Ian, Author at Lateshipment.com

4 Emerging and Promising Ecommerce Logistics Trends for 2024

Ian — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 13:36:12 +0000

Based on Statista’s prediction, global retail e-commerce sales are expected to grow 9.5% from 2023, a slight decrease from last year’s increase (10%). A line that we’ve all been hearing since the end of the pandemic and the dawn of the new age of e-commerce shopping is expected to return this year as well — while the growth rate is slow, e-commerce is still growing.

There are two ways to look at this.

Customers are still open to shop online amidst the re-opening of brick-and-mortar stores
E-commerce merchants are going to adopt new initiatives to spur more customers to spend time with their business

While the growth of e-commerce means so many things, it directly translates to higher parcel volumes. As consumers increasingly turn to online shopping, there exists a surge that places significant pressure on shipping carriers and the supply chain’s infrastructure.

Research predicts global parcel volume to grow from 8.5% through 2027. This necessitates continuous adaptations within the e-commerce and logistics spaces to handle the increasing demand and ensure timely and efficient order deliveries.

That said, 6,913 billion dollars being spent on an industry worldwide in a single year is a huge deal. The question is “How much % of it are you spending on growing your business”?

Knowing what other businesses are cooking, what industry leaders are predicting, and what is going to happen in the e-commerce logistics landscape can help you put your best foot forward and enjoy the fruits of success.

E-Commerce Logistics (B2C and B2B Parcel Shipping) Trends For 2024

Enter 2024, a year poised to be a turning point in the e-commerce logistics saga.

Businesses and consumers alike are consistently raising the bar. Sustainability, efficiency, and hyper-personalization are the new buzzwords. There is a consistent demand for revolution in how goods journey from virtual carts to living rooms.

So, what’s new, what’s hot, and what matters most? Here’s a straightforward article that covers the key trends you need to know to optimize your shipping strategy and deliver a seamless experience for your customers this exciting year.

Here’s something that you can expect inside:

The newer role and impact of AI in logistics
The need for sustainability in packaging and shipping
The increasing demand for faster and efficient deliveries
The evolution of customer expectations and hyper-personalization
The changes in trade regulations and customs procedures

1. Integration of advanced technologies in the form of AI and machine learning

According to a recent report by McKinsey, 55% of business professionals confirmed that their organizations have already integrated AI technology into their operations. Also, with the e-commerce logistics industry expected to witness substantial growth in the adoption of AI in the upcoming years, businesses that haven’t tapped into using this technology will probably get left behind in the race toward redefining the game.

One of the primary roles of AI in e-commerce in 2024, is enabling predictive analytics and real-time data, helping businesses make data-driven decisions in areas like demand forecasting, route optimization, and inventory management. For example, with predictive analytics, retailers can better plan for seasonal fluctuations and avoid overstocking or stockouts. Also, with automated processes, there is a reduced workload on manual processes like paperwork, leading to lower errors, and delays and increased efficiency and cost-effective operations.

Ultimately, with access to AI technology, stakeholders who are dependent on the supply chain can make informed decisions quickly, adapt to changes, and respond to disruptions effectively, thereby making it a critical asset in today’s e-commerce environment.

What you can do to keep up: Make use of Inventory Management tools such as Zoho Inventory, Salesforce, etc, to forecast demand fluctuations, avoid stockouts, and ensure smoother deliveries.

2. A greater focus on sustainability

Amidst timely deliveries and growing technology, a trend that has witnessed a spike for the last couple of years is sustainability in logistics practices. This comes from the place of today’s shoppers’ growing awareness of environmental concerns and a desire for more eco-friendly practices and businesses catering to their needs.

Here are a few boxes that businesses are looking to tick in 2024 in the context of sustainability:

Reduced packaging waste: E-commerce businesses are increasingly adopting practices that minimize packaging waste. This includes using packaging materials that are recyclable, or easily biodegradable. Also, businesses are optimizing packaging sizes to reduce the amount of excess material used.
Green logistics: Major shipping carriers like DHL, FedEx, and UPS have always committed to reducing their massive carbon footprint from frequent order deliveries that they take up on a day-to-day basis. This involves taking up initiatives in the form of carbon–neutral shipping, EVs and other alternative fuels, efficient routing leading to lower fuel consumption, etc.

What you can do to keep up: Use eco-friendly materials for your packaging needs, prioritize shipping partners that use electric vehicles and other carbon-neutral delivery options, sustainable warehousing, etc, will all come together to minimize the environmental impact of e-commerce logistics. Don’t forget to promote yourself as an eco-conscious e-commerce brand and ensure that consumers favor you.

3. A shift towards customer-centric experiences

In today’s highly competitive e-commerce landscape, the CX that businesses provide acts as the competitive differentiator. This leads to brands increasingly adopting a customer-centric approach to cater to the evolving needs and expectations of online shoppers. This approach encompasses various strategies and initiatives aimed at enhancing the overall shopping experience and building customer loyalty.

2024, much like previous years, taking a customer-centric approach involves providing personalized product recommendations, having a user-friendly Interface to minimize friction in the buying journey, offering proactive responsive customer service channels, faster shipping and delivery options, flexible returns and exchanges, omnichannel experiences, etc.

Also, with the abundance of data available and customers willing to share their data for a more personalized experience, businesses are increasingly tailoring their logistics operations to individual customer preferences. This means not only personalized product recommendations but also customized delivery options including delivery preferences like time slots and delivery locations.

4. Increased focus on strengthening Cybersecurity

As we progress further into the digital age, the e-commerce industry has become a prime target for cyberattacks. The increasing digitalization of supply chains has made them vulnerable to various threats, ranging from data breaches to ransomware attacks. In 2024, cybersecurity will take center stage as companies strive to fortify their defenses and safeguard the integrity and trust of their operations.

This includes secure backups, network segmentation, employee training to recognize and prevent phishing attacks, and improved user identity verification methods.

Naturally, businesses can expect stricter regulations and cybersecurity measures to safeguard customer information and ensure the integrity of delivery systems. Additionally, the physical security of packages will be paramount, with advanced tracking and anti-theft solutions becoming commonplace.

What you can do: Cybersecurity tools like IBM and Kaseya to safeguard customer information and ensure the integrity of delivery systems. Additionally, physical security of packages is paramount, so make use of a post-purchase automation solution like LateShipment.com with real-time tracking to stay in the know of parcels at all times and communicate the same with your customers.

Over to You

2024 promises to be a turning point in e-commerce logistics. By embracing these trends, businesses can gain a competitive edge, build customer loyalty, and contribute to a more sustainable future of deliveries. Whether you’re a tech-savvy start-up or a seasoned retailer, buckle up and get ready for the thrilling ride ahead!

The post 4 Emerging and Promising Ecommerce Logistics Trends for 2024 appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How to Respond to Customers After a Late Delivery

Ian — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 11:41:24 +0000

Late delivery incidents are frequent, almost inevitable, and happens primarily because of shipping carriers failing to keep up with their promises of on-time delivery despite their busy schedules during times like the holiday season and while facing supply chain disruptions.

As an e-commerce retailer, it makes sense to take a look at how late deliveries can be problematic to you.

Up to 10% of parcels are delivered late during the holiday season
Nearly half of consumers (45%) say they are unlikely to continue ordering from a company even after just one instance of late delivery
Frustrated customers with delayed holiday gifts will take their frustrations to social media and demotivate others from shopping with you.

On-time deliveries, though, aren’t always within a business’s control. And avoiding customer concerns and complaints when they question you about a late delivery only makes matters worse.

So, here are 4 tips for how you can respond to customers after a late delivery and focus on doing long-term business with them even after a poor delivery experience.

How to respond to customers after a late delivery in 2022

1. Be Honest about Your Capabilities

Don’t put your company in a situation where late deliveries are common because you’re stretching your shipping resources too thin.

Provide customers with realistic shipping times, even if that means your competitors can deliver quicker.

Quick shipping is an attractive benefit to consumers, but knowing when to expect their deliveries is far more important.

Be honest with your customers about how quickly you can deliver an item. You risk damaging your relationship with them if you can’t fulfill your deliveries on time.

2. Be Transparent about Delays

Even if the reason for the late delivery is not your fault (when it’s due to weather or other unforeseen events), acknowledge the delay and contact your customer immediately.

Your customers already hold you accountable for late deliveries and even go to the extent of stopping doing business with you, so why not take responsibility for it and try to ease their frustrations? Also, customers are more forgiving when you’re transparent about the reasons for the delay and the adjusted shipping dates.

For example, Boxycharm women’s subscription box sends out its products in the early part of each month. Its subscribers look forward to receiving their boxes and complain loudly on social media when boxes don’t arrive on time.

When Boxycharm learned there would be a 2-week shipping delay due to product shortages, it notified customers of the delay immediately and told them exactly when to expect their shipments.

While nobody’s happy about receiving a late delivery, consumers do understand that weather emergencies and product shortages can cause delays.

When you let them know about a late delivery in advance, they’re less disappointed and more likely to forgive the problem.

3. Be Generous with Your Time and Compensation

According to an online shopping study, 90% of consumers complain publicly or privately, online and offline, after a late delivery or other bad delivery experiences.

Negative comments on social media aren’t always bad for your brand, though. People view brands more positively when they respond to negative comments. This gives you the chance to win back your original customers and visitors who are reading through your comments and reviews.

Thank complaining customers for their input, and let them know that you value your business and are making every effort to ensure late deliveries don’t happen again in the future.

Many businesses ask unhappy customers to message them privately, and frequently this means they’ll offer some compensation for their inconvenience.

Offering a credit, shipping refund, or free gift to customers whose deliveries are late shows that you value their business. These types of small gestures can help you retain customers who otherwise may not return.

For example, when Grove Collaborative experienced a significant shipping delay with its products, it emailed customers with an explanation, sincere apology, and free gift offer.

By offering a free gift with the next order, Grove increased its chances of customers returning to place an order in the future.

4. Be Proactive and Try Your Best to Resolve the Impact of a Late Delivery

Late deliveries are common and inevitable, yes. But what if there was a way for you to step in before your customers have been impacted by them?

This is where a real-time parcel tracking solution can come in handy.

With the ability to track all your parcels across carriers, geographic locations in real-time, get predictive alerts and flag shipments that seem to be staying behind on schedule. You can then enable your customer support team to intervene and fix the issue before it impacts your customer.

When your customer’s order is facing weather-related exceptions, you can send automated and timely notifications that are customized to the specific situation to keep your customers informed of what’s been happening with their parcels and ease their anxiety.

Even if the issue goes unresolved, your commitment towards taking proactive action can help you strengthen customer relationships and build rewarding delivery experiences.

Communication Can Help Retain Customers Who Experience Late Deliveries

Approaching your shipping operations from a customer-centric perspective helps retain customers in the case of late deliveries or shipping malfunctions.

Your company risks losing customers when shipments are behind schedule.

By communicating in a way that’s honest, transparent, and generous, you can significantly increase the chances of keeping your customers despite a poor delivery experience.

This Artilcle is a contribtion by Riley Panko

Riley Panko is a Marketing Communications Manager for Clutch, a B2B research, ratings, and reviews platform. Clutch helps business buyers make informed decisions about partnering with a business services or technology solutions partner.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Around Late Deliveries

1. How do you respond to a customer complaint about late delivery?

Be honest with your customers about your capabilities on how quickly you can deliver an item
Notify customers of the delay immediately and tell them when to expect their shipments
When customers who have experienced a shipping delay, write a sincere apology and offer them coupons for discounted prices on their next purchase
Send regular, personalized notifications that are tailor-made to the specific situation to keep your customers informed of what’s been happening with their parcels and ease their anxiety.

2. How do you apologize for delayed customers?

Acknowledge the delay and explain what really went wrong to your customers, offer them a list of solutions and let them choose what’s best for them and provide discounts such as free shipping/ reduced prices on their next delivery.

3. What causes late delivery of products?

The most common reasons for late deliveries are transit confusions due to human error, delivery exceptions such as failed deliveries, poor warehouse management, lack of coordination among the people involved, customs issues (for international shipments), acts of gods such as weather changes or natural calamities, etc. Also delays are more common during the holiday season when shipping carriers are operating beyond threshold.

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How Packaging Contributes to the Growth of an E-commerce Business

Ian — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 08:12:38 +0000

Analysts expect the value of the business-to-customer (B2C) market to reach over $7 trillion in 2030. The continued increase of e-commerce enterprises will make it more challenging for companies to stand out from the rest.

Brand identity will undeniably help businesses achieve the goal of automatic recognition, but it needs to be applied consistently to all their marketing efforts.

The packaging of your products is a vital aspect of this. It is part of the post-purchase experience and giving your clients a pleasant one will nurture customer retention.

Packaging Creates a Lasting First Impression

Great packaging with your brand on it can influence a first-time customer’s impression of your company.

Aside from conveying what your business stands for, it can delight clients and even urge them to make posts on their social media accounts. If done cleverly, you may have repeat customers who may keep on buying just because they love how their purchases look when delivered.

According to marketing experts Neon Ambition, creating a great brand identity that will set you apart from other online merchants is essential if you want to see your business grow.

Make sure that your brand colors, logo, and name are visible on the packaging.

Creative Packaging Makes Advertising Less Costly

Marketing campaigns can be costly and “packvertising” is the less expensive way to advertise your products, according to Packhelp.

Packvertising or using packaging for advertising is an innovative approach that helps promote goods AND beautifully secure them at a lower price.

A striking package design is a brilliant marketing strategy. It is very effective when you use it together with social media, content, and email marketing.

Packaging Shapes an Emotional Connection

Customers consider packaging almost as important as the products inside in the opinion of the GWP Group. They know your merchandise can help them, but how their orders look will cement their perception of your brand.

An initial positive response will pave the way for future sales. The continuity of branding in every step of the customer experience will be rewarding for both you and the client.

Remember, none of this will matter if the delivery service you use does not have the same level of commitment as you do.

Bottom Line

Customers will truly appreciate your business when the delivery of orders is timely and they arrive in excellent condition. Be sure that you pick one that aligns with the image that your firm projects.

The success of your company’s brand identity relies on how well you think about each stage of the sales process.

Packaging and vis-à-vis delivery as an afterthought will reflect poorly on the image your brand wants to represent.

This is a guest post by Linda Carter

Linda Carter is a writer and a digital marketing manager who inspires and empowers you to create marketing that your customers will love, igniting real results for your business.

The post How Packaging Contributes to the Growth of an E-commerce Business appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How to Avoid Delivery Delays During the Holiday Season

Ian — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 08:21:59 +0000

The world of eCommerce experienced a new phenomenon caused by COVID-19. The holiday season further adds more challenges to it in the form of sudden increase in online orders, shortage of in-stock items, and delivery delays.

Shipping carriers such as UPS and FedEx, have learned from experience and are preparing for the increased load. But they aren’t the only ones who should be taking measures to prevent delivery delays. It is the hands of eCommerce retailers as well.

Let’s delve in deeper and find out what causes delivery delays and how to avoid them when shipping overseas.

Impact of Delivery Delays

To some extent, delivery delays are inevitable when sending a package to a faraway destination. They are more likely to happen if you’re delivering gifts to a different continent as in the case of shipping to Europe from the USA. But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to prevent them.

Delivery delays cost a lot in the long run. They deal a blow to the reputation of the retailer.

Customers are less willing to buy from the same shop if they have experienced shipping delays. The negative feedback also makes it harder to attract new clients.

Not to mention extra costs. They might add up when you have to compensate the customer for a late package. You may also need to deal with cancellations or returns because the parcel took too long to arrive.

How to Avoid Delivery Delays

While some of the factors that impact package delivery, such as weather conditions and global events, are beyond human control, you can still take measures to minimize the risks. Here’s what you can do before the holiday season surges.

Adjust delivery expectations

The best way to deal with customer dissatisfaction over delivery delays is to establish realistic delivery expectations. Don’t wait till the peak of the holiday season. Start preparing your customers in advance.

You can put a banner on your website with the delivery times for the holiday season, especially for international shipping.

The key is to kindly inform and encourage the customer to order sooner to ensure that the goods are delivered on time for holidays.

Some of the international shipping companies, such as FedEx and UPS, have already posted their holiday season shipping schedules. You can follow their example and inform your customers beforehand.

Use multiple carriers

It’s comfortable to work with the same international shipping company that has delivered your packages for a long time. But when the holiday season arrives, your usual carrier might be overwhelmed with the increased volume of parcels. It’s a good idea to partner with more international parcel service providers to ensure that all your packages are handled on time.

If you’re shipping to Russia or Eastern Europe in general, consider partnering with a shipping company that specializes in delivering packages in this region. You can also cooperate with local delivery experts to take some load off your main carrier. Try to ensure several ways of transporting your goods to the client.

Track your packages

International package tracking has several benefits. It’s good for both the client and the retailer. The customer will feel more relaxed with the possibility to check on the parcel from time to time.

You, as the seller, can also take advantage of parcel tracking. You can observe where the packages are being held up and take action in advance.

Proper package tracking can even lessen the burden on customer support. Some clients might not be in a hurry to send inquiries about late packages if they can see at which point of the delivery chain their goods are delayed.

Prepare in advance

The holiday season comes every year at the same time. It’s very convenient because you can anticipate the increase in demand and make preparations beforehand. It’s best to learn from past experiences.

Analyze the most common causes of delivery delays from your personal experience. Try to identify the issues and fix them. Or have a solution ready, if they reappear this holiday season.

Take control of your delivery management

It may be difficult to control everything when shipping overseas during the holiday season. But you don’t have to do this alone. Consider crafting delightful delivery experiences with a post-purchase solution such as LateShipment.com

Delivery experiences from end to end consists of different aspects such as:

Enabling your customers to track their orders in real-time
Resolving delivery delays even before they happen
Delighting your customers with branded tracking pages
Engaging with your customers via automated and customized shipping transactional notifications
Collecting customer feedback to know how their delivery experiences fared.

Apart from all these aspects, an important factor i.e always overlooked while choosing a carrier is their delivery performance. Especially during times of high volume such as the holiday season or the pandemic period, shipping carriers have been known to have struggled to deliver on time amidst supply chain limitations.

Check out LateShipment.com’s ‘2021 State of Holiday Shipping in the US’ – an unbiased trend analysis and forecast report for UPS and FedEx from an on-time delivery performance standpoint in retail parcel shipping.

The post How to Avoid Delivery Delays During the Holiday Season appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How to Leverage Automation for Holiday Season Sales

Ian — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 07:46:16 +0000

The holiday sales season is often the most important for retailers. Researchers predict holiday ecommerce retail sales to make up 18.9% of total holiday sales this year, up from the year before. In 2020, retail ecommerce made up 17.5% of total holiday sales.

If retailers do not want to miss out on these sales, they must be in the selling channels where customers are spending their time.

It has never been more important for retailers and brands to be wherever the customer is, on their terms. Linnworks calls this Total Commerce.

Total Commerce means going to the customer rather than having the customer come to you. It means staying current on what channels customers are making their purchasing decisions. It’s difficult to constantly manage and keep up with these multiple sales channels. This is where automation comes in, putting Total Commerce control at the center of your business this holiday season.

The Power of Automating Inventory Management for Peak Season

One of the challenges high-growth retailers face is managing logistics through ever-expanding complex channels. Retailers must manage the orders, inventory, and shipping in multiple selling channels. The risk of human error greatly increases the more selling channels a business has when managing commerce manually.

Automation takes care of the management of these areas. Automation is especially important when you have high order volumes during the holiday season. For example, automation helps to solve one of the biggest problems retailers face: inventory management.

Successful inventory management is key to navigating the high-demand holiday season. Inventory management prevents stock-outs.

Stock-outs occur when retailers oversell their inventory. This can lead to a negative customer experience, lost revenue, and a permanently damaged reputation. Stock-outs are most likely to occur during sales surges, which is a common occurrence during the holiday season. This is where automation can be an invaluable asset to manage the stock levels of your inventory across all selling channels.

Get Your Products to Customers Easier and Faster With Shipping Management Automation

A shipping management system helps retailers decide what fulfillment method to use, and designate carrier services based on filtered criteria such as location or product information.

A system also allows you to manage the delivery experience of all of your orders, including being able to identify any delivery issues well before they happen. When you have this kind of insight, it helps you build long-lasting relationships with your customers by providing a positive delivery experience.

Moreover, a good shipping management system integrates well with third-party logistics companies to provide an immersive overall experience. 3PLs can handle the distribution, warehousing, and fulfillment of products.

3PLs can be extremely valuable to retailers because these companies have multiple fulfillment centers that are close to your customers, therefore decreasing the amount of time it takes to ship your products to your customers. Being closer to customers provides a huge advantage for retailers because it allows retailers to get their products to customers faster. 3PLs also save you money because you do not need to buy or rent warehouse space.

Manage Multiple Sales Channels in One Place with Automation

Automation helps retailers implement a successful sales channels strategy. Marketplaces are one type of sales channel and include well-known names like Walmart, eBay, and Amazon in an ever-growing area.

According to Linnworks, 90% of customers start their search for a product on a marketplace. In a consumer market where the winning retailers are wherever their customers are, wherever may seem like everywhere.

Each new marketplace is a possible selling channel to consider for a retailer. Marketplaces can be great for sales and also for more customers to find out about your brand. Automation helps you sell on all possible channels where your customers are spending their time, like marketplaces.

Accomplishing Total Commerce, being where your customers are, on their terms, is difficult to manage without automation. It has never been more important for retailers to be wherever their customers are, such as marketplaces.

Leverage the Power of Automation for the Holiday Sales Surge

Automation helps with your commerce operations while also helping you create a seamless, convenient customer experience.

Automation can consolidate selling channels, manage inventory across those channels, and coordinate shipping. Automation is the key to connecting your business to customers where they already spend their time, in a way that provides them a seamless experience, so that they will return again and again.

This article is a guest contribution from Linnworks

The post How to Leverage Automation for Holiday Season Sales appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

6 Tips to Prepare Your Dropshipping Business for the Holiday Season Surge

Ian — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:44:43 +0000

The holiday season is right around the corner, and apart from candied days, happy moments, lots of festive food, and there’s a high demand for gifts. This means a huge opportunity for your dropshipping store to cross your sales target and break your revenue records.

In 2020, the holiday season eCommerce sales in the US are projected to be $135 billion.

This shows how holiday season purchases still hold immense value despite the pandemic and can be a game-changer for your dropshipping store.

Dropshipping is gaining momentum and slowly becoming a more preferred choice than traditional eCommerce businesses as it helps businesses profit by selling products online without managing inventory on their own.

Combine it with the holiday madness, and you’ve got yourself a perfect strategy to double your revenue and to take your dropshipping store to the next level.

But, before we get into our toolkit to prepare your dropshipping business for the holiday season, let’s understand what dropshipping is and why exactly you should invest in it, now more than ever.

What is dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a method to fulfill orders by listing products online and passing them to a third-party supplier responsible for shipping them to the customers.

This business model does not require the store owner to keep a stock of the products but rather get involved in other aspects like management, customer service, and store maintenance.

While we’re talking about dropshipping, it’s safe to say it’s not a get-rich-quick-scheme.

It may look like a great way to make recurring money as you’re just listing and selling products. But, you still need to put in a lot of work in creating a properly functioning store, marketing it, taking care of listings, and customer service, above all.

But if you have a solid dropshipping strategy, it can take off your business profits massively.

Before you start dropshipping, it’s best to know some pros and cons:

Pros of dropshipping

Great source for building a passive income: Once you’ve listed the products, started marketing them, and have organized your processes to work on auto-pilot—you can earn money with little to zero further effort as orders will be placed and fulfilled automatically.
No inventory management worries: Since a supplier takes care of inventory and shipping, you can focus on marketing your store and getting more visitors to your website: more visitors, more sales, more profits.
Low overhead costs: You don’t have to maintain a brick-and-mortar shop or a warehouse for your products. There’s also no need to hire a full-fledged team to manage the store; you can hire a few freelancers on a project basis—and this way, you won’t have many overhead costs.
Lots of scope for experimentation: When you’re the supplier and seller, you need to take care of launching a new product line, but with dropshipping, you can introduce a whole line and if it doesn’t take off, simply remove it from your store. Since you’re not buying wholesale or committing to someone, you can experiment with different products and see what gets you sales.

Cons of dropshipping

Lots of competition: Dropshipping requires low capital investment initially, making it an easy entry point for anyone who wants to start a store
Low-profit margins: There’s only so much you can make by selling third-party products, and the expenses of creating and managing a store along with advertising hardly allow high profits
Minimal control over products: Since you’re just coordinating the efforts, and the supplier is sending the products to your customers, you hardly get to see the product condition or packaging. This gives you little to no control over the quality, which significantly impacts customer loyalty and store reputation
Hard to build your brand: When customers receive the product, they only care about the product, and not the shopping experience since you’re just the messenger. This makes it difficult to build retention for your business and build a sustainable brand for it.

6 top tips to prepare your dropshipping store for the Holiday season

Now that you’ve understood dropshipping from its roots, it’s time to understand how to prep your store for the holiday season. Consumers wait for festive sales because just for the gifts and discounts, hence the surge would be high during these times. This means your store needs to be ready to accommodate a high amount of visitors, checkouts, payments, and orders.

So, let’s fail-proof your dropshipping store and set it up for ongoing purchases for the holiday season with these 6 preparation tips:

1. Talk to your suppliers in advance

Managing the status of your inventory will possibly be the most difficult yet important aspect to handle. Suppose you suddenly start getting a massive number of orders, and your supplier is not prepared for it, you could end up losing customers, or worse, providing a bad customer experience.

Delays in orders, unavailability of a product even if listed on the store, poor packaging owing to order influx are some ways things could go wrong. So, the first step you should take to prepare your store is to have a conversation with your suppliers.

Quite often, dropshipping stores work with multiple suppliers, which makes this step even more crucial. Talk to them about how much they can accommodate and set up a process for the organization.

For example, you could use Google sheets to manage inventory and add them or hire a virtual assistant or intern to help manage the process.

This should be done weeks before the holiday season begins, so you have a clear understanding of what needs to be taken care of and a fallback plan if anything goes wrong.

2. Review your policies

You cannot have your standard store policies running during the holiday season if you don’t want to exhaust your operation on sorting out exchanges, returns, and other order issues.

To avoid the hassle, clearly state store policies telling users how to proceed with refunds and returns during sales. Not only will this ensure consumers are informed about your policies, but it will also instill trust in your store and shows you are committed to an excellent customer experience.

Here’s what you should clarify during the holiday season:

Returns and refunds

Many stores don’t offer returns or refunds during holiday sales.

This is because these products are already discounted, and engaging in returns or refunds can get expensive given the shipping and logistics involved. However, if you still want to offer them, ensure transparency on timelines and processes.

Shipping and taxes

Ask your suppliers if their method can handle surge orders and how much time it would take to ship and deliver them. It would be best to keep a buffer time.

For example, if you generally ship orders in 24 hours, mention you’ll ship in 48 hours. This way, the supplier would have enough time to accommodate the surge.

Similarly, be transparent about the shipping costs, and check with the supplier if the earlier rates can continue to stay or if you need to revise them.

3. Develop an advertising plan and budget

You’ll indeed see loyal customers buying from you during holidays, but you’ll also acquire many new customers. To maximize the results of your efforts, it’s best to prepare an advertising plan and budget before the season kicks in.

91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands and stores that provide relevant offers and recommendations—which makes advertising crucial.

Before you lay out your plan, it’s essential to assess your most profitable channels. Understand where you get the most customers from—organic search, paid social media promotions, email marketing, and social media channels.

The holiday season is not the time to experiment and invest in new advertising channels. Instead, you need to double down on methods that have worked best for you in the past and optimize them for better results.

Here are some steps you can take to do this:

After assessing your advertising channels, create and allocate a budget to different channels
Create an advertising strategy that allows you to prioritize channels as per past traffic and conversions
Hire a team or assign tasks to an existing team of full-time employees or freelancers so you can put your strategy into motion
Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your efforts like traffic, sources, conversions, channels, clicks, etc
Create great content, and use a solid social media strategy to build buzz around your sale and store.
Use innovative strategies like contests and giveaways, partnering with influencers, and creating a loyalty program so you can promote your holiday sale in the best manner.

Get your advertising strategy in motion well ahead of the holidays. This would provide you with time to create awareness around your store.

Once you launch your deals, people would come in for the familiarity and purchase.

4. Plan your holiday site theme

Holiday sales are not just about listing products at slashed prices on the website. It’s also about creating a memorable store experience for the consumers, so they’re pulled towards making a purchase and referring them to their friends.

Refreshing your website with a holiday theme is one of the best ways to show your store is ready to bring in some festive cheer. If it’s Christmas, customize your store with candy canes, snow trees, and red and white colors to help customers relate to the holiday. Such personalized experiences can go a long way in building customer retention.

In addition to the theme, you can also festively stack your products or bump up those related to the holiday like streaming devices, loaf pans, candles, new dining sheets, and winter clothing for Thanksgiving.

You can also use data from your previous sales and festive store surges to study customer behavior and see how you should optimize and organize the store for more sales.

5. Learn about your top-selling products

Not all products sell the same, and if you can identify and bump up your top-selling products, you could end up making higher sales.

More than offering a range of products, curating and positioning your best-selling products will help you drive more conversions and make the consumers curious to explore your store further.

To discover these products, here’s what you can do:

Study customer purchase history for the past 9-12 months and pick the products with the highest sales. Identify if the product would be relevant during the holiday season, and include it accordingly.
Analyze your previous holiday season purchase history, and cherry-pick those products which sold like crazy. Consider bringing them in again or including an upgrade to those products to push sales.

Once you’ve made a list of your top-selling products, you can position them strategically throughout the website and run promotions on them to attract more people.

Alternatively, you can also study Google trends, communities, and industry reports to understand potential best-selling products that you can also get supplied and listed on your dropshipping store.

6. Conduct a load test to handle the traffic surge

The holiday season can put a lot of pressure on your website regarding increased site visitors, fast checkouts, overburdened servers, and glitches in third-party integrations.

This can show errors to your customers or lead to a slow load time, among other issues which can severely impact their shopping experience, and thus your sales.

The best way to avoid this is to conduct a load test to ensure your site servers have enough capacity to handle sudden spikes in traffic

This will allow you to assess how your website will react to traffic surges and give you an idea of the potential bugs that can cause problems. You can use load testing tools like JMeter and LoadView to help you out with it.

Once you identify issues after running the load test, you can make improvements and optimizations to create a seamless shopping experience for your customers.

Wrapping up

The holiday season offers massive scope for eCommerce stores to ramp up their profits. With dropshipping, you can take it even further with innovative marketing strategies, sales promotion tactics, website optimization, and product experimentation.

Unlike regular eCommerce store owners, you don’t have to worry about the products so that you can optimize the store and overall experience for more sales.

Focus on personalizing the shopping experience for your customers with holiday themes and promotions, which can pull them in further for making purchases.

You can turn the holiday season into a highly profitable quarter for your dropshipping business, but only if you are prepared for it. Use this article as a checklist to prepare your store for the festive surge, and get ready to welcome happy shoppers!

This is a guest post by Hazel Raoult

Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family.

The post 6 Tips to Prepare Your Dropshipping Business for the Holiday Season Surge appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

8 Surefire Ways to Improve Customer Satisfaction

Ian — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 12:19:22 +0000

A business’s success mainly relies on its customers. A satisfied client base means a good reputation and more business in the future. Customer satisfaction can make or break your business, making it one of the most important things that business owners should constantly monitor.

As a business owner, it’s vital to understand your customers. This means knowing what their needs and expectations are and comparing them to what you currently offer. This article looks at different ways on how you can improve customer satisfaction for your eCommerce business.

Here are some of them.

1. Ensure Your Website is User-Friendly

A website plays a key role in influencing customers’ purchasing decisions.

Business owners realize that. That’s why they invest time and money just to get people to visit and stay on their website. But then, the biggest risk for them here is losing potential leads before making a sale.

Dull, boring, and badly designed websites frequently repel customers.

Ensuring your website is user-friendly is one way to avoid losing potential leads.

The first thing is to make the navigation horizontal and as simple as possible. Also, you need to keep it clean and uncluttered for the best UX. Anything that may overwhelm visitors will push them to leave and with no guarantee of returning.

2. Provide Outstanding Customer Support

The key to customer satisfaction is building good relationships.

Excellent customer service is one of the things that can get you a loyal customer. You need to tailor your customer service to your ideal customers’ expectations. This means you need to know what they’d consider as good customer service.

Besides, you need to provide good customer service in all aspects of your business. It should start from your first interaction with customers. For instance, a membership-based business needs to provide good service right from when they onboard new members.

It would help if you understood how membership management operates to ensure your service can satisfy potential customers. Or, working with a company that helps membership businesses manage their operations can help. It brings about flexibility and is an all-in-one solution for many other things.

3. Add Self-Service Options to Your Website

Modern customers expect many things from businesses.

One trend that’s growing exponentially is that customers want to be in control.

Companies have had to add self-service options to their websites to meet this growing need. This is also to ensure that they satisfy their customers and retain them.

The demand for self-service is rising because of the modern customer’s need for speed.

Research shows that 70% of customers expect the website they visit to have a self-service option.

You can populate your website with

FAQ pages
Screenshots and videos
A search field for each page, etc

And many other features if you’d like to offer self-service.

4. Move Your Operations to the Cloud

Many businesses are moving their operations to cloud environments today. This is because operating on the cloud helps reduce operational costs, improves security, and boosts performance.

A business that wants to improve online customer satisfaction should consider running on the cloud.

The cloud

Ensures that Customers can access services 24/7

Provides customers with a one-stop shop as businesses can integrate services when operating on the cloud
Helps firms offer personalized customer experiences and improve brand trustworthiness which increases customer satisfaction.

5. Leverage the Power of Social Media

Social media is one of the most powerful tools in the modern business world. It drives traffic to a brand and also builds solid relationships between customers and brands.

There are different ways that a brand can leverage the power of social media to ensure a satisfied customer base. For instance, social media can work as an excellent platform for answering customer queries.

Not just that, social media can also help you

Interact with customers and alert them of promotions
Collect customer feedback on your products and services.

6. Keep Surveys Short

Collecting customer feedback is vital for any business. It is with feedback that you can understand your brand’s weaknesses and improve on them.

One of the most effective ways to gather feedback is by conducting surveys. But then, long surveys no longer attract respondents, but short ones do.

It would be best to keep surveys as short as possible. Unless you are paying respondents, you do not want to inconvenience anyone or have them leave some questions unanswered.

Be upfront about the time it will take if your survey must be lengthy. This can help you leave your customers happy and satisfied.

7. Co-browse with Customers

Collaborative browsing, shortened as co-browsing, is a popular online business practice today. It refers to when two people navigate a website at the same time.

You can browse your website simultaneously with customers to help them access services faster and teach them to interact with your site.

Co-browsing comes with many benefits, including:

Helping businesses understand their customers better
Improving customer experiences by acting as real-time customer support
Helping your leads access what they are looking for faster, thus improving customer satisfaction.

8. Get and Act on Customer Feedback

We have already stressed enough that customer feedback is vital.

There is no better way to make customers feel important and involved than listening to them. However, collecting feedback is just one part of the trick. The major reveal is showing your customer that you’re acting on it.

For instance, you can ask your customers what they think of their delivery experience and make better delivery choices to consistently improve your brand’s post-purchase experience. This can help you earn fierce customer loyalty in return.

Conclusion

Businesses must satisfy their customers, mainly when operating online. The online business environment has become competitive. For instance, website visitors can easily click away from a website if they are unhappy with it. There will always be a website that offers similar services on the line.

We have mentioned some ways to improve customer satisfaction online. It can be through developing user-friendly websites or offering excellent customer service through co-browsing. Also customer feedback can help you know how satisfied people are with your services, so that you can act on it when required.

This is a guest post by Daniel Martin

A Little about LateShipment.com

LateShipment.com is the world’s only tool for everything post-purchase – combining shipping refunds with everything you need to create well-managed, branded delivery experiences despite the odds.

1 in 5 packages, on average, run into delivery issues. We at LateShipment.com help businesses resolve the resulting post-purchase CX gap and inflated shipping invoices with working post-purchase solutions:

Delivery Experience Management (DEM) platform – For businesses to effortlessly bridge the post-purchase CX gap and discover new ways to delight and retain customers.

Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds – For businesses to effortlessly recover up to 20% of shipping costs through refund claims and drive informed choices through in-depth shipping intelligence.

It takes less than 2 minutes to set up LateShipment.com and the best part is that it seamlessly connects with all your existing tools such as eCommerce Platforms, Order Management Systems, and Helpdesk Tools, etc.

The value we add to businesses is most evident when experienced first-hand.

Try LateShipment.com now or talk to us at sales@lateshipment.com.

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[eCommerce 2021] 7 Ways to Speed Up Your Business’ Shipping Process

Ian — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 09:44:10 +0000

The contemporary shipping process is changing rapidly, and as a shipper, you need to streamline your process.

Streamlining your company’s shipping process implies having a more efficient and speedy supply chain, something most clients prefer.

Forbes suggests that, you need to devise effective ways to speed up the shipping process for your company to remain competitive. Therefore, we’ve come up with a few tips to help you streamline and speed up your shipping process.

1. Enhance Your Company's Warehouse Communication

Proper communication in your warehouse is crucial for a streamlined and speedy shipping process. Therefore, you should ensure that communication with your warehouse is clear and timely to avoid delays.

Ensure you communicate with your warehouse staff on how they should conduct processes to enhance efficiency. This is particularly crucial if you’re offering cross-country car shipping because timely communication prevents delays.

Ultimately, laying down proper communication channels can help speed up the shipping process for your business.

2. Partner with the Most Effective Shipping Carrier

If you’re looking for ways to speed up your shipping process, then you should partner with a reputable and efficient shipping carrier.

This means prioritizing on-time deliveries and proper handling of damages to avoid loss or damage.

Also, when choosing a carrier, ensure you select one that can handle pressure situations. Such a carrier can help you deliver urgent packages per your customers’ needs, helping you gain a competitive advantage.

3. Streamline Your Company's Internal Processes

Most shipping companies implement many systems or programs for a single internal process.

However, this ends up converting a simple task into a complex and sluggish process, leading to frustrations and delays.

Therefore, if your company’s internal processes are prolonged and frustrating, try simplifying them or developing new simple, efficient, and speedy processes.

In the end, simplifying your internal processes can help speed up your company’s shipping process.

4. Plan for Customs Clearance Beforehand

Preparing early for customs clearance is a great way to speed up your shipping process.

Often, customs clearance is a long and tiring process that can cause delays in your shipping process.

The most effective way to address this is to plan for customs clearance in advance.

Consequently, you can avoid delays and last-minute frustrations to beat the deadline for delivering packages to clients.

5. Invest in Shipping Capabilities that Meets Demand

To speed up the shipping process for your company, you have to invest in shipping capabilities that can meet customer demand.

I.e, you have to ensure that the shipping trucks you’re using are spacious to accommodate all the products they need to ship.

This way, you can speed up the shipping process for your business to meet customer needs.

6. Provide Real-time Order Tracking

Today’s customers want to know where their parcel has reached and when they expect to receive it. For this reason, you need to offer real-time order tracking for your clients to understand the status of their luggage whenever they want.

This can help improve your shipping process by keeping your clients informed about the location of their parcel.

Also, having order tracking capabilities can help you identify and resolve issues early enough to allow timely delivery.

Ultimately, providing order tracking is an excellent way to develop trust with your clients and optimize your company’s shipping process.

Having order tracking capabilities can help you identify and resolve issues early enough to allow timely delivery.

7. Implement Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

EDI is a strategy that is implemented by many shipping companies which replace traditional paperwork with electronic data.

By replacing paperwork with electronic data, your shipping company can process data faster, speeding up the shipping process.

Besides, EDI can process large volumes of data within a short period, eliminating possible delays.

Ultimately, implementing the latest data processing technology in your business can greatly speed up the shipping process.

Wrap Up

Speeding up your company’s shipping process is critical for you to meet today’s client needs.

You have to devise new and efficient ways to streamline your delivery process to meet client expectations and remain competitive.

For instance, you can enter into a partnership with the most effective courier service and enhance your company’s warehouse communication.

You can also offer real-time order tracking and invest in shipping capabilities that meet customer demands.

This is a guest post Mckenzie Jones

The post [eCommerce 2021] 7 Ways to Speed Up Your Business’ Shipping Process appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Retail & Delivery Trends That Are Likely to Remain Post-pandemic

Ian — Thu, 27 May 2021 08:16:59 +0000

How The Pandemic Affected Retail & Delivery

In the present circumstances (due to the pandemic, of course) trends around the retail and delivery landscape has gone through massive changes across the globe.

Physical stores have shut down, there have been disruptions throughout the supply chain, and businesses are left to deal with this mess.

On the other hand, the pandemic has also brought a paradigm shift in the way of eCommerce around the world.

eCommerce retail sales have increased in the 1st quarter of 2021 following last year and don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

These trends have turned out to be so effective even in a restored normal version of the planet (if there ever was such a thing). Therefore, business owners can expect them to be followed in a post-pandemic world as well.

Retail & Delivery Trends That Are Here to Stay

The how and where of retail shopping is changing at breakneck speed.

Shopping behavior has changed so rapidly that a huge number of companies are caught unaware.

Trends that have been in their forecast materialized throughout the decade have accelerated beyond recognition.

Let’s look at such trends that are here to stay in detail.

Online Shopping

Online sales are not an alternative, but a need for brick-and-mortar businesses.

While people have been buying from online stores for a long time – on the customer side, the pandemic is responsible for a massive spike in the need for eCommerce, which is here to stay for decades to come.

Several brand new platforms gained importance in emerging markets by developing business models and also assisting the general landscape to be much more competitive by nature.

And also the pandemic may open possibilities for second-generation “niche” eCommerce sites that work in certain industry segments which are usually excluded from large eCommerce platforms.

For instance, baskets of various vegetables and fruits are now in demand as customers look for businesses that can deliver fresh produce to their doorstep.

Livestream Selling

Using video to boost sales is a tried and evaluated technique for brands and retailers.

The application of footage to push sales started with TV shopping channels like HSN and QVC, which showed items in a live broadcast. This method also invited audience participants to gain the product and put an order.

The pandemic and social distancing norms have now given customers a new way to discover and purchase goods from the comfort of their own homes without risking their safety.

Last November, reality star Kim Kardashian appeared on a live marketing stream and sold 15,000 bottles of perfume within minutes.

While major social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook rolled out live marketing opportunities in May 2020, YouTube is preparing to come out with very similar features.

One particular thing is clear, lots of businesses are gearing up for the development of live selling.

Subscription-based Services

Instead of a one-time purchase of an item, a buyer subscribes to access a product or service over a length of time. This may be a subscription to services like Amazon and Netflix or a subscription to makeup brands.

The upside for the buyer may be the comfort of automatic payments and regular delivery, and also personalization. To the company, it implies a much better prediction of revenues, reliable customer data, and much better customer engagement.

The subscription-based model is theoretically meant to be great for the world, as we change from an ownership design to a sharing-based one, maximizing reducing waste and also resource efficiency.

Virtual Experiences

With the pandemic, any outside house tasks are temporarily closed, which leads to people searching for secure ways to continue their hobbies. Thus rose the popularity of virtual experiences through conferencing companies.

One business that exploded during the pandemic was Zoom where it held online classes, company meetings, yoga, and cooking classes.

And as people got creative, virtual experiences included live concerts, museum trips, and theme park visits.

Brands can tie up with these events or influencers and promote their product in relevant spaces.

For example, as a sports company, you can can sponsor a yoga retreat and market their goods to the attendants. There is a good chance that attendants who are trying something new will be intrigued and try out your products.

Same-day Delivery

The pandemic disrupted our way of accessing goods and with government-mandated lockdowns, the usual shopping patterns stopped abruptly with a sudden halt.

Many businesses have switched to altered activities as consumers looked to home delivery as a solution.

As the lockdowns extend further, consumers are now shopping more and more online, leading to further competition among major online retailers. This has further led to the popularity of same-day delivery services becoming a rising trend.

Customers too, looking for convenience in their order delivery, would decide to opt for brands that offer same-day delivery.

Curbside Pickup

Unlike us, who mostly work at home and feel safe, individuals who work in delivery services remain open and at risk. In the case of constant deliveries at multiple locations, there’s a chance of them getting infected.

Fortunately, curbside pickup enables the safety of both customers and employees. Curbside

Pickup lets consumers shop online and choose an available time slot where they can pick up their order with no face-to-face interaction with other individuals.

While this may look like an ideal way of shopping without risking safety, it can be a challenge for small retailers and even bigger businesses who never considered curbside pickup.

What complicates this is having a designated pickup area followed by the requirement to confirm which customer is picking up the order and ensuring the payment process is legitimate.

In the coming days, and maybe even after that, contactless and safe queuing is the deciding factor in client retention.

The Post Pandemic Retail & Delivery Landscape

With the current situation, we’ll see a continuous rise of electronic payments and the use of digital wallets allowing consumers to make safe and instant transactions.

The uncertainty of financial solutions such as secured electronic payments can be a vital risk for businesses, especially eCommerce platforms. With the segment evolving rapidly, it’s essential to have a coherent framework to use.

With the aforementioned trends likely to remain for a while until we all feel comfortable to step out, businesses can likely follow them to not get FOMO.

Even if you feel you are an SMB who cannot implement it all at once, you can look to test out some of the trends by implementing them one by one.

This is a guest post by Anna Carter

The post Retail & Delivery Trends That Are Likely to Remain Post-pandemic appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

[eCommerce 2021] A Step-by-step Guide to Customer Retention

Ian — Fri, 21 May 2021 09:53:08 +0000

Did you know that the average Customer Retention Rate (CRR) is just around 35% for eCommerce businesses.

But why is CRR crucial to maintain for a business? Just take a look at these stats

65% of a company’s business can be credited to existing customers.
Companies have to spend 7 times more to get a new customer than to retain an existing one.
Improving customer retention by 5% increases profits by up to 25% to 95%.
If you are trying to sell something, the chances of making a sale are 60-70% with a retained customer. The likelihood of the same is only 5-20% with a new customer.

Considering all these stats, you can say that a business needs to focus on improving customer retention to increase sales and revenue.

Steps to retain your eCommerce customers

Here are five steps that you can follow to retain your eCommerce customers:

1. Leverage email marketing

Email marketing is an efficient tactic to retain your customers.

Statistics suggest that about 80% of businesses still rely on it to maintain their customer retention rate.

There are many types of emails that you can send, including:

You can send welcome and thank you emails
Special promotions
Friendly reminders
Customer feedback surveys
Gifts and messages on special occasions
Emails that educate subscribers and add value
Personalized product recommendations
Or emails to create personal relationships.

Since 60% of customers say email is their preferred promotion channel, sending a surprise email with freebies, discounts will serve as an even more powerful retention incentive. Such offers also help you give a much-needed nudge to customers sitting on the fence.

2. Create a customer loyalty program

Offering a loyalty program is another effective way to retain your customers.

Over 90% of companies offer a loyalty program. And 37% of consumers are even ready to expense to upgrade to an improved tier of a loyalty program. – Forbes

When choosing the incentives for your loyalty program, analyze your target customers’ needs and behavior. Consider experiential rewards as they can make customers feel good and add value to their lives.

For instance, Swarovski offers a rewards program for its members that provide exclusive benefits, including yearly SCS-only gifts, early access to new products, and access to events for members-only.

By providing their loyal customers one-of-a-kind experiences that are unforgettable and valuable, the luxury jewelry brand generates long-term loyalty.

eCommerce platforms like Shopify allow you to launch branded loyalty programs and reward your customers. However, if you are using the platform, note that it is not an ideal platform for SEO. You will have to take care of Shopify’s on-page and off-page improvements to make the most out of the platform.

3. Build a customer referral program

Given that 92% of customers trust referrals from people they know, building a customer referral program can be highly beneficial for your eCommerce business.

A customer referral program can help you engage and content with your customers that are your brand’s biggest assets.

If you implement the correct referral program software and strategy, you can easily acquire new customers and turn them into loyal customers.

4. Get your social media game right

Yes, you can use social media to your advantage in customer retention.

A simple way to use your social media presence to boost user experience is to implement social listening. By using alerts or social listening software, you can easily listen to what your customers are saying about your brand or products.

This allows you to find out your strengths and weaknesses and help you to build on those experiences. Plus, it is a great way to identify customer pain points and offer better UX to retain them.

Social media also allows you to offer better customer service, which in turn influences retention.

Make sure to respond to your customers’ problems in real-time. It will increase customer satisfaction and improve your brand’s image.

5. Give customers an incentive to create an account

Why not offer an incentive like reward points, freebies, discounts, or exclusive sales to your customers to create an account?

It will automatically add new customers to your mailing list as they are most likely to get enticed by the discounts or freebies. In the meantime, if a customer finds that you have a great loyalty program, they will most likely try your brand.

Whether you are making the signup process free or charging them for a subscription, offering an incentive to sign up can highly boost your conversions as well as retention.

For instance, if you are selling a paid subscription, you can offer a free month when new users sign up. Or, if you are offering a new product, you can offer an incentive to early adopters.

The incentive you offer doesn’t necessarily have to be big, depending on what you are giving out as an introductory offer. Just remember that the more costly your offer, the better your incentive should be.

This is a guest post by Hazel Raoult

Bonus: Build long-lasting customer relationships by managing your delivery experience

The delivery experience you provide also plays a crucial to building a loyal customer base.

How, you ask?

When you take effort to improve your delivery experience by:

Proactively identifying and over-communicating with customers, whose parcels are facing critical delivery issues
Impressing your customers with seamless, brand-consistent order tracking pages
Making better delivery choices at the behest of your customers, etc

You are consistently improve your brand’s performance in post-purchase phase. This helps you earn fierce customer loyalty in return as your customers are now delighted at your efforts.

You can make use of a delivery experience management solution like LateShipment.com to take control of how your customers interact with your brand post-purchase and improve customer loyalty via retention.

Wrapping Up!

Which of these strategies are you going to implement in your next marketing campaign to retain your customers?

Retaining existing customers is going to highly benefit your business, considering that the cost of acquiring new customers is higher than retaining old ones.

Consider the effective strategies in this guide to retain your customers and increase sales.

The post [eCommerce 2021] A Step-by-step Guide to Customer Retention appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

[eCommerce 2021] 10 Expert Tips to Boost Your Website’s Engagement

Ian — Wed, 05 May 2021 09:40:56 +0000

New small business owners find it difficult to understand why their eCommerce businesses grow slowly. While there are numerous contributing, website engagement is among the most overlooked aspects.

Not only does website engagement keep your new visitors interested in learning about your company, but it also helps retain existing customers. Thus, optimizing the sales cycle.

During the course of this article, you’ll learn ten expert tips to boost your eCommerce store’s website engagement. From driving traffic to keeping your existing customers happy, we’ll look at each tip in detail. Let’s get started.

1. Design a Responsive Website

Responsive web design refers to a modern design approach that ensures a website’s pages adjust well on various screen sizes.

“Mobile devices have been consistently generating over half of the website traffic in the past five years.” – Statista.

Therefore, having a responsive website can’t be compromised. For that, you need to choose your theme wisely.

If you use a Content Management System (CMS), such as WordPress or Joomla, ensure that your chosen theme is responsive. As third-party developers can contribute to making website themes for these platforms, they won’t all be fluid.

The more convenient option is to utilize a website builder that guarantees mobile responsiveness, like the Zyro eCommerce builder. With this platform, you’ll get access to more than 80 responsive and attractive website templates, allowing you to focus on growth, rather than the minute details of your site on every different screen format.

2. Have a Clear Website Structure

Website structure refers to your website’s presentation. The four types of site structure include hierarchical, sequential, matrix, and database.

For eCommerce websites, the hierarchical model is the most suitable option. This tree structure starts from the big umbrella that narrows down to more specific topics. Thus, you can display parent product categories and utilize a drop-down menu to contain the child categories.

The best practice for this is to keep the hierarchical structure under three levels. Not only does the simple structure ease your potential customer journey, but it also helps Google index your site faster.

3. Run Social Media Ad Campaigns

Starting a social media ad campaign allows you to display advertisements for your eCommerce store on various social media platforms. It’s among the excellent strategies to help increase your online store’s traffic, as there are 4.2 billion social media users globally.

Here are some ad campaign programs from three of the most popular social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok:

Facebook Ads – This service can automatically generate retargeting ads that feature the goods your visitors saw on your product page. It also lets you customize the advertising targeting options, like gender and age, to get your ads personalized.
Instagram Ads – Sign up for Instagram Ads from your business account and choose the various ad forms the platform offers, including photos, carousels, Instagram Stories, and IGTV.
TikTok Ads – Despite its limited availability, TikTok Ads has been spreading its wings across 20 countries, including the USA. Signing up for the service, you’ll be able to display pre-roll and in-feed ads, promote hashtag challenges, and create branded effects.

On a side note, define your target audience before deciding on a platform, as each social media has its own demographics.

4. Apply Cross-Selling and Upselling Techniques

Cross-selling is about offering more shopping options to complement what your potential buyers have on their carts. In comparison, upselling pretty much involves suggesting a better, more expensive option of the same product.

When done right, these strategies help increase your sales and reinforce your relationship with your customers. That said, let’s see how you can put these techniques into action:

Keep it easy – Being too promotional backfires. Keep the sales flow smooth by only referring to products or services that align with the customer’s needs
Offer benefits – Rewards, such as discounts and free shipping, motivate your potential customers to close the deal
Conduct follow-ups – Check-in on your past customers to find out if they’re happy with the purchase. This is to show that your company cares about its customers

5. Boost User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content, such as reviews, photos, and testimonials, created by general users rather than affiliates or influencers.

“For eCommerce websites, UGC is vital as 87% of customers read local businesses’ online reviews before making a purchase.” – Brightlocal.

Besides proving your shop’s credibility, letting users add content encourages customers to have their say, thus improving your site’s engagement. When they do, don’t forget to leave a response so they’ll feel appreciated.

6. Personalize the Content

eCommerce content personalization is about integrating personal experiences along the customer journey by delivering relevant content based on users’ data, including purchase behavior, browsing patterns, and visited pages.

“91% of online shoppers are more likely to buy from a company with relevant offers.” – Accenture

As personalizing each customer’s experience can be challenging, utilize an e-commerce personalization tool to help with the process. Here’s what such tool can help you with:

Product recommendations. By looking at past searches and purchase history, an eCommerce personalization tool can generate relevant item suggestions
Dynamic pricing. This feature allows adjusting a product’s pricing based on changing market demand and tailoring different product pricing for different audiences
Personalized navigation. This practice is about prioritizing particular website pages for certain audience groups
Abandoned cart retargeting. Suppose an item has been in a visitor’s cart for too long, an e-commerce personalization tool will remind the potential buyer to proceed with the checkout process

7. Upload High-Quality Images

Your target customers can’t see or touch your products in real life before actually purchasing them. To make a decision, they rely heavily on your product images. That’s why having excellent product photography is essential for eCommerce websites.

Suppose you’re afraid the high-quality product photos will slow down your website. In that case, don’t forget to compress before uploading them. For this, use a lossless compression tool, like TinyPNG, as it can cut the image’s size without reducing its quality.

8. Offer Discounts and Sales Promotions

Offering promotions might seem like an ineffective way to generate interest. However, well-organized discount and sales promotion campaigns are excellent for attracting traffic, engaging new audiences, and driving sales quickly.

However, these practices aren’t for everyone. When conducted too often, discounts can diminish your product and service’s value. Read the tips below to structure effective discount and sales promotion campaigns:

Welcome new visitors with special offers – whether it’s a shopping coupon or a 15% discount for their first purchase, it won’t be a problem
Apply early-bird discounts for new products – this practice creates a feeling of scarcity about your goods, triggering purchases
Promote seasonal products with special gifts – suppose you launch Chinese New Year attire collections. In that case, a small hong bao pocket can be a great gift for each purchase of the collection
Reward loyal customers with personalized promotions – establishing a loyalty club is a great way to organize this program. For that, let’s dive deep into a loyalty program on the next tip.

9. Create a Loyalty Program

A customer loyalty program refers to a structured marketing solution focused on rewarding a customer who has engaged with a company repeatedly. Apart from improving relationships, implementing a reward program can encourage your customers to keep coming back to you.

When setting up a customer loyalty program, remember these four tips:

Give out free products – suppose your customers have spent a certain amount on your brand, you can probably send across for them to try

Set a timeframe – your loyalty members should be able to attain their rewards within three to six months after joining the program. This is to make sure they don’t lose their interests

Give birthday surprises – preparing a birthday treat for your loyal customers can be a pleasant and personalized reward. Not only does it show that your company cares about its customers, but it also keeps them happy.

10. Add CTAs Strategically

A call-to-action includes any phrase that encourages your eCommerce site’s visitors to take specific actions. Apart from driving more conversions, compelling CTAs can also serve as navigation that guides your potential customers through the marketing funnel.

To strategically place your CTAs, refrain from being too aggressive. For example, some shoppers may feel intimidated by a Buy Now button. In this case, use Add to Cart or Save as Favorite instead.

Also, emphasize the button with colors or boxes. That way, your CTA will catch your visitors’ attention and won’t get overlooked.

Conclusion

You’ve learned ten tips for boosting your website engagement. By implementing them, you’ll save your eCommerce website from getting stale. Additionally, responsiveness is the first thing you should take care of when developing your website. Make sure you don’t baffle your visitors with confusing navigation and website structure. Finally, good luck with your new eCommerce store!

This is a guest post by Lydia Steele

The post [eCommerce 2021] 10 Expert Tips to Boost Your Website’s Engagement appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

5 Tips to Get the Best out of Your Package Shipping Carrier

Ian — Mon, 03 May 2021 11:04:00 +0000

Millions of international packages make their way to destination points and cross borders every day. And the vast majority of them are the goods people buy from eCommerce businesses operating globally.

While it’s no secret that free package shipping does not actually exist and the seller is the one who has to pay for it, international shipping either costs loads of money for a brand, requires lots of workforces, or both.

Plus, there’s always a chance of late deliveries or lost packages. And suddenly, shipping internationally becomes a true headache.

Thankfully, this struggle a seller experiences can be minimized by knowing how to get the most out of your partner shipping carrier.

Carriers often offer a bunch of additional perks to having you as a long-term partner. And it’s an important thing to have in mind when making a new agreement with a package shipping carrier.

This article will give you a basic understanding of how to make the most out of picking and dealing with a shipping carrier for your eCommerce business (or for your shipments). That way, you’ll be able to make a smart choice by saving both your money and your nerves when choosing a partner package shipping carrier.

Quit Overpaying for Shipping

Spending less on quality services is one of the top priorities for you when choosing a carrier, right?

If it’s a yes, the best way to avoid paying too much and find the cheapest shipping carrier meeting your needs is to simply compare pricing. There are many shipping price comparison sites that give you estimated costs from major US shipping carriers such as DHL, FedEx, and UPS.

Using price comparison sites will give you a primary understanding of what shipping costs to expect regarding the destination country and the country you are shipping from. And believe it or not, it usually varies greatly.

But. There’s always a but. Although DHL, FedEx, or UPS are great for international shipments due to long-term experience, smooth processes, and of course, affordable pricing, comparing a few carriers won’t give a full picture.

Regardless of these big players in global shipping, the US shipping market is crowded with less popular package shipping carriers. Possibly, some of them will also be able to offer you affordable pricing and meet your business needs.

So, do your research ⇓

Use the shipping price comparison sites ( e.g. Easyship, Upela, etc.)
Check costs manually with less-known carriers
Request a custom quote based on your unique business needs

Doing all this will guarantee you’ll find the best shipping partner for your business in terms of pricing.

Prepare to Negotiate

When you choose a shipping carrier for your business, you want to have it for a long period. You do know that bouncing from one to another is exhausting, disrupts work processes, and is wasteful.

But what you may not be aware of is that the shipping carrier needs you likewise you need their services. And you can definitely benefit from that.

When you receive a quote or a long-term offer for shipping services, know that it’s not definite. Usually, there’s plenty of room for negotiation that many businesses forget to take advantage of.

You can lay down your own conditions because as much as you’re interested in having them as a shipping partner, they’re interested in having you as a long-term client.

Want better rates, package insurance, or some extra benefits? Just ask for it!

What’s worse that can happen? Nothing. The carrier can say no and that’s it. You’re free to accept the primary offer or head to another carrier.

Be confident and persistent when making this big decision

Choose a Shipping Carrier Wisely

Picking a good shipping carrier sounds quite simple, but it’s easier said than actually done.

To make it less challenging, the best thing would be to choose a reputable and widely-known international shipping carrier. You cannot go wrong by picking from big-name courier services such as DHL, FedEx, or UPS.

However, if your shipments have a specific route, you might look for other options. Let’s say you operate in the States, but your product is purchased amazingly in the Polish market. So, you’re constantly shipping to Poland from the USA.

And what does that mean regarding picking a carrier? It simply implies that you might consider a carrier specializing in this exact route. That might save you money, shorten delivery times dramatically, and prevent shipping fails.

For example, carriers like AEC Parcel Service which specializes in delivering packages to Eastern European countries may provide a better shipping experience than those shipping to every part of the world.

Consider Convenience and Benefits

If you’re trying to actually get the best out of a shipping carrier, you have to consider what additional value the carrier has to offer.

Put simply, you have to look not only through yours as a seller, but also through the customer’s perspective. Will your customer and your business experience the best package delivery possible without any delivery issues?

What’s here to consider in a nutshell:

Figure out whether the shipper offers free package insurance covering your product.
Decide if delivery times and methods are appropriate for your business model.
Pay attention to the shipping refund policy and compensation for late deliveries.
Consider the drop-off locations and whether there’s one next to your business spot.
Will the shipper provide strong customer service for you and your clients? It should.
Check if the shipper has a real-time tracking tool for both your and your customer’s peace of mind.

Do a Feedback Research

Nothing gives a better picture of a product or service than the experiences of others. Getting familiar with opinions from former or current customers helps to compare competitors, figure out if they offer quality service, and actually makes it easy to decide if the business can be trusted.

The best way of doing it is by reading reviews online. Facebook, Google my Business, Yelp, and other sites where customers express their opinions are the most popular places to look at those stars and words about shipping carriers. In fact, in most cases reading reviews dramatically changes the first impression.

On the other hand, it’s easy to find reviews from simple customers, yet businesses do not tend to share their experiences online. So, if you’re operating in eCommerce, you might want to reach out to your business partners or even competitors asking for their experiences with international shipping carriers.

How LateShipment.com Can Help You

Regardless of which shipping carrier you’re going to choose, the top goal here is to avoid late shipment experiences and have an impeccable shipping service operating along with your business.

However, international shipping is a complex procedure and even the best carriers sometimes fail in delivering packages. That’s where LateShipment.com steps in.

LateShipment.com is the world’s only logistics cloud tool that combines shipping refunds with everything you need to create well-managed, branded delivery experiences despite the odds.

LateShipment.com drives savings in your shipping spend, gives you new revenue channels, better repeat purchase rates, and offers your customers premium delivery experiences. Here’s how we elevate the game for your business.

At LateShipment.com, we aim to transform your customer’s post-purchase journey and make it a memorable experience that encourages fierce customer loyalty.

Our Delivery Experience Management platform powers post-purchase CX success for your business by helping you:

Stay on top of delays by tracking your in-transit parcels across carriers in real-time.
Resolve delivery issues proactively with predictive alerts for shipments facing delays.
Over-communicate with customers facing critical delivery issues.
Send automated delivery status notifications via email and SMS to reduce your customers’ anxiety.
Build beautiful, branded order tracking pages, personalized for your customers.
Capture your customers’ Delivery Satisfaction (DSAT) rating after every order delivery.

Our DEM platform also seamlessly integrates with all your tech-stacks such as eCommerce platforms, CRM systems, Help desk, and Email marketing tools, etc without any change to your existing workflow.

Now, how good is that?

The best part is,

In addition to helping you elevate your customers’ post-purchase experiences, you can also SAVE UP TO 20% on your shipping costs with our Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds solution, which can help you:

Audit your monthly shipping invoices for 50+ service failures
Submit refund claims to your carrier(s) on your behalf
Deposit the refunded amount directly into your account
Save you up to 20% of your overall shipping spend.
Get better service quality from shipping carriers

The value we add to businesses is most evident when experienced first-hand.

Try LateShipment.com now.

Or, get in touch by writing to us at sales@lateshipment.com

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[eCommerce 2021] Social Commerce for Businesses

Ian — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 09:35:46 +0000

Running an eCommerce business is hectic, no doubt. However, there are certain aspects that make it interesting. One such being the relatively new but growing trend of social commerce.

eCommerce business owners can greatly benefit from this trend. All you need to do is to increase your brand visibility and build an effective social commerce campaign.

But before that, let’s talk about social commerce in more detail.

What is Social Commerce?

Social commerce is the use of social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for marketing and sales purposes.

Social commerce campaigns aim to boost social interactions such as retweets, likes, link clicks, and shares and to drive sales.

Social commerce is the use of social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for marketing and sales purposes.

The Benefits of Social Commerce to eCommerce Businesses

If you craft an effective social commerce campaign, you will achieve the following goals:

Reach a wide audience
Improve brand awareness
Increase sales
Build customer loyalty

The Best Social Media Platforms for Social Commerce

There are three platforms that work perfectly for social commerce:

Instagram. This social media network has more than one billion users. It allows you to create a business account and sell your products directly from the app.

Facebook provides a set of tools necessary to design an effective social commerce campaign. If you create a Facebook Shop and build a smart Chatbot Messenger, you will engage your target audience and double your sales.

Pinterest is not as popular as Facebook and Instagram. But still, it provides great marketing opportunities for eCommerce businesses. You can use it to improve your brand discoverability and direct new visitors to your website.

Basically, any social media platform can be used for social commerce. If you want to maximize your efforts, you should choose a platform that is popular amongst your customers. For instance, if your target audience is millennial vegans, the best platform for you is Instagram. Or, if your target audience is Baby Boomers, Facebook is the best choice for you.

Social Commerce Best Practices

The vast majority of modern businesses leverage social commerce. Let’s take a look at the best examples.

Swatch

Swatch uses gamification to engage users and create buzz around a new product launch. The company has recently announced the start of a game “M.I.Q The Secret Mission” on Instagram to present Swatch X 007 Tribute Collection.

Every second day, Swatch publishes a new post and asks followers to complete a new task like “to find a part of a secret code.” In such a way, the brand motivates users to check new posts and visit the company’s website while also attracting more interest in new products.

Under Armour

Under Armour has more than 10.9 million followers on Facebook and for a good reason. This sports equipment company creates content that resonates with the target audience while also reflects the brand’s values.

Take a look at the following post – it was shared almost 2K times. It’s a great example of how one social media post can help the company to reach more customers than a paid ad.

Forever 21

If you don’t know how to use Instagram shopping features, take a look at Forever 21’s Instagram account – it’s a great example to follow.

Forever21 runs one of the most successful user-generated content strategies among fashion brands. The company encourages customers to share their photos and tag @forever21 for the chance to be featured. It motivates customers to buy more clothes and share more photos, which helps Forever21 increase reach and engagement.

4 Tips on How to Leverage Social Commerce for Your eCommerce Business

Finally, let’s talk about what steps you should take to build an effective social commerce campaign this holiday season.

1. Focus on quality

If you want to grab the attention of picky social media users, you should create high-quality content. All your photos and videos must have a high resolution. All your posts must include relevant, meaningful captions.

Why is content quality so important? Customers associate content quality with product quality. Therefore, if the quality of your content is not excellent, your prospective customers will doubt the quality of your products and the trustworthiness of your brand.

If you are not an expert in content creation, consider getting writing help. Check top rated sites and find professional writers who know how to craft outstanding social media posts.

2. Start a social media challenge

Modern users like to participate in different social media challenges. And today, when most people get bored in the houses because of the pandemic, social media challenges are getting even more popular. So why don’t you start a social media challenge to draw users’ attention to your brand?

The idea of a social media challenge should be relevant to your brand and appeal to your target audience.

Also, your challenge must have a name and a memorable hashtag. The use of hashtags will allow you to track posts created by your followers and analyze the effectiveness of your campaign.

3. Create Interactive Content

If ordinary social media posts don’t help you achieve the desired results, try to create interactive content. Invite your followers to participate in fun quizzes, polls, and Q&A sessions on Facebook and Instagram Stories.

The more users will interact with your content, the more likely they will buy from you. So use your creativity skills to come up with engaging content ideas. If you feel like you need help with this task, check the TopEssayWriting review, and find creative writers and content creators who can help you.

4. Collaborate with influencers

Social commerce goes hand in hand with influencer marketing. So if you want to get your brand noticed, reach out to the top influencers in your niche and offer them to promote your product.

Just keep in mind that top influencers get dozens of collaboration requests every day but accept only the best offers that include something more than just a paycheck. If you want to partner with influencers, you should provide a special reward, for instance, tickets to a big industry event or participation in an ambassadorship program.

In Conclusion

2021 has been a tough year, so far. And today, people are anticipating the rest of the year more than ever. They are ready to start shopping and enjoy the vibes while still staying at home or social distancing. And you should take this fact into account and adjust your marketing strategy.

Today is the perfect moment to start a social commerce campaign for boosting sales. Use this article for inspiration and create social media content that will take your eCommerce business to the next level.

This article is a contribution by Leona Henryson

About the author: Leona Henryson is a freelance blogger and marketing specialist at TopWritersReview, a website for top college writers’ reviews. She is constantly looking for new ways to improve customer experience and help businesses reach out to their target audience.

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[eCommerce 2021] 5 Common Mistakes Store Owners Should Avoid

Ian — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 13:06:10 +0000

The world of eCommerce has grown significantly over the past few years.

Each year, the online turf is becoming more competitive and crowded with new businesses that are trying to thrive. Mistakes in such an environment can turn out to be costly and therefore should be avoided at all costs.

The reason why this fact cannot be stressed enough is that today’s consumers have more power than ever before. If they’ve had a bad experience with your eCommerce store for any reason, they’ll simply stop shopping with you and move to a competitor.

Given that it costs 5-25 times more to acquire new customers, your growing eCommerce store cannot afford to lose customers like this. That’s why it’s vital to avoid making mistakes altogether. Which is easier said than done.

Fortunately, there is a way to tread lightly in a market where impressions matter the most.

All you need is a solid strategy that will allow you to move forward. With that in mind, here are a few common eCommerce mistakes that you can avoid in 2021.

Non-mobile-friendly Site

Nowadays, having an eCommerce website that isn’t mobile-friendly is a big no-no!

Consumers all over the world are shopping online using a mobile device, more precisely a smartphone.

That said, mobile commerce is on the rise and according to Statista, it’s estimated that 72.9% of all eCommerce sales in the world will come from mobile commerce.

An eCommerce store that isn’t optimized properly for mobile is going to lose a lot of customers.

You should at least have a responsive mobile-friendly design for your online store.

Optimizing fully for mobile isn’t something that can happen overnight, and that’s okay. No one is going to abandon your store if you’re in the process of making everything mobile-friendly. However, refusing to do so is a completely different story with a bad ending for your eCommerce business.

If you are considering how to optimize your eCommerce store for mobile and boost sales via it, here are some best practices to boost sales by optimizing your eCommerce store for mobile by Magento, a leading eCommerce platform. If you are new to the eCommerce industry, you can consider these strategies from the very beginning.

Misunderstood Audience

Another potentially critical mistake you can make is not making an effort to understand your target audience.

Market research is something all businesses should rely on, not just startups. Having a connection with your audience and encouraging them to buy from you comes from understanding them.

You cannot know what they want, need, expect or demand unless you take the time to find out.

If you don’t know anything about your consumers, you cannot communicate with them properly, let alone expect them to buy from you.

If you want a more meaningful and personal relationship with your audience, here are a few things you should do:

Create buyer personas
Determine your audience’s preferences, expectations, don’ts, and needs
Determine their pain points
Understand their behavior
Research their demographics
Learn which values are important to them
Learn how to communicate with them

Poor Website Design

Customer experience is the elixir of success an eCommerce store.

Consumers aren’t just focused on which products you have to offer or how many of them there are, but are more focused on the experience you can provide them with.

And when it comes to the overall shopping experience, your website’s design too plays a vital role.

If the quality of your design is poor or has horrible visuals, your visitors will bounce right off even before considering making a purchase. You can get in touch with design experts if you are unaware of how to polish your web store’s design.

Bad UX Design

As mentioned before, your website’s design plays a vital role in customer experience. However, there’s also the matter of UX (User Experience) design that’s also a crucial factor. Having a bad UX design is one of the worst mistakes to make.

Visuals are important, but there’s more to UX than it meets the eye.

Consumers want a seamless browsing experience, and they expect you to deliver. In other words, any inconveniences, obstacles, or interruptions will simply force your customers to abandon your store for good.

In most cases, improving UX design has a lot to do with your websites’ functionality.

That said, here are a few things you should focus on:

Improve website navigation
Improve page loading time and overall website speed
Create a seamless checkout process
Enhance your eCommerce site’s security
Optimize website content
Get rid of missing pages, redirects, and errors
Ensure that your store is user and mobile-friendly
Provide consumers with necessary information (company policies, “about us” information shipping fees, etc.)

The more seamless the UX on your store is, the more engaged your visitors will be.

And, if they’re satisfied with everything, they’re more likely to convert.

Inefficient Marketing Techniques

Marketing is crucial for eCommerce stores.

Navigating the online market, especially with many competitors can be quite difficult.

Standing out in such a crowd can be tricky without the help of proper marketing plans and techniques.

Neglecting marketing is one of the biggest mistakes any business can make, not only in eCommerce stores. Moreover, focusing on just one marketing method is equally as bad.

For an eCommerce store to have any chance of success, you need to invest in various marketing strategies and campaigns, such as SEO, social media, email marketing, content marketing, etc. A lot of eCommerce owners struggle when it comes to marketing.

Fortunately, there are a bunch of marketing agencies that can help you out in this endeavor. The important thing is to have an effective marketing strategy in place without having to spend your entire budget on it.

Final Word

The eCommerce industry is a large and dynamic environment. Things can change fast, and they can change often. Making a mistake is quite common in such conditions. However, avoiding mistakes should be your top priority, but if you do manage to make one, you must fix it right away.

Such willingness and effort coming from your end can really impress your customers and influence them in giving a (another) chance to you.

Surely implementing all these strategies will take time and effort but you can definitely start one step at a time in order to move forward and thrive in 2021 and beyond!

This is a guest post by Frank Garnett

The post [eCommerce 2021] 5 Common Mistakes Store Owners Should Avoid appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

[eCommerce 2021] The Benefits of User-Generated Content

Ian — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 08:53:38 +0000

Is user-generated content (UGC) really worth your time if you’re a retail business owner?

Without a doubt.

In this article, let’s take a look at the advantages of making use of content created by customers on your eCommerce website and social media accounts, as well as find out how important and powerful they can be in the online retail sphere.

We’ll also take a peek at the latest trends in user-generated content and how some brands are leveraging it.

If you own a retail eCommerce business, you’ve probably looked for ways to provide customers the best shopping experience possible while also saving on expenses. Read till the end for a great way to do that.

What is User-Generated Content?

User-generated content (UGC) includes various types of content voluntarily created by people and shared online (on social media for example).

Such user-created content serves as social proof for businesses and is contributed by people voluntarily without pay.

User-Generated Content is also known as earned media or earned content and takes up the E in the PESO (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned) model coined by Gini Dietrich’s 2014 book Spin Sucks, consists of content in the form of:

Customer reviews
Blogs or articles published by customers/users
Word of mouth
Replies or comments to your social media post

That’s not all! User-Generated Content has a horde of benefits which we’ll see further below.

How Can User-Generated Content Benefit Your eCommerce Business?

A significant 70% of consumers will consider user-generated content such as reviews or ratings before making a purchasing decision. At least 41% of them will read four to seven reviews to gain important insights on a product.” – Tint

If that’s not clear enough, here’s something more for you:

User-generated content is realistic – Today’s customers are so aware that they see right through the difference between a PR campaign and a review from an actual customer. Marketing campaigns are slick – no doubt but it lacks the honesty in a real person’s real opinion. And people want honesty rather than glossy.

People trust user-generated content more – Not just paying attention to but people tend to trust the opinions of others more than dry advertisements or the results of pure marketing. Moreover, in this age of social media, customers are expected to trust a stranger online and not just their close friends when it comes to choosing a product.

With the help of increased brand awareness and credibility, you can also influence purchasing decisions and inspire prospective customers to hit the ‘buy button’.

This is why placing user-generated content on your customer-facing pages/channels can be a good ploy.

Which Retail Verticals are Best Suited to User-Generated Content?

To be clear, implementing user-generated content in one way or another will help your eCommerce business regardless of industry. Yet, it’s vital to understand that user-generated content won’t work equally well for all spheres.

Some retail verticals that should be using user-generated content for sure are businesses that are dealing in apparel, home decor, beauty products, children and pets products, etc.

And as far as demographics are concerned, with the boom of social media, millennials, more than any other generation, are inclined toward user-generated content.

“Roughly 30% of the time that millennials spend consuming all media is spent on user-generated content. 84 percent of millennials report that user-generated content has some influence on what they buy.” – CrowdRiff

With the basics of user-generated content out of the way, let’s take a look at what the latest eCommerce trends in user-generated content are.

The Latest eCommerce User-Generated Content Trends in 2021

Without a doubt, a big part of the effectiveness of your user-generated content strategy will depend on how well it is executed.

Consistency is among the main points to keep in mind for sure. Similarly, giving something in return to your customers for their content can be a good move (for instance, you could motivate your customers by offering them a discount, coupon, or free product delivery in return for reviewing the product they bought from you).

Here’s how renowned brands are leveraging user-generated content in 2021:

1. Linking Social Media to Your Website

One of the first places to look for user-generated content is your social media channels.

Posts that your customers make on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or even TikTok can be useful. Thus, adding functionality to connect your official social media accounts to your online store is the first step you should take.

Importantly, make sure to give credit to content creators, state what should be done to be featured, and think of a way to organize content in such a way to promote what you’re selling.

Here’s what a user-generated content section on the official Puma website looks like.

Placed right on the home page, the “AS WORN BY YOU” block allows for adding photos to the gallery and also explains how to mention the brand on Instagram. The carousel with the photos shows the name of the contributor.

When a post is clicked, we can see the tagged product on the picture and a button with a CTA that allows us to purchase the item.

2. Enhancing Product Pages With User-Generate Content

Undoubtedly, placing user-generated content on the product pages of your online store is a blazing tactic too. Not only can you build trust this way but can also showcase how your customers are using a product. The latter can result in the “I want this too” reaction and lead to a sale.

The Prismatic Shadows product page on the official NYX Cosmetics website is a good example.

First of all, the highlighted pink “@NYXCOSMETICS” heading hints at how to tag a social media post in order to be featured. The “NYX Cosmetics Community” section displays photos of the looks that people have created with the product that’s on sale.

These photos are collected on the website by a widget that pulls out those posts that mention the brand and that have corresponding hashtags and products that were used for creating a particular look.

3. Displaying Customer Feedback With Visuals

Positive customer reviews are immensely effective at convincing someone to make a purchase decision.

On your site, customers could share what they like and dislike about the product they’ve bought or their impressions of the service they received.

Apart from just submitting text, giving users the opportunity to back up their feedback with pictures makes a lot of sense.

Here’s a tip: To avoid fraud reviews, make sure to verify every review that’s added. You should be certain that every piece of feedback is from a real customer.

Let’s take a look at how the official Azazie website uses this strategy out of user-generated content.

Since buying wedding dresses online without a physical try-on can be a stressful experience, seeing pictures of other real brides (not just models) wearing the dress can be a relief.

The product page is equipped with a gallery that gathers all customer images featuring a specific product.

Even better, the testimonials include pictures and other important data apart from the comment (the size the customer wears, their body type, the item’s fit, rating, etc).

4. Cross-Posting on Various Social Media Channels

Like we mentioned earlier, it’s worth noting that user-generated content works well not only on eCommerce websites but on social media channels too.

Reposting content in which you’re featured and sharing feedback on your business accounts is a great tactic.

This way, you additionally expand the content on your accounts and can increase the number of views. To give an example, this screenshot was taken from the Stories of the official MAC Cosmetics Instagram account.

Having run a short survey, they’ve collected feedback from clients regarding their favorite lipstick and shade. Noteworthy, the “See more” button leads viewers to a page where they can order the item (this is possible only if the business account has an Instagram Shop).

5. Boosting Email Send-outs & Ads

It is a great idea to enhance email campaigns with user-generated content.

Be it a quote from a customer’s testimonial or an image of a happy customer, the click-through rates of a mailer featuring such content will be higher.

Luckily, most email campaign builder tools are already armed with functionality that allows for linking UGC from social media as well as boast various templates that can assist in designing beautiful blocks with customer reviews and content.

Finally, just as in the case with email campaigns, the click-through rates of ads are several times higher if they feature an element of user-generated content. This means that you can potentially cut costs on PPC and save more of your marketing budget.

Final Word

All in all, user-generated content is a mighty marketing resource and weapon that’s especially relevant in retail eCommerce.

Because people tend to believe the opinions of others and are often moved by the trends that others start, user-generated content is a strategy that can not only spark the interest of your customers but also ultimately result in more sales.

About the Author

Alex Husar is CTO at Onilab with 8+ years of experience in Magento and Salesforce development services. He graduated from the Czech Technical University and obtained a bachelor’s degree in Computer Software Engineering. Alex’s expertise includes both full-stack dev skills and a strong ability to provide project-critical guidance to entire teams

A Little about LateShipment.com

LateShipment.com is the world’s only logistics cloud tool that helps businesses of every size reduce shipping costs by up to 20% and provide memorable delivery experiences to customers at scale.

At LateShipment.com, our focus has remained steadfastly on the last mile, typically the part of the logistics chain that is the most opaque.

Some of our high-impact offerings are :

Save up to 20% on Shipping – Automatically audit your shipping carriers’ invoices and recover refunds for 50+ service failures & billing errors including late deliveries.
Real-Time Visibility – Monitor your outbound & inbound shipments across multiple shipping carriers on a centralized window, in real-time.
Critical Delivery Alerts – Pay attention to daily deliveries with predictive delay alerts and more on a purpose-built dashboard for support reps.
Proactive Issue Resolution – Proactively communicate with customers to prevent them from having bad experiences due to delivery failures.
Custom Delivery Notifications – Send custom or automated delivery status notifications for events like “shipped,” “attempted,” & “delivered.”
Branded Tracking Pages – Build fully customizable order tracking pages for your customers to improve brand recall and sales.

The best part is, it takes less than 2 minutes to see LateShipment.com in action.

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eCommerce Success: Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing in Logistics & Shipping for Emerging Businesses

Ian — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 05:07:42 +0000

You might have come across many technical terms being hyped by tech-enthusiasts, but ‘cloud computing’ rightfully deserves the attention it has been getting over the last few years.

Cloud computing is revolutionizing technology that has created a buzz in many business areas due to its ease of accessibility and flexibility.

According to the recent cloud computing statistics, the global public cloud market will exceed estimated expectations worth $330 billion as the year 2020 wraps up.

After looking at such exponential figures, there is no doubt that companies worldwide have outgrown the outdated technologies and expanded their investments towards cloud computing.

Undoubtedly, the advanced technology has been successfully integrated into the logistics and shipment industry as well.

Today, cloud-based logistics software is considered much more efficient to fulfill commercial needs and provide value-added services to customers.

Let’s find out what pros and cons the revolutionary technology has for the logistics and shipping companies.

Advantages of Cloud computing in the Logistics Industry

The following are some of the best benefits one can reap by integrating cloud computing in the logistics industry.

1. More accessibility to real-time pricing updates

Various elements can directly affect pricing when it comes to transportation and warehousing.

External factors like market conditions, customer demands, sales fluctuations, weather changes, and other such volatilities have the power to make or break your margins.

Not every person can have real-time access to such fluctuations and call the next big trend change that could affect the pricing. Cloud computing does precisely that for you. It provides more accessibility to real-time pricing updates.

Like for instance, you receive immediate notice that freight rates have changed, but if you are out of the station, you can still communicate the necessary changes needed to be made to accommodate the sudden change of rates in your favor.

2. Helps your business expand to accommodate customer demand

A smooth supply chain is essential for a company’s operational efficiency.

Given the customer-centricity and the significance the supply chain provides to it, a streamlined supply chain can do a lot more to match customer demands. It can give your business a boost across all the associated supply chain channels without costing the business a fortune.

Organizations require flexibility and integration to survive the competition in the market. And cloud computing can be the right answer.

Cloud computing is a game-changer for businesses to expand and meet customer demands by deploying new agility services.

– Data from Accenture

3. Easy collaboration at every step of the supply chain

Logistics has been transformed ever since technology has been integrated every step of the way.

Where the supply chain has become more complex and dependent on every step, a smooth and streamlined collaboration has become vital for sustaining your business operations.

Because the supply chain quickly multiplies the cost down the value stream, even the slightest change that can help you save through access to real-time pricing information is a significant win for the company.

Therefore, cloud-based logistics is the key to breaking down communication and pricing issues in the supply chain. It will help create a more predictable supply chain by connecting the process through the cloud.

4. Better data mobility among various departments involved

Logistics and shipment require real-time access to data from various departments.

Deploying cloud computing allows better data mobility through the organization’s various departments to streamline the supply chain and make better decisions. This not only saves time and resources but instead directs the use of resources towards other innovations.

Cloud computing allows speedy data deployments of departments like management, maintenance, IT, and other upgrades that are involved in the supply chain. It affects efficiency and productivity through tangible means as it takes open and seamless integration of all the other departments involved to work together.

5. Create better transit models for efficient shipping

If your supply chain requires coordination from several suppliers spread on a larger scale, then it should be seamlessly aligned and synchronized. And cloud computing can help you do just that with regards to your logistics.

Cloud-based logistics solutions easily provide real-time monitoring access to create better transit models for efficient shipping.

The real-time data is not only remotely accessible, but it is available for the entire team regardless of time or location.

Even if you want in-transit models spanning on a global scale, cloud-based logistics solutions can be integrated to efficiently cover, optimize, and manage such formidable and complex trails.

It is easier to deploy and less-costly to initiate.

6. Supply chain transparency for better operations

Cloud solutions allow you to connect with multiple dimensions of your organization.

You can connect with internal and external departments, your partners, and even the services that you have outsourced.

As you integrate cloud in the supply chain and connect all of your inter-departmental partners, it provides real-time transparency at every supply chain level.

It allows you to keep your supply chain inbound functions, outbound operations, and logistics data process under control and your customers satisfied.

The visibility at every step makes it easier and quicker to deploy the means that can carry forward the process, ultimately making it more streamlined.

7. Access to inventory and warehouse capacity figures

Inventory is the starting point and probably the full-circle endpoint of a supply chain. That is why on-hand inventory is the most direct way through which you can easily control the risk factors and optimize your costs.

Cloud allows you to instantly access your on-hand inventory figures and information to maximize your ability to respond to the on-going fluctuations.

The consistent inventory data flow through the cloud allows you access to specific details like profit margins and highest seller figures etc.

Such valuable information can impact your sales significantly and allow you to make better orders to fulfill customer demands.

Disadvantages of Cloud computing

Where cloud computing can be a shining gold armor for logistics and supply chain management, organizations should understand that there are just as many unique risks involved with cloud adoption.

1. Requires a lot more efficient access management

Cloud computing in logistics can lead to inefficient access management in two ways.

One happens through an inefficient credential policy where there is no need for strong passwords to protect the data.

There are no frequent updates in the system to counter any territorial breaches.

The other one happens when risk is known as shadow IT or a rogue IT system that makes use of systems, devices, software applications, and services without a clearly defined IT approval.

2. Countering unauthorized use

It requires countering of unauthorized usage, whether the breach has been made through intentional or unintentional means.

However, the main reason behind the breach is the irresponsibility of the employees who might be using untested and unauthorized means to access the cloud servers that harm the entire logistics and supply chain system.

3. Limited structural control

Due to the risk involved, the companies are advised to protect their systems to every extent possible.

This minimizes the structural control but also closes the access to endpoints that can be exploited.

Limiting potential attack surfaces can be detrimental to the overall supply chain structural integrity, but there is no other way to ground the operations safely.

4. Multiple clouds and interface issues

If the cloud system is accessed through an application program interface or API, it can automate almost every transaction your organization has ever made and expose it to the world.

Such issues stem from several factors involved in the overall system.

Configuration and deployment of multiple clouds require the assurance that they are compatible with each other.

Negligence towards and lack of investment made in this regard enables more APIs that can then become potential entry points for hackers.

5. Dealing with numerous stakeholders

As a logistics company, you would be having multiple suppliers, clients, and stakeholders in general.

Therefore, logistics companies must know the main stakeholders in freight distribution and how different actions can impact their corporate relations with them.

The sharing of your resources and cloud system data among your stakeholders, tenants, and customers is risky.

Resources are vulnerable to leakage, and anybody with ill intentions can get easy access if they want to use such information against you.

Wrapping It Up!

All in all, there is no doubt that cloud-based solutions are here to stay when it comes to logistics, shipment, and supply chain companies.

These companies can easily achieve better operations, execution of tasks, collaboration within the business circle, and overall high functionality through cloud computing.

Therefore, in the upcoming future, we will see many logistics companies moving towards and adopting such cloud practices and generally advancing in the digital realm of performing company operations.

Cloud computing may not be regarded as groundbreaking anymore due to its high adaptability in every business format.

Still, it is breaking barriers when it comes to making seamless supply chain management processes for companies adopting it.

This article is a guest contribution by Samantha Kailee

Samantha Kaylee is currently working as a Planning Manager at Crowd Writer, an excellent platform that offers services like write my assignment UK. She has gained significant experience in logistics due to her previous job in a renowned shipping company. You can check out her blog for recommendations and expertise.

The post eCommerce Success: Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing in Logistics & Shipping for Emerging Businesses appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

How eCommerce Businesses Can Conquer the Biggest Holiday Sales Days

Ian — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 11:45:21 +0000

The holiday season is just around the corner and, pandemic or not, these special days could make things extra hectic for businesses within the eCommerce industry. After all, the Christmas shopping season entails a variety of big “holiday sales” such as Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. According to Statista’s latest study, this five-day period translated to an estimated $28.5 billion in sales during the 2019 holiday season.

Taking an even closer look, Forbes also suggests how online sales for retailers in popular gifting categories are set to get a significant boost this coming season. For instance, health and beauty sales are projected to go up by 23%, consumer electronics by 20%, fashion by 19%, and home furnishings by 16%.

This holiday season, health and beauty sales are projected to go up by 23%, consumer electronics by 20%, fashion by 19%, and home furnishings by 16%.

These dramatic spikes make it imperative for businesses to try their hardest to come up with the right strategies that could help them make the most out of the season. With that in mind, here are some of the ways eCommerce businesses can be successful during the holidays:

3 Ways eCommerce Businesses Can Conquer the Biggest Sales Days

1. Review Your Product Listings

An article on Inc outlines how competing with the likes of the big eCommerce businesses such as Amazon and Walmart will be extremely difficult in the coming months.

So to give yourself a better chance, the first thing you have to do is to ensure that your products are readily available, in stock, and visible to consumers searching for them online. For instance, you could try listing your products on Google Shopping for free. This simple trick will not only strengthen your digital presence but also make your products more accessible to the millions who shop through Google Shopping every single day. It would also be a good idea for you to use a variety of point-of-sale systems like Shopify.

2. Make the Most of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing can be very complex and generally incorporates a number of different disciplines. For most eCommerce businesses, digital marketing campaigns will either be done in-house or if you don’t have the expertise, it will need to be outsourced to an experienced agency or consultant.

Ayima Kickstart highlights how your digital marketing is often made up of three key aspects: technical SEO, content SEO, and Link Development. Technical SEO involves making sure your website is up to scratch. Meanwhile, content SEO involves publishing content that is relevant to your target market’s search queries, and turning visitors into potential customers. And finally, link development involves improving your brand reputation by creating a strong backlink profile. All these efforts put together will help ensure that your site ranks for your main keywords during the holiday season when you can generate the bulk of your annual sales.

3. Establish Clear Return Policies

With the pandemic forcing many of us to shift into the digital space, a high percentage of shopping is expected to happen online. This reality makes it crucial for eCommerce businesses to re-evaluate and re-establish not just their shipping policies but also their return procedures.

In one of our previous posts ‘How Businesses Can Handle Holiday Returns’, we mentioned how over 21% of online shoppers consider return policies as the biggest hurdles to shopping online. It is for this very reason why the first consideration you have to take into account when establishing return policies is simplicity. As much as possible, stick with clear and concise English, and avoid verbose language or complicated sentences. It would also be a good idea to offer flexible returns as well as a free return policy for specific items.

Things You Should Avoid

Of course, if there are things you have to do, there are also things you have to watch out for. These are as follows:

1. Starting Too Late and Having No Marketing Plan

As mentioned, the holiday season is expected to be longer this time around because much of today’s shopping will happen online. If you start out too late and with no solid marketing plan, catching up with your competitors would be far too difficult.

2. Neglecting Mobile Experiences

As smartphones continue to advance through the years, more and more consumers are relying on their phones for a multitude of things, including shopping. This makes it vital for eCommerce businesses to focus on what will make their sites more compatible with mobile.

3. Ignoring Loyal Customers & Last-Minute Shoppers

The holiday season may be the perfect time to appeal to new clients but it shouldn’t be a reason for you to neglect past and loyal customers. Make sure to introduce campaigns that will make them think about you and your brand once the shopping mood hits them.

4. Failing to Prepare Your Site

The shopping season is about to begin and the worst thing you can do is to fail to prepare your site for the wave of traffic the holidays will bring. As early as now, try to understand the load capability of your eCommerce platform, as it will be stretched to the limit in the coming months. It is also important that you understand the limits by checking-in with your hosting company and seeing if your plan supports the amount of traffic any seasonal campaigns could bring in.

This article is a contribution by Roxie Joyce.

How LateShipment.com’s DEM Platform Can Help You

Issues in the holiday season can seriously damage your online reputation and lead your potential customers into believing that the post-purchase experience you offer is flawed and deter them from shopping with you again.

On the other hand, getting your customer’s delivery experience right is crucial to building a loyal customer base. And repeat customers spend 65% more than new customers. Acquiring new customers is 5 times more expensive than retaining existing customers.

This is all the more reason to not overlook the post-purchase experience you offer by handing it over entirely to the shipping carrier but instead taking control of it to drive success.

Having a one-stop solution for all post-purchase issues would be great, wouldn’t it?

That solution is LateShipment.com.

LateShipment.com’s Delivery Experience Management (DEM) platform helps businesses like yours effortlessly bridge the post-purchase CX gap and discover new ways to delight and retain customers by enabling them to:

Stay on top of order deliveries, particularly those facing delays

Track in-transit shipments in real-time across carriers you use on a single dashboard.
Get predictive alerts for shipments facing delays & proactively take corrective action.

Over Communicate and reduce customer anxiety post-purchase

Proactively identify and communicate with customers facing critical delivery issues.
Automate order status notifications via email or SMS throughout the delivery lifecycle.

Impress customers with brand-consistent order-tracking experiences

Build brand-consistent and beautiful order/tracking pages for your customers; on your custom domain.
Embed “Track My Order” widgets on your website and shipping emails to make parcel tracking self-service.

Leverage order-tracking moments to increase sales and reduce returns

Increase sales with marketing campaigns & product recommendations on tracking pages.
Reduce returns by providing relevant product usage information on order tracking pages.

Know how good or bad your customers’ delivery experiences were by collecting delivery experience feedback

Capture your customers’ Delivery Satisfaction (DSAT) rating after every order delivery.
Monitor the average DSAT scores of customers to optimize shipping & delivery processes.

Additionally, LateShipment.com allows you to have your monthly shipping invoices automatically audited for 50+ shipping carrier service failures and claims refunds on your behalf.

The claimed amount is directly deposited into your account. This can save you up to 20% of your overall shipping spend.

Our automated refunds solution

Audits your monthly shipping invoices
Submits refund claims to your carrier(s) on your behalf
Deposits the refunded amount directly into your account

How good is that?

The best part is, it takes less than 2 minutes to see LateShipment.com in action without any change to your existing workflow.

The value we add to businesses is most evident when experienced first-hand. Try LateShipment.com now.

The post How eCommerce Businesses Can Conquer the Biggest Holiday Sales Days appeared first on Lateshipment.com.