So, which are these companies? Global shipping companies like FedEx or DHL have always had an edge when it came to ecommerce shipping and delivery in in all the countries where they are present. But when we talk about Australia, in recent years, Australia Post has taken various measures to compete with the best in the business and has also tied up with state postal services from other countries for better international coverage.

In this blog, we will talk about the best ecommerce shipping options available for Australian merchants.

1. Australia Post

Australia post offers an array of delivery choices and options for letters as well as parcels. It provides business mail and customer communications solutions, special delivery services, domestic shipping for different businesses, and domestic parcels so that you can easily send the parcel without any hindrances. Here are some of the solutions it provides for online retailers.

• Receive payments through payment gateways
• Solutions that meet your business requirement
• Access discounts according to the size of your business
• Boost sales through flexible delivery options
• Prepare and track shipments effortlessly

Integrating Australia Post’s system into your Magento store is super easy with our Australia Post Magento extension.

2. Parcel Send

If you are an Australian e-store owner looking to manage parcels, the Magento 2 Australia Post Parcel Send extension is the solution. This extension allows you to manage consignments, fetch contract rates, print labels, and track shipments from your Magento store. You no longer need to visit the Parcel Send portal or deal with manual data imports and exports. Here’s how it helps the merchants:

• Manage shipping methods
• Address validation
• Free shipping
• Consignment management
• Manifest management

If you want to integrate Parcel Send into your Magento store, try AppJetty’s Magento 2 Australia Post Parcel Send Extension today.

3. FedEx

The shipping needs of online retailers are quite high. Fedex, through its ‘Ship Manager Software,’ offers the perfect shipping solution to the retailers. Mentioned below are some of the services provided by the FedEx Ship Manager.

• Status email notifications
• Information stored in the database for future shipping needs
• Accurate data feeding
• It can be accessed from anywhere
• Advanced reporting system that helps merchants create customized reports
• Shipping features like track, request pick up, rate quotes etc

To integrate Fedex into your Magento store you can go for our FedEx Smart Shipping Extension.

4. DHL

DHL eCommerce Australia offers domestic and international delivery, pick-up, and return solutions for merchants as well as consumers provide standard domestic and international parcel pick-up, delivery, and return solutions for business customers under the brand name ‘DHL Parcel’ Here’s all that DHL offers under its ecommerce umbrella.

• Defined transit times with end-to-end visibility
• International B2C shipping to more than 220 countries
• Shipping solutions fit for small and medium businesses
• Expert advice for getting your business products shipped internationally
• Customs support
• Tracking of more than 50 items at once

5. StarTrack

StarTrack is one of the most trustworthy partners for ecommerce merchants based in Australia. The merchants just have to provide the phone number and email address to receive and send en route notifications, delivery, and pick-up information to the customers. They also get a direct link to myCourier with real-time traffic ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival). StarTrack offers the following ecommerce shipping solutions:

• Delivery and return choice for customers
• Help with targeting and selling products
• Logistics management
• Supply chain optimization
• Online store enhancement

Adding Star Track as a shipping option in your Magento store is very easy with our StarTrack Shipping Magento Extension.

While selecting any of the above shipping options for your store, keep in mind the quality of the service, IT infrastructure of the provider, their reputation in the market, and most importantly their charges. Adding any of them to your store shouldn’t be a problem as there are many extensions available in the market for the same, including ours.

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 Top Ecommerce Shipping Options for Australian Merchants appeared first on AppJetty .

To Whom does it Apply?

• GDPR applies to all the e-businesses that are:
• Selling its products or services to EU citizens
• Dealing with EU business clients
• Having EU citizens working as employees

Compliance to GDPR is easy if you follow these 4 principles:

• Erasure of data- This calls for all businesses to delete the data related to EU citizens held by them till date.
• Data Safety and Monitoring– Once, the old data is deleted, businesses are required to check the reports and documentation, if still any other data is left and erase it. And further to keep monitoring and remain in the safe zone.
• Imbibe Opt-In- Businesses shall now deal with only those EU citizens who subscribe to their services by opting-in. Once they opt-in, business people can send them marketing emails and do cold calling in order to provide further information.

Businesses are required to solve every query related to EU citizen information like what information is needed, the purpose for collection, etc. The EU citizens shall ask for deletion of the information after its usage and you must give them a detailed report of how the information was utilized.

• Follow Opt-Out– When EU citizens Opt-out, it means they deny to get your marketing emails and cold callings. Thereafter, you must not deal with them in any manner or it leads to unnecessary interruption ad breach of GDPR Rules.

Non-compliance of GDPR rules in any manner shall levy fine up to 4% of your annual global turnover. It easy to comply with the rules if you remain transparent and safeguard data of EU citizens. Make sure you follow these regulations to the best of your abilities.

The post Explaining General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR in Brief appeared first on AppJetty .

So, the million dollar question is, how to step ahead of the race? How to jump start your business through a Magento website? How to increase your sales above the saturation line? Well, the Product Heads and Marketing Managers have tons of ideas. And they all seem relevant. There comes another question: “Resource Management & Feasibility!”

So, in a practical scenario, what are the must-have changes or rather features, that will give the desired edge? The best answer to that question lies in your analytics. It must be a data-driven decision on what are the essential changes you should have to your website. However, there are various Magento extensions that can help you add those features with much ease. Would that not solve the question of feasibility?

Some of the Known Drawbacks of Magento Websites:

• Lack of Language Translator while you are serving geographies with multiple languages
• Online consumer wants the product as soon as possible; at minimum, they should have clear update on how soon the delivery is possible
• Stock unavailability after the purchase – it costs you the customer forever
• Supplier ratings for instances where you have the same product available from multiple suppliers
• Unavailability of Real-time tracking information
• Online Product customization tools
• Mobile App for your web store

You may require all of these or maybe none of them. Important thing is that there are Magento website extensions that can help you enhance your store with ease. Here are few tips to increase your sales with less development effort and quick results:

Provide Multiple Languages

If you are selling in Europe and do not have language translator, you are reducing your diaspora. One’s primary language is the best option to communicate. In terms of online sales, you need to be persuasive and provide the experience that matches the offline buying experience. It is not a question whether your buyer understands English or not. It is what you promise!

The promise here is the knowledge of local or the native language needs. The availability of the customer service in the native language. However, the question is no more whether you require language translator feature or not. Managing multiple languages could be a challenge. Therefore, we built Language Translator for M1 and M2 platforms. Using our Magento extension you can easily manage a website in multiple languages. Find out more about Language Translator for Magento 1 & Language Translator for Magento 2.

Allow Customers to Schedule Delivery

The best converting online selling sites are the ones that bring the buying experience as close as it is for offline purchase. In offline purchases, the buyer can hold the product, feel it and take them home with them immediately. Certainly, all of them is not possible. However, to provide an accurate delivery date is possible. And it is extremely essential.

The most basic requirement is to have delivery time availability before the check-out process. To enhance the experience, let the customer schedule the delivery date. Let them schedule the delivery based on minimum set criteria of yours. The backend management tool must be robust to comply with your minimum required time frames. Additionally, it must fetch the pricing for the pre-set rules to add the cost on its own.

Our Delivery Date Scheduler is compatible with Magento 1 and Magento 2 platforms. It will enable your customers to schedule the delivery date with precise time. Find out more about Delivery Date Scheduler extension for Magento 1 & Delivery Date Scheduler extension for Magento 2.

Robust Inventory Management

Managing expectations is the key to build loyal customers. Stock unavailability after the purchase is a fatal error for online businesses. Would you buy from a site that missed a promise like that? The online consumer is demanding and does not handle issues like that lightly. You not only lose a customer but you also get a headache of social media outrage from consumers when you err in this fashion.

There is an easy fix. Add stock quantity in your CMS while adding a new product. Real-time inventory updates would mark the product out of stock on its own. Even better, when you have returns, you require the quantity added back to stock. Our Magento extensions from MageMob series are perfect admin tools to integrate similar features.

MageMob Inventory for Magento 1 will enable your backend with robust inventory management features. Additionally, it will provide you a mobile app to manage backend inventory functions. Find out more about MageMob Inventory Management Magento extension.

Custom Product Designing

Especially, if you are selling non-branded products – you must resort to online product customizations. You must offer more than standard product catalog. You must find innovative ways above the discounts and offers. It just does not yield loyalty. It kills the brand retention ratio.

Through online product customization, you can offer customers literally what they want. Consumers love Apparel, Gifts and mobile covers, laptop skin and so many more products with their own version of custom designs. Provide them the platform. Let them paint their own colors.

Explore our All-inclusive web-to-print solutions store. And learn more about Magento extension for Product Customization Tool.

Provide Your Customers a Native Mobile App

To build a native mobile app for your business could be quite a task. If it is not a native mobile app, you just would not be able to provide the desired UX. So, quit the idea, if it is not a native mobile app. The question again is how time consuming a native mobile app can be. Or, the maintenance of the mobile app.

However, if you have a Magento 1 powered website, your worries are just a little less. All you require is Magento 1 powered website. And our Magento extension can provide native mobile apps. Using our MageMob App Builder you can build native mobile app for iOS and Android. Find out more about MageMob App Builder (Previously known as MageMob Cart).

Conclusion

In order to enhance functionalities of your web store, you may opt for in-house development or external resources. However, there are extensions libraries for Magento Website Extensions. AppJetty is a trusted Extensions store for Magento extensions. We are Magento Certified developers and provide more than 100 extensions to global clientele.

These powerful extensions add value to your store through enhanced functionalities. Instead, running through the cycle of development, explore the features and review of our products. We provide extensive support for of our products. Additionally, we provide regular updates and security patches for our products at regular intervals. Explore our Magento extensions store and find out more about them.

The post Tips To Boost Your Magento Web Store Sales appeared first on AppJetty .

The winter is coming and even if it doesn’t take a thousand years to be the coldest one, it does bring cold winds with it. But for the realm of the ecommerce entrepreneurs winter gets hotter and hotter. The winter is never cold for them!

The 4th Quarter every year brings in the opportunities for the online retailers as it instigates a shopping spree starting from October with Halloween and continues till Christmas! The winter commerce turns the tables in terms of revenue generation for all the online players. The sales multiply as soon as the festival commences. It is one of the biggest festive events that takes place in the world. With a healthy US Economy, lesser unemployment and increase in incomes, it is estimated that the people would buy more again this year. You knew that all, alright!

Here’s the Why:

More connected devices – simple!

Over 8 Billion smartphones across the world embark the expectancy of a gigantic shift towards online sales. And the festive season is the grand finale to equal the scores.

The winter shopping season which began with Halloween and it is to be followed by the holiday weekend of Thanksgiving (23 November), Black Friday (24 November) & Cyber Monday (27 November). Should there be any better time to cover up (or catch up) for all the losses you may have bared the entire year. You can attract the customers with massive discounts and give your users the ease of shopping at their convenience by providing a hassle-free user experience.

It’s not an easy task and all you eCom players flex your muscles and grab the opportunity as the winter holidays are the final year on cap on your revenue. It has been often seen that the black Friday to cyber monday are capable of making or breaking the entire fiscal revenue forecast of a business. The eComm players need to be innovative to succeed in this event where customers are looking for a healthy deal which suits them.

THE BEGINNING

The Halloween shopping kicked off this year’s winter commerce. The overall number of online sales do indicate that the christmas would definitely be merry for eComs. You know your numbers and you sure can compare them with last year’s. What did you get right? And, what you did not? Is your relative comparison ratio better, or lower? Well, these are the numbers you know. For the ones you do not, run Surveys. Who else knows better than your buyer about these details anyway?

Few Mistakes

Many users couldn’t relate with the offers and the Product combination packages. Few of them found better deals on other stores or perhaps the keywords were not optimized correctly for searching a particular product on your store. Some couldn’t find relevant products on your store. All these result in a low conversion ratio. The time is now to discover them, to rectify them.

Learn From Your Failures

You can always learn from the failures and give the customers something better while focusing on improvements. The first thing for improvement is to know your mistakes and next step is to transform your weakness into your strength as the shopping season has just started. You need to be prepared for your Christmas to be Merry.

DISCOUNT ON CART VALUE

Get 1+ Product in Cart!

The festive season is about heavy discounts, mouth watering offers and sales! The celebration is worth only if people feel they shopped at discounted rates and gained some freebies. During the November sale people look forward to buy gift cards & certificates, jewellery, books, electronic goods, candies, decorative goods. The season also kicks off the winter breeze and they look forward to buy all the winter accessories. Warm leather jackets and gum boots.

The Attractive Offers & Its Relevance

The users can be allured with some spooky make-over of the landing page which pops up the festive offers. Combos of two or three products can be clubbed together at a discounted rate fixed by you, which may include the most selling and the least selling product. Or let’s say, if the user buys from the same segment or brand and the bill goes beyond $100, the user gets a discount of 10%.

You can also look to provide direct coupon codes, using them the users can avail discounts or cashbacks upto certain margins. Offers for the first time users and some referral codes from friends too allow some discounts. All this requires automation and a tool which makes your work as a manager easy.

NEED FOR A LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR

A language translator is an extension tool which allows you to delimit complexities of cultural and geographical barriers. The Halloween and the entire winter festival is celebrated across almost all over the globe. But not all of those countries and their people speak the same tongue. For your eCommerce store to be earning more it needs to be serving all those people and it needs to translate the source language into the target language.

Reach More to Gain More!

Considering the second largest market of the world and the largest during the winter sale, the European Union itself has 27 countries and many of the member countries have more than one local languages. To target maximum number of people a language translation extension is a must for your store.

Impact of Compromises

Some online stores lack this feature and only the currencies are translated leaving the product description in english. This leaves the user frustrated and impacts the business negatively. Retailers make this mistake in the short sighted vision of saving some money. You shouldn’t overlook the fact that a complete translation can generate more revenue as it empowers you to take your stores services to more and more people and the better the chances of your ROI.

SCHEDULED DELIVERY & ORDER TRACKING

Something that gets ignored too often!

Managing a mammoth eComm traffic and the delivery of those products during a festive season is a serious task. The customers tend to become very choosy about the delivery date. You can let your customers to personalize their shipping dates, delivery dates using delivery date extension tools with which your users can format dates, time, national holidays, weekend days, time range, and can even comment delivery notes.

Delivery time & date is a user-oriented feature. It is really easy to use incorporated in the frontend. Customers can choose delivery date & time and they can also choose predefined comments that can cope up automatically. It is also planned easily after shipping method segment that brings the finest logic for customers.

This reduces the rejection rate that can occur when you allow the users to choose when they want delivery. The flexibility you provide your users will become your unique selling point. Your customers would love it because they wouldn’t be receiving calls from your delivery men, they would be allowed to track their orders seamlessly and all your resources would be utilized with maximum efficiency.

“How to make this year better?” is the critical question Product Managers are often encountered with.

There are no ready recknors in Digital space. You do the math based on the numbers your business produces. You take decisions based on that data available to you. Online Survey and post-season analysis are just as critical as the pre-season meetup to ascertain the strategy.

The post When the Shoppers Howl and You Must Deliver appeared first on AppJetty .

Being an e-commerce web store owner you don’t want to lose any of the sales opportunity. Most of the e-commerce platforms provide buyers with an optimum experience while purchasing the products and assumes that after that the whole responsibility is of the Courier Company. But, only a few of them have an enhanced order tracking functionality on their websites. However, this approach is wrong.

Let’s brief at some of the most common complaints and how your business can get on top of them before they turn your buyers away.

No Order Tracking Available

“Where’s my order?”

If you’ve countered this question before, then you precisely understand the significance of being able to deliver your products perfectly and on time. Such question arises when there is order tracking facility is not provided to the customer nor on your website or on shipping portal.

Your buyers put a lot of trust in you to get them their orders and if they feel doubtful about when their package is going to show up, the complaints will start rolling in.

Third Party Shipment Portal Complaints

“My Order No. is Invalid”!

“Unable to Access Shipment URL”!

This query is countered in scenarios where you are not providing online order tracking and your consumer has to depend completely on third-party website for eyeing their parcel. Errors on third party websites may leave your buyers annoyed and disappointed. As said first impression is the last impression, customers are not likely to return to an online store which caused them an inconvenience of not knowing their order status. Low quality service of such portal may have a direct effect on your portal sales.

Solution is Simple

Keeping your customers happy is all about managing expectations. Small or big, domestic or international, direct selling or multi-vendor, every Magento online store must have a Magento 2 Track Order Extension that gives transparent information about the status and delivery progress of an order. Below listed are some of the features that can boost your website sale by using order tracking software.

Option to Create New Track Order Page

With Magento 2 track order extension, you can obtain separate page of order tracking without affecting present website design. The new track page can have option to enter customer order number and email address.

Real-Time Tracking

Customers can have real-time access to all order status and shipment tracking details of the products ordered through Magento 2 tracking order extension.

Allows Accessing Order Status without Logging

Almost all e-commerce websites offer to view order status by logging in into the website. But through track order extension you can provide shoppers facility to check the order status without login.

Email Users Track Order Link

Being a merchant, you can send the track order page link to the buyer through email. As a result, your e-shoppers can easily track their orders via email.

The below listed are some goals which can be accomplished by installing Track Order Extension on your Magento ecommerce store.

• Consumers are Given Sense of Assurance
• Earns Trust and Loyalty of Customers
• Saves Admin Costs
• Simplifies Supply Chain Management

Ideas That Can Become Trend for Tomorrow

In today’s time, live order tracking is essential for an ecommerce website to remain in the competition. Above this all, ecommerce giant Amazon have started providing premium live order tracking feature which includes SMS alerts along with one day shipping facility.

Moreover, many big companies are eyeing to offer drone deliveries to their consumers. Due to this, there will be big swift in order tracking process as well. It may be possible that shoppers in upcoming times will be able to track down drones through the navigation maps integrated inside e-commerce store mobile applications.

Furthermore, advance BLE devices like Beacons can be integrated into shipment tracking extension to provide live monitoring and tracking of the expensive parcels. Beacon devices can communicate with the mobile apps through Bluetooth. Hence, Beacons can be easily attached with the costly shipments. Through such gadget, user can track products through maps integrated with mobile application or Magento extensions.

Conclusion

To conclude, it is essential to step hand by hand with the changing trends in e-commerce market. User order tracking software has proved to be a key factor in increasing customer trust, reliability and purchases. Using such extension can prove beneficial in reducing your business administrative costs and hassles created by order delays. The coming time will show what advancements will be coming in order tracking system. But one thing is sure that consumers will surely be benefited from such technological advancements.

The post Let Your Buyers Track Their Own Shipments appeared first on AppJetty .

Amazon and Flipkart are some of the best examples of mobile apps becoming extremely popular amongst customers due to their user-friendly interface and multifaceted functionalities. If you own a Magento Store, it is important to have a mobile app for Magento so that the customers can reach your brand easily. The question is, how can an app like this be created and what features it must have in the frontend and backend to make it feasible to use.

If you are an entrepreneur willing to have an intuitive ecommerce app, this piece of writing may help. So here are some insights on creating an app that works:

Know what you want to sell

Have you decided the type of products you want to sell online? Do you want to start with limited products and then go on to adding other categories or are you ready to sell a huge range of products? Talking about Flipkart and Amazon, you should know that both had started by selling books and thereafter went on to add other products.

Also, you must have a clear idea about the market scenario of the products that fall into your forte. After deciding, you can add those categories in your app. It is advisable to start small and keep adding categories once your business starts expanding.

Find out about your competitors

Before you start designing your app, it is must to know about your competitors. Ask yourself questions like “Why should my customers choose my brand’s app over others?” Start exploring different apps and find out which are the most liked functionalities and features in them. Read the reviews and comments provided by different customers along with their feedbacks. These things will teach you what not to do with your app.

Thereafter, you can come up with a list of features that an online shop like yours provides. Shortlist the ones you like the best and make sure you inculcate them into your app. However, make sure you are unique from others in some way so that you can build your USP. Take help from business experts/analysts and start brainstorming.

Offer smart search options

Customers love quick and refined results. After opening your app, it is unlikely for them to keep scrolling until they find what they want. You can integrate an open source enterprise search platform like Solr to your Magento app which enables your customers to conduct an advance search for the product they want. By integrating this functionality to your app, your customers will find it easy to search for what they want right from the app and order easily. A smart search will definitely bring down the number of cart abandonments resulting out of the inability to find a particular product.

Don’t overwhelm

A minimalistic approach is must with an app. Offering too many functionalities thinking that “My customers will love it!” often comes across as a wrong decision. A cumbersome, loud and confusing application can invite several dislikes. So it is better to display lesser products and have a neat looking app. As mentioned above, you can focus on the major features of the app like easy login or product search option. Also, keep the payment simple and customer forms short so there are lesser cart abandonments.

Have an intuitive backend

There are several backend Android and iOS based mobile apps available for the entrepreneurs so that they can handle their inventory, check order details, track order fulfillments and manage all the aspects of their ecommerce store whenever they want from their devices. So along with a nice front end app that you provide your customers, make sure you also get a good quality inventory or admin application. This will help you streamline your business processes and run your business smoothly.

Be available for help

Good support facility forms the crux of any business. Make sure your customer support team can be reached at the click of a button. Provide an option of help in your app and make sure you render an outstanding support so that your customers feel valued. By doing so, you will make your app reliable and more welcomed for people. After your app gets up and running, you can add features like “customer reviews”, “feedbacks” and “ratings”. Let your customers provide their feedbacks on your app. Thereafter, you can enlist the pain points and make enhancements with your app.

On a Final Note…

After keeping the above tips on creating an Ecommerce App like Amazon and Flipkart, you can start researching on a company that can help you develop a mobile app for Magento. Ask for quotations and development costs from different companies and look at the UX/UI design services being offered by them. Approach a company that deems right to serve your needs.
If you are a start up business, there might be a possibility that your budget is limited.
And it is not necessary for you to have a fully functional and classy looking app from the beginning. Start small and keep upgrading from time to time so that you can reach out to your customers in the best possible way.

So what keeps you waiting? Now is the right time if you want to make your business reach the fingertips of your customers. What features would you want your business app to have? Feel free to share with us!

The post How Can Ecommerce Store Owners Create an App Like Amazon and Flipkart? appeared first on AppJetty .

Don’t Hurry the Launch

A common mistake made by eCommerce entrepreneurs is rushing their website launch. Ideally, they should wait till all the groundwork has been done before announcing their project to the world. This homework includes taking care of paid advertising, social media, content marketing, SEO, etc. So, after you register your domain name, put up a “Coming Soon” sign on your site till you are fully ready for the launch.

Make the User Experience Delightful

The biggest disadvantage of an online store compared to a brick-and-mortar store is that customers cannot take a firsthand look at the products. You cannot resolve this problem, but you can still provide a delightful experience to shoppers. You should hire competent ecommerce development service providers if you are not comfortable doing it yourself. Use a simplified shopping cart to ease checkout, offer promotions and discounts, and ship the goods free to the customer’s’ address. Happy customers may well return to your online store for repeat purchases and talk about their good experience to their friends and contacts.

Do Thorough Testing

The success of your eCommerce venture depends on thorough analytics and testing. Put yourselves in the shoes of the buyer and take an objective look at the features that are working and not working, and find out the reasons for failures. This will enable you to rectify the errors quickly. Use quality A/B testing solutions for the purpose.

Make Good Use of Social Media

Social Media has become a popular internet phenomenon and you should not outsource this activity. In fact, take a hands-on approach and handle social media monitoring and marketing yourself as much as possible. You can learn about the lifestyles and buying attitudes and behaviors of your customers, and this will help you to personalize your strategy for each high-value shopper. Hire the services of an experienced social media manager and take the time out to get involved personally too.

Include Social Elements

This tip is a follow-up to the previous one. Enable your buyers to provide their feedback through product reviews and testimonials, and add follow buttons as well as social login choices to boost customer engagement in your products and business.

Go Mobile

Smartphones are becoming the preferred device of the millennial generation for internet browsing, searching, and shopping. Therefore, go all out to provide a great user experience for mobile users. They should be able to easily find your online store, select their preferred products, and check out them effortlessly. Needless to say, your business may well fade into oblivion if your site is not mobile-optimized.

Manage SEO Effectively

The eCommerce industry is getting crowded with a lot of new players entering the market regularly. Therefore, it is important to carve out your niche and identity in this crowded space. The way to do it is to manage your SEO activities and campaigns effectively. Hire skilled SEO strategies to improve your online store’s visibility and rankings on popular search engines. Interested shoppers should be able to find your site easily on the internet. If your ecommerce store is on Magento you can also install a good Magento SEO extension to take care of all your on-page SEO issues.

Collect and Analyze Customer Data

It is important to gather customer information and details to grow your website and also for future launches. Invest in a quality business intelligence software solution and hire the services of experienced analysts who can crunch the collected data. They should be able to provide actionable insights that you can use to craft targeted marketing campaigns to engage specific customer segments. The valuable insights can also help you to make smarter business decisions.

Establish Strategic Partnerships

Your online store cannot stand on its own. You need to form strategic partnerships with established vendors and brands who can add quality to your products and services. Make use of their knowledge and expertise to improve your online business.

Implement an Effective Content Strategy

Content marketing can help you to generate a steady stream of organic leads. Admittedly, it can be a bit expensive to create and publish quality content, but the investment is worth it. You can start a blog, share your articles and posts on social networks, and connect with leading websites and industry publications in your niche.

Keep Learning and Evolving

Finally, be keen to learn more about your business, customer tastes, and the latest eCommerce trends to evolve and grow continuously. You are sure to make mistakes as you go along but do not get disheartened by temporary setbacks. Learn from the experience and use it to improve your business.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that eCommerce offers a lucrative business opportunity, but you need to make strenuous and smart efforts to be successful in this crowded field. You can consult a reliable B2B software marketplace such as the FinancesOnline.com review site for detailed analyses of the best shopping cart systems to select a suitable one for your needs. We also hope our useful tips are a good contribution to you in this regard. If you are already implementing or know about other effective eCommerce strategies, feel free to share the details with us in this space.

The post 11 Success Tips for Your eCommerce Business appeared first on AppJetty .

If you own a Magento based online store, it’s time for you to enhance your order delivery services. The question here is, “How?” There are Magento based ecommerce extensions that help your customers to pre-schedule their order delivery. At AppJetty, we also have an extension for this. Called Delivery Date Scheduler, it’s a nifty little extension that removes uncertainty from your order delivery process.

Through this article, we will know how you can make the most of such extensions and make your order delivery process more certain and efficient for your customers.

Offer an estimated delivery date

Not all customers expect business owners to deliver their order on the same day. But offering an estimated delivery date certainly gives you an edge over your competitors. Now, this might seem like a very obvious thing to do. But a lot of online stores do not provide this facility. For eg, If someone is looking for a last minute anniversary gift, he/she would definitely choose to buy from an online store that provides a particular date and time of delivery. This is because customers get an idea about when the product is likely to arrive and the amount of extra price that needs to be added.

Provide multiple shipping options

For an emergency delivery situation like the one mentioned above, you can provide different shipping options through your extension. For eg, Fedex offers 5 types of delivery options whereas UPS provides eight different shipping services from same day delivery to 5 business days. Customer can choose a shipping service that is most convenient and trustworthy and place an order accordingly.

Set minimum and maximum time intervals

Apart from giving the freedom of setting delivery date to the customers, admin can also set minimum and maximum time intervals for the delivery of products. This can be done while placing orders from the backend. Also, multiple addresses can be added in the checkout page by making delivery date compulsory. The fixed time intervals provide an option for the customers to choose from the available dates. This brings convenience to both – the vendor and the customer.

Push notifications

Delivery date scheduling extensions also provide an option to integrate shipping notification facility to your system. Through this automated system, you can send a notification to customer once the delivery is given to the carrier. This gives an idea to the customer as to when the order is expected to arrive. Sending push notifications helps you to lessen the amount of calls received from customers enquiring about the expected date and time of delivery.

Monitor and track delivery orders

As a lot of orders are dispatched from your ecommerce store, it is quite likely that you might lose a track to some of them. Through a scheduler extension, you can have a section on the dashboard of your backend that keeps you updated about all the latest delivery orders. Not only that, you can also track all the latest delivery orders and have a repository of your data.

Apart from the above mentioned functions, you can also let the customers know about your work timings, help them to manage delivery orders through a user-friendly UI and send reminder emails. If you want to have a customer centric online business, you must improve your order delivery process. Make sure you invest into an extension like this so that you can save time and efforts spent after streamlining the delivery process. It can work wonders for both you and your customers.

The post Pre-Scheduled Order Delivery Service: How Can You Make the Most of It? appeared first on AppJetty .

As a retailer, you might have wondered about can the products in your store be personalized by your customers. With our best selling online product design tool, Advance Product Designer, you can allow your customers to design their own products in five easy steps. Let’s see how.

Step 1 – Install Advance Product Designer

Installing Advance Product Designer is effortless. All you need to do is to follow the step by step instructions as given in the guide and you will be done in no time. Thereafter you can make configurations for your customers. You can add cliparts and templates that your customers can use during the design process.

Step 2 – Product Addition

Enable your customers to choose from a variety of products rendered by your store. Once the products are shortlisted, they can add their own text, images and clipart or select from the options provided by you. Make sure you provide variety of themes, images, templates and colours so that the customers can feel free to design the product the way they want.

Step 3 – Product Customization

The third and the most important step is to let your customers customize the product they have selected in the best possible way. Our product design tool offers an array of masking and effect options so that your customers can craft something that they would love to buy. It also offers options like various designs and patterns, templates having different colours, printing options and social media sharing. This way you will bring out the artist in them.

Step 4 – Product Preview

Online stores are different from the traditional ones as the customers cannot hold and have the feel of products with their hands. After the product has been customized, checking the overall the look and feel of the product is very important. There should be an option for them to preview the same design on different products so that they can be sure about what they are buying. For products with cylindrical shape, a 360 degree view can be provided so that the design can be viewed from different angles.

Step 5 – Order & Checkout

Placing the final order should be the easiest part. If you want to increase your sale of customized products, make sure the rate of cart abandonments go down. The process of ordering becomes easy if there is a responsive mobile and desktop design. Also have a safe and secure payment gateway so that the customers know that they are buying from a trustworthy store.

Advanced Product Designer has a responsive web design and is extremely easy to install. Integrate it with your Magento store and you will start noticing the difference in your sales figures. Your search for the best designer tool in the market is just a click away!

The post How To Use Online Product Designer for Personalizing Products appeared first on AppJetty .

Failing to optimize title tags

It is very important to make changes with the title tag. There are many SEO professionals who love to optimize title tags but they usually apply the wrong method. For eg, while making the title tag for home page, they title it as ‘Home’. But they need to understand that the title of the home page should be such that it describes the business and its services. An SEO expert will usually understand how title tags work and provide you with the best optimization so that your website can rank high.

Using duplicate URLs

Duplicate URLs are a strict no no if you want your ecommerce search engine optimization to be successful. If you think there are issues of duplication with your URLs, go to System-Configuration-Catalog-Search Engine Optimization and select the option ‘No’ in the field of ‘Use Categories Path for Product URLs’. You can also go to the Admin section, Select System Configuration-Design-HTML head and come up with a new title in the ‘Default Title’ section. You should also make sure that your title is unique and relevant with your business.

Sitemap with staging URLs

If you want your Magento store to rank well on the Google, make sure your Sitemap is free from unnecessary URLS. Some Magento store admins forget that there is a difference between the URL of a staging and live site. And since they forget to remove those URLs, lot of just urls get added in Google search index adversely impacting website SEO. So it is always a good idea to create an XML sitemap by using the right URLS from the live site.

No index, No follow

The step to be followed after making a website live is getting its pages indexed by search engines. If you forget to change robots.txt to enable site, your site won’t get indexed on Google. To enable site indexing, you must check the robots.txt file and meta robots directives that can be found in the section of every page. Set them to INDEX – FOLLOW by default. Make sure you can check it at System -> Configuration -> General -> Design -> HTML Head -> Default robots.

Not using alt tag for your images

It is high time for the store owners to understand the importance of product photography. Images are everything when you are selling your products on estore and displaying them. You might be making some image related mistakes unknowingly. One of them is not using alt tag on your images. So make sure you go back to all your images and add alt tag to all of them. It is important to do this as the search engine spiders cannot identify what your picture is about. When you write a description that goes with your image, it helps to improve the ranking of your website.

Not Turning on Canonical URL setting

Turn on canonical url setting for all your products and categories and avoid your website from getting penalized due to duplicate content issues. Canonical url tags tell search engines which version of your urls is the primary one and that gets index and all others get ignored for ranking purposes. Thus if you have more than one urls for any product or category (typically www and non www versions of your urls, but can be other types of duplicate urls as well), your website wouldn’t suffer due to duplicate content issue.

Disregarding user generated content

Search engines love customer reviews. This is because the reviews are what lead your buyers to purchase products from your website. A research conducted by eConsultancy concluded that “Website visitors that consider both reviews and customer questions are more likely to make a purchase. These visitors are likely to spend 11% more than people who do not interact.” So do not undermine the user generated content. Instead, get your customers to provide reviews and interact as much as possible.

Refrain from committing the seven mistakes mentioned above and you will definitely improve your rankings on Google. If you are new to Magento SEO and want an easy way to take care of all the above steps and all other on page SEO tasks, you can use our best selling Magento SEO extension, SEO Hub.

The post 7 Common Magento SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them appeared first on AppJetty .