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Find Out Why Having an Online Store Makes Sense

Find Out Why Having an Online Store Makes Sense
Mohab Ecommerce 0

Find Out Why Having an Online Store Makes Sense

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In 2022, shopping is no longer limited to physical brick-and-mortar stores. With advancement in modern technologies, availability of faster shipping options, and the recent pandemic that limited the movement of people, more and more customers are shopping online. While there are third-party channels like Amazon, Etsy, eBay and more that allow you to sell your products on their website, have you ever considered opening your own online store?

An online store dedicated to your brand and products can be tremendously beneficial as well as profitable. However, to reap the benefits of an online store, you must be familiar with how to create an online storefrom scratch. The process might sound too technical and troublesome but it’s quite simple and straightforward in fact. Read on to know more.

How to Open an Online Store?

Here’s a brief rundown of the process which you can follow to establish your very own store listed online and ready to serve customers. The best part about opening an online store is that you don’t need a lot of experience or technical knowledge and there is a plethora of tools available that are made specifically to help you with this journey. So, if you were wondering how to create an online store, follow these steps.

  • Step 1: Decide on your niche and what you will be offering the customers. Is it clothing, food items, appliances or something else?
  • Step 2: Choose whether you will house the products on your own or use a drop shipping supplier to take care of the shipping.
  • Step 3: Come up with a customer-friendly business name and register a domain name online for the website.
  • Step 4: Select and list the products that you will sell.
  • Step 5: Create the website for your brand. You can do it yourself, take help from an online store builder or even hire a developer.
  • Step 6: Get a sales tax ID since you’re now a business and would need to pay taxes on your products.
  • Step 7: Run marketing campaigns to get the products in front of your audience.

Benefits of an Online Store

Interested to know about the advantages of an online store and why it scores higher than a physical one? After all, most big brands have official stores and retail outlets for people to walk in, roam around, feel the products, and then make a purchase. While there’s no alternative to physical contact with the products, an online store can provide several other benefits.

  • Enhanced Communication with Customers: Online shopping allows brands to capture in-depth customer information like their purchase history, shortlisted products, email address, shopping preferences, and more. All this information enables you to connect with your customers better. Targeted campaigns, special discounts, and notifying the customers when their shortlisted product is back in stock can increase the chances of completing a sale successfully.
  • Better Shopping Experience: This is one of the key benefits of an online store. Shopping online gives a certain amount of freedom to customers that can’t be found in physical stores. There’s no salesperson following them around the store to make them uncomfortable and no queues for them to stand in and wait. All they need to do is browse through the website, select products they like, and buy them instantly with the click of a button. No fuss. No hassle. And no carrying things around the store.
  • Reduced Costs: One of the biggest reasons behind taking your business online is the reduction in costs. Sure, you will be paying server costs, website maintenance costs, infrastructure costs and such, but they will be far lower than paying rent for a commercial space, hiring employees, and maintaining the physical stock as well as the store. The amount spent on marketing online can be as minimal as you like.
  • Increased Market Access: This is another one of the top advantages of an online store. Selling products over the internet opens a wide range of possibilities that just isn’t possible with independent stores. Not only can you market to people worldwide, but third-party drop shipping and fulfilment companies like Amazon and eBay make it possible for the products to reach even far-flung customers. Setting up a shop is easy and can happen in just a matter of minutes.
  • Master of your Own Finances: Since you’re not partnering with third-party channels and selling products from your store, barring the cost of advertisement, shipping, and other overheads, all the revenue, as well as the profit, is yours to keep. While selling on Amazon or eBay might feel like a good side hustle at the beginning, the earnings will stagnate over time even if your business is growing. Getting away from any third-party agreement frees you from these shackles.
  • You Have the Final Say: Another online store benefit? You are not restricted to the selling metrics and strategies of other third-party companies. You have complete authority over every business decision like how it’s going to operate, sales and marketing strategies to generate leads, product presentation, pricing, and even the way the order is packaged and delivered. Customer service also becomes more streamlined and efficient.
  • Convenient payment system: In case of an online store, if you join hands with the right payment gateway solution provider, accepting and keeping track of payments will become a piece of cake. You will be able to offer your customers multiple payment modes too, including debit and credit cards, net banking, e-wallets and so on. No matter where a customer is located, the funds will be deposited in your account quickly. Sending invoices and reminders will also become easy, helping you to focus more on core business areas.

Wrapping Up

Building a business from scratch and running the same is not easy, be it online or offline. Each has its own difficulties and comes with its fair share of roadblocks, but you don’t create a multi-billion-dollar corporation piggybacking on another company. Plus, there are several benefits of an online store over an offline one, as you read above. And if yours is a growing business that aims to stay in the game for a long time, futureproofing the business is vital. The world is going global and physical borders are no longer a constraint for brands trying to reach their customers. So, now is the best time to go online.

3 years ago
A Basic Guide to 6 Different Payment Solutions For Freelancers
Mohab Guest Posts, Social Commerce 0

A Basic Guide to 6 Different Payment Solutions For Freelancers

Freedom in what you do

Freelancing, sometimes known as independent contracting, offers workers a way to take charge of their work setup. What jobs you do, when you do them, and who you do them for, become matters that you can control in a way that a direct employee cannot. You may even choose where to work, perhaps hot-desking in a shared workspace or on the deck in the sun.

As a freelancer, you have the flexibility to earn around other life commitments and create a work/life balance that works for you. It’s a model of working that is suitable for many fields. Web designers can ply their trade to a variety of clientele. Freelancing opportunities abound for writers and editors. Graphic designers and artists can take advantage of the growing NFT art marketplace.

There are many important things to consider before pursuing the life of a freelancer. Work can be unsteady. It is up to you to find clients and generate business. Be wary of blurring the lines between work time and personal time. Chief among these concerns is how you get paid. Read on to see some tips for mitigating risks associated with freelancing, and for a basic guide to some of the payment methods available.

Tips for getting paid

  • Create an invoice template you can easily edit for different clients.
  • Use an easy meeting minutes template to keep track of what you’ve promised to clients and what they’ve promised to you.
  • Before signing a contract with a prospective client, do some research to discover if there have been any reports of bad experiences from other freelancers.
  • Ensure you have several points of contact with a client. If you’re freelancing for an organization, then make sure you can contact the HR department. You should have an established point of contact for invoicing.
  • Try to glean some insight into the finance department structure of client organizations, so you know who to go to if there are any disputes.

How do I get paid?

There are many payment solutions for freelancers to choose from. You need to use those that work best for you and your clients. Below are 6 options for freelancers, along with some benefits and drawbacks for each method. Each payment solution will serve the purposes of some freelancers but not others. This basic guide will help you decide which payment platform best meets your needs.

Paypal

Founded in 1998, Paypal is one of the most well-established and best known methods for moving money around. According to Statista, Paypal had 426 million active users as of Q4 2021. As such a well-known payment platform it may seem like an obvious choice, however, there are pitfalls to be avoided.

Benefits

It is free to set up an account and all you need is an email address. Being such a well-known brand, clients can trust their online payment is secure; they offer robust buyer protection policies. Clients paying you through PayPal don’t actually need a PayPal account. If they are paying via credit/debit card, or with their PayPal balance, payments are sent in minutes. 

Drawbacks

The protections PayPal offers are weighted heavily toward the buyer/client. In the event of a dispute, you could find funds are withheld or refunded. If you experience several disputes then you run the risk of your account being frozen. If you travel a lot, you may log in to your PayPal account from a “.co.uk” part of the world one week, a “.de” the next, then a “.ae” (you may be asking, what is .ae domain?) a few weeks later. All this travel can also run the risk of account suspension, although you can communicate with Paypal to outline your frequent travel.

PayPal has higher fees than some of the other options. The amount you pay in fees depends on what country you are operating from, what currencies are being used, and the amounts of money in question. They also charge a conversion rate if you are accepting payments in currencies other than your own. Payments made using electronic checks or bank transfers will be slower because they will need to be cleared by the financial institutions involved.

Bank Transfer

Money can, of course, be moved directly from bank account to bank account electronically. Western Union pioneered the wire transfer back in 1872. They used their telegraph network to communicate between offices which gave the process the moniker of telegraph transfer, by which it is still known in some countries today. These days, secure systems such as the SWIFT banking system ensure the secure transfers of funds.

Benefits

This method is available internationally, with few exceptions. Payments are processed nearly instantaneously when paid domestically, with international payments possibly enduring delays of a couple of days. It is extremely secure and so freelancers and clients can use it with confidence. Once you add your bank account details to your Paypal account, you can simply transfer funds.

Drawbacks

Depending on the banks involved, there can be expensive charges when transferring money internationally. Some banks charge flat fees for incoming and outgoing international payments. For small projects, then, this may be a method to avoid. Unless you have a good relationship with a client, they are unlikely to feel comfortable paying this way as there is little recourse in the event of a dispute.

Escrow

Escrow is a legal and financial agreement that is designed to give the confidence to transact with each other when they are unfamiliar. A third party will hold onto the payment until both freelancer and client are satisfied that work is complete and payment is due. Escrow.com provides this service for a fee.

Benefits

When totally unfamiliar with a client, Escrow can give you confidence that monies are secure in the event of a dispute. Freelancers and clients agree who pays the fees ahead of time and arrange an inspection period of between 1 and 30 days for the client to accept the goods or service provided. They are impartial arbiters, providing a fair way to do business across many countries.

Drawbacks

The fees are quite high. Anything below $300USD is a $10 fee. It’s, therefore, not a good option for small transactions. Although the inspection period can provide peace of mind, it also delays your payment by up to 30 days. 

A Basic Guide to 6 Different Payment Solutions For Freelancers
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Venmo

Owned by PayPal, Venmo is a peer-to-peer payment platform. It is widely used throughout the US as a way to pay someone back for a takeout meal, for example. As an app-based platform, it is a convenient way to make and receive quick payments with no fees for bank transfers or Venmo account transfers, and only a 3% fee for credit or debit cards.

Benefits

Venmo is extremely fast and convenient. Thanks to its app-based structure, you can send notes along with payments and communicate within the app. When transferring money from Venmo to your bank account, you may have to wait one to three days. There is an option for a fast transfer for a charge of 1% up to a maximum of $10.

Drawbacks

Strictly speaking, Venmo doesn’t allow its platform to be used to pay for goods and services. If a client insists on paying this way then you risk having the payment reversed. It’s only available in the US right now and you can’t transfer money internationally. There are few protections for you as a freelancer or a client. It may be suitable for small dollar amounts but use with care and only with clients you have a good working relationship with. 

Paymes

Based in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA), PayTabs social commerce platform Paymes. Paymes is an app-based option aimed at freelancers. It promises a paperless, fast, and secure way to make and receive payments. It is brand new, with some details TBC. If they deliver what’s promised, it could be a viable option for many freelancers.

Benefits

You can create an online store with this platform, so it acts as an advertising tool as well as a payment platform. They are also payment partners with many social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. When a client wishes to pay for your service, you share a link or QR code with them. It is a convenient, and intuitive approach.

Drawbacks

There are still details to be worked out with Paymes. They won’t charge set up fees or an annual fee but there will be a transaction charge that is currently unknown. Any charge will likely be comparable to other platforms. Currently, Paymes is only available in the Turkey, Azerbaijan and Egypt.

Skrill

Skrill was once known as Moneybookers. It specializes in international payments using different currencies. With fees comparable to PayPal, it is an option to consider for freelancers regularly working with clients from other countries.

Benefits

Opening an account with Skrill is an easy process. Payments can be made worldwide and only an email address is required. It is safe and secure, being regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. Payments can also be made in Bitcoin.

Drawbacks

Once you’ve opened an account with Skrill, there is an onerous verification process to endure. You will need to provide a photo ID along with a utility bill. Users complain of a slow process. They also complain about lackluster customer support, a chatbot for existing customers.

A Basic Guide to 6 Different Payment Solutions For Freelancers
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Payment power in your hands

Freelancers exert a lot of power over their ways of working. You’ll have to decide where you work, when you work, and for online-based working, choosing between single tenant vs. multi tenant cloud-based software.

When deciding on the choice of payment method, you will have your own unique things to consider. Use a meeting minutes generator to help you decide what the client will be comfortable with, in regards to settling bills. You are now equipped to find a payment method that best suits your needs.

Jenna BunnellJenna Bunnell – Senior Manager, Content Marketing, Dialpad
Jenna Bunnell is the Senior Manager for Content Marketing at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated cloud-hosted unified communications system that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. She is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility and visualizing how content can be presented in creative and comprehensive ways. Jenna has written for sites such as Promo and eHotelier. Check out her LinkedIn profile

3 years ago
7 Strategies That Are Proven to Reduce Involuntary Churn (And Help Win Your Customers Over)
Mohab Customer Experience, Guest Posts 0

Let’s say you’re an app developer. You’ve found your niche, built an original app that you just know people will love, optimized your marketing and discoverability plan, and have what you think is a fail-proof monetization strategy. But for some reason when it comes to product launch a high churn rate is killing your profit margin.

In the language of sales, customer churn rate is the percentage of customers that stopped using your company’s product or service during a certain period of time. 

To calculate your churn rate, just divide the number of customers you lost during a certain stretch of time by the number of customers you had at the beginning of that time period. For example, if you started the quarter with 400 customers and ended it with 380, your churn rate would be 5% because you lost 5% of your customers.

What is involuntary churn?

No matter what product or service you sell, attracting potential customers and convincing them to part with their money is all well and good, but if for whatever reason they can’t finalize payment, you’ve lost a sale.

Involuntary churn is exactly this. It refers to when a customer is ready to make a purchase but some unforeseen difficulty prevents them from doing so.

7 Strategies That Are Proven to Reduce Involuntary Churn (And Help Win Your Customers Over)

Because we tend to think of churn rates as a metric that applies to existing customers, we often talk about involuntary churn as a feature of subscription services or business models that rely on repeat payment. 

When analyzing your website’s traffic, it is useful to think about bounce rate vs exit rate in order to get a clear picture of which stage of the user experience people are leaving the site. The same logic applies to churn rates. When exactly in the customer lifecycle you are losing business is just as important as why.

1- Analyze what’s causing your company’s involuntary churn

When thinking about involuntary churn, the first thing you need to ask yourself is what’s causing the churn.

Are payments defaulting because of a problem with your payment gateway? Or is it an issue with your web design that’s causing the site to crash at the point of sale? 

Different businesses will find that different things are causing customers to churn involuntarily. There’s no straightforward way to figure out what’s causing involuntary churn and ultimately it will take different types of testing to do so.

2- Apply best practices when sending dunning messages

Dunning is the process of methodically communicating with customers to ensure the collection of payments owed. It’s a simple but effective way of addressing involuntary churn that many businesses apply to the management of their repeat customers.

If you’re signed up for any repeat payments, subscriptions, or buy-now-pay-later services, you may have received dunning messages in the past. They typically take the form of an email or SMS sent if an expected payment hasn’t been processed for any reason.

If your dunning messages are accusatory or confrontational, you risk alienating the customer for good. After all, most failed payments can easily be rectified by customers simply re-attempting the payment or updating the payment details.

7 Strategies That Are Proven to Reduce Involuntary Churn (And Help Win Your Customers Over)

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Ensure your dunning messages clearly explain what has happened, how the customer needs to proceed, and what the next steps are if they fail to make payment.

3- Use card updaters

For merchants who accept credit or debit cards for recurring charges, expired card numbers can be a leading cause of failed payments and involuntary churn.

Card updater services offer an alternative to trying to get in touch with customers on your own. In recent years, American Express and Mastercard have both accelerated innovation in the field and it’s now easier than ever to automatically update card details. 

Compared to trying to get in touch individually, automatic card updaters help you to retain customers while saving time for everyone involved.

American Express offers a service known as Cardrefresher which allows merchants to keep customers’ Amex card details up to date. The service offers daily updates. Merchants can receive the updates directly or through a vendor or processor that updates their recurring billing or card-on-file data.

The Mastercard Automatic Billing Updater is a similar service designed to assist merchants in keeping their on-file card information current. In the Mastercard system, issuers submit account changes to Mastercard’s database, which merchants can access and use to update their own records.

4- Offer multiple payment options

By multiplying the options for payment, and allowing customers to enter a backup option if one fails to process a payment, you increase the likelihood of successful payment and decrease your customer churn rate.

For truly global businesses, make sure you’re partnered with a payment gateway like PayTabs that supports multiple currencies. Nothing is likely to send customers elsewhere than not being able to pay in the currency of their choice.

7 Strategies That Are Proven to Reduce Involuntary Churn (And Help Win Your Customers Over)

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5- Encourage direct debit for recurring payments

Direct Debit refers to when customers give their banks the authority to automatically pay recurring charges. It has been one of the most useful banking technologies for businesses that rely on these recurring payments. It is the preferred arrangement for paying utility bills such as gas and electricity and for subscription services such as SaaS business models.

In today’s international payment environment, the best way to get set up for direct debit payments is to enlist the help of a globally-minded payment gateway, that gives you access to the different technologies used to process direct debits around the world.  For example, EG-ACH in Egypt or Masav in Israel.

Remember that direct debits can be used for both incoming and outgoing payments. As well as helping you to reduce involuntary churn by making repeat payments easy for your customers, it can be one of the best tools for affiliate marketing by helping you to pay your affiliates on time.

6- Optimize your retry cycle

Businesses that rely on some form of electronic payment usually implement a retry cycle that automatically attempts to process a payment again when it fails.

7 Strategies That Are Proven to Reduce Involuntary Churn (And Help Win Your Customers Over)

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Retry cycles are especially important in fields such as mobile eCommerce in which retailers are entirely dependent upon virtual payment methods.

When thinking about your retry cycle, it helps to divide declined payments into what are known as hard declines and soft declines. 

A hard decline is when the issuing bank does not approve the payment. Causes of hard declines include:

  • Stolen Card
  • Invalid Card
  • Closed Account

With hard declines, you often need to ask the customer to retry, usually with a different payment method.

A soft decline happens when the issuing bank approves the payment, but the transaction fails at some other point in the process. Typical reasons for a soft decline are:

  • Processor Declined.
  • Card Activity Limit Exceeded.
  • Expired Card.
  • The Purchase is Unusual.
  • The Billing Address and the IP Address Do Not Match.
  • The Card is Being Used Abroad.

For soft card declines, it is best to retry the payment at least once straight away. For hard declines, the ideal retry cycle is to retry again over the coming days or weeks. This gives people a chance to rectify the issue, for example by adding new payment details or funding their bank account if the card has insufficient funds.

7 Strategies That Are Proven to Reduce Involuntary Churn (And Help Win Your Customers Over)

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7- Don’t cancel unpaid subscriptions

Some businesses automatically cancel unpaid subscriptions without giving the customer a chance to pay another way.

When there’s so much technology out there to help you collect repeat payments, even if your first attempt fails, canceling subscriptions without following up with your customers just doesn’t make sense.

Before canceling any subscriptions, first, you should find out why the subscription is going unpaid. For example, outsourced or inhouse testing might uncover an issue with your payment setup that is causing failed transactions that your customers don’t even know about. If this is happening, canceling the unpaid subscription would create a loss of revenue that could be avoided.

Conclusion

Whether your business model relies entirely on repeat payments, or a combination of payment types, reducing involuntary churn is a simple but effective way to increase your profits.

After all, a happy customer who continues to pay month-in month-out for a service they value is a great thing for any business. These types of customers can help you survive dips in growth and keep the revenue coming in when other sources dry up.

 

Emily Rollwitz Emily Rollwitz – Content Marketing Executive, Global App Testing
Emily Rollwitz is a Content Marketing Executive at Global App Testing, a remote and on-demand app testing company helping top app teams deliver high-quality software, anywhere in the world. She has 5 years of experience as a marketer, spearheading lead generation campaigns and events that propel top-notch brand performance. Handling marketing of various brands, Emily has also developed a great pulse in creating fresh and engaging content. She’s written for great websites like Airdroid and Shift4Shop. You can find her on LinkedIn.

3 years ago
Ecommerce vs Digital Marketing: A Comparative Guide to Help Your Business Succeed
Mohab Ecommerce, Guest Posts 0

Ecommerce vs Digital Marketing: A Comparative Guide to Help Your Business Succeed
These two terms, ecommerce and digital marketing, are often used synonymously. In fact, they refer to two very different things. If you have an online business or work in one, it’s important to fully understand the differences.

Where it gets confusing is that ecommerce and digital marketing often go hand in hand. Both can also exist independently. For example, an ecommerce business could trade without digital marketing. Similarly, digital marketing could be used by a physical business.

Introducing Digital Marketing & Ecommerce 

Basically, ecommerce is the act of selling online. Whether that’s through a mobile app or an ecommerce site, it’s all ecommerce. Digital marketing, on the other hand, is the act of marketing through digital channels. Social media ads, email campaigns, and so on. They are similar and often complementary disciplines. Many businesses will make use of both. Almost all businesses will use one or the other at some point. 

What do we Mean by Ecommerce?

Let’s look at ecommerce in a little more depth. We’re talking about selling online or through an app. But we’re also talking about how you deliver the goods to your customers. Logistics is an important part of ecommerce. 

The latest figures show that in 2020 73% of UAE consumers were shopping more online than ever before. With an overall growth in ecommerce sales in the Middle East and North Africa of 19.8%.

This market is expected to grow to $49bn by 2025 . You can see from these figures alone why ecommerce is now a vital part of the global economy. In addition, the growth in ecommerce popularity has led to new opportunities for digital marketers. 

Ecommerce vs Digital Marketing: A Comparative Guide to Help Your Business Succeed

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What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing means any form of marketing using digital means. That means ecommerce applications like banner ads and mobile notifications. But could also mean email campaigns, text adverts, social media ads, and more.  

The goal of digital marketing is much the same as any other marketing. You’re looking to promote your brand to the largest number of interested customers you can. Having a digital marketing strategy lets you keep the tone and message consistent across platforms. 

Here are some of the more popular examples of digital marketing today;

 

  • SEO 
  • Email Marketing & Automation
  • Viral Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Pay Per Click & Pay Per Conversion 
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Native Advertising 
  • Image & Rep campaigns 
  • Point of Sale cross-promotion

 

Compared with traditional marketing, digital marketing has the advantage of accessibility, visibility, cost and popularity. Digital marketers should look at future trends. Think about questions like ‘how will mobile apps affect the future of digital marketing?’ 

Can Digital Marketing & Ecommerce Work Together?

The answer is a resounding yes. They can, and should, work together. It’s hard for any business to succeed without making use of digital marketing techniques..  

Digital Marketing & Ecommerce Hand-in-Hand

Take the example of a SaaS (Software as a Service) business. What is a SaaS company you ask? Well, they sell software, usually on a supported subscription model, to other businesses. They operate entirely online, with many using remote workforces.

 

This means there are no physical locations, no passing trade. Every customer has to be gained through direct or indirect marketing efforts. Digital marketing is a vitally important part of the marketing strategy for a business like this. The same is true for many ecommerce sites.

Digital Marketing & Ecommerce for Physical Retail

That doesn’t mean that digital marketing is only used by ecommerce businesses, though. Digital marketing should form an important part of any retailer’s marketing strategy too. Both large businesses and local businesses can boost revenues with digital marketing techniques.  

 

Hosting a blog with local interest pieces can help drive traffic to local companies. Sharing your successes, or the community work you do, on social media can have a big impact on reputation. Digital marketing goes beyond just putting your products in front of the customer. 

 

Remember those ecommerce stats we cited earlier? Well, research also tells us that many businesses in the Middle East reported that in 2020 a quarter of their sales were online. Moreover, 85% of MENA consumers have shopping apps installed on their phones. These figures are only growing year on year. 

Ecommerce vs Digital Marketing: A Comparative Guide to Help Your Business Succeed

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As a physical retailer, ignoring the growth of these markets could seriously harm your business. Even your local customers will appreciate the opportunity to use a website or app if they choose to. 

This doesn’t mean you have to move away from your high-street roots. The key for a physical retailer is to make both experiences complimentary. Look at the potential for integrated customer data. 

This means that across your online and physical retail options, you make the customer experience consistent. A customer can fill a basket in your app and complete the transaction in-store, or vice-versa. 

This should also extend to your digital marketing efforts. If customers sign up for your newsletter, let them use the same email details etc. when they open a customer account. 

Does Ecommerce Need Digital Marketing to Succeed?

In short, yes. There are physical methods that will work well for online businesses, but digital marketing will make up the majority of your strategy. You can use consultants or account managers to promote your service. 

You could also look at billboards and local news advertising. The problem with many physical methods of advertising though is the cost. 

Some digital marketing approaches are also cost-intensive, it’s true. But the wealth of word-of-mouth advertising, available through low-cost social media campaigns, is too much for small businesses to ignore. 

Ecommerce vs Digital Marketing: A Comparative Guide to Help Your Business Succeed

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Digital Marketing: Practical Benefits

Let’s look at some of the direct benefits of digital marketing that your business could make use of. Many of these techniques require data collection and analysis to get started. So, make sure your records management systems are able to keep up.

Targeted Marketing

This means directing your marketing at the groups who will respond to it best. Using customer demographic data, you can analyze habits and preferences to optimize your advertising. Having a flexible digital marketing strategy allows you to easily run several concurrent campaigns. You can target these at different groups to get the optimal response rates. 

This can be very useful if you’re launching a new product or service, too. Target the early adopters, the customers who are most interested in your products. These customers will generally be the most willing to give feedback when asked. 

You can integrate this with your quality assurance strategy to gain useful customer data before a general release. Then, make this a part of your qa metrics. This will help you gain a picture of how your customer base will respond to a new product or process. 

Personalization

Personalization is becoming an important brand differentiator. This is when a website or app will adjust the adverts, notifications, or the products it shows you based on your customer profile. We’ve all seen examples of it, some apps even do it whether we’re aware of it or not.  

According to a recent study of consumers in the Middle East, personalized emails have an open rate of 19.34% in comparison with 7.91% for broadcast emails. There is also a very visible increase in click rate when push notifications are personalized. This jumps from 5.58% to 21.12%

This shows that there is both huge potential in personalization, as well as high customer demand for it.  

Loyalty & Satisfaction

Then, it follows that servicing these demands will increase your customer satisfaction rates. Take a look at this case study on Ruroc, an online retailer. They noticed that engaged customers who arrived via paid ads would often bounce from product detail pages.  

Simply by adding a “similar styles” viewer to their app for paid ad viewers saw a huge turnaround. Thanks to this one little touch of personalization, they saw the following changes:

 

  • 19% decrease in bounce rate.
  • 67% increase in conversion rate.
  • 25% increase in average order value.
  • 109% increase in average visit value.  

Ecommerce vs Digital Marketing: A Comparative Guide to Help Your Business Succeed

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Ecommerce: How to Drive Success

So, let’s talk about how we can use these digital marketing techniques in ecommerce for a more successful business. 

Personalized Shopping

Use the data you collect from your customers to feedback and improve their shopping experience. Often, your customer’s habits will tell you more about them than more traditional marketing questionnaires. 

You might implement push notifications for your mobile app, for example. You could personalize these based on your customers’ shopping habits. Give them personal deals on products that are relevant to them. This way, you’ll see increased uptake rates. This will have a knock-on effect, increasing your average customer lifetime value. 

Optimization

Optimizing your platform is important, whether you’re operating an ecommerce site or app. 71% of UAE ecommerce sites have a bounce rate of 50%. One of the main reasons behind this is if a website or app takes more than three seconds to load. The longer the load times, the higher the bounce rate. Make sure you optimize for mobile and desktop. 

QA testing should form an important part of your optimization. Testing is very important to a successful app or ecommerce site. Put in place a QA testing strategy and come up with a qa test plan template.

Customer Experience

Customer experience is everything in online retail. According to research, 65% of consumers in the Middle East seek curated experiences. This encompasses all parts of the buyer’s journey. Not just the experience of buying itself, which should be fast and simple. You should also think about the after-sales support, customer service, and reliable delivery. 

Final Thoughts

Keep your customer experience in mind, whether you’re pursuing ecommerce, digital marketing, or both. Keep in mind that an integrated digital marketing strategy needs to include all parts of your business. From your sales reps to your remote contact center agents.

 

Kate PriestmanKate Priestman – Head Of Marketing, Global App Testing
Kate Priestman is the Head of Marketing at Global App Testing, a trusted and leading end-to-end functional testing solution for QA challenges. Kate has over 8 years of experience in the field of marketing, helping brands achieve exceptional growth and mobile compatibility testing, She has extensive knowledge on brand development, lead and demand generation, and marketing strategy — driving business impact at its best. Kate has also written great articles for sites such as angelhack and CBNation. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

3 years ago
5 Key Differences Between Cross-selling And Upselling (+ Why And How to Use Both)
Mohab Growth Hacks, Guest Posts 0

Cross-selling and upselling are proven sales and marketing techniques. 

Both techniques offer customers in the sales funnel the opportunity to purchase additional products and thereby increase sales. However, they are very different in terms of what they offer, how they are used, and what’s required to sell them.

Get it right and you will increase revenues and give your customers a positive purchasing experience. Get it wrong and not only will you end up with high levels of shopping cart abandonment, but your customers will also be left frustrated and take their custom elsewhere.

5 Key Differences Between Cross-selling And Upselling (+ Why And How to Use Both)
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What is it?

Let’s keep it simple:

Upselling offers the customer the chance to purchase the same product, but a better version. For example, a customer may wish to purchase a bluetooth headset for phone calls. While they have chosen the basic model, the sales operative could recommend the same brand of headphones but a high-end model with additional features as an alternative at a higher price.

Cross-selling offers the customer add-on products that they may not have originally intended to purchase but will complement the original item. An excellent example is the purchase of a mobile phone. The mobile phone on its own will be fine, but a great cross-seller would suggest the purchase of headphones, a protective case, or even an additional phone charger and cable.

What’s the difference?

Yes, they both offer sellers the chance to increase the average value of sales. But that’s it. Here are five key differences between upselling and cross-selling:

  1. Upselling increases sales values by offering a higher quality product while cross-selling is about offering more products. Perhaps you created a software program for inventory management for Shopify. Your customer subscribes to the basic package, but they are expanding their operations. You could upsell the next tier that will meet their additional needs for an increased fee.
  2. Offering a similar item to the one the customer initially selected is upselling. Cross-selling, however, offers different items that may complement the chosen product. A fast-food vendor may offer a supersize meal. That is upselling. However, when they ask if you want fries with your burger, that’s cross-selling.
  3. Upselling requires in-depth knowledge about one type of product, all the varying levels of quality and models available for that item, and how that will add benefit to the user. Cross-selling incorporates a wider range of products, therefore more knowledge is required about what products will complement the original sale and how they will all add benefit to the user.  
  4. Revenue is increased from the sale of a single product in upselling, but cross-selling makes multiple gains from the sale of several products.
  5. Large single-item markets offer the best opportunities for upselling. If someone wants to buy a widescreen HD TV, upselling allows the opportunity to offer a 55-inch screen compared to the 50-inch one they are looking at, or even the 4K version, but offers have to be about a TV.

However, the opportunities for cross-selling are much wider because they can be done in and across any market. Along with the TV, you could also offer them a 3-month free trial of a streaming provider, or perhaps a deal on a media package.

Why use Upselling and Cross-selling?

The opportunities provided by upselling and cross-selling should not be underestimated.

Increased revenue

Upselling and cross-selling will boost revenues.

According to McKinsey, cross-selling alone can increase sales by 20% and profits by 30%. While Sumo claims upselling increases revenues by 10-30%.

Figures like that are impossible to ignore.

Personalized customer experiences

Customers want every step of their purchasing journey to be tailored to them, from advertising, to purchase, and post-purchase. They want to engage with brands that have done their work and know what they want before they know it themselves.

When you can make recommendations that are relevant to their purchasing behavior, customers are far more likely to make that purchase because they feel you have tailored that package for them.

If you want to build a better site, you need to make sure it can adapt and offer personalized experiences for your customers by making specific and relevant recommendations, not a popup featuring random items.

5 Key Differences Between Cross-selling And Upselling (+ Why And How to Use Both)

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Increased customer retention

When you offer relevant recommendations that are tailored to your customers, you build brand loyalty. Customers who continue to return, help you generate a higher customer lifetime value; the net profit that you can achieve from a customer for the duration of their relationship with you.

We live in a competitive world. It’s more cost-effective to focus on customer retention rather than customer acquisition.

If your upselling and cross-selling strategies offer your customers the opportunity to buy everything they need from a single location you are demonstrating that you know them and care about their choices. This convenience will help you create long term customers who are loyal to your brand.

Less selling, more sales

Random sales recommendations will frustrate your customers rather than encourage them to make additional purchases. Your recommendations should be reframed as a solution to their problem, rather than a pushy sales gimmick.

For example, you provide quality assurance testing, and your customer wants help with product quality improvement for their latest hairdryer. Offering additional services for testing electric toothbrushes, because that’s a new service you want to push, is not going to help them.

Upselling and cross-selling should increase the average order value ensuring every sale is optimized.

Providing recommendations to customers who are already engaged increases the average order value in the short term and the customer lifetime value in the long term. Cross-selling alone helps introduce products that your customers may not have known were available.

How to Use Upselling and Cross-selling

Now you know the benefits, you need to know how to use cross-selling and upselling to achieve them.

Here are a few tips:

1. Know your audience

76% of people expect personalization these days. You can’t personalize your customer experience until you know them. That means research.

You must engage in ongoing studies of your customer base using analytical tools and key demographics. Perhaps you could involve your staff in an innovation challenge to help write the perfect script to maximize upselling and cross-selling techniques that demonstrate knowledge about both your products and your customers’ needs.

If you want your upsell or cross-sell to feel genuine, rather than aggressive, it needs to resolve their problem. Understand why your customers need your products, what problems they solve for them, and tailor your offer to add value.

2. Keep it simple

If your upselling or cross-selling techniques overwhelm your customers, you need to tone it down. Use empathy maps to learn how your customers feel about their experience. Are you bombarding them with discounts and offers that only create confusion and lead to a negative experience?

It’s best to keep it simple. Limit your upselling and cross-selling offers to products that are relevant to that customer.

3. Price

Always be aware that pricing can make or break your success using upselling and cross-selling offers.

With upselling, you want to offer upgrades that solve problems but are still within the customer’s price range. For example, your customer may want to upgrade their user testing app but has a limited budget. There’s no point in offering the premium package if it is five times the cost of their current package. Keep your solution reasonable.

Likewise, with cross-selling, add-on items should be priced lower than the original product to increase the likelihood of a purchase. No one will buy a shoe cleaner that costs more than the shoes.

4. Pre-purchase and post-purchase

Before and after a customer pays, are the perfect opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, especially in eCommerce.

Online supermarkets make the most of pre-purchase opportunities with the ‘have you forgotten…’ pop-up once a customer clicks on the checkout button.

Amazon is an excellent example of how to use post-purchase cross-selling. At the bottom of their order confirmation emails, there’s always a list of additional items that other customers have purchased.  

5. Product bundles

Who doesn’t like product bundling when you can buy a group of related items together, for much less than you would pay for them separately?

Maybe you’re an online advice blogger with pay-per-view access, but your how to rate an app page is outperforming your app testing page in terms of hits. Perhaps you could offer them together with a buy one, get one free deal?

Bundles offer shoppers a convenient opportunity to purchase multiple products, but in a way that doesn’t come across as pushy. A customer is more likely to accept a cross-sell if it’s packaged as a deal.

5 Key Differences Between Cross-selling And Upselling (+ Why And How to Use Both)

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Beware…

Upselling and cross-selling are one of the easiest ways to increase both sales conversion rates and average order values.

However, to strengthen your relationships with your customers you must make them relevant and personalized.

To get those conversions you need to understand your customers and their needs, and tailor your recommendations so they add value and help buyers resolve their problems.

Aggressive, pushy, and irrelevant upselling and cross-selling only leads to confused and disgruntled customers who will walk away from their purchase and lose their trust in your brand.

 

Kate PriestmanKate Priestman – Head Of Marketing, Global App Testing
Kate Priestman is the Head of Marketing at Global App Testing, a trusted and leading end-to-end functional testing solution for QA challenges. Kate has over 8 years of experience in the field of marketing, helping brands achieve exceptional growth. She has extensive knowledge on brand development, lead and demand generation, and marketing strategy — driving business impact at its best. Kate Priestman also published articles for domains such as CEO Blog Nation and VMblog. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

3 years ago