Have you ever decided to not buy anything from a brand due to a poor delivery experience? Or have you ever opted out of an online purchase due to high delivery charges? If you never have, it’s exceptional. And if you have, you aren’t alone.

Long delivery periods, late deliveries, high delivery charges, and lack of choice of ecommerce delivery options, top the list of online shoppers’ pain points.

If you are also an online store owner looking to eliminate the bottlenecks in deliveries, you are at the right place. This post is about the ecommerce delivery solutions or tips that can help create an infallible delivery strategy.

Importance of a Strong Delivery Strategy

A strong delivery strategy holds importance in numerous ways.

• Brand Loyalty – Customers are spoiled for choice. If you can’t stay ahead of your competitors and ensure fast deliveries, your customers may drift away. Also, if you charge higher shipping costs, they won’t stay for long. Fast and nominal ecommerce delivery options will help boost your brand loyalty and repeat business.

• Lower Cart Abandonment – If customers have to pay higher shipping charges or wait longer for deliveries, they may abandon the cart. Instead, using efficient ecommerce delivery solutions can help ensure fast and low-cost deliveries. This will eventually help take conversion rates high.

• Enhanced Upselling – Flexible and efficient ecommerce delivery options to give customers more freedom to control delivery dates or timings can help. You can win their trust and pitch for sale of products other than what they are looking for.

• Helps Stand Out – Offering faster and nominal ecommerce delivery options can help you stand out from your competitors. Over time, it can help expand your customer base and rule the market.

• Enhanced Delivery Experience – More control over deliveries means a better delivery experience. Ecommerce delivery options like package rerouting, shipping address validation and correction, etc. can help enhance customers’ delivery experience.

A Peep into Fast-Changing Customers’ Expectations from Deliveries

E-commerce has been there for around two decades. Earlier, the business owner could be the decision-maker and pick the ecommerce delivery solutions that suited them more than the customers. Well, things are no longer the same.

The global e-retail giants like Amazon, eBay, Walmart have pushed the envelope of ecommerce. They have introduced customer-centric approaches and made ecommerce delivery options better and flexible.

There is one more big reason you can’t afford to ignore. The Covid-19 pandemic. Situations have started improving now with people going out for in-store shopping. But yes, the shopping habits of people won’t ever be the same as in the pre-Covid era. More people than earlier have embraced online shopping and will continue to do so.

In fact, eMarketer forecasted an increase by 32.4% in ecommerce sales in 2020 and a fall by 3.2% in brick-and-mortar sales.

National Retail Federation, the world’s largest retail trade organization, recently conducted a survey on customers’ shopping preferences.

Here are the insights into surveyed customers’ preferences.

• 97% opted out of the final purchase as shopping wasn’t convenient to them.

• 83% state that convenience matters more to them now than 5 years ago.

• 52% say that convenience while shopping influences half or more of their purchases.

• 38% of online shoppers want shopping experience to be convenient at the very beginning in the research phase, 20% right before check-out, 18% at check-out, and the rest 23% post-purchase.

In yet another survey by NRF two years ago, (one of those years was when the pandemic affected everything) 65% online shoppers surveyed said that they search for free-shipping thresholds before even adding items to their carts. 39% want the two-day shipping to be free of cost, and 29% have opted out of a purchase because two-day shipping wasn’t free.

As evident from the stats, customer-centric solutions are the need of the hour.

If you analyze the stats more carefully, you can see that the delivery aspect has been crucial even before Covid. And with Covid-19, it has become even more crucial with 18% who want convenience at check-out.

This “convenience” spans every single aspect of delivery. Be it ecommerce delivery options, delivery charges, payment methods, or anything else; everything should be convenient. From a small online store owner to a big enterprise, nobody can survive without “customer-first” ecommerce delivery solutions.

Thus, a strong delivery strategy is a potential game-changer for the e-commerce industry today.

Ecommerce Delivery Solutions and Ideas to Boost Deliveries

1. Multiple Ecommerce Delivery Options

Offer your customers multiple shipping options including same-day, next-day, two-day, or standard shipping. This will give them a better control over their delivery charge and speed of the delivery.

2. Offer Free Shipping

If your budget allows, offer free shipping for a purchase exceeding a certain amount. For non-urgent purchases that your customers can wait longer, this tactic can help engage them. If you want, you can compensate your delivery charges by adjusting them somewhere in your selling prices.

3. Avail of Delivery Incentives

Utilize time and price delivery incentives to attract sales – especially during festivals. For instance, a time-sensitive incentive like “Order by New Year Eve to win a freebie” or a price-sensitive incentive like “Free shipping for purchases above $200” can drive conversions.

4. Display Delivery Dates

To ensure customers’ convenience, always display delivery timelines and prices on the checkout page. It will help them pick the most suitable shipping option according to the delivery period and price.

5. Share Tracking Info

Enabling your customers to track their packages is a sure-fire way to win their trust. There are a number of ecommerce delivery solutions or services that you can pick from to auto-send tracking info of packages. Real-time tracking of packages will enhance transparency and brand loyalty.

6. Adopt BOPIS – The Popular Hybrid

Over 90% of customers surveyed by NRF rated BOPIS as convenient. Buy-Online-Pick-In-Store blends the experience of online shopping and in-store shopping. If you have N number of physical stores, you can integrate in-store pickup using one of ecommerce delivery solutions for that.

Our AppJetty Magento 2 Store Locator Extension is also one such next-gen ecommerce delivery solution. It enables customers to pick up their products from a nearby store easily. It lets the admin configure N number of stores, provide curbside pickup option, display available stores on the product page, and allows selection of a preferred date and time slot.

7. Offer Zip Code Validation

Let your customers check for the product deliverability to their address before checkout by entering their zip codes. It will help prevent unwanted order cancellations later and maintain complete transparency.

Our Magento 2 Zip Code Validator is one of the next-gen ecommerce delivery solutions that enable customers to check for the deliverability of products to their addresses through zip codes. It lets you whitelist or blacklist zip codes to allow or restrict deliveries respectively to them. You can also customize the zip code check label and button, availability/unavailability messages to engage customers better.

8. Let the Customers Be in the Driver’s Seat

Allow your customers to take the reins of the delivery process. Give them the freedom to choose delivery date and time slot. This will make them feel more connected with more flexibility in scheduling their deliveries. As a result, they will look forward to returning to your store for repeat purchases. You can also display cut-off time to customers – the time beyond which any order won’t qualify as the order on a particular day. Besides, you can specify non-working days and time-slots for your customers to view and decide when to order.

Our Magento 2 Delivery Date extension is one of the feature-rich ecommerce delivery solutions that help customers choose a preferable delivery date and time slot. It helps configure same-day delivery and custom delivery options for special customers. You can also choose to display the scheduler on Product Page or Checkout Page.

9. Communicate More and Better

No matter how advanced ecommerce delivery solutions become, you still can’t ignore the importance of effective communication. If a delivery goes amiss despite all measures, be ready to accept and handle your customers’ complaints. Convey the reason for the delivery issue and the effort you are making to resolve the issue, politely. Let them know that you value them and that you are ready to take every step possible to not let the issue repeat.

Ready to Have a Strong Delivery Strategy in Place?

A strong delivery strategy is indispensable for an online business. With the right ecommerce delivery solutions and strategies, you can make your delivery strategy highly productive.

With 14 years of experience in tech integrations, we offer the most suitable ecommerce delivery solutions to suit your business requirements. You can also get the best advice from our industry experts on how to formulate a strong delivery strategy. Looking forward to hearing from you.

 
All product and company names are trademarks, registered® or copyright© trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

The post E-Commerce Delivery Solutions to Strengthen Delivery Strategy appeared first on AppJetty .

Holiday season is almost around the corner. Like every other festival in 2020, this holiday season will be different. It means that this year people won’t be giving gifts to their loved ones in person. But that definitely is not going to stop them from gifting. They are going to look for estores/ecommerce websites that are offering contactless deliveries, gift wrapping, gift messages, and are following proper precautions set by WHO.

Hence, as an eCommerce business owner, it’s the perfect time to up your game and catch up with the trends.

Apart from offering contactless deliveries, gift wrapping, etc., you also need to streamline your inventory management to serve your customers who will be high on festivities.

Focusing on deliveries and order fulfillment makes sense, but why focus on inventory management?

Well, here are some major reasons why you need to have an inventory management system in place during the holiday season.

Saves time and money

With the help of the proper inventory management system, you can get to know what products are in the stock, which ones need to be ordered, which are out of stock, or about to go out of stock. Imagine running out of stock the trending sweater from your store during the peak holiday season. Can you imagine the loss you’ll have to bear?

Hence, keeping a close eye on your stock especially the ones that are in demand will save you lots of money and time. Not only that, but it will also give you a clearer picture where you stand in terms of your inventory as a whole.

And with the right inventory management software, you can even update the inventory in real-time giving every stakeholder an updated view of the situation at every possible time.

Real-time inventory updates

This is one of the major benefits of having an inventory management system. If you have a clearer idea of what’s going on with your inventory, you can present this clarity to your customers by updating your website accordingly. While your customers are online searching for a particular product, they will be able to see how many quantities of the products are left.

You definitely don’t want them ordering something that’s not in your stock. Imagine the damage it can do to your reputation.

Additionally, you can also use the quantity counter as your marketing strategy to create a sense of urgency in customers, which work especially in the holiday season.

Centralized inventory

Being a medium or large scale eCommerce platform, it is likely that you might have warehouses at multiple locations. In this type of scenario, it is easy to get lost in the middle of everything. Having a centralized inventory management system helps overcome many challenges that this scenario poses. Additionally, it eliminates a lot of redundant communication that happens between different warehouses to check up on the availability of certain products.

This also helps your team have clearer communication and decrease any types of issues in transits, wrong deliveries, or product lost.

So, are you ready to adopt an inventory management software?

If yes, then check out our inventory extension for Magento 2 which enables you to manage your inventory on the go!

Magento 2 MageMob Inventory

Equipped with features like supplier management, stock and purchase order management, and more, our inventory management extension brings the stability you need to win over your competitors this holiday season.

So, let’s prep you for the holiday season, shall we?

All product and company names are trademarks, registered® or copyright© trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

The post Why You Need an Inventory Management System for Holiday Season appeared first on AppJetty .

It’s been a decade now since smartphones have become an inseparable part of our lives. And the most important role in this marriage has been played by mobile apps. And what they allow a regular person to do; the power it put in the hands of the users.

Currently, there are over 4.5 billion people online and out of the 3.5 billion people use smartphones having apps every day. Around 7.5 billion people are estimated to be active on the internet by 2030 out of 8.5 billion of the estimated people alive at that time. That’s 90% of the total world population. Just imagine the market size of mobile apps these stats alone prove there will be in the near future.

A few years back, we were all anticipating 2020 to happen and within the blink of an eye, 2030 will be here. Hopefully, COVID-free.

What we are getting to here is that the future of mobile apps is happening right now. And the future is drastically competitive considering the opportunities that are available out there.

Every business wants, needs, and definitely should have a mobile app depending on the frequency they want their customers to interact with them. Having apps for B2C businesses might be considered imperative whilst apps for B2B targeting businesses might seem a little far-fetched for now.

Personalized interactions are becoming increasingly popular among customers as well as businesses and apps bring a lot of leverage for businesses in this area. Meanwhile, in the ecommerce landscape, the shift is happening and moving towards m-commerce i.e. having a mobile estore from where your customers can shop on the go. No matter how niche businesses are.

The idea to have a mobile app for your business is not new. It’s as old as the invention of mobile apps. But the main question that looms over the heads of business owners is which way to go? What technology to use for their apps since most of them do not come from a technical background?

If you are among the ones seeking answers to these questions mentioned above, then this blog will simplify some of the aspects of mobile app development for you.

There are essentially three methods to develop a mobile application:

→ Native mobile application
→ Web application
→ Hybrid application development

Native mobile application as the name suggests is native to the devices they are made for i.e. iOS or Android. Native apps are built using either Swift or Objective-C for iOS and either Java or Kotlin for Android devices. Since the apps built are native using native languages, tools, UI components, and directories, they tend to be more robust, perform better, and deliver a better user experience.

The major disadvantage of having a native app is that it won’t be useful for the other platforms including and not limited to web, iOS. Moreover, you can’t reuse the code used to build your iOS app for anything. Additionally, there are limitations from Apple App Store as well that can delay your release if there’s a direct change in the native code. The review process takes roughly around 1-7 days — which can stretch based on the time of the year you are submitting your app or update.

Regarding the resources required to develop native apps — it is harder to find resources that know languages for both apps with equal proficiency. So, here the cost goes high for the development itself, and when you have to update the app, you need to again go through the same process as well as shell out a better chunk of money.

Web application is an application program developed using languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and delivered over the internet through browsers. Some of the websites can be categorized as web apps. The main advantage of building a web app is that you don’t have to go through the tedious approval process that app-stores have and you can directly deliver the application to your users for mobile as well as browser. Since it is built using HTML, CSS, or Java, the developers have huge libraries like Vue, Angular, React, etc. to use giving them more freedom with the functionalities.

Here, the advantage and disadvantages stem from the source — since it is developed using not native languages, they deliver a less smooth experience and have limitations in accessing the abilities of the platforms. Additionally, they are also restricted to the capabilities of the users’ browsers.

Finding resources to create web applications for your business is easier as the languages used to create them are more universal. The cost to create them usually runs lower than native apps and they can be accessed on multiple platforms and can be updated in the one go for all the platforms.

Hybrid application is essentially native mobile application development + web application development. The core application is written as a web application which is then wrapped around a native shell using applications like Ionic’s capacitor or Apache Cordova. What these applications essentially do is create a shell for your web application which has the webView component where your app loads for the users without giving them the hint of the same. The limitations of web applications can be overcome using the plugins available for Cordova or Capacitor that enables you to use the capabilities of their native OS. Additionally, you can also publish your hybrid applications on both the app stores since the apps are loaded in a native way.

Since it is fundamentally a web application, you might run into a limitation regarding UI elements as you might need to recreate them but this limitation can be easily overcome by using libraries like React Native, Ionic, Xamarin, etc.

To improve UI in hybrid app development, hire a React Native specialist for responsive mobile interfaces.

To summarize the advantages of the hybrid application:
→ Low costs and easy to develop
→ Speed performance
→Great UI/UX
→ Offline support
→ Easy integration with other apps
→ Multi-platform support

In short, these apps provide the best of both worlds. Some of the most popular apps like Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, Evernote, and more are created using the hybrid way. You didn’t know that, did you?

The performance is great, the experience is great.

But wait…

There’s another quick way to go by creating a mobile app for your estore!

App Builders!

You get native mobile applications for iOS as well as Android under $400 since they have the basic components ready for an estore, you just need to white label the solution and publish it on app stores.

How?

Using our Magento 2 mobile app builder.

Intriguing, right?

Find out more here →

The post How the Mobile App World is Changing: The Hybrid Wave appeared first on AppJetty .

Of late, almost all major shipping services across the world have faced some ‘challenges’ in deliveries due to lockdown restrictions in various countries. The reason behind this is the sudden surge in the number of daily orders placed with online merchants using various shipping services provided by shipping service companies. As a result, a number of online e-store owners are now looking for a solution to mitigate the delivery issues – or at least update the customers about their order statuses. For a big store with a large number of orders placed daily, streamlining order fulfillment is a must.

If you too are an Australia-based online store owner and deliver your products to Australian customers or abroad, Australia Post can be a good option for you. However, there are some issues that can ruin your customers’ shopping experience. For instance, they may get late deliveries, shipping service selection issues, or tracking issues.

If you too are a Magento store owner who uses Australia Post Shipping services, you can reduce delivery issues to a minimum and manage order deliveries more efficiently.

How?

By integrating an Australia Post Shipping Extension into your store backend.

Read on to know how our Magento 2 Australia Post Shipping Extension can help you cut down on customers’ grievances and enhance their overall shopping experience.

Multiple Shipping Services

Magento Australia Post Shipping module lets you set up domestic and international services for parcels and letters. You can choose between a number of domestic and international shipping services for parcels or letters based on their type and size. This helps you get a better idea of online post shipping.

Address Validation

Validating the delivery address beforehand is highly crucial – especially in these times when orders can get stuck up due to lockdown restrictions or other issues in containment zones.

Our shipping extension helps validate zip code(s) to avoid any delivery issues – delays or losses anytime later.

Address validation lets customers correct any mistake while entering their shipping addresses. In addition, it saves online merchants the unnecessary wastage of time and money in addressing the issues related to the products shipped to ‘wrong’ addresses. This way, address validation acts as a win-win situation for both online merchants and customers.

Shipment Tracking

One of the biggest concerns customers are facing is – the inability to stay abreast of the whereabouts of orders placed. Our shipping extension allows customers to track their orders on the go. Through tracking labels, customers keep getting updates about the orders at every stage of the delivery process.

As customers are able to know where their parcels have reached anytime they want to, the transparency of your delivery services increases. The increased transparency in your delivery operations helps build customers’ trust in your brand.

Official Australia Post Partner

As an official partner of Australia Post, our extension assures the world-class quality of delivery services by itself. This is because Australia Post has served as a great delivery service provider and a ‘lifeline’ amidst the tough times of Corona lockdown.

Ready to Weed Out Major Delivery Issues?

Corona lockdown has led to some challenges that online merchants using even the most popular shipping services like Australia Post are facing. If you too are an e-store owner looking for an Australia Post Shipping Extension, you can check out our Magento 2 Australia Post Shipping Extension.

To explore more of its features or integrate it into your store, contact us at sales@appjetty.com and our sales team will revert to you within 24 hours.

The post How Our Magento 2 Australia Post Extension can Mitigate Shipping Issues appeared first on AppJetty .

Resource.

Such an umbrella word that without context you’d be lost as to what it means.

People? Money? Equipment? Raw materials?

It can mean anything.

But that’s not the difficult part. Management of ‘resources’ is.

And that’s why the blog.

We are going to cover a wide variety of topics related to resource management so that when you finish reading this blog, you are pumped up with at least 10 ways to improve your resource planning, distribution, and overall management.

Resource Management:

What is resource management?
Why is it important?
Advantages of doing it the right way
Tools you need

First question: What really is resource management?

Well, it is the management of people, equipment, and money. In relation to each other. While getting the optimal benefit out of each resource without running them dry.

Of course, that sounds contradictory but that’s where the word ‘management’ comes in.

The primary and important resource is people. But also money. So find the right people who can help you bring the money to the table and once it is there, who can help you use it efficiently. The people who can make the right decisions and maximize on opportunities to get the best out of what is available.

The people you hire need to be skilled to use the equipment your business requires. Want to sell muffins? You need people who know how to use an Oven and a mixer. Want to make an app, you need people who know how to code. Match the equipment with the people and you will get the results.

Why is resource management important?

Suppose I have a million bucks in my account today. The chances I still have the same amount tomorrow is very less. I am going to spend some of it for either groceries, electricity, water, and other basic necessities. Also, chances are I might never have a total of million bucks in my account unless I actually put the money to work.

Letting the money stay in the bank might earn me some interest but it would always be lesser than what I would earn if I invest it properly. For example, if I put $20,000 in Apple’s stock, chances are that I’ll get $50,000 in less than a year seeing Apple grow at a tremendous rate.

The same goes for any business. If your resources; people, money, machinery, are just sitting there idle in your office or warehouse then you are never going to get the return on investment or any work done.

It is important to understand the opportunities in the market and utilize your resources in order to get the maximum output and return on your investment.

Other reasons why resource management is important are:

– One step ahead: With proper resource allocation and planning, you’ll always be one step ahead of the problems or mishaps that might be coming in your way.

– Total control: Seeing you’ll have an overview of all the resources, how they are being spent, utilized, you will be able to plan the direction of your project way ahead of time. This gives you and your team the breathing space required to innovate and function properly. And pivot if necessary.

– No wastage: Since you’ll be utilizing the resources optimally, the chances of resource wastage becomes zero or next to zero.

– Data for future: Since you’ll be collecting data of the scenarios where you are able to utilize your resources optimally, that data can be utilized for future resource planning, project management, and moreover will help you understand the work you can take on with the current resources.

Overall, with proper resource planning, allocation, and management, you can actually manage to stay ahead of your competition and grow at a nominal rate without those dips in profits and revenue.

Related: Enterprise Appointment Scheduling: All You Need to Know

Since, we’ve already covered the advantages of proper resource management along with its importance, we are directly going to jump to the tools that’ll up your resource planning game.

Let’s see!

Top 5 Resource Management Tools of 2020-21:

One of the primary tools is CRM. But along with that, tools that integrate with your CRM so you are not constantly double-checking and putting the same effort with 3-4 tools to manage everything.

For Team and Equipment Management:

1. Calendar 365 for Dynamics CRM

If you want a tool that’s native to your CRM, then this is the perfect choice for you. A powerful tool that helps you manage your meetings, tasks, teams, and other resources.

Features + USP:

Native to Dynamics 365
Activity Management
Shared Calendars
Manage Custom Activities
Real-time Reminders
Fully Configurable
Fully-responsive

And more.

Pricing:

– 30-day Free trial
– Starts at $69/Year

For Project Management:

2. Mavenlink

This is one of the most comprehensive tools available in the market for project and resource management and team collaboration along with business intelligence.

Features + USP:

Unified interface to manage multiple facets of your business
Real-time project management
Easily connects with all your tools in your ecosystem including ERP, CRM, and more.
Sales pipeline
Business forecasting capabilities

Pricing:

– Professional & Teams: 10 Days free trial then starts from $19/user/month
– Enterprise & Premier: You’ll have to get in touch with their sales team

3. Forecast.app

An all-in-one project management software that lets you plan, manage as well as track your projects in one place.

Features + USP:

Automates a lot of administrative tasks
Deep integration with other software in your ecosystem
AI work automation
Project budgets
Resource and project management
Expense management

Pricing:

– Free Trial
– Lite: $29/month/user — if billed annually
– Pro: $49/month/user — if billed annually
– Enterprise: $69/month/user — if billed annually

Choosing the right tool is crucial for the efficiency you are planning to achieve. So make sure to list your pain points and then go out hunting for a tool.

Writer’s Note: This article was written in collaboration with Roma Amarnani.

All product and company names are trademarks, registered® or copyright© trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

The post Resource Management 101: Your Guide to Utilizing Your Resources Optimally appeared first on AppJetty .

As an organization grows in size, manual customer management becomes tedious. There are some industries/businesses where scheduling of appointments is highly important.

Let’s consider that you own a popular salon or spa with a large customer base. With a continuous rush of customers, their management can grow hard. In such a scenario, giving appointments to your customers instead of letting them enter randomly can save both your and your customers’ time.

There are two ways to book slots – manual and automatic. While manual appointment scheduling can work for small or medium-sized businesses, it can pose a challenge for big enterprises. Here comes into play an appointment scheduling software program.

Let’s read in detail about an appointment scheduling software and its benefits.

What is Appointment Scheduling Software?

Appointment Scheduling Software lets customers book an appointment with a service provider via a website, mobile application, or kiosk eliminating the need for staff to ensure that appointments are scheduled manually.

Benefits of Automated Appointment Scheduling for Enterprises

Seamless Customer Journey

Customer experience today is not just restricted to customers’ in-store, on-site or in-app experience. It is rather the sum total of the experiences a customer has had across all the touch base points.

Though technology has led to the advancement of the entire service industry, physical stores still exist and matter. Therefore, using digital technology to enhance your customer journey from booking an appointment to the actual in-person visit to your store is crucial.

And an appointment management software can do that. It makes the first touchpoint where a customer books an appointment engaging and user-friendly which in turn enhances the customer’s journey ahead.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Booking appointments is a powerful way of serving customers. Instead of visiting your store physically or calling you to book appointments, an integrated appointment scheduling software offers them hassle-free appointment booking experience through your website or app. All they need to do is visit your online store or app and simply book the slot of their choice out of the available slots. And once they book an appointment with you, you get a notification in your CRM and then you can assign the same to your team. A perfect flow without any redundant communication.

Increased Staff Productivity

An appointment-enabled service in place can help increase the overall productivity of the staff. With the advanced knowledge of the appointments of an entire day at your disposal, distributing the workload evenly among your staff members in a given shift becomes easier.

As there would be no random check-ins, your staff members would be prepared to serve customers more effectively resulting in enhanced staff productivity as well as prevent a situation where a customer has to wait for their chance.

Automation of Customer Communications

Managing appointments manually requires more labor and time.
For instance, if a customer has to postpone or cancel an appointment; changing it manually would take more time and energy. Further, there would be unnecessarily increased communication between your team and customers over calls or messages. There are also chances that your members make mistakes while making such changes. At times, you may also need to remind a customer manually of their appointment if they fail to reach on time.

What if all these tasks are automated?

Your time and energy will get saved and chances of errors would reduce to a minimum. And an appointment scheduling software does exactly that.

It lets customers book appointments and cancel or postpone them right from your store, site, or app. This way, it helps you manage appointments seamlessly and stay on top of customer satisfaction.

How our Dynamics 365 Calendar Extension Can Help?

Our Calendar 365 for Dynamics CRM has a number of functionalities that can help increase your productivity.

Let’s walk you through several of its features that can help streamline your management of customers as well as team members.

Creation and Management of Multiple Activities – No more managing multiple calendars and forgetting events, email follow-ups, etc. Create, edit, and copy CRM activities as well as custom activities.

Quick Multiple Actions – Convert any calendar activity into existing cases/leads & reassign them to other users or teams with few simple clicks. You can edit or copy any event and re-assign to the user/team as required.

Improved Activity Management – It allows you to create appointments or tasks related to clients and manage them, add or remove them easily from within the Calendar.

Resource Scheduling – By letting you have a full knowledge of and control over every member’s working hours, break timings, etc.; it helps streamline your management of resources.

Easy Calendar Views – With 4+ views of the calendar with a dynamic tooltip and detailed pop-up, it lets you view all your appointments, activities and tasks easily right from within the calendar.

Besides, it has features like shared calendar, real-time reminders, activity filtration, custom calendar, and several others that make it an ideal solution for appointment scheduling and management for enterprises.

As you have understood how appointment scheduling is beneficial for your business, it is high time you added an appointment scheduling software to your arsenal.

To know more about its features or integrate, drop us a line at sales@appjetty.com and our team will get in touch with you within 24 hours.

The post Enterprise Appointment Scheduling: All You Need to Know appeared first on AppJetty .

Considering several SEO factors is important while setting up a multilingual store. This is because good multilingual SEO helps improve rank your site higher and overall user experience.

Multilingual SEO is the act of optimizing content on your website for different languages to become searchable in new markets and make your site findable among people from different countries. A Magento 2 Multi-Language extension or any other based on your ecommerce platform can help translate the store.

Note: Though Google Translate can help, translation of your store for non-English speaking countries won’t be accurate and fully practical. Instead, a properly planned multilingual SEO services that uses a Magento 2 Language Switcher or any other plugin can give far better results.

There are, however, several tips to ensure proper and effective SEO. So, let’s read on…

Plan out Your Multilingual SEO Strategy

Consider the search habits of your audience from target countries. They might be different from those in your native country. Ensure that you have a solution that translates your content and metadata into your audience’s native languages.

The post 5 Multilingual SEO Best Practices to Follow in 2020 appeared first on AppJetty .

If you want to expand your business beyond boundaries, multilingual support is one of the first and foremost requirements. Providing multi-language support gives a number of benefits like:

– Better and consistent shopping experience to customers from different countries across the country.- Enhanced personalization by letting customers view the store in their native languages.
– Expansion of customer base by engaging customers from across the globe.
– High credibility by making international customers feel closer to your brand and enhancing transparency;

Which makes a Language Switcher app of great importance for estore owners.

But before jumping into the multilingual support, read on to know the points you need to keep in mind while running a multilingual store.

Things to Consider While Selling in Multiple Languages

Translation App – Make sure that you have a language switcher app that provides support for multiple languages that your estore supports.

Theme Compatibility with Multilingual Support – The store theme you choose should be compatible with the multilingual support feature. Like for Shopify, the non-updated themes that are incompatible and can’t support Shopify multiple languages will generally use relative URLs in their liquid code.

In such a scenario, these relative URLs won’t work if a user searches for your website in a language other than the default language.

Limit of Language Support – If you use Shopify basic plan, you can translate your store into up to 5 different languages. And if you use Shopify Plus, you can translate your store into 20 different languages. Similar rules apply to other platforms as well, so make sure to check out the limitations and buy plan accordingly.

Automatic Creation of Unique URLs – Once you publish a language, customers can browse your website and check out in that language. A unique URL (or locale) gets created for all translated pages in your store after you publish a language.

For instance, if you create a domain www.mystore.com and add French to your store, the URL www.mystore.com will get auto-created to www.mystore.com/fr. If you unpublish French again, all /fr links in your store will become 404-redirects.

Support for Language-Wise Domains – At present, Shopify doesn’t support unique domains for different languages. For instance, you cannot create fr.mystore.com for the French language. So, make sure to check out for this limitation before you invest in a language translator.

Auto-Detection of Metas and hreflang Tags – Shopify automatically adds meta and hreflang tags to assist Google (or any other search engine) in detecting different languages and index the localized pages in your store speedily. Check this requirement for your platform as well.

Multilingual Sitemap – Shopify supports the generation of the website sitemap only in the primary language of your store always and doesn’t allow its translation. Having a multilingual sitemap is necessary for international SEO. So, look out for this limitation as well.

There are a number of extensions that can help you with store translation for Shopify, Magento, etc.

However, make sure that the extension or app you choose is native to your estore platform. Only then can a language translation benefit you in a true manner as mentioned above.

But why Native Language translation?

Benefits of Native Language Translation

Seamless Integration

A native translator app integrates seamlessly with your store’s Translation API and works smoothly with its multilingual support feature.

Higher Loading Speed

All the translated resources are stored in the platform data storage itself instead of separate cloud systems. This prevents any external backend that can lead to site crash or slowdown.

Enhanced SEO

As there are no changes to be made in the liquid codes of your store to support multiple languages, the site loads faster. Further, language-specific storeviews make the store more engaging and provides them with visibility on search engines separately. This helps enhance the site SEO that otherwise would get affected by slow loading speed.

Now that you know about the benefits of multi-language support and the native translation feature, read on to know how our AppJetty Language Translator for Shopify can be a good option for your Shopify store.

Features of AppJetty Language Translator

Simple Translation Backend Interface

Our app enables you to store the different product objects (variants and options) in a single product resource for every product. A single tap is all that you need to complete translation. Language translation management not only is simple but also faster.

Complete Control over Final Shopify Language Translation

With its What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, you will have full control over the final translated content.

Manual and Automated Translation using Google API

You can store components manually or automatically using Google API. Also, you can stay updated about the translation status of every individual component in your store. In case you own a big store with a large number of store components, bulk automatic translation is highly beneficial as it saves your time and energy.

Compatible with all major SEO apps

With the ability to store content and create language-specific domains with the native Shopify multi-language support, you can help Google to recognize your site as SEO friendly and boost your international SEO.

Ready to cross borders with Shopify Language Translator?

It is not a luxury to have multilingual store. Now it has become a necessity. Ready your store to win all the battles with your competition by going international with our Shopify language translator.

If you have any queries or integrate it, contact us at sales@appjetty.com and our team will revert to you within 24 seconds.

All product and company names are trademarks, registered® or copyright© trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

The post Crossing borders with Native Language Translation appeared first on AppJetty .

The last few months witnessed an unprecedented upheaval with COVID-19 having disrupted anything and everything. Whether it is people’s daily lives, businesses, educational institutions, or anything else, the novel Coronavirus has disrupted them all.

As per a new analysis by Deloitte Access Economics, Australia Post’s delivery services contributed to an additional $2.4 bn during the COVID-19 crisis compared to the last year. When around two-third of all businesses reported revenue declines, Australia Post continued to serve as their lifeline. It further reported several other findings:

– Australia Post contributed a total of $1.8 bn to the country’s GDP over the three months (from March till May) this year.
– There was an increase of $560 Mn in ecommerce for regional and remote across Australia.
– Australia Post facilitated an additional $26 Mn transactions that may have failed to occur through in-store visits amid COVID lockdown restrictions.
– They also helped generate 58,800 jobs amid the peaks of Corona.

Last but not the least – An additional 23,000+ small businesses availed Australia Post MyPost delivery services amid COVID-19 each month.

Having looked at all these stats, you can clearly conclude that Australia Post is crucial to businesses across Australia. If you own a business anywhere in Australia, it is time you picked Australia Post Shipping Services to facilitate streamlined management of your global parcel deliveries.

However, several tasks like calculating shipping costs, tracking orders, etc. can be tedious at times for e-store owners.

Thanks to a number of Australia Post Shipping modules out there using which you can manage shipments much more easily.

Our M2 AusPost module is also a next-gen shipping extension for Australia Post that gives a number of advantages to merchants.

– Live Shipping Rates
With Magento 2 Australia Post Shipping Module integrated in your store backend, calculation of live shipping rates becomes a matter of seconds. No need to visit the official Australia Post site now and then, you can calculate and display shipping rates right on your storefront with M2 AusPost.

– Official Australia Post Partner
Our Magento 2 Australia Post Shipping Module offers best services to all the ecommerce retailers globally. The functionalities and features it offers are highly productive and customer-oriented and the proof is our official partnership with Australia Post.

– Live Tracking
The ‘live tracking’ feature lets customers know about the whereabouts of their orders on the go. This real-time tracking helps build a sense of faith in your brand and engages your customers better with enhanced transparency.

– Multiple Shipping Services
Our module enables you to set domestic and international services for letters and parcels. It lets you select international services to offer to your customers depending on the size and type of the parcel.

– Shipment Configurations
With M2 Auspost Shipping extension, you can add insurance charges and features like ‘Signature on Delivery’. You can also set item level packing if the need to ship items individually arises.

– Shipping Rates Configurations
You can set default dimensions – length, width, height to be considered to generate shipping rates in case there are no product dimensions mentioned explicitly.

Ready to Choose Australia Post?

As you can see Australia Post is a lifeline for businesses across the globe, you can also pick Australia Post as your shipping partner. In addition, you can also integrate a good Australia Post Shipping like our M2 AusPost module to smoothen your delivery management even further.

If you want to integrate it into your store, contact us at sales@appjetty.com and our team will revert to you within 24 hours.

All product and company names are trademarks, registered® or copyright© trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

The post How Australia Post Managed to Navigate COVID-19 appeared first on AppJetty .

Ever wondered that a small virus invisible to naked eyes could wreath havoc beyond bounds? Yupp, you guessed it right – the Novel Coronavirus a.k.a. COVID-19. At first sight, anyone would only say this – the virus has disrupted lives. And nobody can deny that! Though this pandemic has positive sides too – improved air quality, reduced noise pollution, healing environment, one can’t ignore its widespread impact. 

Online businesses too are facing the brunt. Nevertheless, as Einstein said – “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.”, online business owners also have the opportunity to innovate their business operations. Wondering how?

Read on to know how you can prevent problems from arising in your business operations – especially the problems with delivery services and keep your business operations streamlined amid COVID-19.

Tips to Manage Deliveries Efficiently

Zero-contact delivery

In the times of this pandemic, everyone is concerned about the possibility of infection from Corona. Several ecommerce companies like Amazon, BigBasket, etc. have already started offering zero-contact deliveries. It is high time you also offered the option of Zero-Contact or contactless delivery to your customers to:

– Mitigate the chances of Corona spread.
– Win their trust and instill a sense of safety in their minds.

You can display this option for customers to opt-in on your product page or checkout page. You can also view the list of orders with the condition of contactless delivery along with specific instructions from customers from your backend for more efficient management.

A feature-rich plugin like Delivery Date Scheduler that integrates with your estore can help you step up to the occasion. Also, make sure that you take proper steps to ensure that the zero-contact delivery is seamless.

Coming soon: Our team of developers is working to add this functionality to our Magento 2 Delivery Date Scheduler. To explore more, click here.

Let customers select delivery date and time slot

With the lockdown scenario prevailing across various areas of a country, customers know better about their regions. And they have a better idea about when the lockdown would probably be over or relaxed and deliveries would resume – especially if they are in red zone areas. Even in other areas with mild lockdowns, they would know the fixed hours during which the administration might allow outsiders including delivery men to enter.  You can let them use this knowledge to choose a suitable delivery date and time slot with a delivery date picker to reduce the chances of delivery issues like delivery returns to a minimum.

Personalize customers’ shopping experience

By letting your customers add delivery comments regarding the packaging style specifications or the ‘Call before Delivery’ option, etc. This way, you can engage them better. 

Stay on top of order management

With a summarized view of orders and delivery statuses, stay on top of your customers’ orders. Keep your customers in tune with order statuses through email notifications or text messages using a feature-rich plugin.

Display non-working days and non-operative hours

To ensure full transparency, specify working and non-working days and display them on the checkout page so that customers not only get a clear idea of them but also place orders accordingly. You can also define operative and non-operative time-slots to make the checkout process even more transparent through a Delivery Date Scheduler. This will help customers choose the most suitable time slot from operative slots in accordance with the lockdown guidelines in their regions.

This will help reduce the chances of delivery issues like delivery delays, order returns, confusion, and miscommunication, or poor delivery experiences, or other grievances to a minimum. 

Offer Zip Code Validation

Zip Code Validation is a great way to ensure clarity and transparency for both the parties. When customers choose a delivery date of their choice from the delivery date scheduler and proceed to checkout, they would be able to check whether the delivery of that particular product is available at their address or not simply by entering zip codes. 

Further, they can also find out whether one-day delivery of a particular product is available at their address or not. Accordingly, they can decide whether to order the product(s). 

Thus, zip code validation helps avoid any miscommunication or issues like late deliveries, product non-availability, etc. and keep customers’ trust in your brand intact.

Manage grace period, cut-off time, and daily quota per customer

To streamline your delivery operations and mitigate the possibility of delivery problems or grievances, you can:

– Specify the min. count of days it takes to process several particular orders (grace period)

– Mention the point of time beyond which any order placed would count in the orders as the next-day (cut-off time)

– Add the maximum number of items a customer can order daily(daily quota per customer)
etc. on your store.

It won’t only help you add more transparency but also manage orders more efficiently and seamlessly. 

How Can AppJetty Help You?

We, at AppJetty, understand our customers’ concerns and have some plugins to help e-store owners like you in streamlining their delivery operations.

Magento 2 Delivery Date Extension

This delivery date scheduler extension lets customers choose delivery date and time of their choice which creates a seamless delivery experience by reducing non-availability issues to a minimum. At the same time, it is also highly helpful for e-store admins as they get to control working and non-working days, customize the delivery date scheduler for better engagement, define the maximum number of deliverable days, etc.

Magento 2 Zip Code Validator

This extension enables the customers to check for the availability of a particular product(s) at their addresses by entering the zip codes of their regions. As an admin, you also can blacklist/whitelist zip codes from the backend, customize product availability/non-availability messages, zip code check label and button to enhance customers’ shopping experience. As it is compatible with Magento 2 Delivery Date Scheduler, you can also use it along with that and take delivery transparency to the next level.

Are You Ready for Streamlined Delivery Operations?

Now that you know that one of the important steps towards sustaining your e-business amid the Novel Coronavirus pandemic is streamlining your delivery operations, it is high time you followed the above-mentioned tips and retained your business productivity right away.

All product and company names are trademarks, registered® or copyright© trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

The post Keep Your Delivery Operations Streamlined amid COVID-19 appeared first on AppJetty .