So, here the main point of focus is to explore the tips that can help in creating visually appealing and professional looking eCommerce site because a perfectly designed online store is a guarantee of higher sales.

However, it takes time to learn and execute the correct tips with proper planning to offer great shopping experience to your buyers. Among the bundle of tips, I have researched the top 8 tips that every online retailer should implement on their eCommerce site for enhancing the conversions and sales through it.

1.Strong and Clear Value Proposition Is Must

Value proposition is the first thing that helps online retailers to decide if people are interested in reading about their product or not. Hence, while designing eCommerce store, it becomes necessary to incorporate a strong value proposition as it will serve as the argument as to why your target audiences should purchase from your store when they have options from your rivals as well.

Most of the online stores lack the knowledge of having clear value proposition on their sites, which creates confusion among their customers to interpret what they are exactly selling to them. Here is an example of petsworld.in, an online pet food and accessories store that has an excellent value proposition on its landing page:

You can see the landing page of petsworld.in has made perfect use of attractive pictures in their value propositions.

What elements are necessary for creating clear value proposition?

• An impressive headline with clear and simple language is importance to grabbing the attention of visitors.
• Display clear buttons or banners for discounts and offers on your online store.
• Use images that could create desire among the customers to purchase them.

2.Display Images in Multiple Angles

Online stores are the places where the customers can’t touch and feel their products, but they can only read the information and check out the images of the product to take their final decision of purchase.

If you are not using high quality images with multiple angles on your product page, you might lose the chance of a successful conversion because images are something that plays a very crucial role in making your ecommerce site attractive and it also help in increasing the sales by motivating the customers.

You can see in the example given below how an online shop has used the multiple angle technique for representing the product in different angles. It will not only help its visitors in checking the look of the product in different angle, but will also incorporate sense of confidence in them that if they purchase this product, they already know how it will look in all angles.

You can also use a 360 degree video of your product that gives the perfect view of your product to your site’s visitors.

3.Create a Trusted Checkout Page to Lessen Shopping Cart Abandonment

Checkout page is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of an online store that if created excellently ensures decreased shopping cart abandonment rates. You will be surprised to know that 7 out of every 10 online buyers put some products in their shopping cart but leave the site without making the purchase. Why is it so? This is because your online store lacks a trustworthy checkout page, which is essential for generating confidence among your customers that their confidential and financial transactions will be processed securely.

How to create a trusted checkout page?

Use a SSL certificate for your payment page that guarantees customers that their information will be used securely.

Another way to make your checkout pages trustworthy for your customers is to show the trust symbols clearly on your checkout page with a security badge like McAfee, Norton, Verisign, TrustPay etc.

4.Display All the Order Information Clearly

Often people add too many products in their shopping cart and things end up with lots of confusion. The best way to avoid this is to show all the order information clearly to your visitors. The list of information that should be displayed on the checkout page of your online store includes:

• A small image of the product along with its name and specifications
• The price of the product
• The quantity of the product
• A clear up addition of all the charges including the shipping charges for representing the total cost of the order

In the above example, you can show that the customer gets an overall view of his or her order in the form of order summary. It also shows the image of the product along with the quantity of units ordered, price, delivery details and the subtotal.

5.Don’t Forget Responsive Design

It no more a secret that mobile commerce has seen significant splash of growth in recent years and hence, when you are planning to design your ecommerce store, don’t forget to make mobile friendly or responsive. If you will not     make your store responsive, you will lose a great section of your overall site’s visitors including all your mobile target audience. Therefore, pay attention towards responsive design when it comes to creating an online store. A professional ecommerce site should look professional only when it is adjustable to the varied screen sizes of mobile devices. Select the color, background image, font, for your online store by taking care of both your desktop and mobile users.

Seamless mobile experience like the one shown above is the best way of making profit through online stores. If your ecommerce site has all responsiveness integrated in its design, it is definitely going to enhance the conversions on your site.

Concluding Note

Overall, none of the above mentioned tips are very difficult to implement in your ecommerce site. If they are executed effectively, it will not only generate sales, but will also add perfect touch of professional to your online store. Do you have more suggestions for building visually attractive and professional ecommerce store? If so, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts with us in the comment section.

The post Common Ecommerce Design Mistakes That Kill Your Conversions appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

With the increasing popularity of ecommerce businesses over internet, the customer’s experience with the marketplace is getting more social, visual, and mobile. This phenomenon is improving the customers’ online shopping experiences, whereas it is also complicating the process for retailers and online store owners to maintain and keep up with the hottest developments in the ecommerce domain.

Appealing new customers towards your online store for making a purchase can cost five times more than retaining the existing customers. Here are some important stats that exhibit the significance of maintain the existing customers:

Important Customer Retention Stats

• You will be surprised to know that 41% online revenues are contributed by the returning customers that claim just 8% of all visitors. Isn’t it astonishing?
• Moreover, a mere 5% increase in the customers’ retention can help an ecommerce website to increase its profit by 25% to 125%. These figures reveal the importance of customer retention practices for the ecommerce businesses.
• The probability of making sales through an existing customer is 60%- 70%.
• 71% customers put an end to their relationship with the retailers or store owners with poor customer services.

From the above mentioned stats of customer retention, it is clear that instead of focusing on devising innovative tactics for attracting new customers, it is equally important to maintain the existing customers on your online store for ensuring boost in sales and revenue. For doing so, it becomes vital for the online businesses to remain aware of the key practices to retain the existing customers for assured success.

1. Make use of Customer Accounts Efficiently

Suppose you are a customer and you have already made an account on an online store. Now, whenever you want to make a purchase, you don’t have to put your shipping details and other information again and again because all your mandatory details will be saved in your account once it has been created. You can simply place an order by logging in your account with your login details. On the other hand, as an online store owner, you can keep a check on the loyalty of new customers by checking the number of customer accounts created on your website, since most of the customers prefer to checkout as a guest only if the option is available on the website.

Hence, it becomes important for you to successfully persuade your customers to make customer accounts without encumbering the conversions of new or the first time customers.

Moreover, accounts also make repurchasing very convenient for the returning customers as it provides them the ease to access their previous orders and also saves their time involved in entering their shipping details again.

2. Deliver Your Product Timely

Delivery is yet another important factor that every ecommerce store owner must emphasize to ensure customer retention on their websites. Delivery could become a pain for the customers if it is not done timely. You might sell good products by offering an impressive online shopping experience to your buyers, but all your efforts will go in vain if you have failed to deliver your products timely.

Being the owner of an online store, you must choose a trusted and loyal courier partner for ensuring that your customers will get complete information about the status of their products until they are delivery safely at their doorstep.

Kiddicare’s SMS service is one of the finest example of excellent delivery service to the customers as it keep its customers informed about the status of their products via texts and they can easily rearrange their delivery if they want because an option for doing so is also available.

Other important points that should be taken care while successfully delivering the product to your customer are listed as follows:

• The packaging of the product should be done appropriately to avoid any damage to it.
• Fast delivery options should also be offered by the ecommerce store owners.
• Set and meet your customer’s expectations

3.Offer Great Customer Service

Great customer services help the customers in avoiding the waiting queues of the call centers and it also helps in adding a more personal touch. Only the design of your ecommerce website and your wide product range is not sufficient to lure the customers but you must offer great customer experience to them for ensuring improved customer retention percentage on your online store.

For example, if a customer ordered a product from your store, and you have provided all the essential details to the customers about the product without any hidden cost, it will help in developing a long term relationship between you and your customer.

Here is an example of Oasis, which opens an online booking service for offering in-store advice to its shoppers:

Other significant ways of offering great customer services for ensuring customer retention are:

• Enhance your email customer service
• Enhance your website with effective ecommerce conversion optimization strategy
• Satisfy your customers with their queries
• Offer them easy and free returns
• Offer them refundable schemes

4. Execute Customer Loyalty Program

It seems to be one of the perfect ideas for retaining the existing customers on your online store. Rewards are always considered as one of the most effective way of improving online marketing experience. You can offer rewards to your customers based on their loyalty and for implementing this strategy, you can develop a loyalty membership option on your online store. This is a very successful way of guaranteeing improved conversion rates and revenues through repeat purchases.

Here is an example of an online Pizza store that offer a Free 2Z pizza to its customers on purchase of any two items listed on its website:

You can reward your customers for their second purchase from your website or you can also present them rewards on a set dollar figure spent while purchasing from your website. It will encourage the existing customers to make purchases from your online store again in future.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a successful way of boosting return shopping on your ecommerce store. Email is measured as the perfect medium for contacting your existing customers and reminding them of your ongoing offers. If you have a customer retention focused email marketing tactic, you can send emails to your target customers about the ongoing discount and offers on your website to encourage them to generate leads and sales on your online store.

If a customer has not made a purchase from your website for long, you can use this strategy to generate tempt within them to return back to your store.

Ebay.co.uk sends an email to one of its customers reminding the winter offers running on its store. This is one of the perfect examples of implementing the email marketing strategy effectively by an online store:

6. Improve Social Engagement

Social media platforms not only help in improving the traffic on your online store, but it is also an ideal way of enhancing your customer retention.

There are two reasons as to how social media engagement helps in retaining your existing customers for ensuring repeat purchases:

It offers a platform where you can interact with your customers on daily or weekly basis, which is important for reminding the customers about your brand and offers.

It helps in revealing your loyal customers as the people who have liked or followed your Facebook business page have chosen to connect with your brand in personal way.

Now, you can use both these points to encourage your customers to make repeat purchases from your store by telling them about your latest and ongoing discounts and offers.

7. Keep Record of All Customer Interactions

Keeping a record of your customer interactions is important because it helps in evaluating the channels that contribute leads to your websites. Now, you can focus on these channels for bringing back the existing customers by reminding them of their purchases through emails and offers. You can understand what customers have purchased from your website and you can suggest them similar products or can also send offers and other lucrative appeals to drive them back to your online store. If you were successful in offering great experience to your customers with their first purchase, your offers and appeals will definitely bring them back to your site.

These practices are considered as just the beginning to the efficient customer retention for an online shopping store. Customer services are very vital to the success of your ecommerce business. Therefore, thinking out of box and implementing these strategies will surely help in retaining your existing customers to your online store.

The post Best Customer Retention Practices for Improving Ecommerce Sales appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

As seen from the last 3 years, ecommerce sales shoots up to all time high during the Christmas shopping season (Nov1-Jan31) making it the most profitable time of the year for online merchants. Projections from various sources indicate that in U.S, consumer spending surges during Pre-Christmas weekend and this year (in 2014), the U.S retail sales is likely to increase by 4-4.5% (~ from $981 billion to $986 billion) by the end of the quarter.

With festive season catching up fast, how should you tweak your online store to give your customers the most exciting shopping experience while fetching maximum sales? In this post, I’m sharing top 18 ecommerce website optimization tips that can increase the conversion rates of your e-shop by up to 40% more, if implemented rightly. For your convenience, I’ve listed all the tips under 3 major categories – ecommerce website design & user experience, promotional marketing/email campaigning & ecommerce SEO tactics along with live examples so that you don’t miss any single aspect while prepping up the whole store to boost sales for the big Christmas shopping carnival.

18 Ecommerce Optimization Tips

Tip 1 – Get a complete festive makeover – Christmas Theme, Banners & Imagery

Ask your website designer to use a themed background with a golden, silver, green or red colour scheme and create beautifully styled banners. You can also get a completely custom designed theme by hiring dedicated resources from professional website design companies. While most of them are busy this time and have already stopped taking ecommerce projects for Christmas 2014, TIS India will be taking up overseas projects from ecommerce merchants worldwide till the end of November 2014 so that shop owners across the globe can cater to the last minute rush easily !!

 Tip 2 – Create an effective mobile-optimized landing page to promote product sales on Black Friday, Super Saturday and Cyber Monday.

Creating targeted content-specific landing pages convert better than homepage when it comes to exclusive promotions and sales especially if you’re planning a PPC ad. Get an attractive responsive landing page design for Black Friday, Super Saturday & Cyber Monday deals. Don’t forget to include some of the key landing page elements like Header, Body copy, call to action and trust elements (testimonials, return policy etc) while designing a landing page.

You can also download some popular Christmas Landing Page templates like Noelle, Feast, XMAS Season, Gadget, Mistle Toe etc from Themeforest.

Example – Last year Tesco, the biggest online retailer of electronic devices used the below Landing Page with a countdown in their PPC Campaign which highlighted their products and ranked their website 5^th in the paid search index, just after Amazon, Apple, Techradar & Kobo. The sale targeted Cyber Monday – the busiest day of Christmas weekend in US & UK & ended up with an exponential boost in revenue.

Tip 3- Create Easy cum Quick Path To Conversion – Point shoppers in the right direction by making navigation shopper friendly

Make sure you make the navigation easy enough to help visitors reach the most relevant product they’re looking for in no time. Using website architectural organisation as a sales tool will make it even easier for visitors to stop by.

Optimize the no. of clicks by mapping the whole user navigation so that customers can find your products easily & quickly, like if you’ve just one subcategory for a product, remove the subcategory and place the subproduct under the top-level navigation category only.

Say, For example – If there’s a top-level-category Christmas Decor and you just have Christmas Trees to sell under this category, then instead of making a complicated navigation like Christmas Decor à Christmas Trees & creating a separate page/link for both; list down all the Christmas Trees directly on your Christmas Decor webpage. This will make it less-time consuming for the shoppers.

Promotional Marketing and Email Campaigning Tips

Tip 4- Make way for Consecutive Sales – Highlight the kick-off of Christmas by offering Thankyou Gifts to your loyal customers

Last year, ecommerce website Totes-Isotoner positioned a 50% off as a thank-you gift to their customers by scheduling a second message immediately after a customer bought something from them. The message looked like this – 

This “thank you” message delighted their customers upto an extent that they kept on purchasing more & more and in turn the website was able to boost sales upto a great extent.

Tip 5 –Spot the “Bestsellers”, “Favorites” and put them in exclusive sections like “Deal of the Hour”

Research the top-picked gifts, top-rated products or the most trending items on your website that have received best ratings/reviews from customers. Tag them under brand exclusives and showcase them into sections like “Deal of the Hour” with a countdown. This is a great way to prompt visitors to take actions almost instantly.

Tip 6- Optimize your Paid Advertising Campaigns

Research shows that 50% of all ecommerce sales on Christmas are now driven by Search advertising. So, don’t follow a “one-strategy-fits-all” approach here and assign different bid levels for each advertising campaign. Before campaigning, research the right data & plan which high-value products you can monetize on for gaining maximum returns. Use some conversion-tracking tools also to know the success %age of each campaign and understand how you need to change bids based on the performance of keywords (Cost-per-click bids). Use competitive intelligence tools to find the best keywords that you can target for selling products on Christmas. Also, don’t forget to create dedicated landing pages relevant to what you’re selling through the ad.

For example – if you’re selling an iPhone with a PPC ad with keyword like – Buy pocket-player at 50% off –Xmas exclusive offer; you can plan a landing page something like this 

Bonus Tip–  For executing effective PPC Campaigns to get maximum returns on your investment, always avail services from a PPC advertising agency who is a Google Partner and comprises Google Adwords Certified Professionals only.

Tip 7: Start Email Campaigning on a high frequency

Email marketing still remains the most effective way of reaching out to customers. The biggest evidence is the Direct Marketing Association that claims email marketing campaign has a 4300% impact on ROI. So, plan exclusive email campaigns for the pre-Christmas weekend rush especially for Cyber Monday, Super Saturday and Black Friday by creating newsletters with suitable imagery & catchy subject lines.  But remember to space your campaigns decently so as not to end up annoying customers. Map out the suitable dates for sending campaigns and make distinct campaigns everytime. Also, include links to get customers back to your product pages while designing the newsletter. One amazing idea that can fetch you even more conversions is by implementing an email remarketing strategy after tracking the success of previous campaigns and use effective email tactics to reach out to people.

According to recent data report from Exact Target, a large chunk of merchants miss sales opportunities due to the inability to use effective email campaigning tactics & messaging. 

The data clearly shows that how important it is to implement all the five email tactics wisely to produce “excellent returns”. For Christmas sales, just focus on the 4 strategies like Loyalty email, Welcome series, Browser Retargeting and Abandoned carts.

Tip 8- Ramp up for the social media rush, earn “Word of Mouth” sales and allow endorsements from other customers

Social care is the major factor that influences customers. Besides this, adding product ratings and review sections to the website can build up trust and will allow customers to make ‘more informed’ purchases while enabling them to recommend your products within their social circle. Ask shoppers to make word of mouth recommendations by offering them special Christmas gifts or you can plan some group purchases for better response. An amazing idea is to allow shoppers who use social media networks like Facebook to access customer service or seek shopping advice through Facebook timeline/comment/post just like NM Incite did last year. Also, encourage positive customer reviews by offering them rewards. Here’s a screenshot that will give you an idea how to do this.

Example – Below is a screenshot attached from an ecommerce website that sells baby products & accessories. Look at the highlighted top message that they incorporated in their website to reach more people, build loyalty and boost sales

SEO Ecommerce Website Optimization Tips – Tweak your SEO strategy for Mega Christmas Sales

With Panda 4.1 rollout, it is necessary to tweak your SEO strategy before-hand if you don’t want to lose sales on this big shopping season. Apart from the 4 tips shared below, you can read this blog on Ecommerce SEO Tips to drive more sales- 10 Secrets shared that explains 10 quick tricks to optimize website for search engines using examples from popular online stores.

Tip 9 -Make your product and category pages more unique, engaging and relevant

Now the Google search engine is no less than a human and will turn off if you offer irrelevant product pages that don’t add any value. Take time and write effective product descriptions for what you sell. Don’t clutter the content here and there as Panda 4.1 will slam the websites that look like a content farm

Tip 10 – Freshen up your website with Up-to-Date content for more visibility

Update the whole content of your website to get ready for more Christmas cheer. Tailor your content according to relevant industry, link popular sources and sync your content publishing efforts with social media as well to create maximum impact.

Tip 11 – Solve the Duplicacy issue – Don’t end up selling the same Christmas gifts on 4-5 similar pages

Run link tests especially on the landing pages designed for conversion. Visitors should not end up on the similar product pages while looking up for the same product. Use canonical versions to be safe and tag the “child” pages with a ‘noindex, follow’ in your robots.txt file.

Tip 12 – Handle Removed Products – Have a Broken Link Check & handle pagination properly

Broken links are the worst thing that can happen to your ecommerce site and costing you sales. Identify them and fix them before launching the new store.

Tip 13 – Test Server Load

The last-minute rush can crash your website. To avoid this, pre-check whether your site is equipped enough to handle bulk visitors. You can detect this by signing up free with Load Impact and check it via running 5 free tests per month.

5 Bonus Tips to make your online store “stand-out” this Christmas

Here, I’m sharing some bonus tips to help you ramp up your ecommerce store for more sales.

Tip 14 -Offer Free Christmas gift wrapping service

You can offer Free Christmas gift wrapping service along with Free Delivery.

Tip 15 – Create a Christmas Gift Purchasing Guide

How about creating a Christmas Gift Purchasing Guide for customers and showcase selected products that can make up the best gift according to different age-groups.

Tip 16 –  Launch E-Gift Vouchers

You can Launch E-Gift Vouchers and outline the benefits of choosing a voucher as a Christmas gift and surprise friends. You can also lure customers by giving Cash Back Offers on selected range of credit/debit cards.

Tip 17 -Launch a Christmas competition

Competitions will help customers win free stuff. This will get you extra visibility & potential traffic straight on your website.

Tip 18 – Promote across multiple channels

You can promote your store and offers across multiple channels for extra visibility.

Wrap Up

Big Christmas bucks are eagerly waiting for you!! So, it’s high time that you take action and touch up your ecommerce site to gear up for the biggest shopping carnival. Tell us in comments how’re you planning to cash visitors this Christmas?? If you have any questions or queries, you can take actionable advice from our ecommerce consultants. Happy selling!!

The post Sell Upto 40% More This Christmas With These 18 Ecommerce Optimization Tips appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

The move of eBay to shut down Magento Go and ProStores on February 1, 2015 is out of the blue for more than 10,000 small and mid-size merchants. If these customers want to continue a hosted service, then Bigcommerce and Shopify are the best hosted platform to count on. After hours of research work on both Shopify and Bigcommerce, I have collected following important information which helps you to choose the right platform to support your ecommerce business as per you need and budget:

General Information:

Features Comparison:

The best e-commerce platform should have the store features that are needed, while being pocket friendly. The table below shows clear comparison between Bigcommerce and Shopify.

Following features are some of the most important considerations when we evaluate a hosted e-commerce platform:

• 1.  Pricing

While choosing a hosted e-commerce platform, price is an essential factor to consider for most of us. Bigcommerce offers 3 pricing plans, whereas Shopify offers 4 (plus a custom plan; more on that below). They both offer free trials, although Shopify offers one twice as long as Bigcommerce.

Starter plan of Shopify is only $15, which is cheaper as compare to the Bigcommerce’s $29.95 starter (‘silver’) plan. But, the starter plan of Shopify restricts the number of products you can sell to 15 (versus an unlimited number with Bigcommerce) and limits your ability to edit your shop’s theme via HTML and CSS.

A fairer comparison is between ‘basic’ plan of Shopify, which costs $29 per month, and ‘silver’ plan of Bigcommerce. Both offer unlimited products, with Shopify winning in terms of cost which is $0.95 cheaper per month. As you move up the scale with Bigcommerce and Shopify plans, you get increased functionality (more products, more features, more storage, etc.), all of which come at an increased cost.

One aspect of Shopify’s approach to pricing is that they allow the customers to build a custom plan based on their needs and requirements. That means you can incorporate some features from more expensive plans into lower cost plan without shelling out for more expensive one.

Winner

In terms of pricing, Shopify comes out ahead if you only need to sell a few products and you want to create a customized pricing plan. Bigcommerce is a good in terms of their off the shelf packages as they come with more features, and if you are taking their $79.95 ‘gold’ plan, you don’t have to worry about the transaction fees.

• 2. Themes and Designs

Having a professional, good looking and inviting storefront is the first step to welcoming and enticing your prospective customers which can increase your chances of making a sale.

Shopify’s themes are very impressive and updated and these look professional. Shopify uses independent and professional designers to create these beautiful themes, so the designs are always fresh and modern and they can make your store look welcoming and credible. Some themes of Shopify are free, whereas some are paid and if you want to use their premium theme, the cost will range from $80 to $180.  At first, this may sound pricey but it is a worthy investment that will make your store look good. These beautiful themes can help your website visitors to stay longer in your e-store to browse around, which will improve chances of making sales.

Bigcommerce offers over 100 themes and all of them are free, but themes previews are not available, unless you give them your email and sign up for their 15-day trial. In addition to this, themes of Bigcommerce are pretty outdated. The themes of Bigcommerce were functional, and they will work fine for e-store builders, but you will not get that “wow” factor like Shopify’s themes. However, in March 2014, Bigcommerce updated their theme collection and included 28 new themes which are all mobile friendly. These themes are free as well as paid that will range from $120 – $250, but most are in the $120 – $140 range.

Winner:

Elegant web-design and superior looks matter a-lot, if you are trying to generate more sales to grow your online business. In my view, Shopify wins the “Battle of the Themes” as they provide better and a much wider variety of professional online store themes to you.      

• 3. Ease-of-use

Both Bigcommerce and Shopify offer easy to use admins, and their interfaces are user-friendly. When it comes to the initial store set-up process, Bigcommerce is a bit easier to use than Shopify. Whereas, Shopify is the easiest shopping cart to install, setup, and launch your e- store. It stresses the importance of simplicity and the ‘beauty’, and has a ‘clean’ user interface with no ‘unnecessary’ tool and easy-to-understand instructions for everything.

Winner

In a nutshell, when it comes to ‘ease-of-use’, I highly recommend Shopify as a winner. Everyone, from professional web developer to beginner user, can benefit from the convenience and great help that Shopify offers. Like Bigcommerce, Shopify also gives you freedom to personalize your store with coding.

• 4. Ecommerce Tools
  

Ecommerce tools, like ability to manage inventory, set prices, showcase products, taxes, configure shipping details, tracking orders, setting up payment gateways, and many more, are fundamentals of a good e-commerce builder. Both Shopify and Bigcommerce provide really awesome tools so that you can build and grow your online store. But, there is a slight difference in how they approach this.

Shopify provides you with all the basic tools in order to create and operate an online store. Advanced tools, like product reviews, product recommendations, customer wish list, etc. are only available in their App store where you have to pay for them; however, they all have a free trial period for you to test them out. Shopify also offers you their own payment gateway so that you can manage all your money in their dashboard that will save you time. If you choose this option of Shopify, they will also waive all your transaction fees.

On the other side, Bigcommerce gives you the most comprehensive set of tools amongst all leading e-commerce builders.  It has a lot more advanced tools which are “out of the box”, therefore, these are included in the monthly fee.

Bigcommerce and Shopify also give you all the marketing and SEO tools that you need to run a good e-store. From a Facebook store to coupons, these platforms have ways of promoting your store. However, Bigcommerce goes an extra mile and automatically creates feeds to popular comparison shopping sites like Shopzilla, Google Shopping, and BizRate.

Winner

While both the hosted platforms provide you with the fundamental tools you need to run a good e-store, but Bigcommerce offers you a bit more advanced tools in their monthly packages. Therefore, the winner is Bigcommerce.

• 5. Customer Service and Technical Support

Both hosted platforms maintain plethora of online support. Bigcommerce has published more than 500 topical articles, operates a helpful forum, and maintains a knowledgebase, as well as Facebook and Twitter pages. Shopify’s support is also impressive, including a manual, live chat, forum, and Ecommerce University. This cart also maintains active Twitter and Facebook accounts.

With Shopify, you will be able to get in touch with their tech support team over the phone 24/7. On the other side, Bigcommerce offers 24/7 support during the week via email and chat, but not overnight on Saturday and Sunday. In Bigcommerce, if you really want to call someone, you can always call a phone support number which is not toll-free from the country you are based in.

Winner

Shopify is the winner in the customer care bracket.

The Good and Bad of Bigcommerce and Shopify 

Bigcommerce:-

The Good:

• Unlimited bandwidth is offered with each and every one of their plans.
• Abandoned Cart Saver feature is available on their Gold, Platinum, and Diamond plans. This tool converts lost customers into sales by notifying customers of their uncompleted orders and abandoned carts.
• Marketing and SEO tools allow you to dominate search engines.
• Integrated newsletters, coupon codes, and social sharing are quite simple.
• This mobile friendly platform enables customers to shop using their mobile devices.
• In 2013, it brought a new look to their admin dashboard and their new look has simple navigation and a neat design.

The Bad

• If you want to edit the look and feel of Bigcommerce templates, CSS and HTML experience is strongly recommended.
• There is a 2% transaction fee for all members on their Silver plan, whereas other plans do not charge any transaction fees.

Shopify:-

The Good

• Plans start as low as $14 per month for 25 products, as well as you will get unlimited bandwidth, and 1 GB of storage.
• It offers unlimited bandwidth on all of its plans, including its cheapest plan.
• Due to its simple design editor, it allows you to customize the layout of your online store. It requires no experience in CSS and HTML.
• It has convenient and simple store launch wizard tool that sets up an online store within minutes.
• Abandoned Cart Recovery, which is same as the abandoned cart saver of Bigcommerce, is available on professional and unlimited plans.
• Their sophisticated SEO tools will rank your store high on major search engines, but some marketing tools are limited on smaller plans.
• All themes and the actual checkout pages are integrated to work on mobile device.

The Bad

• Their transaction fees range from 0 to 2%, but it can be waived by using their credit card processing service.
• It limits theme editing and some marketing tools on their smaller plans. Their $14 per month plan does not allow you to use advanced reporting and coupons. 

Other options for Magento Go and ProStores customers

If Magento Go and ProStores customers don’t want to continue with hosted solution, then other option for these customers is to switch to Magento Community Edition and hire experienced Magento developers because:

• Magento CE is free to download and use
• Most features are the same
• Access to Magento Connect with thousands of extensions
• Porting to Magento CE would not be expensive, as customers already have the design and they will not pay for a full rebuild of their site.

Conclusion

Choosing the right e-commerce builder for your business is not a straight forward decision. You have to consider so many things, and our review is helpful in steering you towards some of the key factors to evaluate. Ultimately, it’s a case of weighing up your requirements and plumping for the system that suits your requirements best. You can also sign up for Shopify’s 14-day trial and Bigcommerce’s free 15-day trial to decide which shopping cart is the best fit for your online store.

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New entrepreneurs are quickly landing their feet in the ecommerce industry expressing the need of a stable ecommerce solution to host their website on and start selling products in a jiffy. So far, the easiest and the most reliable cost effective solution has been to go with hosted ecommerce solutions instead of the licensed ones. With hosted shopping cart providers offering SAAS (software-as-a-service) solutions , you need not worry about server loads , maintenance costs, version upgrades, code customizations and a lot of other features as they regularly keep on updating their platforms in sync with the cut-throat competition, latest trends and comprehensive user requirements. Each platform comes with its own set of pros and cons and thus selecting the best available option is a hard nut to crack. So here we have critically compared the Top 5 hosted ecommerce solutions through scores, ratings and 7 important criteria to help you decide which one is the best bet !! Read them carefully and check it out yourself !!

Big Commerce – Proud to be the Most Powerful with Best Value

Big commerce is the most powerful hosted SAAS solution that lets you build your store cost effectively with utmost ease while not compromising on the versatility and marketing tools as well. Bigcommerce came into existence in mid 2009 and has pretty good number of clients to its credit so far.

Go with BigCommerce if you -:

• Are seeking a platform which is User friendly, Versatile & Easy to set up.
• Would like to choose a platform that has wide global presence and shipping network large enough to ship to your customers throughout the globe with utmost ease and in minimal possible time.
• Are looking for a development framework that doesn’t charge you any transaction fees.
• Love to play around the Drag and Drop Interface and built in Super Zoom feature that looks cool.
• Are fascinated to know that Big Commerce offers unlimited storage, bandwidth and email accounts for your store.
• Are ready to compromise on the free not-so-stylish designs and themes (100+). There is no “Premium Theme” concept in Big commerce and if you want to have that “wow” factor along with modern look , you need to consider some additional cost to get the front-end modified by hiring some professional creative designer  who is well versed with Front-end technologies like HTML,CSS, JavaScript etc.
• Are looking to integrate all the advanced features and tools without paying anything extra. Big Commerce includes everything in their monthly fee.
• Are likely to run in a need to import customers, products, images and variations into your store from a standard CSV file.
• Would like to have military-grade security and encryption that the big banks use with 99.99% average uptime.
• Are seeking a platform with good SEO features, Social Media Tools and integration with iContact, a newsletter service for creating email marketing campaigns.

Don’t Go with BigCommerce if -:

• You want a built-in Blog with your store.
• You dream of sleek ultra modern designs for your website.
• You are likely to run into Technical difficulties with your store at midnight of weekend (Saturday/Sunday) and you get frustrated to know that Big commerce doesn’t offer any support channel before 9am and after 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays. However best class in-house 24 hours support is available in weekdays (Monday – Friday).
• You are ok with the fact that you won’t get to see any Theme Previews unless you give them your email id and Sign up for their Free Trial.
• You are ok with the fact that BigCommerce offers Limited 3^rd party App support.

FIGURES TO LOOK AT

• No. of paying customers – 50,000+
• Trial Period – 15 day fully functional free trial
• The PRICING – Prices range from $24.95 per month – $299.95 per month
• OUR SCORE – 9/10

Shopify  – The Elegantly Gorgeous

Founded in 2004, Shopify is known as the most gorgeous amongst all hosted shopping cart solutions available in the market due to its innumerable mobile friendly themes, exquisite designs and amazing apps.

Shopify suits you if –

• You are going to run an online store for the first time and don’t know a single bit about ecommerce platforms. Shopify is the most user friendly platform amongst all others and best suites to those who want to go live with their stores as soon as in an hour or two.
• You want to have an aesthetically appealing store with a collection of uniquely beautiful designs to choose from. But wait !! Apart from free themes, there are premium themes also generally priced between $80-$180. So, take care while opting one for your business.
• You are looking for a complete mobile optimized site with powerful SEO features.
• You are fascinated by their App store that offers a host of add-on features that can quickly integrate with your store. But again, for more advanced tools such as product reviews, customer wishlist, product recommendations and some exclusive apps, they will charge you extra money!!
• You like their “Shopify Payments Feature” introduced for those who hate integrating 3^rd party payment gateways and would like to associate with a platform that offers its own payment gateway to manage all your money in their Dashboard. Shopify waives off all your transaction fee if you choose this mode. However, it can integrate with a host of 3^rd party payment gateways as well.
• You are absolutely a newbie to this ecommerce business and want a platform that offers hundreds of qualified experts for your rescue. From Designing and development, you will get help even for the ways to popularise your store by their Digital Marketing experts.
• You would like to get an instant reply to your messages and round-the-clock (24X7) support via mails, live chats or phone call on all days including weekends. Shopify is known for its one of the best support teams in the ecommerce industry.
• You are looking to have a shop with complete Content Management System with built-in Blogs and Page Publishing also.

Shopify doesn’t suits you if – :

• You are not ready to shell out extra dollars to pay the Transaction Fee that Shopify charges on every product. If in near future, you start selling at speed of light, Shopify proves to be the most expensive solution.
• You are not ready to compromise on Web Analytics part which is not that good as compared to other platforms.
• You are familiar with the coding part and would like to change everything with your store the way you want. Since, Shopify platform uses its own programming language Liquid, it becomes pretty confusing to play around with the codes.

FIGURES TO LOOK AT

• Trial Period – 14 day fully functional free trial
• No. Of Paying Customers – 80,000+
• The PRICING – Prices range from $13.29 per month – $161.51 per month
• OUR SCORE – 9/10

Magento Go – Feature Rich meant for Small Business Storefronts

Magento Go is also a hosted ecommerce solution which boasts of a pretty good clientele by offering the same flexibility and power as its most famous non-hosted counterpart Magento that is serving more than 2,00,000 merchants worldwide.

Magento Go suits you if  -:

• You are from a creative agency, a team of designers or developers who want to create and manage everything from the scratch and you want to have complete control over as many aspects of your website as possible. This is because Magento Go gives you full programming access and an impressively stable core that lets you customize everything from products and reports to marketing and content, the way you want.
• You are looking for a flexible design and advanced features like complicated discount conditions, upselling/cross-selling, surveys etc built right into it.
• You are looking for a Feature-rich platform that comes with reasonable cost , mobile friendly stylish themes and huge library of extensions, tools and add-ons
• You seek a platform that is architecture-wise scalable with built-in support for almost all Payment-Gateways.
• You are looking for Powerful Marketing tools and exclusive Web Analytic Features.

Magento Go is a Big No-No if  -:

• You are not from IT background and are not comfortable bearing a dent in your pocket to hire ecommerce application developer if something goes wrong with your store. This is because the response from the Magento Go support teams is very very slow and absolutely unsatisfactory.
• You want a platform that is easy to use and lets you list unlimited products on your store with unlimited bandwidth and storage capabilities. Even the most expensive package of Magento Go doesn’t allow you to list innumerable products and doesn’t come with unlimited bandwidth.
• You want a built-in Blog for your store

FIGURES TO LOOK AT

• Trial Period – 30 day fully functional free trial
• The PRICING – Prices range from $15 – $125 per month
• OUR SCORE – 8/10

Volusion – Unbeatably Classic with Hidden charges

Volusion is the oldest hosted shopping cart solution provider that comes with advanced vZoom features, exclusive integration capabilities, easy to customize platform and powerful functionalities, all at your doorstep.
Volusion is a platform that-:

1. Offers user friendly interface with good SEO tools , mobile optimized themes and one page-checkout functionality
2. Provides good Mobile commerce features, excellent customer support , Social media integration tools , Coupon integrations and Newsletter functionality at your fingertips.
3. Doesn’t charge you any transaction fee.
4. Starts cheap by limiting its functionalities and later on when you need to integrate add-on features and some indispensable features, you need to whip out extra money that increases your monthly bills to a considerable extent.
5. Offers pre built store designs adhering to latest web design trends and standards.
6. Offers unlimited storage in every plan and lets you list unlimited products if you go for their Premium plans.

Volusion is a platform that doesn’t offers -:

1.  Built in Blog and Publishing Page
2.  Too many Stylish Interface and themes to choose from.
3.  Drag and Drop feature
4.  Unlimited Bandwidth in even its costliest plan.
5.  Good technical support and expert advice.

FIGURES TO LOOK AT

• Trial Period – 14 day fully functional free trial
• No. Of Paying Customers – 40,000+
• The PRICING – Prices range from $15 – $135 per month
• OUR SCORE – 7/10

3DCart – Not Upto the Mark

3D Cart is also one amongst the hosted shopping cart solutions with popular features and awesome tools but unfortunately due to its less number of themes and shipping options, it has not emerged triumphant in winning too many hearts.

3D Cart comes with

1. Features like ‘Group Deals’ and ‘Too Low To Advertise’ which are not yet offered  by many hosted shopping cart solutions available in the market.
2. Fantastic tools especially in the area of conversion.
3. A Built in blog.
4. Good customer support via Email and ticketing system with live chat and phone support as well. Kayako Fusion Help Desk Software which is known as one of the “World’s leading Helpdesk and live chat software” powers the Helpdesk of 3D Cart. So the customer reviews about their support team are pretty good and there are not much complaints so far.

3D Cart Ecommerce Platform lacks -:

1. Advanced features like Loyalty Programs and a built in POS system.
2. The ease to customize front-end to 100% extent.
3. Detailed documentation, support on technical aspects and expert advice.
4. Advanced features in the Admin interface
5. User-friendly Interface with smooth process flow in comparison to other platforms.
6. Number of available Free templates. Their premium templates are also not worth-paying.
7. Enough Shipping options to sell globally.
8. Good Content Management System.
9. Versatility

FIGURES TO LOOK AT

• Trial Period – 15 day fully functional free trial
• No. Of  Customers – 15,000+
• The PRICING – Prices range from $19.99 – $129.99 per month
• OUR SCORE – 5/10

The Final Verdict

In our opinion there are 7 critical factors everyone should look for an ecommerce store before taking the decision of going live. Listed below are the features with best recommended considerations mentioned against it.

1. Themes / Design/ Amazing Apps – Shopify
2. Unlimited Products, Storage and Bandwidth – Shopify ~ BigCommerce
3. Best round the clock Technical support and Expert Advice on all days  – Shopify
4. Versatility, 100% Customization and Large No. of features – Magento Go
5. Ease of Use  –  BigCommerce ~ Shopify ~ Volusion ~ 3D Cart
6. Powerful yet cheap with less monthly costs – BigCommerce
7. Best SEO and Conversion Tools  – Shopify ~~ Big commerce ~~ Magento Go

However, we advise everyone to make a choice only after having a Trial with the best ones that match your Online shop requirements as well !!

The post Reviewing the Best E-commerce App Available Online appeared first on Digital Marketing Agency - TIS India Blog.

Just like anything in internet marketing, not all mobile e-commerce sites are created equal – there are those that stand out and those that fade in the background. If you are thinking of taking the first step to develop e-commerce website for mobile, here are the seven key components of highly effective e-commerce sites specifically crafted for the on-the-go consumer.

Key Ingredients of Effective Mobile E-Commerce Websites

A Prominently Situated Search Box

The first thing you need to keep in mind when developing e-commerce sites or any sites for that matter for mobile devices is the ease of use. Consumers behave differently when they are using their smartphones or tablets versus if they are using their desktops or laptops.

Chances are when they are shopping using their smartphones or tablets, they are doing something else – whether they are watching TV, waiting for the train, stuck in traffic, etc.

That being said, mobile e-commerce development should be centered on being user-friendly and one way of doing this is by putting your site’s search box in a prominent location on the page so shoppers can punch in a query with no difficulty. Also, the search box should be incorporated across all pages to enhance accessibility as well.

Transform Your Consumers into Social Ambassadors

According to the research firm Nielsen, approximately 50% of social media users access their social networks through their mobile gadgets.

When you develop an e-commerce website for mobile, do not forget to enable and empower your customers to spread good words about in their social networks.

Be creative. Maybe at the end of the checkout process, there could be a window that would ask you’re satisfied customers to share their delightful shopping experience to their Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

Make it Fast

According to an infographic published by Mashable, 40% of mobile shoppers will abandon an e-commerce site does not load in three seconds.

Undeniably, the mobile retail business is all about speed and if you want to gain profits, ensure that your site is optimized for mobile surfing. Simplicity is the key. Take out unnecessary elements that will slow your page down. Keep visual elements to the necessary.

Further, speed does not only apply to load time but to the check-out process as well. Make it as convenient and as easy as possible for consumers to complete their shopping.

Takedown lengthy forms and allow users to save their information the first time they visit your site so they don’t have to go through the process repeatedly.

Responsive Web Design is a Necessity

During the mobile shopping frenzy last Black Friday, most purchases were carried out using the iPad, followed by the iPhone and followed by Android devices.

The point here is mobile shoppers are using a different screen with different screen sizes and your site should be able to adjust seamlessly to these varying screen sizes.

Mobile e-commerce website development should follow the principles of responsive website design to deliver the best mobile shopping experience your consumers whatever screen size they are using to view your site.

Design for the Finger, Not for the Mouse

This point may sound mundane, but this one small nuance can spell the difference between a successful and unsuccessful mobile eCommerce site.

Many online retailers forget the fact that mobile shoppers don’t have the benefit of using a mouse and are instead using their fingers as their “navigation hardware.”

There’s nothing more annoying when a consumer can’t click on a link because the site’s layout is too crowded. Make sure to space out links accordingly to allow users to click using their fingers without difficulty. You can also employ other tools such as drop-down menus to ease up navigation.

Enable Instant Access to Customer Service

You can either develop mobile apps that will enhance your customer service engagement or incorporate certain elements on your e-commerce site to allow your customers to reach your customer service team in a breeze.

You can use a clickable phone number, eliminating the need for your customers to dial your customer service hotline. This can also be a clickable email or SMS number.

If it will not affect your load speed, you can also use live chat for instantaneous interaction. You can also develop mobile apps that will help your customers track their orders.

Do this and your customers will feel well taken-cared of and there’s a higher chance that they will purchase from you again.

A Forward-Thinking Retailer

Lastly, you are probably the most important ingredient when coming up with an effective mobile e-commerce website. Why? Most of the time, business owners are reluctant when it comes to incorporating new technologies to their operations.

Mobile e-commerce website development cannot commence if you don’t have the mindset that the retail landscape is vastly and quickly changing because of technological advancements and if you want to cope with these shifts, you need to embrace technology.

Lessen Clutters

Simplify the design of your eCommerce website. Ecommerce websites with simple designs have the best conversion rate. Ensure that the visitors’ eyes are drawn straight to the Call-to-Action (CTA) space or the products you sell. So, avoid putting too many clutters on the homepage as that will render difficult for visitors to locate the CTA at the very first sight.

As your objective is to sell your products, you should take ample care of not distracting the visitors with too much clutter.

Shun Complicated Menus

Simplify the menus. Do not confuse the visitors by having complicated menus. If menus on your eCommerce website are with too many categories, it will confuse the visitors and that will prevent them from locating what they look for. To do away with the confusion, you can use broad terms to categorize your products.

For example, if your eCommerce website sells keyboard, mouse, and cabinets; then instead of having separate category menus for each of the items, you can group them into a single category—Computer Accessories.

Write Regular Blogs

You need to engage your customers on your website as much as possible. As your customers are not likely to make purchases every day, you need to make them visit your website often. By writing regular blog posts, you can make your customers visit your website now and then. They are likely to purchase more if they visit your website more.

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