Posted on

Ecommerce Trends of the Future to Watch in 2020

Businesses across multiple industries are turning to ecommerce in a big way. For a few years, online shopping seemed like it could be a tool for expanding offerings. Now, we know that the ecommerce revolution is changing how shopping occurs in-store and online forever. With a ton of room to grow your business, keep an eye on these ecommerce trends of the future for 2020.

Trends to Watch in Ecommerce in 2020

A few key areas of ecommerce are leading to serious growth for businesses. Don’t get left behind by the competition. Start working these approaches and insights into your marketing and sales strategies.

Customize the Shopping Experience

Every business wanting a piece of the ecommerce market needs to stand out. That’s why key areas of interest for businesses include retail app development and increased mobile optimization. With consumers having more options than ever, simply having a website isn’t enough anymore. Shoppers love brands with their own app and over 50% of shoppers visit dedicated retail apps more than once a week. That’s some serious screen time you get in front of interested customers. 

Power to the Consumer in Customization and Experience

It’s great to have your products listed on a website or app. It’s going to likely introduce new visitors to what you have to offer. What really sets great ecommerce experiences apart from the herd is consumer experience. Most notably, the ability to see in-depth looks at products and explore areas for customization help to drive sales. Micro-conversions that give shoppers more say in what they’re buying can also increase revenue from individual sales. That’s a win-win for everyone.

Reinventing the Customer Service Experience with AI

Artificial intelligence used to be something we read about in books or saw in movies. Now, it’s likely helping you when you ask a question about products online. There are a ton of AI solutions entering the ecommerce space that make shopping easier for shoppers. Not to mention, AI does the work for the business so they don’t have to waste employee resources on answering basic questions. AI might not be replacing human customer service representatives, but they’re a wonderful tool to allow for employees to focus on more pressing matters.

Engaging Over Email Isn’t Dead, But Needs Some Serious Change

The old days of email newsletters that look the same for everyone receiving them are over. That might help get your product information and offerings in front of customers, but they aren’t buying. Just like you don’t expect to make much progress cold-calling potential clients, you’ll get the same result sending bland emails. With a potential ROI on email marketing campaigns being higher than most outreach methods, don’t plunder your best chance at converting sales. Personalize your emails and use your brand’s flair to turn curiosity about your business into concrete leads. 

Why Trends in Ecommerce Matter in 2020

The trends we’re seeing in ecommerce today aren’t possible areas of success for the future. These are proven methods for growth in the online market. Make the most of what works for businesses that dedicate their efforts to digital spaces and build a brand of the future. 

Posted on

Success

The bolder we are, the more power can be released through us. It’s when we hesitate and are afraid of what people might think that nothing happens.

Posted on

WordPress, should I start using it? – Part 2

Plugins

WordPress has a big collection of plugins, all stored in the WordPress Plugin Directory. The plugins are addons that make the WordPress platform even more functional and interactive.

The original version of WordPress lacks quite a lot of features, and it comes only with the CMS option. Adding plugins like WooCommerce, Mailchimp for WordPress, WPForms Lite or activating the Jetpack integration will turn your site into a powerful platform for selling, capturing customer information and interacting with your existing customers or leads by providing content to their inboxes or social media feeds.

We already said a few things about WooCommerce, the plugin that turns WordPress into an eCommerce platform.

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that works with lists of emails. The WordPress integration makes it easy to funnel new leads and interact with your existing customers via email. Each new post or page can be delivered to their email seconds after it’s being published.

Jetpack for WordPress is a service with quite a lot of features. One of the interesting features is social media integration. It will connect your social media accounts to your WordPress and each time you make a post, the data will go directly to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn profile or page.

These are just a few of the plugins that can add value to your WordPress site. There are a lot of other promising and interesting plugins that can make WordPress your ultimate tool for business survival and social media marketing.

All in all, if you don’t have a lot of expectations and you use WordPress mostly as a content platform, this is the right choice for you.

Posted on

WordPress, should I start using it?

You probably heard by now about WordPress. Either from a friend, coworker, someone you know. Maybe you’re using it!

So what is WordPress?

WordPress is an online website creation tool, or, a web-based content management system.

Initially released in 2003, it is probably the most used tool for online presence. WordPress as a platform managed to stand out, becoming even more famous than it’s rivals, platforms like Joomla, Drupal Tumblr, Squarespace, etc. Although those platforms still have large numbers of users, the community support behind WordPress makes it one of the most reliable and flexible platforms that are out there.

How does it work?

WordPress has to be installed on a web server. The convenient administration interface allows the owner to log in and manage the platform in a very intuitive way. The simple interface will definitely promote the writer and blogger in anyone, it’s as simple as writing a document using your word processor, like MS Word or Pages.

WordPress has two main concepts:

  • Pages
  • Posts.

A page is a static container of text and media (photos, images, videos). Also, a page can contain a list of posts.

A post is a single entry with a fairly large length. It can contain text and media and can be listed within a page.

Both can be edited using a graphical interface, accessible in the administration panel. It all depends on what’s the goal. Pages are used as welcome/home pages for blogs and sites. Posts are used to store frequent updates.

Knowing this, you can surely see the advantage of using WordPress as your personal or business online presence tool. Combined with a few plugins that connect to social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you are all set to promote your business and ideas to the world.

This is just the first of the WordPress series, we will have a close look at a few nice plugins which are a great addition to WordPress.

Posted on

E-Commerce, is it hard to do it? – Ecwid

Similar to its older brother, Ecwid is a complete eCommerce platform that comes for free.

Founded in 2009, it’s still growing steadily and attracting new customers. It’s free to open a new store on Ecwid, the only costs are domain related costs.

The existing app market has a lot of plugins to offer to increase the efficiency of any store. The cost for 1 year for this option is ~ $200.

PROS: Easy and fast signup process.

CONS: Any kind of redesign requires a lot of time and a technical person.

Posted on

E-Commerce, is it hard to do it? – Magento

The biggest of them all, Magento had its glory days some time ago. Released in 2008, it still holds steady.

Let us focus on the eCommerce product that Magento offers. Although robust and very easy to manage, it still needs a hosting provider and a lot of attention.

The existing marketplace will make any online store more dynamic and will help to automate a lot of day to day actions.

Because of the hosting and the setup, the amount spent to keep this platform running for 1 year is $300.

PROS: Easy to deal with, comes with all of the options, good support, big selection of addons.

CONS: Has to be maintained manually, needs a lot of attention.

Posted on

E-Commerce, is it hard to do it? – Etsy

Launched in June 2005, Etsy is one of the oldest eCommerce platforms.

It resembles eBay, it’s an all in one solution, ideal for a startup or a small business. They charge per listing and there is a 5% transaction fee.

PROS: Easy to set up, no initial costs, low fees.

CONS: The fees per transaction are quite big.