Common BigCommerce issues and their impact on your online stores
What is BigCommerce? BigCommerce, founded in 2009, is one of the major online store builders powering online stores in thousands in 150 countries. This platform provides an engaging online experience. It allows you to create pages, add products, process orders, upload photos, creates discount coupons, and more. For instance, design it using drop and drag panels. It is a cloud-based platform offering multichannel selling, abandoned cart saver, fraud monitoring, product ratings, cart-level discounts, and more. You may save yourself from managing complex hardware and software systems. BigCommerce keeps you away from troubles by installing and maintaining software that is easy to access online through the internet. Common BigCommerce issues The constant changes in Big Commerce’s business plans, model, and pricing is making the online store owner’s business afloat. Here are some of the BigCommerce issues that are arising with this platform. No automatic categories There are no automatic categorization tools that are common for online stores. It is because the products are in large numbers that they keep discontinuing. Visitors browsing your site may reach the wrong product type or unavailable products, resulting in frustration. They believe the entire website is not up-to-date. Only if you know to access smart categorization or automated tools, you can assign products to categories and their sub-categories automatically based on their attributes. No standard backordering feature There are annoying BigCommerce issues that do not come to notice glaringly as issues until you need the feature. One such issue is not having a standard backorder feature. BigCommerce tutorial section and SEO support offer little to no helpful information. The backordering feature allows customers to order even before the stock is on hand. Having this feature means the companies can ensure it is available soon. If you are fed up with the workarounds to allow backorders, try out BigCommerce BackOrder app. The tool does more than just a single backorder function. It ensures your customer will have a favorable experience with features to customize CTA, messages, and threshold. Limited payment options Having an online store and trying to attract visitors call for real hard work. The last thing anyone wants happening is the inability to convert the shoppers because of non-supportive payment methods. It is one of the BigCommerce issues that turns out potential customers. BigCommerce does not support a lot of payment options and even on enabling digital wallets used commonly by online shoppers, it fails to support Visa Checkout, and so on. Limitations to SEO and blogs Other common BigCommerce issues include the limitations to SEO and blogs. It lacks the feature of blog posts relating to the associated products, and so visitors cannot find the items in your online store. The advantage of associating your SEO and blog content with your website products is impossible. It means you will lose valuable opportunities and call-to-action in converting the inbound traffic. As BigCommerce now lacks this feature, it requires the website owners to manually add to the blog post body the product references. Conclusion Agreed, no eCommerce platform is perfect, yet ensure to manage and settle your business with efficiency. Look for features and tools that you need to survive and ensure it is at your fingertips and succeed. Thus, you should be comparing different platforms, make a plans to get rid of common issues before building your site. Further reading: How to build your BigCommerce website.
Online Consumer Behaviour Trends in 2021
The eCommerce industry is ever-changing and ever-evolving. Online consumer behaviour is also altered over time. Monitoring and incorporating the latest e-commerce trends will help you stay ahead of the competition and provide more value to your visitors. Machine Learning and Automation Machine learning and automation empower customers to have a seamless and personalised shopping experience. AI offers tailored guidance and recommendations to shoppers based on their past purchase history and browsing behaviour. Machine learning and AI analyze data and showcase products that are more likely to be purchased. Implementing automation into your eCommerce store will help you increase the conversion rate, run more relevant marketing campaigns, improve in-house operational efficiencies and make more informed decisions. Moreover, this technology helps improve your customer service. Automated problem-solving solutions are the key to streamlining the sales process, which can be efficiently done with AI. Integrating AI into CRM will let you get in touch with your customers and predict online consumer behaviour. If you are BigCommerce merchant, Atom8 is the ultimate automation tool that solves your business problems and significantly boosts up your profit! Explore here: Atom8 will greatly enhance customer experiences thanks to AI. Social Shopping The number of social shoppers is increasing rapidly. The goal of social shopping is to encourage people to make more purchases via social and turn them into brand champions/evangelists who are willing to back your brand. Promoting brands socially needs to be done very carefully as it can impact online consumer behaviour. You have to ensure you do not spam your followers or prospects while driving social purchases. There are many smart marketing techniques e-commerce companies can use to promote social shopping, such as mass marketing via messenger, chatbots, quizzes, user-generated content, shoppable feeds and one-click purchases and socially integrated shops. Social shopping is more about creating experiences RFID Inventory Tracking Delivering compelling experiences in both the online and offline world is important to keep the customers engaged. Retailers are filling the gap between online and in-person shopping by converting their brick and mortar stores into smart stores. One solution for this is the IoT strategy using RFID. RFID tags are used to collect data and generate analytics about inventory and customer interactions. Furthermore, customers today often use one-click checkouts. Therefore, retailers with RFID checkouts deliver quicker checkout for it reads all the items in the basket simultaneously. In other words, RFID technology helps retailers create a smarter digital store, especially in inventory management. Visual Search Images are the key to shopping online. A visual search allows users to carry out an online search based on images. A new trend in online shopping behaviour is to use an image rather than text to search for the product. With visual searches, relevance becomes more essential. Hence, you should take into account that suggesting products that are nowhere close to the image will damage your reputation. Contactless Shopping This is a new trend as a result of COVID-19. Contactless shopping is a retail experience that maintains the minimum level of physical interaction. There are many ways consumers can do contactless shopping, such as catalogue shopping, eCommerce, mobile payments, curbside pick-up, checkout-free retail. These are some of the trends of 2021 that you can leverage to provide a better experience to the customer and stay ahead of the competition.
eCommerce Automation Beginner Guide
An eCommerce store operates on a 24-hour basis. The online environment makes it almost impossible for a break. While you can’t make a human work all day long, eCommerce automation can help. Automation makes online business easier than ever. A part of the operational process consists of repetitive tasks. Hence, automating this tedious task would pave the way for a smooth and subtle business. After that, you can channel your energy and resource to other vital things that will help improve customer’s experience. Busy multitasking? Listen to this blog post while doing other works here: What is eCommerce Automation? eCommerce automation involves using technology to increase staff productivity and grow sales. Generally speaking, eCommerce automation comprises three important components: The triggers The condition that defined the automation The outcome of the action How to use Ecommerce Automation Some of the benefits of automation are: Minimizing order cost Delivering personalized customer experiences Reducing workload Increasing performance efficiency To achieve all of these, you have to understand the steps to automating your eCommerce business. Identify what you need to automate your eCommerce stores Manual activities that take up a large amount of time per day should be automated. For instance, order tracking, order processing, or keeping track of inventory can be assigned to technology. What do you need to automate? Is it the pricing, product information, or payment option? Identify what you need to start your automation process. Automation applications are limitless and depend greatly on your unique business processes. For examples, tasks that can be automated are: Product management: auto-merchandising, publishing/hiding products, changing descriptions or tags Order management: auto-changing order status, notifying orders needing special attentions Customers management: auto-grouping based on account information or purchase behavior Performance management: auto-notifications for respective team members, manage tasks with Trello Schedule promotion campaigns: changing store designs, setting discounts or price changes And a lot more up to your creativity! Choose the right eCommerce automation platform Today, there are several eCommerce solutions available for store owners to choose from. Therefore, it is challenging for newcomers to select a reliable automation tool that can guarantee their success. Explore various options, check reviews, and ask for testimonials or case studies. Furthermore, don’t hesitate to ask the provider to clear your doubt if you have any questions. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use platform, Atom8 is beyond suitable. Some of the app features are: Auto-publish products Auto-categorize orders (based on value, locations, etc) Auto-segment customer (based on demographics, spending, the total number of orders, etc) Auto-tag customers on CRM, email marketing, and delivery platforms Auto-generate reports & lists on Google Sheet Auto-notify of low-stock items, abandoned cart, or high-value orders Auto-detect and halt high-risk orders You can build your own workflow easily with our drag-and-drop dashboard. Otherwise, you can make use of the pre-built templates. Discover more at: Look for pre-built connectors If you already have ready-made connectors, you can integrate them with your eCommerce platform. In other words, you don’t have to hire a third party to integrate your system. However, make sure your eCommerce solution comes with a connector that can reliably transfer product, customer, order, and information between your systems. Monitor and validate data Businesses need to transfer data across various systems. It means a high level of accuracy is required. When opting for an automation process, look for one that allows you to resend, repeat, or recheck activities manually. Furthermore, ensure you have a process that checks and maintain the security and quality of your data. Set up a winning team The automation process won’t work perfectly without a good team. You should be able to add multiple members to the system in case of technical problems. Setting up a team allows you to respond quickly once an order or return fails. The team can quickly resolve the issue or notify the customer when it will be resolved. Final note Now you know how automation work in the eCommerce industry. Whereas 80% of automation users see an increase in the number of leads acquired, 77% experienced a rise in conversion rates. So, install an automation platform today and have the work done quickly and accurately.
How to reduce backorders
There is a hypothetical scenario that you have experienced a backorder. If you don’t understand what that means, then this might make it easier. Imagine a customer who visits your websites and decides to buy a particular item. He searched for the item with so much excitement and eagerness and added it to its cart, hoping he has gotten what he wanted. It was his last destination to acquire that product. However, after checking the expected date his order will arrive, he receives an alert, “We are sorry. Currently, the order is on backorder. We will notify you once we get it in our inventory.” Suddenly, all the expectation has turned to disappointment and anger towards your store. It is frustrating to find yourself in such a situation. How long does a backorder take? What can a store online do to minimize backorder? What is a backorder? In eCommerce, a backorder is when an item ordered isn’t available in the inventory but will be made available at a future date. The problem with backordering products is the fact that it brings about delay. The customer has to wait until the date specified in the shipping date to receive the item. Most customers are unwilling to wait for a backorder, which might be a loss for the business owner to his competitors. Furthermore, a backorder is quite different from an out-of-stock order. Both terms refer to the shortage of an item, but there is a distinct difference. While a backorder relates to an item that is currently unavailable but can be delivered at a particular time, an out-of-stock order means the item isn’t available and might never be listed in a store. How to reduce backorders No eCommerce store owner wants to experience a backorder situation consistently. Therefore, to reduce backorders, there are several things you can do to minimize the shortage of items and handle it peradventure they happen in the future. Have an estimate of demand using past purchases The first thing to do is to get an estimate of what your customers purchase in a particular period to reduce backorders. For instance, if you sell sweaters, and you observe that during the fall and winter, customers order over 120 pieces. You can use this information to restock your store during this period. You can double the number of sweaters you purchase to accommodate more customers during this period. In this way, you will always have enough items in your store to meet your customers’ needs. Work with manufacturers or suppliers If you face an unexpected increase in demand for an item or ran into shortage, you can work hand-in-hand with the manufacturer or supplier of the product to know when the item will be available. If you know the exact date an item will be restocked; you can help manage your customer’s expectations. Good supplier relationship management will help you greatly in meeting requirements. Diversify your manufacturer or suppliers At times, backorder occurs when you depend on a particular supplier or manufacturer. To minimize the risk of running into frequent back order situations, you can have multiple suppliers or manufacturers working together. In this way, once a particular supplier doesn’t have the product, you can switch to the other. With this, nothing can disrupt your supply chain as you always have products to meet the demands.
eCommerce Supply Chain Optimization Tips
How you manage your eCommerce supply chain varies depending on the business model you’re implementing. No matter you’re running B2B or B2C, it is essential to understand how products move from manufacturer to customer. There are multiple approaches to supply chain management. Online store owners sell products through mobile apps, social platforms, and websites. Digitally native brands often add a step forward by taking complete control of their distribution from factory to consumer. Meanwhile, marketplace sellers allow third parties to take part in delivery to reach a wider customer base. Identify the customer needs All supply chain model is designed to meet a particular goal – to satisfy customers. Your customers probably have high expectations when buying online. They often do extensive research, looking through every review and social comment before making a decision. Before placing an order, they want to know if the item is available. They also want to have a seamless experience across platforms and devices. They expect your website to be responsive, even during the peak seasons. Furthermore, most customers have become accustomed to fast and free shipping. Once they are unhappy during this process, they might never come back to you. At the same time, they want to return the item conveniently without spending any money, should it fail to meet their expectations. There are a lot of different things that customers want. The key is to know what the most urgent and important needs are to fulfilled. Then you can work on the others on your way. Effective warehouse design A warehouse design can directly or indirectly affect your supply chain. In detail, you should design your warehouse in a way that allows you to increase storage density and capacity. Some helpful features to be installed are a strategic racking system, narrow aisles, and a mezzanine level. You might also want to consider hanging shelves or bookshelves. Invest in innovative technology Another way to optimize your eCommerce supply chain is to invest in innovative technology. Investing in modern technology will help improve performance. You can utilize a warehouse management system to take care of your daily warehouse operations and inventory management tasks, including ordering picking, EDI capabilities, and replenishment. Furthermore, depending on the size of your business, you can acquire an order management system to help optimize inventory and provide visibility for your store. With this, you can view several fulfillment sources to help prevent overstocks, stock-outs and minimize inventory carrying costs. Reverse logistics To ensure your customer has access to quick refunds and hassle-free returns, ensure you have a reliable information system, transportation capabilities, and distribution network. In this situation, an order management system will help streamline the return process. To make it easier, you can set up distribution centers near your customers to help speed up return processing and reduce transportation costs. Expand sales channel Most online eCommerce store owners expand their physical locations like pop-ups and boutiques. If you don’t have a brick-and-mortar store, you must ensure your eCommerce supply supports or allows multiple order profiles and sales channels. Conclusion All in all, it’s not easy to have an effective eCommerce supply chain right at the beginning. However, you should always look through your process, communicate with your team to identify bottlenecks, and find a way to optimize them. This way, you don’t have to waste too much thinking about how to streamline your supply.
