with packaging (especially plastic packaging) altogether.

Green consumerism is now a significant focal point for many businesses, even tiny businesses that want to make an impact. Their eco-friendly packaging and other touches — water-activated paper tape, recycled paper package padding, cardboard boxes, biodegradable plastic parts, reusable freebies like metal straws, and more — attract customers who want to do their part to fight waste and non-biodegradable trash.

Drone Delivery

This concept made waves last year when Amazon first debuted it. It has since gained some traction with companies such as FedEx and Alibaba preparing to adopt it. It takes shipping into unheard-of levels and creates a unique service that many customers would be willing to pay for just to see it happen.

Furthermore, it’s another way to enforce contactless payment and delivery. There would be no need for delivery personnel to come to a person’s residence to deliver the package. Better still, drones aren’t restricted to the traffic and roads to which land delivery channels are constrained. They can make same-day deliveries from the nearest distribution or fulfillment center.

While there’s still a long way to go when it comes to nationwide (much less global) implementation — along with specific difficulties along the way concerning a perishable product, packaging that withstands potential drops, and other issues — it’s a promising start. The carbon footprint of drones is a lot smaller compared to freight trucks, vans, and other land-based delivery options.

Augmented and Virtual Reality

Some years ago, the widespread fame of Pokemon Go introduced consumers to the wonders of augmented reality. Now, it’s widely available and viable for commercial purposes. Many businesses have been implementing it for various features.

Adding AR features provides a unique experience for customers. For example, it can give them the utility of “trying” an item on before they make a purchase, the same way they would if they were in a brick-and-mortar store. As such, it improves the conversion rate as it eliminates buyer uncertainties.

Clothing stores have begun using AR to create virtual dressing rooms. Customers can try on clothes before buying them. Some salons offer hair color testing features to see if a particular hairstyle will suit a customer. IKEA uses virtual reality to scan and measure a room. Buyers can see what a piece of furniture would look like in their home before buying it.

As you can imagine, these types of eCommerce trends aren’t just there to dazzle. They also serve an integral purpose to the buyer experience.

Social Media Enters Online Shopping

Social media has become more than just a marketing vehicle for eCommerce. Now it’s a selling platform as well.

Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram now have their shopping features which improve the conversion rate by lessening purchase steps. Customers can see a product getting advertised on a company’s Facebook page. They can then buy them straight away through a Shop Page or Facebook Marketplace.

Similarly, Instagram now has a much-anticipated shopping feature. Users can click on a photo and see tags that indicate the names and prices of the featured products in the photograph. After that, it’s a matter of making the purchase right inside the Instagram app. This cuts out the rest of the steps that typically lead a customer to a company’s page or selling platform and create an account for purchase there.

Headless eCommerce

As part of the movement to improve conversion rates through positive customer experiences, headless eCommerce was designed to give companies more significant control over their site’s front-end design. It also helps create personalized customer experiences. Changes made in the front end of the design don’t affect back-end functionality.

This way, companies can change and adapt the front-end design more efficiently than ever. They can respond to special events or holidays, or revamp website appearance every so often to fit their customer base’s mood and style. They can even transform the design for web, mobile, and tablet displays as needed. Significantly, they can modify the SEO of their pages as well, all without messing with the complex shop functionality in the back end to make it work.

Increased AI Use in Ecommerce

Finally, there is the increased use of artificial intelligence or AI. You might have already seen this done via chatbots installed in a business page’s social media platform messenger or directly on the website. The AI can act as an FAQ or helpdesk for customers with common concerns, removing the need for a human customer service rep.

Another use of AI is to detect and predict user preferences. AI can study your customer’s browsing and buying patterns. It can then make intelligent recommendations of similar products that they might also be interested in. It helps keep customers in the store longer and find what they need on your site.

Final Thoughts

Trends in the eCommerce field continue to grow by the day, month, and year. More eCommerce trends than ever are springing up. With the advent of more technology, there are plenty of opportunities for online businesses to gain an edge over the crowd by hopping onto the forecasted trends right away. This allows them to deliver customer-centered experiences and demonstrate that they are at the cutting edge in their industry.

The post Future-Proof: Expected eCommerce Trends for 2022 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Whenever you apply for a financial product — such as a credit card, loan, or mortgage — your application typically goes through a stage known as underwriting. During the underwriting process, the financial institution is looking at different characteristics of the customer. These typically include age, income, employment, and financial requirements. These criteria help them decide whether to approve the application and what rate they will charge.

Underwriting has moved away from the old process of being scrutinized by a bank manager on a case-by-case basis with that person making the decision. Listed below are some of the ways that underwriting has progressed significantly in the last decade.

The Use of Point Scoring for Underwriting Financial Products

Whenever a customer fills out an online application, that data can be evaluated against a lender’s preferred scoring system.

“With so many products like loans and credit cards, you can sometimes enter your details and get an instantaneous decision. What happens in between is that your data is scored against thousands of data points by that lender,” explains David Beard, founder of price comparison company LendingExpert.

“A lender or credit card provider might have 8,000 or 10,000 rules included in their scorecards. They’ll factor in things such as age, income, gender, residential status, and credit score. This is usually built-in using software or APIs. The lender will be collecting previous historical data. In this way, they have a good idea of whether a certain demographic is a better type of customer or is more likely to pay back on time.”

“Everyone might be given a point if they are a certain age or live in a certain area. Overall, a lender might say anyone that scores above 500 will be approved. If they decide they want to accept more risk, they can lower the score. Alternatively, if they want to be more risk-averse, they can up the score.”

Automated Credit Scoring

Credit scoring is certainly not new, but nowadays it’s astonishingly automated. Through the use of credit reference agencies or bureaus, a credit card provider or mortgage lender is able to pay $1 or $2 to a bureau and get real-time data on a customer.

This information typically includes how many other loans or forms of credit they’ve been applying for. It can also include how many debts they have outstanding. All this data will help the vendor make an informed decision.

Credit scoring is also very much based on numerical values and credit scores. This makes them easy to factor into the overall score and automate decision-making.

Using Social Media as a Factor When Underwriting Financial Products

Credit card processors have started factoring social media and email accounts into underwriting for many years. Neither of these tools was available a decade ago.

Whether evaluating the basics — such as Facebook, Gmail, or Linkedin — this provides an effective way to confirm that an individual is who they say they are. Moreover, it helps verify that the applicant is employed at the place they have claimed. This process can be automated, too. It’s not only useful for confirming names, locations, and employment, but it is hugely beneficial for fraud prevention.

Recent Use of Artificial Intelligence

The real art of good underwriting these days is to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into decision engines. Rather than having to constantly update scorecards, providers should be able to get real-time information of which customers are repaying on time and defaulting. They then feed this data back into their underwriting process. Essentially, the system “learns” and gets “smarter.”

Overall, the use of AI should make the underwriting process more effective, lower default rates, and maximize profits for suppliers.

The underwriting of financial products has truly progressed in the last 10 years. Going forward, we can expect that breakthroughs in AI, machine learning, and blockchain will have the biggest impact to scale processes and operations for companies in the financial space.

The post How Underwriting for Financial Products Has Advanced in the Last 10 Years appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Given that your website is often the first point of contact new customers will have with your brand, your website must establish your credibility enough that they feel safe in transacting with you.

A professionally designed, easy-to-navigate website reflects the effort you have put into creating a good browsing experience, which makes it likelier that your products and services have the same high quality. It is also a crucial step in building your brand community.

In this guide, we discuss in detail the three key UX elements that reflect your brand’s credibility — namely usability, the About Us section, and social proof:

Usability

1. Speed

If your website pages take more than two seconds to load, your customer is likely to become impatient and exit the window. Test your site design for loading speed and make adjustments (such as reducing image resolution) so that it loads rapidly across all devices, operating systems, and browsers.

2. Content

Website content that has not been updated in a long time, such as promotional offers from six months ago, does not reflect well on a site’s trustworthiness either for the customer or for a search engine bot.

Keep refreshing your content to reflect the latest news and statistics, company updates, and limited-period offers or product availability, and be sure to keep the language simple enough for a general audience.

Content freshness determines your domain authority — search engines rate updated website content for freshness higher than those websites where the content does not change. Hence, constantly optimize your ecommerce site for SERPs.

Content also includes other links that your pages lead to. Therefore, be sure that none of those links are broken or spammy. Besides, have clear calls-to-action wherever relevant and make sure your text is in a clear and legible font.

3. Navigation

Once your target audience reaches your homepage, they need to be able to get to the pages they are looking for easily.

Have a prominent search bar on every page and make sure that each page element is arranged in a sequence that makes sense. Drop-down menus should be comprehensive, and each item should be listed in clear, simple language.

4. Accessibility

The ADA requires all websites to be optimized for easy use by customers with physical and neurological disabilities. Run a quick test to see whether your site meets the ADA compliance requirements, and get a consultant’s help if necessary to make the adjustments.

Things like clearly legible text, video/audio subtitles, and alt tags for images will, in fact, improve the user experience for all individuals — differently-abled or not  — and also help your site rank higher in search results. Hence making accessibility one of the important UX elements for every website.

5. SSL

Most buyers nowadays will look for the HTTPS in the website address bar and the green lock. You get these from purchasing an SSL certificate, an absolute must for site security — and yes, Google also considers this parameter while assigning ranks.

Besides, it would be best if you had a firewall in place to block unauthorized traffic, a privacy policy that promises not to share customer information, and two-factor authentication.

Given how prolific cybercrime has become, especially on eCommerce sites, you can never do too much when it comes to site security. Get an SSL certificate today!

About Us Section

1. Contact Information

Your website should have a physical address, telephone number, and email address mentioned, either on a separate contact page or at the footer of your site. This assures your customers that you are a real business and also helps with your search engine rankings.

Having a phone number and email address also shows that you want to hear from your target audience, and you want to make it easy for them, which further establishes your site’s trustworthiness.

2. Brand Story

How did your brand come about? What is the story behind your product or service? What motivates you to do what you do?

Having a page that talks about these things helps build a connection with your customers, who see you as a genuine team of individuals rather than a faceless company.

The more customers can relate to the how and why of your brand, the likelier they are to want to buy from you.

Yellow Leaf Hammocks has a well-crafted “About us” page that shares the entire story of how the company used to be, their comfortable hand woven hammocks, and the original Thai weavers who bring the products to life.

Source: Yellow Leaf Hammock

3. Team Faces

Putting a face to the business you run allows customers to see exactly who they will be working with and adds that personal touch. This is particularly important if your business requires one-on-one calls, business meetings, or home visits.

Add brief bios for each member, including qualifications and experience and personal details like hobbies and family. People attract people.

Social Proof

1. Trust Badges

If customers transact on your website with their credit card information, having trust badges from reputed third-party authorities is critical.

These badges show that your website has been verified as a legitimate one and serves to reassure your customers, particularly now that hacking has become common. Some of the most reliable trust badges include McAfee, PayPal, Norton Secured, Verisign, and BBB.

2. Clear Buying Policies

You should highlight any guarantees or warranties you provide to your customers (such as a one-year product warranty or guarantee refunds on canceled orders) on your product pages or in the website footer.

This includes clear mention of any cases where the guarantees do not hold. Taking this step will clarify things for the customers and avoid any legal disputes for you later.

Moreover, one of the top reasons consumers abandon their carts during checkout is hidden shipping costs and tax charges.

Source: Captured from Pack & Send infographic

Such unforeseen costs frustrate consumers, which could tarnish your brand image in the long run. It might be worth including your delivery cost estimation on the product pages so that they do not get shocked at seeing the total costs at the last stage of the buying cycle.

You will appear as a genuine brand if you are up-front about your pricing. Hiding costs would not take your brand very far!

3. Awards

If you have won any significant awards by industry bodies or specific areas like customer service, mention those on your website. It would be best if you also highlighted any positive mentions in the press on the website.

4. Case Studies

These are detailed accounts of a challenge that your business helped a customer overcome. Typically, you would write these in collaboration with your customer so that their side of the story shines through and showcases you as the ultimate solutions provider for your target audience’s pain points.

5. Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials from happy customers go a long way in setting you up as a brand to trust. Therefore, encourage your customers to leave reviews for you online, particularly ones that describe the challenges you helped them overcome.

Wherever possible, ask your customers to share a photo or video of themselves with their testimonial for extra credibility. Professional reviews from high-authority websites or influencers in your domain can also boost your credibility.

Boost Your Site’s Trustworthiness

The above-mentioned UX elements (and their sub-elements) define the credibility of every website. How you approach the specifics is in your hands. However, the underlying principles remain valid. Try to incorporate them all into your website slowly, and you will witness a considerable boost in your website traffic (and conversions).

The post 3 UX Elements That Make or Break Your Business Website’s Trustworthiness appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

But how can small business owners prepare for this influx of online shoppers? And how have both mobile and new tech become increasingly popular ecommerce tools in recent months?  

Preparing for the Rise of Ecommerce

Shoppers around the world drove a 75% growth in ecommerce in Q2 2020 over Q2 2019, and also outperformed the 2019 holiday shopping season – which was already considered a peak sales season compared with recent years. That growth is expected to continue in 2021. It’s predicted that over 2.14 billion people worldwide will buy goods and services online this year. 

In short, businesses should expect larger numbers of website visitors looking to purchase online in 2021, especially because we’re still living with the coronavirus pandemic that has accelerated ecommerce growth. 

Prepare for an Influx of Visitors

Preparing your website for an influx of visitors is important. If your site is unable to cope with increased traffic, then it will load more slowly for your customers. This will heavily affect conversions. In fact, even just a one second delay in site speed will reduce conversions by 7%.

There are easy tweaks you can make to reduce your site’s load time for visitors. One quick and effective fix is to compress images. This means striking a balance between the smallest file size and the highest quality for each image. This might sound technical or complicated, but a quick Google search will turn up a number of free image compressing tools to do it for you.

If you’re running a larger online store, or your website is seriously exceeding your traffic expectations, then you might need to think a little bigger. Consider upgrading your web hosting plan to one that offers more bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data – such as media and content – you can transfer from your web server to your users. It’s usually capped at a monthly limit. The more visitors your site has, the more data you’ll need to be able to transfer. 

Optimize for Mobile Viewing

You’ll also want to double-check that your site’s design is responsive on mobile devices, which plays a huge part in the customer journey. While it’s true that more sales are made on desktops, more traffic actually comes from mobile devices. The pandemic has also increased the popularity of mobile browsing. Essentially, 45% of consumers say they’ve been using their phone more as a shopping channel since the COVID-19 outbreak. 

Ecommerce in 2021: The Rise of Mobile 

These days, it’s very easy to create a website that looks good and works well on both desktops and smartphones. In fact, if you’re using a website builder, chances are it’s already been taken care of for you.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, mobile purchases were predicted to make up 72.9% of total global ecommerce spend by 2021. This would be worth $3.56 trillion. In Q1 of 2020 alone, ecommerce traffic on mobile devices grew by 25% across all industries. Seventy-one percent of traffic came from mobile phones, as did 56% of order share. 

As I mentioned earlier, desktop devices lead in sales. But the high numbers of mobile traffic we’re seeing this year is so important. It means that mobile devices are starting more customer journeys than ever. 

In fact, mobile devices play an important role in every stage of the customer journey including during it. Additionally, 58% of multi-device purchases utilise mobile as a transitional touchpoint. Mobile traffic also consistently remains higher than desktop traffic at both the start and end of the customer journey. 

The two biggest ecommerce markets in the world – China and the U.S. – conduct 59% and 39% of their ecommerce shopping on mobile devices, respectively. 

Ecommerce in 2021: The Rise of New Tech 

New technology trends like voice shopping and chatbots are also shaping the customer experience into something new this year. These innovations are making browsing more convenient for customers, and they’re important new channels for merchants to watch. 

Voice shopping

Voice control devices, like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, are rapidly changing the way many people shop. One in five smart speaker owners are already using voice commerce – and that’s a lot of people, considering that roughly a quarter of US adults have a smart speaker in their home. 

It looks like the pandemic has accelerated the popularity of voice assistants, with 52% of users saying they use the technology “several times a day or nearly every day.” That’s up from 46% before COVID-19 hit.

Chatbots

Google search volume for “chatbots” has increased 19 times in the last five years. Consequently, more than half of customers say that they’re more likely to shop with a business that they can connect with over chat. But this new technology isn’t just convenient for customers. By using chatbots, merchants can save up to 30% on customer service spending.

And while customer service is the area most likely to benefit from chatbots (95%), other areas will benefit too. This includes sales and marketing (55%) and order processing (48%). 

Final Thoughts

Retail is moving more and more online all the time. For small business owners, the increasing digital and ecommerce demand can be overwhelming, but it’s also a massive opportunity for growth. Set up a website that can handle online shoppers. Then, keep an eye on rising trends in mobile and new tech. Lastly, reap the rewards.

The post Ecommerce 2021: COVID, Mobile and New Tech appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Right after Thanksgiving, Small Business Saturday kicks off the busiest shopping season of the year. As the shopping holiday rapidly approaches, businesses everywhere are doing everything they can to prepare for and contend with the ongoing challenges brought on by the pandemic.

This year, Small Business Saturday is a chance to support and champion businesses hit hardest during 2020. Brick-and-mortar small businesses rely on foot traffic and in-person customer interactions. This year, they have already had to pivot, change, and transform their business models to meet customers where they are now — at home. Small businesses have increased their website capabilities, adopted curb-side pick ups, or partnered with larger delivery services to connect to their customers. 

As these new business avenues have been adopted, additional marketing and customer engagement programs have been set in motion. Local shops have expanded their online presence with email marketing campaigns, created larger online presences and experimented with increased digital advertising. With these adaptations, there are also greater risks for being a cyber crime target. For a smart small business, preparing for the holiday shopping season also means reassessing and reaffirming cybersecurity posture. 

Phishing scams during the holiday shopping season are almost a given. Phishing emails can range from a fraudulent email sent by a business owner to an employee asking for personal data verification or a malicious email disguised as a promotional offer to customers. These emails often include small clues like misspelled email addresses or mismatching url destinations. 

While it can be tempting to look at cyber crime as a distant problem or one that is more likely to happen to a larger enterprise, the reality is that small businesses are as frequently the target of cyber crime. This can wreak havoc in a number of ways from leaking customer data and damaging customer trust to even debilitating critical business operations. Phishing attacks are just one of the most common and simple ways that a potential bad actor could cripple an otherwise healthy business.

Phishing attacks can generally be spotted with some fundamental “basics” on what to look out for that can significantly help businesses, their employees, and their customers identify fake emails and questionable notices in their inbox. Businesses should always be encouraging a security-oriented workforce, but for employees in customer-facing roles during the busiest time of year, it can pay to be especially vigilant. Some of the most important clues to watch out for are:  

• Email address comes from a “trustworthy” source: Phishing emails often appeal to a sense of authority. These emails can often attempt to trick small business owners by imitating the address of a government agency or financial service, but can even imitate common companies, most especially Google and Amazon.

• Makes an urgent appeal: Does the email make reference to an emergency? Does it call for immediate, quick action or a set of tasks? Demanding requests are created to distract the reader. Making the task seem necessary is designed to cast doubt for preoccupied readers who may have otherwise noticed the signs of a false email.

• Uncommon internal requests: Is this email coming from someone you do not normally work with, especially an executive? Employees should be trained to be vigilant for emails like this, which can imitate the business owner to hide the email’s true intentions and make an employee reluctant to refuse to comply. Small businesses can alleviate this by making clear to their employees the usual chain of command in everyday operations.

• Random misspellings of common words: One subtle sign of a suspicious email is the tendency to use words which are commonly misspelled, to give the phishing email a human touch.
  

Small Business Saturday is a great way to encourage communities to shop locally or with specialized online retailers, especially this year as small businesses have been hit the hardest with the coronavirus pandemic. As small businesses are working to meet the demands of their customers, and reach new customers with online advertising and partnerships, they must be aware of cyber criminals lurking in the dark. Preparing employees to quickly identify and report suspicious emails can go a long way to support other network security policies in place. 

With the proper tools in place to defend the network and a strong culture of cybersecurity at the individual employee level, small businesses can drastically reduce their risk of attack and be better prepared to expand their online operations for a healthy and secure holiday season. 

The post Safeguarding Your Network in Preparation for Small Business Saturday appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

These are the essential features a marketplace script should have:

• Customization options
• Scalability
• User experience
• Affordability and
• Mobile accessibility 

Top Marketplace Platforms

1. BigCommerce

Most suitable for small-to-medium sized businesses, BigCommerce’s dashboard is very straightforward and user friendly.

Pros:

• Fully hosted
• Easily accessible
• Unlimited product listings
• Unlimited bandwidth & file 
• Integrations with shipping and POS software
• No transaction fees

Cons:

• You have to pay for 24/7 customer service.
• They are expensive compared to competitors. 
• Customer orders don’t come with tracking information.

2. Shopify

Offering the widest range of apps, add-ons, and plugins for small, medium, and large marketplace platforms, The Top Shopify Developer NZ are always ready to help to build an online store providing  Shopify provides tons of readymade templates for personalization.

Pros:

• A ready to use ecommerce store with cloud hosting
• Access to hundreds of themes and plugins
• Hundreds of templates for selling any type of products
• Built-in payment gateways
• Highly customizable and scalable
• Compatibility with popular third-party integrations

Cons:

• Month-to-month pricing
• Limited customization options
• High price for the enterprise level plans
• Complicated migration

3. Shopygen

Supporting different types of marketplace platforms like B2C and C2C, Shopygen provides turnkey solutions for marketplaces like Uber, Airbnb, and Instacart. They also provide services for customized plugins and themes for other eCommerce software developing platforms like Mgento, Shopify, WooCommerce etc. 

Pros:

• Created using NodeJS technology
• Highly customizable
• No recurring fee
• Cost effective in comparison to its competitors

Cons:

• You will need to get your own hosting and security maintenance.
• If customization is required, the development time is longer than usual.
• It requires an upfront cost. 

4. Magento

Magento’s platform helps to empower retailers and brands with flexible cloud solutions to help companies scale up their business. Magento’s wide range of customizable options makes it a  great platform for merchants who want to innovate and grow with technology.

Pros:

• Integrated checkout, payment and shipping
• Mobile-optimized shopping
• Catalog management
• Instant purchase
• Customization options available

Cons:

• Long development time 
• Higher budget than most of its contemporaries
• Doesn’t have a lot of content creation options
• Magento Commerce support comes with a hefty price

5. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free, open-source wordpress shopping cart plugin. It is one of the most chosen eCommerce platforms in the market and runs on about 30% of all stores.

Pros:

• Regularly updated and totally secure
• Highly customizable
• Integrates with many other ecommerce platforms and payment gateways
• Complete support

Cons:

• Not all of the features come with the basic plan
• Expensive external themes, plugins, and hosting
• You are on your own with regards to maintaining hosting to security and backups.

There are many eCommerce softwares available in the market; don’t just limit your choices to SaaS. Of course, managing a self-hosted site is not as easy as a SaaS platform, but you get the complete control when you own the code of your site which is incomparable. Ultimately it depends on your requirements, budget, and how you are going to manage your website.

The post Shopping Cart Software for Multi-Vendor Ecommerce Marketplaces appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Your account can be used by both brick-and-mortar businesses and online businesses; depending on the country in which is set up, the merchant account may not be required for a brick-and-mortar company, but in the case of online stores, this is a necessary aspect, regardless of the jurisdiction, as the customers won’t be able to conclude cash payments.

For example, when setting up a merchant account in Singapore, the company will be able to accept credit and debit cards transactions from approximately 150 countries, one of the advantages being that the merchant account can process payments in well known global currencies, not only in the local currency. Other countries, such as Estonia, accept credit cards from more than 160 jurisdictions.

In other jurisdictions, such as Cyprus, the companies wishing to set up a merchant account that will accept international payments will need to select an international merchant account, especially designed for this purpose (the country provides several types of merchant accounts, depending on the specific activities of a company and the country in which it is incorporated).

If you have an online business in Ireland, another option to explore merchant accounts refers to mobile phone payments, which increased in popularity in the last years, due to the fact that payment itself is processed very fast. Its advantage is given by the flexibility obtained by the customer, who can conclude the purchase at any given time, from any location.

The main advantage of a merchant account is that the customers can conclude a certain purchase regardless of the daily schedule of your business, in safe conditions, as all merchant accounts have to provide a safe gateway payment software.

Besides these advantages, it is important to know that companies can benefit from a simple registration procedure, which requires only several documents, but this can vary depending on the country in which the merchant account is registered. Investors can also conclude this procedure through online applications, in certain investment jurisdictions.

The post The Advantages of Opening a Merchant Account appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Customer Experience Matters

According to Salesforce’s “State of the Connected Consumer” report, “Eighty percent of customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.”

The report also reveals that 57% of consumers have stopped buying from one company because they had a better experience at another retailer.

As an eCommerce small business, it’s incredibly important to treat each customer as a person rather than a number. It should come as no surprise that people value experiences. Use this principle to gain a leg-up on the competition. For many, holiday shopping brings back feelings of nostalgia. While you can’t recreate The Miracle on 34th Street, you can make your shopping experience unique and enjoyable.

2. Outstanding Customer Service

One thing customers fear losing when shopping online is the warmth and personalization of a brick and mortar store shopping experience. To increase holiday sales, offer unrivaled customer service by:

• Follow up purchases with a personalized thank you note or email
• Put the important information at their fingertips. If they can’t find things like shipping information, return policy, sizing guides…etc., right away they will get frustrated and walk away from the sale
• Because holiday shopping happens in a pretty small timeframe, offer a direct phone number so customers can call with time-sensitive and urgent issues
• Offer a live-chat feature on your site so customers can get answers to questions immediately
• Leverage social media support. Although customer complaints will be out there for the world to see, you have an opportunity to prove to new and existing customers that you take customer service seriously and resolve issues in a timely manner. You can really make your business stand out with quality support conversations on social media

3. Seasonal Social Media

The holidays are a great time for seasonal social media content marketing campaigns. It’s important to stay connected with your audience if you hope to increase holiday sales. Be sure to optimize your content for your audience. Tailor your social media campaigns for the holidays to keep your brand relevant. Small changes like a holiday-themed profile picture, holiday messages, or pictures of your products in holiday gift wrap go a long way.

4. Go Local

Even though you may not operate out of a brick and mortar store, you can still capitalize on some of the advantages of local businesses during the holidays. Analyze which areas are your largest markets and run a promotion for that location. Just because you are based out of Maine doesn’t mean you can’t sell swimwear during the holiday months, you just have to target the right demographic such as consumers in Florida or California. 

5. Look at Your Conversion Rate

Use a free tool like Google Analytics to see where you can optimize conversion rates on your website. Track things like your bounce rate. Google Analytics gives insight into how much traffic your site has and how many visitors “bounced” because your site didn’t have what they were looking for. You’ll also be able to see how visitors are getting to your site whether it be a Google search, social media site, or an advertisement. Do you have a high rate of cart abandonment? Go through the checkout process yourself and see if there are any areas for improvement in your check out process.

6. Optimize for Mobile

People spend more time on mobile devices than any other platform. If your online store isn’t optimized for mobile, fix it immediately!

In 2017, 56% of traffic came through mobile devices, but mobile devices only generated 33% of the revenue.

This means that people are using mobile devices to shop, but not purchase, probably due to a messy mobile checkout process. Make it easy for customers to go from seeing your ad on Instagram to buying your product right from their mobile device to increase holiday sales.

The post 6 Quick Tips to Boost E-Commerce Holiday Sales appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With increased competition, constantly changing algorithms and search engine rules, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) now requires much higher expertise to handle it.

Having realized this fact, many marketing companies like web developers, PR firms, web hosting companies, etc. – all which used to carry out their clients SEO processes (along with their specialized services) by themselves, now agree that SEO is a process that is better left to the specialists in the industry, thus, relieving the burden off their shoulders. But I will recommend you to go for that company, who can provide you White label PPC. According to experts, a white label PPC company can give you better result can compare to another companies like RankJacker.

Find Your Niche

While it’s always best to work in a niche you’re passionate about, not every entrepreneur knows what they want to sell and to whom. You shouldn’t despair if you don’t have a clue what type of online business you want to start.

According to this article, the selection of a product or niche is one of the hardest things you’ll have to do. With the right questions and a bit of brainstorming, the right idea (or ideas) will come sooner than you think.

Here are some of the questions that should put you on the right path:

• Are you looking to attract only local audiences or do you want to go national/global?
• What’s the main thing people complain about when it comes to services or products in your area?
• Which commercial niche presents interest to you? (it’s always best to select a niche you know)
• Can you improve upon the niche you select?
• Is the niche popular on Google? (are people interested in searching products or services?)

These questions will help you get a rough idea of your skills and the possibility to be successful with sales as amazon.com is with the oscillating tool online sells.

Research, Research, Research

We can’t stress this enough! The research will provide the knowledge needed to understand the product/service and its audience.

You should start with online stores that sell a similar product or service, and reverse-engineer their marketing strategies. Also, learn from other successful online entrepreneurs who managed to replicate their initial success in other online businesses, click for source.

Next, learn about the market surrounding your chosen product/service and understand how the people who buy/use it think. Also, get in touch with the audience (using message boards, forums, blogs, and other tools) and ask for their opinion and feedback.

Furthermore, once the site is up and running, you will also have to invest in paid adds and online marketing strategies to tell the target audience about your new and exciting product. While it may sound a bit worrisome, the investments you’re making, in the beginning, are of paramount importance to the well-being of your online business in the future, so try to avoid skimping on quality. If you’re looking to try out solo ads anytime soon, make sure to try out Harshwardhan’s traffic at https://oursoloads.com/.

Producer or Reseller?

As a reseller, you work with a product (or products) that’s already been tested. Choose the right type of products, those that people are familiar with. Customers will sometimes buy based on the product’s reputation (which will help your site).

As a producer, you’ll also have to factor in production and storage costs. Not to mention, your marketing strategies have to be more extensive. However, if the product is well-received, the benefits are trifold towards the ones you get as a reseller.

So, before you start an online business, first understand the risks, costs, and rewards of each of these roles.

Define a Brand Persona

With the outline in mind, you can now move towards the next step, which is creating the e-commerce store.

The first step is to establish your brand’s persona (or personality). This is how customers will perceive the brand and it must be unique and strong, so it sticks with anyone who gets in contact. Employ a industry expert from companies like Eztuto who can assist in designing the perfect logo that will resonate with the color schemes and persona of your business. They take pain in understanding your business before getting into designing so have a look at their website.

For instance, Tesla is a brand well-known all over the world as being a bold rule-breaker and a pioneer in the field of engineering. Furthermore, they are often associated with Nikola Tesla, the famous kind-hearted inventor with a brilliant mind and a wonderful personality.

On the other side, Amazon is known to be the giant online retailer that’s easily available and accessible to anyone all over the world.

One interesting fact is that both businesses (Amazon and Tesla) were started from scratch by passionate people, who knew how to implement their vision of the future. And these are the kind of people from whom an online entrepreneur would have a lot to learn!

Bring Your Brand to Reality

Up until now, all the concepts we discussed border on the abstract. You have an idea and a brand persona, so it’s time to take steps towards more concrete elements such as a brand name and logo. Both should fit the brand persona and resonate with the target audience.

For example, Bella & Duke Dog Food is the brand of an online store selling dog food, but it’s also a commonly used dog name. As a result, it will resonate with dog owners and they will easily understand what the store is selling.

Store Setup

Armed with a name and logo, you’ve finally reached that step where your store can come to life using a domain name and suffix (.com, .net, .info, and so on). You’ll also need to invest in good hosting, select an e-commerce platform that fits your needs,  and hire a professional to build the e-commerce site of your dreams. If you’re looking for professional help to incorporate more internet marketing in your business, check https://www.alliancedmc.net/.

Authored by:

Stewart Dunlop is a full-time content marketer at Foundr and part-time reader, gamer & footballer in his free time. He enjoys sharing his thoughts on business, entrepreneurship, and marketing.

The post 6 Actionable Steps to Start Your Own Online Store appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

This emerging trend of e-commerce has been putting small businesses, who are already facing heightened competition as a consequence of global growth, at a significant disadvantage to larger businesses. While large businesses have the funds and resources to open warehouses all over the country, or to purchase the services of career warehouses (which require long-term volume and time commitments, as well as individual contracts for each warehouse) so as to get items to customers as efficiently as possible, small businesses cannot afford to do so. As a result, small businesses often must ship items from far-away locations and take days or weeks longer than their larger competitors to reach customers. According to Dotcom’s Distribution’s 2016 study, 87% of online shoppers say delivery time affects their decision to buy a product and 44% of online shoppers say quick delivery increases their trust in a brand. Bloomberg News claims that 60% of buyers expect 1-2 day delivery. Research by KPMG’s network of independent consulting firms, published in 2017, states that 43% of consumers cited “delivery options” as the most important factor in deciding where to purchase an item from online, following only “lowest price” at 57%. While large corporations are making moves to meet this demand for quick service, smaller companies have been left in the lurch with few options — that is, until UPS announced the launch of Ware2Go, a new service specifically designed to level the e-commerce playing field.

Ware2Go, which launched on Tuesday, August 28th, works by acting as the middleman between warehouses and small merchants. By providing large quantities of inventory from a number of small merchants, Ware2Go is able to get better deals for merchants, as well as bypass the barriers of minimum inventory and minimum time holding inventory in warehouses. Ware2Go vets warehouses so clients don’t have to, and in addition to storage also provides pick/pack fulfillment and shipping, as well as guaranteed UPS 2-day delivery services. Additionally, merchants have only one contract with Ware2Go instead of individual contracts with each warehouse they want to do business with. Ware2Go accomplishes this by creating a network of warehouses all over the country that have space they would like to fill.

To use Ware2Go, merchants and warehouses must both create accounts and answer questions about their needs and capabilities. Merchants provide details about their products, orders, space requirements, and specific delivery needs. Then, they can upload and manage their inventory and order across the whole network. The Ware2Go platform matches warehouses with merchants and simplifies communications to make inventories easy to manage for all parties involved.

“As our customers have much more complex supply chains,” UPS Chief Transformation Officer Scott Price explains in his August 28th Bloomberg interview, “they look to UPS to help them simplify that complexity, which is why we believe the end-to-end service single price approach will be part of the solution for those customers.”   

While Ware2Go is only the latest of many tools designed to minimize the barriers to entry for small businesses in the rising – and increasingly competitive – e-commerce industry, Ware2Go’s launch is so significant because it eliminates one of the most daunting obstacles, and likely will stimulate small business growth all over the nation. While the ultimate effects remain to be seen, Ware2Go intends to be a game-changer for both small businesses and the American economy as a whole.

The post Ware2Go: UPS Launches Flexible Warehouse Fulfillment Solutions appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Meet holiday shoppers where they’re at

2. Tune into what your customers really want this holiday season

3. Like gift shopping, it’s best to start earlier than you think

4. Look outside the gift box and expand your audience

5. Make your list and check it twice

6. Deck your feed with seasonal content

7. Wrap it up with mobile

8. Trim your Pins with pops of text

9. Make it merry, build up customer trust and confidence

10. Use consistency to make your experience sparkle

The post 10 Ways to Drive Holiday Sales on Pinterest appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Now, Instagram has developed a method to translate that brand awareness directly into sales. According to the best instagram agency Melbourne, Instagram is in the process of developing a tie-in shopping app that allows Instagram users to browse the goods of businesses they follow and directly purchase them. This app intends to make it easier for users to reach and purchase content they already enjoy, and in turn makes it easier for businesses to remind individuals who enjoy their content that they are more than just a page with great content, but a brand with products users can take home.

This app will be particularly helpful in promoting small businesses in the world of online shopping, which attracts 79% of shoppers in America. Online shopping for small businesses has been historically dominated by websites such as Amazon that bring products of all different types together on an accessible platform, but that does not promote individualized content based on brands that users have been shown to enjoy. The new Instagram app will be helpful to small businesses because it will make shopping from their brands accessible like Amazon while simultaneously only advertising to individuals who actually care about the brands they’re purchasing from.

While this app has exciting implications for small businesses, it also means that now, before the app’s launch, is the time to heavily focus on social media. Get those followers and engage those followers, because soon, followers will mean sales.

Authored by: Natalie Lifson, reporter, Smallbiztechnology.com

The post Shopping on Instagram (and Beyond) – What to Expect appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Mike Trabold director of compliance risk for Paychex, Inc.  says that It’s not all bad news for business owners. While small businesses with an e-commerce presence may now be looking at a significant incremental compliance obligation, smaller brick-and-mortar operations who have always been required to collect sales tax are hailing the decision as providing long-overdue competitive equity.

When tax season comes around, you roll your eyes and wonder how difficult it will be to figure it out this time. Tax preparation has come a long way and there are many options to help you out and make your taxes a successful experience every time. There are online preparation services through professional offices. There are software programs that guide you through the process. There are private offices that offer the services of CPAs or tax attorneys. And there are franchise tax preparers that churn your taxes for small business through their proven systems. Tax preparation service is available in all shapes and forms don’t go without the help you need.

Professional CCH Integrator have experience and credentials to handle just about any tax situation. If your taxes are simple you can expect to have quick turn around and a fair price. Although these companies do a great job, they may cost more and you may not need their high level of experience for your simple taxes.

It stands tо reason, ѕоmеwhеrе іn thе country іѕ thе Worst Tax preparer. Thе bad news іѕ уоu mау hаvе аlrеаdу booked уоur appointment wіth hіm. Preparing taxes іѕ a complex activity. Sо complex thаt mаnу оf uѕ simply throw іn thе towel, pack uр оur receipts, аnd head fоr thе nearest tax office. Whеn уоu arrive аt thе office, уоu fully expect оur tax preparer tо bе highly competent аnd completely vested іn getting уоu thе best deal іn town.

Tax preparers hаvе a wide range оf experience frоm nоnе tо grizzled veteran. Thеу аlѕо span thе continuum frоm ethical tо completely fraudulent. Thе mоrе complex уоur return, thе mоrе уоu need a veteran preparer. And іf уоur preparer tells уоu аbоut thіѕ great deduction thаt уоu саn tаkе аnd іt sounds suspicious tо уоu, listen tо уоur intuition. It’s thе difference bеtwееn paying a little bit nоw оr paying a whоlе lot later.But for people who already have tax problems or anticipate some problems, hiring this level of professional Tax preparation service could be the best thing you have ever done.

The Piloto Asia tax preparation service is another great option for getting your taxes ready. They have proven methods of handling your taxes that may be just what you need to complete yours. Franchises are usually trustworthy and have a history behind them no matter how long the franchise has been there. They often have CPAs as employees that can help with tax preparation that is more complicated or to deal with potential problems. These systems are mostly for straightforward taxes, however, and more professional help may be required if your taxes are complicated.

Some CPAs and tax attorneys work over the internet and many are a less expensive option to getting the best professional help there is. If you are not in the area where the office is, you can conduct all your business over the internet or the phone. This is a very convenient option for those who can’t get out or live in rural areas. The tax preparation service is available to everyone that can get online. In addition to these options there is also software for tax preparation. These programs can guide you through a simple tax return with minimal mistakes and quick turnaround time.

eCommerce expert, John Lawson had this to say about the ruling:

The way this case was positioned, it was hard for the Supreme Court to rule anything else. SOUTH DAKOTA v. WAYFAIR, INC., is not representative of all the small and medium businesses that this ruling will effect. The home goods e-retailer generated 4.72 billion U.S. dollars in revenues in 2017, up from 3.38 billion U.S. dollars in the preceding year.  That is one huge jump from the mom and pop e-tailer making $100,000 in annual sales.

The real issue is that for a multi-billion company to ramp up the collection of taxes and fillings vs. smaller entities leave a big disadvantage and liability to the smaller retailer. There are now 9,998 different sales tax jurisdictions in the United States…that is a heavy burden and it needs to be rectified for smaller entities. 

Mike Trabold feels that there are also some upsides for online retailers. He says:

• You have some time. It takes time for states to react to such rulings and make the necessary changes to enable the collection of a new tax. While some states have been readying their processes in anticipation of the ruling, most will have work to do before enacting any major changes. In the meantime, it’s wise to get in front of this by locating the tools you need going forward.
• Some states already have, or will likely enact, thresholds above which the tax will be triggered. Thus, if your activity in a particular locale is below an ordained dollar or transaction level, you may be exempt.
• The Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement. Twenty-four states currently participate in this agreement, which in addition to standardizing some of the supporting tax calculation and submission protocols also provides for free sales tax compliance software for retailers under certain circumstances.

Though the Supreme Court’s decision has been made, there are areas that small online retailers will still need to keep an eye on:

• Some states may be tempted to look to collect these taxes not only going forward, but retroactively.
• Federal standardization. Policy makers grasp how challenging it will be to stay on top of the multitude of state and local sales tax rules. As such, the Supreme Court ruling may prompt Congress to finally enact a standardized federal policy – though this may be politically unlikely for now.
• Potential impact on general business taxes. Some states don’t levy income taxes on businesses without a brick-and-mortar location within their borders. This decision may spur these states to reconsider that stance given the opportunity for incremental revenue.

Though some effects of this ruling are unknown at this time, business owners can take steps to prepare. First, you should assess impact, evaluating where your main out-of-state sales come from. This will give you a sense of where you may want to focus your compliance attention. Next, find tools and resources to help ease the transition. Look for an established software solutions provider that provides a comprehensive, easy to use, reasonably priced product and which has the resources needed to stay abreast of the wide, complex, fluid array of state and local sales tax requirements. Your CPA will also be able to provide guidance aligned with your specific situation.

The post How Will The Supreme Court Online Tax Ruling Affect Your Business? Two Experts Way In. appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

GoDaddy also announced 3 upgrades to its shopping cart features. These upgrades include:

• Smart mobile checkout: redesigned checkout flow to minimize all friction points for customers to complete purchases. Dramatic reduction in typing and tapping to checkout.
• Abandoned shopping cart recovery: automatically send emails to shoppers with an easy link to return where they left off in the purchase flow.
• Commerce ready email marketing: upgraded email marketing integration enables rich mobile experiences for your prospects or customers.

What does this mean for your business? If you’re not enabling multiple payment options for your mobile (and other) shoppers you’ll lose sales.

The shopping cart is the “last” click for many shoppers. Make sure your shopping cart is optimized for mobile shoppers to enable them to shop fast and remind them if they don’t finish shopping.

This announcement also shows that email is still a VERY important asset in e-commerce, it is a very important factor when trying to define ecommerce. Social media is useful but email is still quite powerful. If you’re a beginner to dropshipping, you may want to check out the ecombusinesshub.com before you put all your savings into a new dropshipping business.

Prepping Products
Why is prepping important?

Product prep is important because it helps reduce time in post-production or photo editing. You can reduce the appearance of fingerprints, creases, folds, or other imperfections that otherwise would have to be corrected during editing.

Sometimes product imperfections can be so noticeable that they can’t be reduced even after editing. Thus, it’s important to take this step as seriously as the other steps. Keep in mind that the camera picks up things that are unnoticeable to the naked eye.

The post GoDaddy Enhances Mobile Shopping With ApplePay and Shopping Cart Intelligence appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Tips for Improving Your Likability

In this intriguing Smart Hustle interview, Ramon Ray spoke with Dave Kerpen who shared the many ways that becoming more likeable can improve your business – building trust with mentors and business colleagues, developing a company culture that empowers your employees, and listening to your customers so you know what they value and how to help them.

Click to read Dave Kerpen’s 5 Simple Rules for Being More Likable and Successful in Business

Must-Have E-commerce Tools

There are around 110,000 e-commerce stores online. How can you stand out in the crowd and grow a profitable small business? By using the right tools! This article covers six of the most important e-commerce tools that will help your online store run smoothly.

Click to read 6 Essential Tools for Every E-commerce Business

The Importance of Non-Revenue Assets

When asked what drives the value of your business, most small business owners say it is revenue, but in fact, much of the value of your business is locked up in non-revenue assets – whether it is equipment, processes, intellectual property, customers, or something else. These assets are particularly important when selling your business to a strategic buyer, so it is essential that you understand the non-revenue assets that will drive up value. This article shares three tips for doing so.

Click to read The Hidden Value of Your Business in Non-Revenue Assets

Boost Your Startup Valuation

Valuation is essential for startups because it helps build buzz and draw in potential investors and lenders. However, it is now easier than ever to start a business, so competition is fierce. This article teaches you how to guard the value of your startup with three important tips.

Click to read How to Make Waves with a Startup Valuation

At Smart Hustle, we strive to provide tips and insights on all aspects of running a business – advice specifically for small business owners.

The post Smart Hustle Recap: Increase Your Likability, E-commerce Tools, and More! appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The only way to have a successful business is if customers are buying the product or service you’re making.

Of course leveraging the power of social media, having a great web site, selling online and growing your digital brand are so important.

As you head out for the weekend here’s a round up of four quick reads to help you improve these areas of your business.

3 Tips for Building A Solid Online Presence

Social Media and Websites: How To Get it Right

How To Build the Right Web Site For Your Business

Tips To Help Your Business Sell More Online

The post Digital Marketing Weekend Round Up – Content, Websites, Digital Brand and Ecommerce appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

It’s understandable that you might want to take care of applying for worker’s compensation on your own but hiring a workers’ compensation lawyer in Santa Ana will ensure that you dont make these mistakes.

Identifying the right lawyers to handle your claim is important, as you want local attorneys who are knowledgeable about all aspects of the law, and who can work with your employer to file a proper claim. Interviewing attorneys can be laborious and time-consuming so it is important to have a list of questions ready for any potential lawyers before making contact. There are lots of lawyers in your area, not all of them specializing in workers compensation. Be sure the attorneys you contact have plenty of experience with workers compensation cases. You may wish to ask for education and experience references to see if the attorneys have worked in your area previously, or if they received training in another state or city. Ask how your potential lawyers handle difficult cases and what kinds of fees are charged. Look for attorneys who have experience specializing in workers compensation and are familiar with the government regulations.

Most workers’ compensation attorneys advise employees to inform their employers every time they get injured in the workplace, however minor the injury may be. Such injuries may result in serious complications later on, so if they do not file them early on, it may be more difficult for the employees to seek compensation.

Top Small Business Organizations

Help is available, small business owner! Whether you are looking to boost your knowledge with tutorials, videos, and lessons, improve your networking by connecting with other small business owners, or secure funding in the way of grants. In this article, we cover 23 of the top small business organizations that offer free and paid resources to help grow your small business.

The Most Common E-commerce Mistakes

You’ve started an e-commerce store and are delighted at the possibility of reaching a wider market and increasing your profit potential. However, if you’re not careful, you can make crucial mistakes that eat into your profit margin and hurt your business. In this article, we look at three of the top mistakes that small business owners make when running an e-commerce store, and we share an infographic that has tons of advice on how to fix a leaky e-commerce faucet.

Click to read 3 Mistakes that Cost Your Ecommerce Store (And How to Fix them)

Do You Know What the FICO Liquid Score Is?

Understanding your credit score is important for securing the funding you need both in your business and personal life. However, financial terms are often confusing, so it can be difficult to make sense of it all. Put yourself on a better financial path by reading this article that details the difference between your personal and business credit scores and how they combine to create your FICO Liquid Credit Score, which many lenders are using today to make their funding decisions.

Tax Tips for Small Business Owners

Taxes are an unfortunate reality that every small business owner must deal with. Should you set money aside for your tax payments, and how can you prepare for taxes without hurting your cash flow? This article covers three scenarios of when taxes and cash flow collide. You’ll learn how to plan for taxes in a way that will keep your business healthy and prepare you for tax day. If you still find your business struggling with taxes then consider getting help from tax relief services or you could get yourself prepared and take some tax planning courses.

It can be easy to get lost in the passion you hold for your business ideas – to focus on your products or fun elements like marketing and social media. However, a smart small business owner should always have a good eye on the finances, and these articles are guaranteed to help.

The post Smart Hustle Recap: Top Small Business Organizations, Taxes, Credit, and E-commerce Mistakes appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

This article was written in partnership with GoDaddy, a company that offers domain name registration as well as hosting and ecommerce services to help you develop your online presence.

The phrase rings out on websites all over the Internet – if you’re a business, “you HAVE to be online!” Although most small business owners will recognize the importance of an online presence, many have held back for fear that setting up and running a website is a complex process that they can’t possibly understand or manage. It’s not true! As small business owner Fred Magnanimi said in a recent Smart Hustle interview, technology is a lot more accessible than many people assume. He set up his website and e-commerce store all by himself and with the tools available today (like GoDaddy hosting and e-commerce services), so can you.

I recently had the chance to review GoDaddy hosting and e-commerce options. My conclusion? These are the sort of tools that empower small business owners to take control of their online presence and reach a larger market. They are affordable, simple to use, and include everything a small business owner needs for success.

Want to know what I think about GoDaddy hosting & e-commerce services? Check out my personal review by clicking play on the video below, plus read on to learn more.

The Importance of Hosting and E-commerce

Before I cover the GoDaddy services and features, let’s talk about why you would need them in the first place.

Hosting (or web hosting) refers to a service where a company (in this case GoDaddy) provides access to, and storage space for, a website. It’s a lot like renting your space. Just like you pay to rent your physical location, you pay a web hosting service to rent your online location. The host gives you a certain amount of storage space (for pages, website content, files, pictures, etc.) and they store your information on a server. When someone wants to view your website, they type in your address, their computer connects to the host’s server, and your website is displayed in their browser.

There are some sites that offer free hosting, but that comes with downsides that aren’t ideal for business. For a few bucks a month (as low as $3.99 with GoDaddy hosting) self-hosting gives you perks:

• Choose your own domain name (you want to be timsbakery.com not timsbakery.wordpress.com!)
• Fully customize the design of your website
• Use plugins – tools that extend and improve the functionality of your website
• Add Google Analytics to learn about your website visitors

It’s clear that any person who is serious about their business should choose a self-hosted site over a free site. And why do you need a website? Because it’s where your customers are and where people will go to find you! Even if you are a local business, your customers (and prospective customers) will want to go online to find your location, phone number, business hours, contact information, menu, and so on.

If you have a product you could potentially sell online, having a website gets even more important. That’s where e-commerce comes in. E-commerce refers to the selling and purchasing of goods online. It takes your website to the next level – not only do you have a site that gives information about your business and your physical location, but you also have the ability to sell your products. This expands your reach and opens you up to millions of potential customers. E-commerce is a natural progression for any local product-based business that wants to expand.

GoDaddy Hosting

GoDaddy offers WordPress hosting services for small businesses who know it’s time they set up a website. WordPress is the most popular website building tool because it’s completely customizable and user-friendly. If you don’t feel comfortable setting up your own site, there are also plenty of WordPress experts out there who can help you get set up. The GoDaddy plans allow you to choose the hosting that is right for your business:

• Basic Plan – As low as $3.99/month and $7.99/month when you renew, you’ll get hosting for one WordPress site with a capacity for 25,000 monthly visitors and 10GB SSD storage.
• Deluxe Plan – As low as $4.49/month and $9.99/month when you renew, you’ll get hosting for one WordPress website with a capacity for 100K monthly visitors and 15GB SSD storage, plus extra perks like an SEO plugin.
• Ultimate Plan – For as low as $7.99/month and $14.99/month when you renew, you’ll get hosting for two WordPress sites with a capacity of 400K monthly visitors and 30GB SSD storage, plus extra perks like malware scan and removal.
• Developer Plan – For as low as $13.99/month and $24.99/month when you renew, you’ll get hosting for five WordPress sites with a capacity of 800K monthly visitors and 50GB SSD storage, plus extra perks like a free one-year SSL certificate.

If you purchase an annual plan, you’ll also get a free domain (your chosen URL). All plans include free daily backups and one-click restore so you won’t lose your data, plus free 24/7 support for questions and issues.

GoDaddy E-commerce

If you want to sell products online, you can choose GoDaddy’s e-commerce service which includes your website, hosting, and shopping cart. Currently, you can try it for free for the first month then get a discount of $19.99/month for the first year (after that, the normal price is $29.99/month). With GoDaddy e-commerce you can:

• Easily set up your store, choosing from many customizable themes that allow you to drag and drop product images and add descriptions.
• Take payments online, with the ability to accept all major credit cards and PayPal. You are only charged a fee when you make a sale, which is 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction.
• Sales are automatically transferred to your bank account.
• Enjoy 24/7 support for advice and answers to all your questions.

My Experience with GoDaddy Hosting & E-commerce

There are several things to look for when considering an e-commerce solution for your business. Of course, the specific needs of your business and your goals are most important. But in general, I look for simplicity and the ability to easily add products online. Other things, such as security and integration with other apps, are important as well.

I explored GoDaddy’s e-commerce solution by making a test store of my own.

In my experience, GoDaddy’s e-commerce was fast and easy to use, allowing just about any business to get up and running quickly to sell online. You can sell through QuickBooks or Stripe, for starters.

GoDaddy’s hosting solution is pretty seamless as well. When I tried out GoDaddy hosting, I wanted to see how easy it was to migrate SmallBizTechnology.com over to GoDaddy. After entering a few bits of information, GoDaddy’s migration tool took over the rest and began to automatically migrate my managed WordPress site to the GoDaddy platform. From my experience, it will be easy for anyone who currently has a website to switch from their current host to GoDaddy hosting. Doing so will allow you to lock in the low prices and features I mentioned above.

Also, if you don’t have a website yet, I’m sure you’re now amazed at how easy and affordable it is to set up your online site and store. GoDaddy hosting and e-commerce services are perfect for small business owners who are ready to embrace technology and all the perks that come with it – more leads, customers, sales, and profits. The online world is your oyster, small business owner!  It’s time to set up your website or e-commerce store today.

GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar, with over 14 million users worldwide. Their services also include website creation, hosting, design, ecommerce for small business, security, marketing services, bookkeeping, and productivity tools. GoDaddy has 62 million domains currently under management and is committed to empowering small business owners to successfully start, grow and run their businesses.

The post GoDaddy Hosting & Ecommerce Helps SmallBiz Owners Set Up an Online Presence appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

In today’s Internet-driven marketplace, before a business can open its doors, an online presence is a must. Just as a storefront with an “open” sign once let communities know a business was ready for customers, a website lets today’s customers know that a business is open. Whether a business is online, local, or a combination of both, the vast majority of customers will search for information online before making a decision.

The advantages of being online are immeasurable. Not only can an online presence help a business get off the ground, but it also helps a company thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Today’s customers would rather Google a company than pick up the phone to call, even for small details like operating hours or directions. When a business doesn’t have that information online, it risks losing customers to competitors.

But in order to be found online, a company must first be online. There are three major options to get started on building a strong online presence for your brand. Eventually, you should consider a combination of all three, but to get started, focus on one and add the others later.

1. Social Networks and Ecommerce

More than a billion people interact with social networks, as well as sites like Amazon, Etsy, and Yelp. The good news for brands is that it’s fairly simple to set up a page on each of these sites, at which point you’ll have access to a built-in base of existing customers. However, even if you choose to set up a comprehensive presence on one preferred social media or e-commerce site, you should still invest in a domain name that points to that site. External websites can change, but your URL will always be a site where customers can find you.

2. Company-Branded Email

If you’re using an email through a third-party site like Gmail or Yahoo, you may be scaring customers away. A full 90 percent of people surveyed say they feel more comfortable working with a small business that has a branded email. When your email address reads yourname@yourbusiness.com, you add a layer of trust you’ll find you need as a new business. Securing a domain name is fairly easy and inexpensive and you can still use your favorite email client to get your email.

3. Company Website

Like a domain email address, you need a website URL to serve as your online business card. As important as social media and e-commerce are to your online presence, your own domain name gives you the most in terms of control and flexibility. Once you have a domain name you can point it to your social media page or e-commerce store or set up a basic WordPress site to serve as your web page. If you want something more comprehensive, a service like Wix or Weebly can help.

Before you can decide on your business’s online branding, you must first set up the basics. Your domain name is the single most important choice you’ll make as you build an online presence. For about the price of one lunch, you’ll be able to brand your business while also creating an online home that makes it easy for customers to find you. There are multiple extensions available, but for best results choose either a .com or .net address and try to find a name that will make it easy for customers to find you. As a small business, the right domain name can make a big difference in being seen by your customers as legitimate and professional.

This article was written in partnership with Verisign, the global leader in domain names and internet security. All opinions and experiences expressed are my own.

The post 3 Tips for Building a Solid Online Presence appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

• There has never been a better time for e-commerce.
• It has never been easier to set up an online storefront.

But as simple as it is to set up an e-commerce presence, it’s important to know how to build and market your store before you get started. With the right tools in place, you can build a winning website and draw customers in. Once you’ve set up your e-commerce shop, you’ll need to know how to leverage it to get the best results.

How to Leverage an Ecommerce Platform

As beneficial as an online store can be to your business’s success, it isn’t the only option. If you aren’t quite ready to set up your own online store, consider leveraging one of the many existing platforms for reaching customers online. Marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, and eBay will let you set up a store and reach their already robust customer bases. Angi (formerly Angie’s List) and Thumbtack will help you connect with local customers who are looking for services like yours. The best thing about these resources is that you’ll be able to enjoy quick setup without a huge financial commitment.

If you decide to use a site like Etsy or Amazon as your sole selling platform, you should buy the domain name that best relates to your business and point that domain to your online store. This will give you a single address on the web, whether that address is connected to your Amazon seller account, your Etsy shop, or your own dedicated website. This will give you one online address, as well as the benefit of an easily-remembered address that promotes your own brand up front. It will also give you a company-branded email address.

How to Build Your Own Online Store

Once you’re ready to build your dedicated online store, getting started is easy. Useful website builders like Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix let you build an online store using drag-and-drop tools. These sites offer features like shopping carts, site hosting, and search engine optimization, making sure your online store is easy to use, has a professional look, and ranks well when customers are searching for certain products or services.

While these services generally aren’t free, businesses usually find they’re budget friendly. Generally do-it-yourself site builders cost less than $75 a year and may even be free if shop owners are willing to allow third-party ads on their sites. Best of all, these tools come with customer support to provide technical help when needed.

3 Tips to Guide You

1. Identify your website needs – Your online store can be simple and streamlined or a sophisticated multimedia marketing and sales hub. Determine your requirements before you begin building. If you decide you want a lot of bells and whistles on your site, you may want to consider a professional web developer to help.
   2. Pick a domain name – Your domain name will be your virtual address, as well as your online identity, on the web. Even if some solutions offer to host your site on their domains, you should put your website on your owndomain name to have a consistent, branded web address for your customers to remember. It will also give you an attractive, professional web address to use in your marketing.
   3. Select the right website builder – You can find an array of solutions by doing an Internet search for ‘e-commerce website builder.’ Take time to research and compare two to three options. Make sure they have an e-commerce option and that they will not only meet your needs for today but in the future as well.

With so many great resources, entrepreneurs can easily set up an online store and begin promoting it immediately. Before choosing your site’s platform, make sure you carefully research all of the available options and choose the one that’s best for your own business.

This article was written in partnership with Verisign; however, all opinions and experiences expressed are my own.

The post Tips to Help Your Business Build a Winning Ecommerce Store appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

For sure companies have tried to use computer programming as an interface in a variety of human interactions.

This is quite a bit more intelligent than what you’d experience in an interactive phone system at some big company. This is about having a conversation with a computer – about buying your next pair of shoes, shopping for an airline ticket or something else.

Facebook’s Messenger service is going to get very intelligent, as reported by the NY Times:

The experience is akin to chatting with a friend, “the one whose taste you always trust while you’re shopping,” said Alan Tisch, chief executive of Spring.

There’s just one thing: The entity on the other end talking to you and helping you choose the shoes is not human. It is a chatbot, a relatively simple piece of software that uses artificial intelligence to carry on a conversation.

While chatbots have been around for some time — think of SmarterChild, the friendly buddy that was popular on AOL Instant Messenger more than a decade ago — companies are now increasingly betting that a grand bot resurgence is coming, one that will change the way people interact with their most beloved brands.

The post Bots or Humans: Ready To Chat With A Computer When You Chat? Facebook Messenger Evolution. appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.