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5 Tips to Boost Your eCommerce Revenues

Posted by Unknown May 13, 2014 7 comments

eCommerce industry is expanding by leaps and bounds. There’s no two ways about it. More shoppers are turning to online sources for information before making a decision of buy offline. According to a recent MIT study, 80% of store shoppers checked prices online and one-third accessed the price information through their mobile devices while they were browsing in the physical stores.

Many shoppers visit brick-and-mortar store when they want to see their online choices in the flesh before buying it.

You can use the following tips to leverage this evolving trend and boost the sales.

Merge online and offline shopping: Looking at the evolving trend of using online data while shopping in physical stores, the merging of online and offline shopping experience becomes a necessity. The omni-channel shopping structure will let the eCommerce merchants have an edge over their competitors. Let your customers order clothes online and pick it up in the store, or vice versa when something isn’t available in the store can be bought online and shipped to the customers’ home.

Offer the right product to the right customer: How will you feel if you visit your most frequented store and get treated like a new customer? Baffled, right? So don’t make your customers feel the same way. Instead, have a look at the customer’s past shopping history and direct them toward the page/section that interests them the most. This will be specifically helpful for those shoppers who want to browse less and find more.

Leverage data: If you wish to stop your customers from going to the competitors, you can do so by using location-based technology that will tell you where your shopper is. Once you get this information, you can send attractive offers to them before they finalize the purchase at your competitor’s store.

Use mobile: According to the Custora High-Growth eCommerce Index, 40% of online shopping during Black Friday 2013 was done through mobile devices. So make your designs optimal that can be rendered on any device, including tablet and smartphones. Create apps that encourage sharing of product information.

Customization: Personalization is the key to happy customers, especially for high-end customers or big-ticket sales. So guide your customers to the exact location of their interest when they visit your online/offline store. Also, you can let your consumers modify the product you are offering according to their wish – provided you have the capabilities to execute the modifications asked for. For example, if you are selling Tees, let the customer order the color of their choice or let them add designs of their choice.

Customization is the key to boost eCommerce sales. Thus, Let's try e-Smart eCommerce Suite from Ydeveloper, a best model to increase revenue from your eCommerce website.

Bitcoin: All That You Need To Know

Posted by Unknown April 11, 2014 0 comments

After hearing Bitcoin's name time and again, if you are wondering what on the earth is Bitcoin, continue to read.

Started in 2009 right after financial crisis, Bitcoin is best known as digital currency. It's a peer-to-peer payment system, which doesn't require middle men or banks to facilitate the transaction. This minimizes transaction costs for the parties involved. When you pay or get paid in Bitcoin, the transaction will be recorded on the ledger and then confirmed by the computers after its complex verification process. Meaning, there are no parties tracking your Bitcoin transactions.

To use Bitcoin, you need to install a Bitcoin wallet app on your phone or computer, and then buy Bitcoin currencies from a Bitcoin exchange. Once you have Bitcoin currency in your wallet, you are set to initiate Bitcoin transactions.

As Bitcoin was established in the wake of financial crisis, many believe that it was sort of a critique of the modern financial system. The jury, however, is still out whether Bitcoin is safe. Let's have a look at pros and cons of Bitcoin.

Pros:

Low transaction costs: As no middlemen or banks are involved in the transaction, merchants - specifically small businesses - can lower their bank transaction costs.
Privacy: The information about the transactions are only known by the parties involved. So none of the authorities, including IRS or federal agencies, have access to the transaction details.
No bank accounts needed: As Bitcoin do not need bank accounts, it can be used by people in developing countries who might have cell phones but no bank account.

Cons:

Security: Recent cyber-attacks on Bitcoin has highlighted the fact about how vulnerable Bitcoin is to hackers. Also, once you lose your money to a hacker, there's no way of getting them back as it can't be traced easily.
Insurance: As Bitcoin is not regulated by FDIC, there's no FDIC insurance to cover your losses in case you lose money.
Unregulated: Bitcoin is relatively unregulated, making it a hothouse of illegal activities, including tax evasion and money laundering.
Volatility: Bitcoin price is highly volatile. Couple of years back, it was trading at about $5, a year ago at $100, few months ago more than $1,000 and now $448. So you never know what will be the value of your bitcoins after a month from today.

Future of Bitcoin

Until the recent cyber-attacks, the future of Bitcoin was quite bright. However, that's not the case anymore. Apart from the fear of hackers, various regulatory authorities are mulling if they can regularize the exchange. The Treasury is worried about the illegal activities that can be done through Bitcoin; while IRS considers Bitcoin as property and not currency. Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen has been very vocal about Fed's jurisdiction, stating that it doesn't have any authority to regulate it.

Bitcoin Acceptance by eCommerce Merchants:

Usually when customers are purchasing products from anywhere on the planet, they are worried about the acceptance of currency and then the prevailing exchange rate. Here are the Pros and Cons, if you planning Bitcoins for your eCommerce website or business. There are many open source Bitpay Plugins are available that can be integrated with your existing custom eCommerce platform (e.g. e-Smart eCommerce Suite) to allow Bitcoin for payments.

Pros:

eCommerce business can increase their customer base with this universally accepted payment solution.

Cons:

You online store should not be limited by Bitcoin. Instead of accepting the Bitcoin, consumers are also looking for more than this electronic currency.

Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid While Developing Yahoo! Store

Posted by Unknown March 13, 2014 0 comments

Yahoo Merchant Solution Development Tips

Yahoo! Store is the best marketing vehicle to connect with the online audience. In fact, you can be in touch with your customers 24x7. Nonetheless, there are mistakes to be avoided while building a feature-rich Yahoo online store; mistakes that can really put your site’s existence in danger.

Here Ydeveloper presents top 10 mistakes, which you should definitely avoid, if you are really keen on making your mark in the area of Yahoo Store design and development.

Yahoo Merchant Solution is one of the best channel of selling attracts traffic in greater number as compare to others. However, there are many things to take into account while setting up an ecommerce store to enhance your sales potential. To run a successful eCommerce site it’s important to avoid these mistakes.

Keep your Yahoo! eCommerce headaches at bay with Ydeveloper:

1] Improper Domain Name

Domain names should indicate what your business stands for. It should be easy to spell and reflects the business image as well. It should not be something that misleads clients and businesses.

2] Lack of Keywords

To run your ecommerce business successfully, it should have significant web presence. The best way to achieve this is through use of keywords. A keyword guides a visitor/customer from the search engine to your site. Associate yourself with a good web design company to ensure that your webpage has all the required keywords to attract your target audience.

3] Not Meeting the Demands of Consumers

Internet is the best place to kick-start a business at low-cost. However, the business will be able to survive and make profits only if the products sold on such sites meet the demand of the consumers.

4] Shying off from Seeking Assistance

The ecommerce owner may be a jack of trades, but lack of specialization may prove detrimental So business owners should seek assistance in areas where they lack the required expertise. It can be in the areas of marketing, accounting, etc.

5] Lack of Dedication

Just like brick-and-mortar store, an online business requires dedication and effort. The owners may have to work 24X7 and even on weekends. They have to come up with innovative marketing strategies, right products, etc. So lack of dedication won’t work.

6] Overlooking Website’s Layout

You should give enough time and consideration while building a layout. An ideal layout should be simple and clean, giving more emphasis to products. It should grab visitor’s attention. Avoid flashy designs because it draws attention away from the products.

7] Lack of Services and Products

Many ecommerce businesses are happy selling limited products, oblivious to the fact that they are losing customers. Visitors may purchase at the first visit, but may not come back for more. Adding more products is the best way out to attract more traffic.

8] Lack of Funding

Traditional businesses may require massive funding, but not ecommerce business. That’s not to say that ecommerce businesses require no funding. It requires start-up money, at least for purchasing domain name and marketing etc. The type of money required will depend on the type of business started.

9] Lack of Business Plan

Just like traditional businesses, online businesses should follow a proper business plan.

The plan should talk about the vision and mission of the business as well as five and ten year goals. Even advertising and marketing ideas should form part of this plan. It should also cover potential risk factors the businesses may face and how to deal with them.

10] Not bringing a Professional Web Agency on board

A website needs a professional look. A poorly designed website by amateur designers can affect your business prospects. Since professional website agencies have trained web designers who are skilled at creating attractive and highly-functional websites, which helps create a good impression on the minds of the consumers.

No doubt, an ecommerce business gives a boost to your traditional business. However, avoiding the aforesaid mistakes will ensure that the business venture is on the road to success.

10 Secret Tips for eCommerce Website Growth to Keep Eye On

Posted by Unknown February 24, 2014 6 comments

I want to draw your attention towards creating a best eCommerce website. I will not go deep into the registration process of domain, hosting and so on. But, I can certainly point out few best tips for building a custom eCommerce website from scratch. Moreover, these tips help you in finding the best custom eCommerce platform as well.

Here are the tips, hope you are excited to see all these eCommerce tips...

1. Set your business plan:

As with any business, you need to know what to sell and whom to sell. This will define how to present your products.

On the internet there is another great advantage in understanding the right questions of your target audience will help produce unique and quality content. This is important because it can make you stand search engines by increasing their visits and enabling more sales.

2. Describe your products as well:

If you think you can just copy the description that comes along in the product manufacturer's website or institutional rethink box.

If your content is equal to all, how do you expect to stand out in the search engines? Search engines (Google and Bing) do not like duplicate content and may even penalize your site, in addition, if someone is looking for information of a particular product on the web is because you have an interest in that particular product.

Try features related to Product/Item page enhancement in your site as follow:

Product Listing with pagination
Customized ToolTips at Product Level
Product Comparison
Product Snap shop
Product Tags like New, Hot Item etc.
Cross Sell items like Accessories
Related Products and more at Ydeveloper.com

3. Image is everything:

How many times a well-fitted window not attracted you to the store?

On the internet is even worse! The design of your store and product image greatly influence the purchase, remember that the customer will not have the touch, will not feel the smell and in most cases they could not use the product. It has nice pictures in all possible angles and colors, zoom to see more closely, product videos, so put everything if possible!

Try features related to Image optimization in your site as follow:

4. Earn social reputation:

Most simply believe that open a twitter account and create a Facebook page will solve everything, but in the end only gets "flooded timeline" of their customers and they have no idea how to grow the community. If you think about using social networks to increase exposure of your business, then use the truth to understand the customers, know what they want and what they expect as well as feedback on how you can improve the lives of these people.

Take examples of Oreo and Coca Cola, see how they are using such networks to engage with their customers, potential visitors etc.

5. More content = more channels = more sales:

Okay it's not that simple, though much of it is true, more content allows you to index more pages, search engines love large sites, in addition, to diversify content on social networks can also bring visitors. Just remember that not only have worth much, it has to have quality.

6. Google Analytics is your best friend:

Google Analytics Setup for eCommerce Site

Imagine receiving reports where it came from every user, knowing that he typed keyword in search engine, which he accessed pages to complete the purchase? A good (and well customized) web analytic tool does this and more.

There are several other web analytic tools on the market, but Google Analytics is free and best in the beginning, learn how to use it or let's hire a professional.

Try features related to Search engine optimization in your site as follow:

Basic Google Analytics Setup

7. Free Shipping:

Many people give up at the last minute because it realizes that the shipping fee is too high to purchase and, remember this is a deciding factor in the purchase.

Try features related to Shipping integration in your site as follow:

8. Be straight like a punch in the mouth:

Believe me, your customer will probably find many interruption when they come into your store, after all you are responsible to clear all such interruptions and offer them a best product in best price with excellent after sale service.

A banner in the middle of the buying process can make it run away from your site and ends up falling on the competitor's site. Think about it when you have a "great idea" to put ads within your site without interruptions.

9. Identify a point of your strength:

In the physical world, a store with a good (well located) commercial point can be the difference between an average business and other exceptional on the internet where everything is a few clicks away, the smallest difference can do damage.

What does your store has that makes it worthwhile?

What is its unique quality that makes you stand out from the crowd? Think about it.

10. Test everything you can:

You can create variations of product pages and simply compare which have a higher conversion rate, is most effective when generating a sale.

One way to do this is through A / B testing, but there are others and I will not dig into more. The important thing here is that, through this type of testing, you can simply compare what works best for your business gradually.

Remember that small details make a big difference!

Finally, and not least, keep reading our blog and share your thoughts.

The Ultimate Ways to Win Trust of your Online Shop Customers

Posted by Unknown January 24, 2014 2 comments

One of the key factors to successfully sell on the Internet, is trust. To surge this significant facet is an important step towards growing sales. But how do I cope to win as an online shop, the self-confidence of potential customers, and thus produce more sales?

Above all, start-up eCommerce website face the difficulty to win the confidence of prospective buyers. In a new online store, no experience of pleasing customers are available that could make a purchasing decision easier.

Customers trust customers:

Look at the store. If it is designed with the features that allows customers to add their reviews about your store, product and services – this will create a trust. Many customers usually check the reviews and feedback provided by other customers. Along with these signals, customers also looking for trust seals if integrated on the site. This is a significant step by site owner to add such certification, security and other similar seals.

Further, customer also look at the likes, comments on the major social networks. Facebook comes top on the list. Twitter and Google+ are next to be followed by them. The social media reputation of your site and brands is extremely important here.

Above all, the mix of such reviews are absolutely more important to create trust.

Inform instead of hide:

The most important element to keep the customer at all on his side, is the design of the product detail page. This information should be as rich as possible and not force the user to acquire desired or needed information on a separate page. The visual appearance is important only secondary. Of course, the shop should make a clean, modern and contemporary impression. But only if product, price and information are correct, the first one is managed.

Try to use the product descriptions in a way that it emotionally attach with the users and feel free to buy. A significant part of the purchasing decision is caused by the activation of feelings. Create pictures in the mind and encourage the head to the cinema.

To summarize again:

Create a value with respect.
Logo is closely affect the customers feeling.
Provide a good product presentation using different high-quality pictures as possible and make an informative and meaningful product detail page.
Specify your pricing policy.
Display retail price and sale price clearly that demonstrates amount of pricing benefits one can avail from the product.
Put Trust elements in the form of certificates or seals.
Ask for rating and add comment feature ready to use.

If you follow these few points you have created a value for your customers and trust will be automatically built.

How to boost Sales with eCommerce Integration during Christmas

Posted by Unknown December 11, 2013 1 comment

New eCommerce Feature Integration in Christmas

Are you running an eCommerce site, but have been struggling for some time to streamline different processes? Then look no further, Ydeveloper provides different types of eCommerce integration services specially to boost sales in your store during Christmas that are sure to simplify and organize your eCommerce site.

It is said that the efficiency of an eCommerce shop depends on the effectiveness of eCommerce features integration. If the eCommerce integration has been thoughtfully planned and executed, the online businesses would run like well-oiled machines. Ydeveloper will help you achieve just that.

Types of eCommerce integration presented by Ydeveloper include:

Backend Integrations
Shipping Service Rate Integration
Online Payment Service Integration
Web Site Traffic Analysis Tools Integration
Integration with Other Sales Channels

With Ydevelopers’ eCommerce Integration services, small, medium and large sized companies can look forward to saving their time, money and resources.

It is inexpensive and has different types of integration for different business requirements. Moreover, you can put the processes on an auto-pilot mode. So it will be a big blessing for small and medium sized businesses.

Likewise, companies with sizably larger traffic can manage their shipping and payment orders easily. The service is ideal for different organizations such as health care providers, R&D firms, web design companies etc.

There are many companies offering a host of eCommerce integration services during holiday seasons at reasonable prices. However, choose an eCommerce provider that provides solutions as per your requirements and also supports you even after the integration process is over and done with.

Ydeveloper has been a leading player in eCommerce development. The company offers a host of services including web development, design services, SEO marketing, mobile application, content management etc. Their services are affordable and help online companies accelerate profits. Trust them for your eCommerce integration services.

Prop Up Your Ecommerce Store For Holidays

Posted by Unknown October 2, 2013 7 comments

Most of the ecommerce stores see their sales peak during the holiday season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the festivals that alone can change the fate of your store’s balance sheet. You too can make the most of these festivals by planning holiday marketing for your store without any further delay. You may redesign or optimize your store.

Following are the few tips to make your ecommerce store attractive and engaging:

Is your store ready for online holiday shopping?

Gift Guide: This guide will help your customers in making their shopping decisions. Be it buying gifts for family, friends or co-workers, the guide should offer a range of gift ideas. You can offer this guidance in the form of tutorials, blog posts or articles. You can decide the form according to the nature of your business.

Shipping Calendar: The task of buying gifts for your loved ones doesn't end with just buying. They need to know when the products will reach them. If they have opted for customization, you even need to tell them how much time the customization will take and how much time the shipment will. This will help your customers chart their shopping schedule.

Special Discounts: Of course you need to offer special discounts during Black Friday and Cyber Monday because doing otherwise would be sacrilege. If you are unwilling to offer discount on each and every product of yours, you can either create special deals or offer special discounts on selected items.

Assistance: Set yourself apart from the competition by offering instant aide to your customers. You can either add special phone numbers wherein customers can call you with their questions or you can add live chat for that.

Refresh Product Descriptions: As your store is going to see the highest number of footfalls during holidays, it would pay to refresh the product description with the latest information and customers’ reviews.

Why eCommerce on Cloud is good during holiday season?

Posted by Unknown September 13, 2013 5 comments

With holiday season around the corner, these are critical times for e-Commerce companies. It’s time to get their acts together with email campaigns, new landing pages, merchandising strategies, inventory planning and so on. Since huge traffic spikes are anticipated, the technical teams are expected to be on their toes 24x7. They have to support the rapid increase in visits and database calls; ensure that new projects are launched quickly and that systems are secure, all within the stipulated budgets.

Cloud computing is the perfect remedy for this sudden holiday fever that tends to grip the ecommerce space. The solution enables the eCommerce companies to achieve these objectives effortlessly. It is always a better option than running the applications in an organization’s own environment.

Benefits of Cloud Computing:

Pay-as-you-go solution
A cost-efficient model than on-premise systems
Free to expand or contract your costs according to your needs
Shifts the risk of expansion to the cloud computing provider
You pay as you go and you don’t have to buy more hardware or software for the data center
Other advantages include: elasticity, scaling up with cloud computing based systems
Aids in storage and database services
Achieve better ROI by integrating with the existing back office

The function and delivery style of Cloud computing providers can be likened to electric companies. The company may have hundreds of electric generators, but the concern of the consumer is limited to the electricity that they consume. Likewise, Cloud users pay for what they use, no additional charges or costs are involved. Just connect and get what you want, if that means instant scalability to you, for anticipated or unanticipated traffic surges.

Profitability in the eCommerce business comes from not just driving sales but also by reducing costs and improving efficiency. And cloud computing helps you to just to that. The cloud computing is one saving grace for the IT department to support their organization and marketing endeavors during high season.

Thinking about a Concept of Multi-store for eCommerce

Posted by Unknown August 14, 2013 4 comments

Sales in e-commerce are increasingly concentrated in the few industry giants. This requires in particular of smaller shops consistent business strategies - especially the focus on a few product groups or even on a single dedicated business unit.

Particularly lasting effect, the concept of multi-gate…

Multiple ecommerce store and single admin panel

According to the study results achieved among the top 1,000 multiple online shops a total turnover of around $20 billion accounted for the largest ten of them around $6.2 billion. This corresponds to a share of about 30 percent and an increase in sales of the industry giants by four percent compared to last year.

The 100 largest providers generated in the same period with $13.9 billion sales up nearly 70 percent. They increased their market share so much as 5 percent. The rest of the dwindling revenue from e-commerce remains for the ever growing number of smaller online shops. This means that more and more retailers have to share less and less revenue.

Online competition is on…

It is anticipated that in the future increasingly rely more established traders and shippers on the internet and thus increase competition. In addition, the technical development of e-commerce currently tends to favor the stationary retailer. An example of this are the apps on Internet-capable mobile phones, which ranges of local traders overlook is easy and can be compared. This "Location Based Services" opened considerably better ways to specifically address customer and make them offers that are appropriate to their particular situation.

Occupy niches with multi-store ecommerce solution…

In retail stores many years ago, the classic "mom and pop shop" were popular, but ultimately random range of retail chains and forte providers, most operators were not able to hold out the massive price pressure that has been generated, among other things due to the massive difference in the purchase quantities.

Following the same pattern now available as conventional and interchangeable online shops of small and medium scale…

For the specialization of online merchants can choose from several options. One important way is to reduce the range of shops in the area rigorously and comprehensively build the most promising product groups. Customers want to be professional advice - and this is in a time in which all the information is seemingly infinitely available, an essential resource. Instead of looking for expensive must want to find customers quickly - and get the feeling to get all the important information and have measured their investment made the best possible choice of product.

Until, some time ago mainly counted the price-performance ratio than selling point. Meanwhile, the time factor is becoming increasingly important.

6 Benefits Make Yahoo! Store as a Best Platform for Ecommerce

Posted by Unknown July 22, 2013 5 comments

If you are planning to sell your merchandise online, there are many e-commerce platforms on the Internet. However, you just cannot start selling your products randomly. You need to analyze pros and cons of every available platform before settling on one. Yahoo! Store platform for eCommerce is one of the most powerful platforms when it comes to online selling. Use it and boost up your sales.

For an e-commerce merchant, there are several selling platforms available. All these platforms offer basic features that help you to sell your merchandise. However, among these platforms, Yahoo! is one of the most popular platforms. So if you are thinking to start your own store, do consider following benefits of having a store on Yahoo!

Benefits of Yahoo!:

Highly Popular: Yahoo! platform is one of the most popular platforms on the Internet. Whenever anybody wants to buy something online, they tend to visit Yahoo! first. So if you have a store on Yahoo! platform, your chances of success increases multiple times.

Easy Search: The searching feature is a backbone of any e-commerce store. Yahoo! understands this very well and has designed a wonderful search engine that lets the customers find the exact product they are looking for. This attracts more and more customers to Yahoo! Store.

Search Engine Optimization: Yahoo! offers you an option to optimize your store by offering you the facility to add meta tags like titles, descriptions and keywords for your products. It also allows you to optimize your images, URLs and reviews of your customers. This facility makes sure that your products on the Yahoo! Store get proper exposure in the proper market.

Easy Checkout Process: The checkout process at Yahoo! Store is a child’s play. Checkout at Yahoo! is typically a short and quick process. And of course customers love this style of checkout.

Payment Process: Yahoo! platform supports various types of payment methods, including cash on delivery, checks, credit cards and debit cards. If you want, you can also integrate other kinds of payment methods into your payment gateway too.

Security: All the processes at Yahoo! platform are highly safe and secure. Yahoo! implements a variety of steps to protect any and all information of its merchants and customers.

If you are planning to create a Yahoo! Store for your business, it’s always better to hire an expert who knows what he/she is doing. And if you are on the lookout of such expert, do consider contacting Ydeveloper.

Ydeveloper is a mid-sized e-commerce company, which is popular for offering tailor-made advanced solutions and applications that make any business a thriving venture.

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