Best Themes For BigCommerce Stores
Do you have a product to sell online? Then you need a powerful online platform that will provide the best experience for your customers. BigCommerce provides fully-featured online stores and eCommerce websites with several kinds of themes for leveraging your store layout. To make it easier, we have selected the 10 best BigCommerce themes for eCommerce websites. Brooklynk Are you a fashion designer? Are you looking for a simple but effective eCommerce theme for your store? Brooklynk is one unique BigCommerce theme that is quite trendy for fashion stores. It has a clean and professional look to grab people’s attention at the first sight. The theme has an Instagram module that allows you to connect to your social feeds. If you already have a fashion website and are looking for an upgrade, this is what you need. Beautica Theme Do you want to run multiple stores? If you want to delve into fashion and beauty stores, then Beautica would be a well-suited offer. The theme is applicable for both fashion and beauty items – you can sell both clothes and cosmetics products. What’s more, the premium version comes with unique features such as an Instagram module, mega menu, logo slider, LookBook page, lazy loading images, product labels, and so on. SarahMarket SarahMarket is a perfect theme for your grocery store or supermarket. It is optimized for SEO and loading speed, which serves as an additional advantage. Additionally, you can showcase your products in several ways – product categories, new arrivals, and most popular products. Get the SarahMarket because it is highly responsive and comes with several customization options. ShopTown The theme is rather similar to SarahMarket but has a more modern and trendier design. For new online store owners, ShopTown is easily customizable with features such as a quick view option, zoom magnifier, vertical mega menu, product grids, and much more. Besides, ShopTown is highly responsive on mobile devices and optimized for SEO. Furnicom The name pretty much gives a picture of what the theme is about. Furnicom is your best theme for architecture, interior design, and furniture stores. Your store is bound to look great on all devices since it is highly responsive. Furthermore, it gives you total freedom to configure the theme the way you want. Jewelry Parallax Your one-stop online store theme for all jewelry-related items. It has a stunning parallax effect with elegant typography to captivate your audience. With fully responsive and configurable block sections, you can get the sales you desire. eMartica eMartica theme has a modern design that perfectly fits any online supermarket store. Easy to customize and fully responsive, you can find exciting features such as mega menu modules, product quick views, product display, and much more. Caros Theme With its elegant and simple design, Caros theme is an excellent choice if you deal in cars. It displays items boldly for your customers to see in several ways. Furthermore, you can choose from 3 different homepage layouts with 3 different product page layouts for your store. Take advantage of features such as newsletter popup, mega menu, and product upsells to leverage your sales. Mega Shop The Mega Shop theme is the complete package for all items you want to sell in your supermarket. Whatever the item or product might be, the Mega Shop theme allows you to customize it in a way that is relevant to your audience. With a responsive and powerful admin panel, you can display your product in several unique ways. Its features include a zoom magnifier, advanced search, and vertical mega menu. eMarket theme If you are looking for an advanced mega menu theme for your online store, the eMarket theme comes with something more. It is fully customizable and responsive for your eCommerce website. You can customer the fonts, colors, and other aspects of your store effortlessly. Furthermore, it loads faster to give customers an outstanding shopping experience. Choose the best BigCommerce theme for your store A suitable theme serves as a ground to build up your brand visualization. Therefore, it’s helpful to think through what you’re offering and how you want the customers to interact with your store in advance. BigCommerce free themes should be enough for your start. Yet you can always consider a paid plan for a fancier look.
Groomers Pro: Leverage Inventory Management With Atom8
About Groomers Pro Groomers Pro has been serving the professional groomer and dog show enthusiast since 2008 and is the proud distributor of grooming products for Chris Christensen, Nature’s Specialties, Crown Royale, Artero, Wahl, Andis, and many others. The need for automation When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the grooming industry was particularly hard hit – bottles suddenly became hard to source, with hand sanitizers and hand soaps taking priority. For Groomers Pro, suppliers could not fulfill purchase orders and products started going out of stock. Luckily they had installed a back-in-stock functionality, with their email marketing platform. This allowed customers to be added to a waitlist and receive an announcement when the item is replenished. To promote the waitlist availability, Groomers Pro’s staff were manually adding the promotional label “JOIN WAITLIST” to each out-of-stock item, and also manually removing the label when the product had arrived back in stock. The problem, however, is they were never sure which products were in or out of stock. As a result, sometimes the product never had the “JOIN WAITLIST” promotional label added, or worse it never got removed. Potentially, customers could receive an email stating that a product was available, but the “JOIN WAITLIST” label was still visible on the website. It was not clear if the product was available to purchase. There was the potential for confusion and also the loss of sales. Groomers Pro needed to find an automated solution for this issue. This is when they came across Atom8 on BigCommerce. At first, they’re generally worried about the effectiveness for this was their first experience with an automation platform. Yet, Atom8’s performance indeed exceeded their expectations. The Atom8 solution One of Atom8’s features is to auto-publish labels on predetermined rules, dates, and times. With this, whenever the inventory level lowers to a certain threshold, the system will automatically add the label. Customers then are aware that a waitlist is available if they want to purchase the product in the future. Later, as soon as the stock level is updated in the store backend, the label will be automatically removed. Simultaneously, by integrating Atom8 with their email marketing platform, Groomers Pro’s customers can still receive an announcement about their waitlist order. This is a perfect add-on to their previous solution. Besides, with a drag-and-drop dashboard and prebuilt templates, it didn’t take the team much time to get acquainted with the app. Now the process is fully automated and timely. Atom8 has positively transformed their work process. Potential future developments With Atom8 in place, Groomers Pro is freed from worrying about incompatible product labels. In addition, the Atom8 team is always responsive should they encounter any problem while running on the app. Operating strongly with the assistance of Atom8, Groomers Pro has now been able to serve even more customers. As stated by the Groomers Pro team: “If you are looking for a BigCommerce App to help with automating a tedious, problematic task, look no further than Atom8. Responsive (yes they provide support!) and helpful, at last, an app to rely upon.”
Inventory Management Challenges for Online Stores
Managing inventory effectively can be challenging, especially for eCommerce retailers with an omnichannel strategy. eCommerce businesses come across various inventory management challenges every day. In order to maintain sustainable growth, they have to find an out-of-the-box solution to streamline the process. In this blog, we’ll outline the five toughest challenges faced by e-commerce entrepreneurs and how to deal with them effectively. Inventory management challenges faced by online stores 1. Unqualified staff The most common mistake businesses make when it comes to inventory management is to hire unqualified staff to carry out the tasks. Underskilled staff is incapable of evaluating suppliers, preparing the proper documentation, making correct forecasts, purchasing new inventory, or handling inventory. As a result, your inventory management system becomes reactive rather than proactive. This might lead to unreliable system information, high levels of expired inventory, build-up of obsolete inventory, and over or understated inventory valuation. Inventory management issues will arise because of incompetent staff, and it will be destructive for your business. 2. No KPIs or too many KPIs KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. An inventory management KPI is a metric that a company uses to analyze its stock management efficiency. Using too many KPIs may confuse your staff about the most important aspects to focus on. Meanwhile, no KPIs will cause stockouts or result in excess stocks. Either case would adversely impact a business. There are many performance KPIs that a company can use to optimize inventory. Still, it is vital to choose the right metrics for your business for inventory management issues that can decrease the efficiencies and dig into your profits. 3. Manual management process Another challenge faced by e-commerce companies is a manual management. It is possible to track and manage stocks manually in the early stages of an e-commerce business. But as the business scales, managing inventory manually becomes more and more complex. As the company grows, paperwork and other manual processes turn out to be tedious and burdensome. Automating the inventory management process not only helps you save time but also limits errors caused by fatigue. 4. Deadstock When it comes to inventory management challenges, deadstock refers to a product that has not been sold and keeps lying on the shelves for a longer duration than anticipated, and the chances of it getting sold are very weak. In the absence of good inventory management, businesses often end up stocking excess inventory. Deadstock might be the result of poor forecasting, lack of demand, over-ordering, etc. If not tackled properly, it would lead to huge losses to a business. 5. Irregular stock tracking To maintain an accurate picture of the stock, it is important to count your stock regularly. It helps you to figure out any discrepancies between the book and actual inventory. There are times when un-trackable stock such as exchanges or pilferage are not entered into the system. This type of error would cost you tremendous time and effort to fix. Therefore, a frequent stock audit is highly necessary to ensure sufficient inventory. Back up your store with BackOrder BackOrder allows users to assign any product to a backorder status when the inventory level reaches a certain threshold. This means customers can still place an order for out-of-stock items and have them delivered later. In addition, you can set up the system to notify your staff whenever a new request is submitted, preventing you from missing out on any potential customers. What’s more, BackOrder can now be integrated into Atom8. This creates a centralized management system without you going back and forth between different platforms. Streamlined Backorder Management Atom8 enables seamless management of backorders by automatically tracking and updating inventory levels in real-time. This ensures that customers are promptly notified of product availability and allows for efficient handling of backordered items. Optimal Inventory Planning By leveraging Atom8’s advanced forecasting capabilities, you can anticipate demand for backordered items and adjust inventory levels accordingly. This proactive approach helps prevent stockouts and ensures timely fulfillment of customer orders. Enhanced Customer Communication With Atom8, you can automate communication with customers regarding backordered items, providing transparency and reducing customer inquiries. By keeping customers informed throughout the backorder process, you can maintain trust and satisfaction. Integrated Order Fulfillment Atom8 seamlessly integrates with your existing order management system, allowing for streamlined order fulfillment processes. Whether fulfilling in-stock or backordered items, Atom8 ensures accuracy and efficiency throughout the order fulfillment process. Conclusion In conclusion, overcoming inventory management challenges requires a combination of strategic planning, process optimization, and leveraging innovative solutions like Atom8 and Backorder app. By addressing these challenges head-on and implementing effective inventory management strategies, online retailers can optimize their operations, minimize costs, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
5 key customer retention metrics and how to calculate them
An essential component of any business is customer retention metrics. Each company is customer-focused, notwithstanding the type of business it is. However, when you begin to lose customers unusually, it means something is not right. Customer retention is critical to the success of your business. Regrettably, it is a significant problem for most businesses despite applying various retention strategies. It is much more than that. Therefore, what customer retention metrics can you use to justify the success of your brand? How can you calculate these metrics to know if you are meeting your goals or not? In this article, you will learn important customer retention metrics for your online business. Customer lifetime value It measures the revenue you generate from a particular customer. It doesn’t matter if you sell individual products or render services; you need to trace this metric consistently. Usually, customer lifetime value should either rise or remain constant. However, anything that makes it shrink only means losing customers faster or capturing low-value customers. To evaluate customer lifetime value, you need to determine the average revenue of a particular customer for a year. To get the average revenue, you divide the gross annual sales you generate by the number of unique customers you acquire for that year. Repeat Purchase Ratio The repeat purchase ratio represents the percentage of customers returning to purchase an item from your store or company. This metric helps you know your loyal customers, which you can use to assess your performance and the impact on the customer retention strategy you implement. Here, the repeat purchase ratio applies to products. However, you can also use it for contract renewals or repeat subscription services. To calculate the repeat purchase ratio, you divide the number of returning customers by the total customers. Product Return Rate The product return rate is essential for businesses that deal with intangible products. It represents your product return rate when an item is purchased. It is a proportion of the total units of an item returned compared to what was sold. The product return rate is equivalent to the number of units sold that customers later returned divided by the total number of units sold. Net Promoter Score This metric measures the general satisfaction and loyalty to your brand. Your overall score will determine if your customers are willing to advertise your product to others in their community. You can compute the net promoter score by getting the percentage of promoters subtracted by the percentage of detractors. Loyal Customer Rate Loyal customers represent those who have previously made a purchase on your store at a given time. Since your existing customers buy from you, this metric identifies the percentage of your customer base that is loyal to your business or brand. Importantly, you need to know your existing customers because these customers are your valuable assets. They don’t only buy items to drive your sales; they act as ambassadors to your brand since they can share positive words about your business. To calculate your current customer growth rate, you have to determine the number of existing customers divided by the total customers that visit your store. If you are looking for a tool to increase customer retention rate, check out our apps for BigCommerce automation and Shopify automation.
How To Prevent Regular Stockout
Stockout hurts your business and negatively impacts your brand image in the eyes of your customers. Identifying the causes of stockout empowers you to overcome inventory issues and have sufficient stocks to meet demand. One of the major reasons for regular stockout is incorrect data. Complicated as it may sound, retailers can overcome this by implementing inventory management systems. Let us look at how to prevent inaccurate data from causing stockouts. 1. Use a Modern Inventory Management System By implementing a modern inventory system, you can avoid stock discrepancies. Maintaining ledgers or excel spreadsheets is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. Modern apps often operate on a cloud-based system, enabling you to manage and edit inventory remotely. In other words, it can automatically modify stock levels when a transaction is made, saving you from manually updating the database. It is also exceedingly beneficial for omnichannel operation. Today, inventory tracking systems can be integrated into other systems such as point of sale and order management. Moreover, retail point of sale allows you to create order recommendations when stocks go below pre-determined levels. Thus implementing a modern inventory system will provide you with accurate data and help you avoid stockout. 2. Connect Inventory from Different Platforms Manual management can’t particularly deal with a complex business model. Therefore, you need management software to take care of your real-time inventory. By constantly updating the stock level, it helps you manage your supply chain and avoid being out of stock. If you’re selling across multiple channels, you should connect all your retail platforms to ensure accurate sync of data whenever a transaction is made. This integration of different points of sales with your e-commerce website is called omnichannel inventory management. 3. Count Stocks Regularly One of the reasons for a stockout is the discrepancy between the data in your system and the actual stock number. This might be due to human error, technical issues, shrinkage, loss, or theft of goods. Conducting frequent inventory audits will help you avoid stockouts, especially before the peak seasons. 4. Simplify Processes Done by Human Never forget to examine your staff’s work scope on a regular basis. This helps point out the repetitive tasks that can be automated so that your employees can focus on the bigger picture. 5. Label and Place Inventory Strategically Labeling the goods using barcodes and RFID ensures a high level of inventory accuracy. RFID technology allows storing and tracking product information in a chip embedded in an item’s tag or packaging. Strategically labeling and placing allow for faster monitoring and search whenever in need. In this sense, marking the stock is probably the best solution for avoiding inventory data inaccuracies. Besides the warehouse, you should also label your product in the backend of your online store. This can be quickly done by integrating Atom8 into your website. All you need to do is set up workflows based on your current business activities. Then whenever the triggers are met, the app will automatically tag products and orders accordingly. In other words, there’s no need to manually look at every item and place a label anymore. You save a lot of time and resources needed for more impactful decisions. Conclusion Out-of-stock products not only lead to a loss in the sale volume but also result in poor customer experience. Therefore, effective inventory management techniques are a must to prevent regular stockout.
