Best Inventory Management Automation Use Cases
Inventory management is an indispensable part of every retail store. A small mistake within the process can cause disruption to the whole value chain. Yet the inventory accuracy rate within the US is only 63%, which is simply disappointing. Consequently, a lot of store owners have deployed inventory management automation to get rid of human error and save time for more powerful investment. In this blog, we’ve listed 4 ways that automation software has made inventory management more cost-effective and time-efficient. 1. Auto-publish product You don’t have to update new products all the time. However, it is not easy during the holiday season when everything needs to be aboard at midnight, or when you’re operating in another region with a completely different timezone. This would be eliminated with inventory management automation. All you need to do is update the product information on your store and determine the date and time you want it to be published. The app will then take care of the rest and you’ll be free from this tedious task. We recommend using Atom8 – BigCommerce’s top automation platform, to deploy your eCommerce automation workflows. Atom8 has no-code automation, so any store owner can easily eliminate redundant tasks with a simple workflow like this. More: 2. Send notification in case of low stock Your inventory stock changes every time an order is placed. This is why it is so daunting to keep track of every item at a time. If you are unaware of out-of-stock products, you’ll risk dissatisfying your customers and lose your revenue. With inventory management automation, you can tell the system to send your staff a push notification when the stock inventory reaches a certain threshold. This way, you’ll have enough time to reorder while still serving the best of your customers. Especially with BackOrder, your customers can preorder the product and have it delivered right after it is restocked instead of having to wait for the fulfillment first. 3. Auto-tag orders & customers There are 2 reasons why customer segmentation is so important to your business success Therefore, you should always tag and categorize orders right after it is placed. Set up a workflow to tag your customers based on their location, gender, age, order size, and purchase life cycle. This enables you to take special care of each segment and nurture them better. 4. Auto-generate data to a spreadsheet Simply segmenting customers on your CRM doesn’t make so much change without analyzing it. You need to feed your data into a spreadsheet so that you have a better look at it. Thanks to Google Sheets integration, Atom8 can automatically cover all these time-consuming tasks on a pre-scheduled basis, saving you a lot of time and effort. Final note In general, you should never ignore your inventory. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that you might be extremely busy during this turbulent time. Therefore, an inventory management automation system would be an easy way out for you. No more fuzzling with manual inventory counting, you’ll have more time to accelerate your performance.
Holiday Marketing Ideas For Maximum Impacts
People spend trillions of dollars each year on the holiday season. Therefore, a failure to push the gas on your holiday marketing ideas would halt your business development. Your holiday marketing campaign should be placed everywhere, from emails, social media posts, and blog content. It also needs to cash-in on that purchasing behavior around specific holiday seasons. That way, you can get to the top of your customer’s minds when they’re thinking about making a purchase. In this article, we introduced 7 strategies to help you master the next holiday season. 1. Create a holiday calendar The most popular holidays are Christmas, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and New Year. However, it’s not only winter events that you can stimulate your marketing activities around. Other holidays that possess great opportunities to boost your sales include: Valentine’s Day Easter Thanksgiving Mother’s and Father’s Day The 4th of July Back to School or College Halloween Yet building up a new marketing campaign might take up to 12 weeks. That’s why it’s always helpful to have a calendar marking all the holidays you are celebrating at the beginning of the year. This way, you won’t risk being so occupied with other tasks that you huddle over the holiday assets just one week before. 2. Segment your customer before starting Customer segmentation is a significant factor for every successful campaign. Each customer has different demands when it comes to holiday shopping. A smart customer segmentation strategy enhances your understanding of customers’ behaviors, hence better prepare personalized promotional campaigns for each segment. Moreover, the holiday dates vary across regions. Launching a Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November in Canada would be a terrible idea for they’ve celebrated it more than a month ago. You can segment your audience based on: 3. Create holiday-themed landing pages and distinctive holiday content Hundreds of retailers join the game every day during the holiday sales season. The challenge is to distinguish yourself from others. One of the effective holiday marketing ideas is to build a distinctive landing page so that your customers can find the wanted product with the least difficulties. This should be done at least a month before the sales season. Otherwise, you’ll be flooded with tons of work and have no time to optimize your pages. Here are what a festive holiday landing page can do to your business: Introduce you holiday hot-sales items and special deals Take SEO advantage when people search for holiday, sale, deals, offers, coupon, discount, and other related keywords Incorporate special popup for personalized gifts or offers 4. Make a creative holiday video Video is always a notable way to catch people’s attention, especially when it is catchy enough. That’s why businesses always try to come up with a creative idea tailored to the holiday season, to name but a few: T.K.MAX The Lil’ Goat campaign for Christmas, Hyundai’s #BreakonStereotypes campaign or Star Sports’ #CheckoutmyGame campaign for International Women’s day, etc. The key is to show your customers how interesting and trustable your business is. Share it using your social media channels, post it on your “About” page, attach it in your signature so that as many people see it as possible. The goal is to get your video viral on digital platforms. By targeting the customers’ emotions, you can accelerate their trust in your business and open the way to a higher conversion rate and revenue. 5. Run social media giveaway 3.5 billion people are active on social media these days and there’s no signal of slowing down. A social campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms would help gain more and more eyes on your business. Furthermore, people like free stuff, especially during holiday seasons. Something completely free, a free add-on with an order, or just a big discount can foster the holiday spirit of giving in your store. Ask your followers to comment, share, like and tag their friends so that you gain even more engagement on your giveaway. 6. Use automation When it comes to holiday marketing ideas, don’t get down in the weeds doing things manually. The more you can automate your holiday campaigns, the more time you’ll have to double-down on what’s working as you go. Therefore, it’s a good idea to integrate your store with an automation platform. The app will streamline your process from inventory management to delivery. All you need to do is preparing the necessary materials and it will take care of the rest. For example, you create a holiday-themed landing page a week before Christmas and the app will automatically publish it at midnight, without the owner having to stay up late to do it. This saves you a lot of time and resources to spend on more meaningful activities. CONCLUSION As you can see, holiday marketing ideas can be anything from a simple thread of tweets, right the way through to a full-scale TV advertisement. The most important thing is that the planning of your holiday campaigns shouldn’t start the night before the big date. It takes time to plan out your ideas, design the creatives, and get sign-off. It sounds like a lot of work for one small period but remembers: the holiday seasons are some of the biggest times for spending. Make sure you take advantage whilst you can.
Best Shopify Apps to Increase Engagement in 2021
The global pandemic that started last spring has resulted in a new way of living and entertaining. When it comes to shopping, people are expecting a seamless experience across channels. They want to gain information about a product while scrolling their social media, or talk with staff even at 2 am, which is not always easy for merchants to serve. Yet, omnichannel customer engagement strategies were proved to increase the customer retention rate by 33%. To ensure this uninterrupted buying journey, merchants must be in need of assistance from the best Shopify apps. In this article, we’ve outlined the 7 recent most commonly used apps on Shopify, built on emerging customer trends this year, that can help leverage your business performance. TikShop Being the fastest growing social media platform in the world, Tiktok is expanding to be a sales channel. The huge number of Titok users increases the chance that your product is seen by potential customers. Tikshop integrates your website with your Tiktok account, allowing for cross-channel advertising. Key functions Add Tik Tok feed to your homepage Create a dedicated feed that is linked to your Tik Tok bio Tags products on your Tik Tok videos Create a dashboard overview of your products on Tiktok page Price $19.99 per month Ultimate FAQs and Accordion FAQ, as being a common concern of almost all customers, is extremely effective to engage with your consumers. Therefore, MoxoApps was created to make this experience more interesting. This is one of the best Shopify apps with an easy dashboard that enables store owners to create multiple FAQ layouts without coding knowledge. Key functions Unlimited FAQ categories and items added Create your own collapsible accordions to any of your pages Filter FAQ by categories Price Free forever plan Pro plan: $4.99 per month Rockerbox When your marketing activities scatter over multiple channels with a different program for different groups, it is rather challenging to keep track of everything. Understanding this, Rockerbox is among the best Shopify apps for merchants to manage their marketing budget. By integrating Rockerbox with apps like Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Adroll, you can easily extract and analyze your performance data. Key functions Allocate credits across your marketing channels Generate post-purchase report from both online and offline activities Account-level conversion rate across devices and events Price Free to install Custom Background Music People these days are seeking more entertainment besides their shopping experience. Meanwhile, music is always the fastest way to grab their attention. That’s why Custom Background Music is becoming more and more popular. Key functions Add a media file to play on your website, either on the entire store or only the homepage Control the volume Auto loop Customize the speaker’s color, size, and position Price Basic plan: $1.99 per month Developers plan: free Shogun Landing Page Builder Your website is extremely essential in showcasing your brand identity and product range. You don’t want to lose any customer for an erroneous bug on your product page or a broken link. This is why Shogun Landing Page Builder is among the best Shopify apps you might need to optimize your pages. Key functions Quickly build multiple types of pages including homepage, product page, about us page, sales funnel, etc Optimize your online store for increased conversions with built-in A/B testing, analytical tools, and on-page SEO elements Add custom elements using HTML/Liquid, CSS and JavaScript Price Build plan: $39 per month Measure plan: $49 per month Optimize plan: $149 per month Returnly: Return & Exchange The specialty of Returnly is that once incorporated with your Shopify store, it’ll automatically approve returns while identifying the edge cases. All you need to do is set a product return policy and the app will handle the rest. Key functions Automate credit exchanges Smart product recommendation Allow for CSAT feedbacks Price Returnly price is set in accordance with your Shopify plan Basic Shopify: $29 per month Shopify: $59 per month Advanced Shopify: $149 per month ConnectPOS ConnectPOS is the point of sales system trusted by 200+ Shopify merchants. The app guarantees 100% synchronization between Shopify Admin and POS for products, orders, customers, tax info, etc. At the same time, ConnectPOS can be integrated with all major payment gateways such as Authorize.net, Paypal HERE, Payment Express, or iZettle. You don’t need to pay any additional fee except for the direct payment to these providers. The platform also offers 7 languages to support your international operations. Key functions Scan barcode to add products to cart Allow refund and exchange for both online and offline customers Allow split or partial payments Save Cart / Create Draft Orders Load customers & products in offline mode for faster checkout Customize your print receipts, product labels, and order ID Provide 20 different types of reports including sales by outlet, sales by registers, etc. Price Standard plan: $39 per month Advanced plan: $69 per month Premium: $89 per month Custom plan based on your need Ergo Last but not least, workflow automation is being widely adopted by businesses of all sizes. By unleashing merchants from daily repetitive tasks, these apps give them more time and resources to invest in important business activities. Ergo Automation is one of the best automation apps on Shopify, allowing for digitizing all tedious parts of your business. The tool’s function includes: Auto-publish products Auto-categorize orders according to value, locations, etc Auto-segment customer based on demographics, spending, the total number of order, 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 also integrate the app with other significant platforms such as Mailchimp, Hubspot, or Google Sheet so as to smoothly streamline and analyze information. Final note All in all, keeping your eyes on every task must be daunting. Therefore, having a digital tool doing the work is an effective solution, be it an extension app or a whole workflow automation platform. The key
How to Schedule Automation Trigger
More and more businesses are employing automation apps to operate more effectively online. The most convenient part of automation is that it can be triggered whenever needed without human intervention. In other words, automation trigger is activation workflow automation according to predetermined rules and time. Looking into detail, workflow automation refers to the design and execution of a series of tasks according to preset rules. It helps release online merchants from repetitive tasks and hands in more time to invest in impactful business decisions. What is an automaton trigger? Normally workflow will automatically run whenever marked as active. Nevertheless, not every workflow is the same in nature. In fact, there are 3 types of event schedules you might consider. One time The schedule generates an event once at a specified date and time. When your new products arrive, add them to a collection and publish the new arrival section. Then after one month, remove products from the collection. Recurring The schedule generates an event on a regular basis. An example of this is the workflow to send a low-stock alert when the inventory reaches a certain threshold. With this, the system will deliver a notification email to your staff concerning every product under your setting. Start/End of time range The schedule generates an event at the beginning or end of a specified time range. You can choose to repeat the workflow during the timeframe or generate an event at both the beginning and the end of it. For instance, for every newly-created account, label them as new customers and send a promo code via Mailchimp. Then after one month, remove the tag and treat them differently. This workflow runs within one month and the label event can be repeated at the end of the time range if the customer meets certain criteria. How to set up an automation trigger? You can customize the time for each event by using the delay function on the workflow automation app. For example, instead of waiting for a week to unpublish New Year Eve’s offers, you can delay the process after publishing items. At the end of the holiday season, trigger another automation to close the deal. This can always be done easily in one workflow with Atom8. The process to set up a workflow is completely the same for every type of event. However, there are 2 points you need to make clear with your team: Firstly, your staff should be aware of which tasks to be executed by automation Secondly, everyone should agree on the type of schedule, the time range of the event as well as all the necessary due dates. This way, you won’t risk publishing a product without a featured image or sufficient stock inventory. Listening to your team would bring you a broader overview of how your business is running and help figure out the most optimal solutions. Final note Generally speaking, each type of event in the automation trigger has its own benefits and serves different needs. Therefore, the key is to have concrete communication within your team to understand what needs to be done at what time. With that, you’ll master workflow automation and gain a positive result earlier.
3 Steps to Avoid Customer Churn
Customer churn, despite being a negative figure, is one of the most important metrics for businesses to evaluate. Even large and successful companies have to face up with customers leaving them every day due to numerous reasons. Therefore, understanding what prevents your loyal customers from a relationship with your business is exceedingly crucial to retain sustainable business growth. What is customer churn? Customer churn refers to the percentage of customers who stop using your products or services in a certain period of time. The rate can be calculated by dividing the number of customers you lost by the total number of customers you have at the beginning of that period. This number demonstrates how well your business is doing in satisfying your existing customers. Says at the start of this quarter, you have 300 customers on your database. If after this timeframe, the system records 12 unsubscribers, then the customer churn rate is: You can also calculate the churn rate in a different way, such as: The number of customers lost The number of recurring revenue lost The percentage of recurring revenue lost Ideally, your business should always gravitate towards a 0% customer loss. The reason why keeping your customers aside is so important is because customer retention drives more revenue than attracting new ones. In fact, only a 5% increase in customer retention can accelerate profits by at least 25%. However, there are many factors that affect your customer’s intention. So, how to avoid customer churn? 3 steps to avoid customer churn 1. Analyze why a churn occurs Try multiple ways to communicate with your customers as of why they abandon your company. In fact, 68% of customers leave because they think the company doesn’t care about them. There are multiple ways to talk with your customers, such as: Making a phone call Creating a poll on social media Sending an exit survey when proceeding with unsubscription These help you gain valuable feedback about what’s going wrong to improve your performance and prevent customer churn from happening again. 2. Predict who is likely to churn It’s always better to avoid customer churn from the first place. The idea is to identify customers with certain characteristics that might lead to a churn in the future and pay special attention so as to reconnect them with the company in time. Among all, there are 2 types of customers who are most likely to churn, which are People you have not been contacted for a while People you forgot to follow up on their questions After knowing the reasons, you would be aware of the actions that your churned customers made. This can help you head up to other people who are behaving similarly and take care of them earlier. 3. Use automation to take care of your customers The best way to stay on top-of-mind with your customers is to constantly engage with them. However, as the number of customers grows, this becomes extremely frustrating. As a result, business everywhere is integrating automation software to help them keep in touch with their consumers. There’s no need to manually send a message to every single customer anymore. With automation, you write the content once and let the software do the distribution. Apart from newsletters, you can use workflow to deliver promo codes during special occasions or simply re-engage with them after a time of no purchase. This ensures that customers always receive information from your company. You can also use automation to sort out questions, complaints, and refund requests and send push notifications to your staff. This way, you make sure not to miss out on any questions that might disappoint your customers. Conclusion Now that you know the importance of customer retention, it is noteworthy to focus on being a keeper. After all, maintaining a strong relationship with your customers is daunting sometimes. It boils down to analyzing reasons for customer churn and coming up with solutions. Communicating with your customers regularly using automation would be effective to keep them on your side.
How Automation Changes Business Workflow
Business workflow automation allows organizations to streamline their critical processes using technology. The aim is to minimize the complexity of having to conduct repetitive tasks all at once. Automation is not only efficient in terms of cost and time but also helps online stores expand their business more rapidly. Below we discuss 7 easily-adopted automation workflows that have helped plenty of entrepreneurs to foster productivity. 1. Hiring process Organizations might receive hundreds to thousands of applications a day. Storing information and categorizing applicants must be frustrating for any employer. Workflow automation enables applications to be sorted out at the moment it’s sent, enabling them to seamlessly scan through and identify the most suitable candidates for a vacancy. 2. Employee leave and vacation requests Each employee has different demands for leave and vacation, which makes it very time-consuming to manually track and make a summary of all the numbers. With business workflow automation, employees can send an electronic request that automatically routes to their supervisors for approval. The system will also store data about the total number of leaves they have. 3. Purchase order In the traditional business setting, when an online order is placed, store owners have to note down customer information such as name, address, number of items, what variants they want. Merchants also need to keep an eye on their inventory to avoid being out-of-stock. With business workflow automation, these data are automatically stored in the database. It is easier not only to manage but also to retrieve later for personalization or discount programs. For example, this workflow is triggered whenever there is a new order. If any product name includes iPhone, the system will assign customers to “Apple customers” and send them a confirmation via Mailchimp. 4. Logistics and supply chain management Business workflow automation helps improve communication with suppliers and delivery service. Store owners no longer have to call every partner to book a van, check the delivery status, or update orders. Customers can also see the status of their package easy as pie on the website, which increases credibility and satisfaction. 5. Social media management A study found that 90% of customers will visit a website after engaging with the company on social media. That’s why a lot of marketers have been focusing their efforts on updating their social media account every couple of hours. Now you can integrate your social media with business workflow automation. The app will publish your content on a predetermined timeline on the right platforms. As a result, you will save a lot of precious time on repetitive tasks to spend on more impactful business activities. 6. Auditing Robotic process automation (RPA) is an emerging auditing automation technology, which can carry the work 2 times faster than manually done. RPA helps improve the efficiency of the audit process, minimize the error accompanied by this complex task and generate more powerful insights. 7. Customer support Chatbots and other virtual assistants are becoming more and more popular these days. In fact, 55% of customers prefer engaging with chatbots when they have a problem. Chatbots are programmed to absorb questions as input, analyzing them using a natural language processing mechanism, and return an answer as stored in the system. This technology helps businesses ensure quick and restlessly 24/7 customer service to satisfy customers at any time. Final note Business workflow automation frees companies from tedious repetitive tasks to focus on work that matters. It is a must-have for any business if you want to enhance productivity and scale up revenue. Try Atom8 automation today to see how you can stimulate your business performance.
Marketing Automation Benefits for Online Businesses
Among efforts to digitize businesses, eCommerce marketing automation is probably the fastest emerging trend. In general, automation platforms enhance marketing efficiency while releasing the pressure to personalize the experience for every customer. In this article, we discuss how marketing automation has helped online stores accelerate their operational performance. What is marketing automation? Marketing automation is the integration of automation software into a business’ promotion effort. This application can effectively solve repetitive tasks such as personalizing each email, uploading social media management posts, or generating data on a spreadsheet. The technology allows for streamlining information from the first touchpoint to nurture your potential customers and take care of them post-purchasing. By taking over manual tasks, automation software offer marketers more time to think through high-quality content and out-of-the-box solutions for the business. A lot of studies have been conducted to examine the effectiveness of email marketing. Interestingly, the results are all positive: Marketing automation helped 76% of marketers increase their ROI within a year 80% of others report a surge in lead generation after incorporating automation Automated marketing increases the conversion rate by 15-20% How can these figures be achieved? Let’s look at the way marketing automation benefits online businesses. How does marketing automation benefit your business? Increase marketing efficiency Marketing automation can post social media content on your behalf every day according to the predetermined timeline. You no longer need to pay attention to the publishing process anymore. It also reduces error when you operate on multiple platforms, each of which has a distinctive content goal. Additionally, your staff can launch your nurture email, run ad campaigns and post a blog on the same app, making the work less confusing and more time-efficient. Improve lead conversion and ROI Marketing automation tools help you track your conversion rate and manage your leads more effectively. Since being stored in a single platform, your leads will be scored consistently based on common criteria to generate better quality lists. At the same time, the platform allows for easy extraction of data for personalization and retargeting effort, which helps foster your ROI. Enhance alignment between the marketing and sales objectives Integrating your marketing and sales effort on the same platforms can help tighten your marketing and sales team. This is because the apps allow you to set consistent scoring parameters and definitions of qualified leads. They also automatically convey notifications within and between the teams, thereby reduces miscommunication and increases efficiency. Foster a concrete omnichannel overview Reporting is no longer a daunting task with the use of automation. It is always possible to ask the platform to extract reports on any channel. Thanks to the huge data stored in the system, automation apps can give you an accurate overview of your overall process. This will free you from scanning through a lot of data points and focus immediately on critical points. Marketing automation with Atom8 Atom8 is a workflow automation platform designed exclusively for BigCommerce merchants. Besides order categorization and inventory management, the app is extraordinarily beneficial for your marketing activities. For example, once a customer orders an item, you often have to label it based on address and order size and notify your staff about this placement. Additionally, you can create another marketing workflow that runs simultaneously with these activities. After being installed, Atom8 will send a confirmation email tailored to your customers without you having to rewrite it. This will save you a lot of time and free your mind from worrying about trivial tasks. Now it’s not just me who is promoting marketing automation. More than 75% of companies are operating with marketing automation these days. So incorporate one, or else you might risk lagging behind your competitors.
5 Best Ways To Engage With Customers
Customers are the lifeblood of any business. That’s why it’s extremely important to engage with your customers on a regular basis. From content marketing to social media and beyond, there are plenty of opportunities to exploit such relationships. However, it’s not easy to get to know millions of consumers at a time. In this article, we explain 5 simple strategies you can deploy any time to boost your customer engagement. 1. Make every first impression count There are new customers coming across your website every day. Yet they don’t have time to cling in and dig information about your brand. You have to present yourself clearly and coherently in front of your visitors. Design your website in a way that serves the best of your customers. Consider real-time support and be proactive about starting the conversation to catch their attention. Don’t explicitly focus on the transactional value of the relationship. Rather, explain how your product can benefit the customer and let them make a decision. 2. Build a community A key to engagement marketing is to give your customers an opportunity to speak up. In 2016, Starbucks launched an open forum called MyStarBucksIdea.com to foster engagement with customers. This community allows customers to propose their initiatives to refine products and experiences within the franchise. After a few months, the website had received over 150.000 products, 55.000 experience, and other 30.000 involvement ideas. This campaign paved the way for new flavors such as skinny beverages, hazelnut macchiato, and pumpkin spice flavored coffee. Building such a large-scale community might be challenging. However, you can start by creating your own Facebook group to share information and communicate with your customers. 3. Make your customers a part of the team Feedback is a gift. It is not only a way to engage with customers but also to know where you are and what needs to be improved. After all, you’re running to satisfy the consumers’ demand. Therefore, customer feedback serves as a guide to your business growth. One effective way to collect feedback is to send out a feedback form after the order is completed. Build an email template that allows customers to type in their thoughts quickly. You might also consider getting back to them for an explanation when it comes to negative feedback. Another way is social media listening. Check your social media account constantly. Direct comments, mentions, and posts are useful to see what customers think about you. You can also create quick polls and Q&A stories to gather immediate responses from your followers. 4. Personalized your customer experience 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from a brand that personalizes their experience. Personalization increases the personal relevance of your message to each customer. It implies that you care about your customers’ needs as an individual, thereby improving a good impression and engagement with your brand. Referring to the customer’s name is a good starting point to engage with customers, whether you are communicating via social media or email. Segmenting your list for email marketing is a must-do. You can choose to categorize them by location, age, order size, or lifetime value. This enables you to have a special nurturing program for each group, which has a larger impact on your business. 5. Keep the conversation going with technology All of the abovementioned might be easy to conduct one by one. However, things are different when the business grows. You can easily ignore customer support once you’re busy managing your internal staff. Personalizing is another frustrating task as you have to pay attention to every single customer and order. That’s why many businesses have implemented automation apps to help them. You can set up a workflow to tag your customers whenever an order is placed without having to do it millions of times. You can also tell the system to automatically send an email tailored to each individual. This data will then be stored in your CRM to use in the future. In this sense, automation not only saves you from daily repetitive tasks but also enhances your business efficiency. CONCLUSION In today’s business, it is a must to engage with your customers via content and marketing. Rather than a single solution to connect with them, think of how multiple strategies can create a wholesome experience for your consumers. No matter what you’re selling, these tactics are keys to forming a long-term customer relationship that modern companies are looking for.
Performance Optimization Tips for eCommerce Stores
Performance optimization is always the top-of-mind issue for every eCommerce entrepreneur. Besides your designs and services, there are technical factors that are directly related to how your website is running. If not addressed properly, they’ll result in negative lead page performance and prevent your visitors from becoming your actual customer. These include the load speed, mobile experience, and checkout process. Here we’ve outlined several ways you can implement to optimize your website performance. 1. Improve page load speed Google recommended an acceptable loading time for an eCommerce website of around 2 seconds. Anything slower than that would risk annoying the customer. Google also takes page-loading speed into account when ordering the results. Therefore, if your page takes forever to load, you’ll probably fall short in your ranking as well. Fortunately, Google provides users with an explanation of page loading issues and some tips to fix them as soon as possible. Hence to optimize your performance, consider: Minify code and compress file Too many unnecessary codes on your website would take it longer to process. Minifying your code by removing spaces, commas, code comments, formatting, etc. It is also vital to keep your CSS, HTML, and Javascript files smaller than 150 bytes. Use a CDN Content distribution networks (CDNs), or content delivery networks, are geographical groups that work together to distribute content over the Internet. In other words, CDNs allow you to store data and images in any data centre around the world. Then, instead of providing information from the main data centre, your page is loaded with data from the nearest place to where your customers locate. This way, page loading speed is improved. Limit the use of redirection An act of redirection to another page costs you additional time waiting for the HTTP request to complete. Therefore, don’t stuff your webpage with too many URLs. Optimize images The size of a website image should never exceed 1.000 pixels. Many people often use PNG when it comes to image format. However, for photographs, which are often graphics with higher than 16 colours, a JPG file is good enough. You can use CSS sprites to combine all your images into one large image that loads everything all at once and chooses which part to be displayed. This would save a lot of time as you don’t need to wait for every request to be fulfilled. 2. Leverage your mobile experience Mobile commerce is growing rapidly. Last year, the mobile eCommerce spending in the US reached $47.8 billion, making up for approximately 31% of total e-retail sales. Companies with a mobile app have a huge advantage in the omnichannel world as people are making more purchases on their mobile devices. Here are some quick tips for mobile performance optimization: Use a responsive design A responsive design assures that your web pages are rendered seamlessly regardless of the viewer’s devices, browser, and screen size. Before publishing a theme, remember to preview your design as it will be displayed on every device. Don’t ignore any page, especially the checkout page. Otherwise, you’ll lose a bunch of potential customers because of trivial layout errors. Redesign your mobile popups Popup is one of the most effective methods to grab your visitors’ attention from the very beginning. When designing a popup for mobile devices, size is the most important element. A popup that covers the whole screen is extremely annoying. At the same time, make clear that customers can dismiss the popup if they want to with a visible, decent-sized button. 3. Streamline checkout process Almost 60% of customers abandoned shopping carts before completing the first step within the transaction procedure. Sending a reminder email might help pull these customers back in. However, you should also focus on optimizing your checkout process upfront via: Show your security badges Asking a customer to fill in the transaction form with their personal information might be frustrating for fear of privacy leakage. Therefore, having standardized security badges can instill their confidence and avoid them abandoning the shopping cart at the last minute. As long as you have a well-recognized security badge on your website, your reliability is always heightened. Offer multiple payment methods Offer your customers as many popular payment options within their regions as possible. In general, always allow for checkout with PayPal and major credit card brands. Be clear on every cost Be transparent and make sure that your tax is calculated correctly. You should also provide sufficient information regarding the delivery methods, the cost, the carrier, and the expected delivery time. This way, your customers won’t be black out about what is happening with their package. More: Woocommerce pos plugin Bigcommerce POS Quickly validate the information If you install a plugin to recognize a company or education email domain, make sure that it responds as soon as the customer types in. This makes them feel like they’re going through a seamless process and keeps them rolling along. Adopt automation software Automation software enables merchants to load order information and categorize them according to certain criteria. This helps save time insert data on your CRM and subtly transfer it within the team. The quicker your fulfillment is, the less time your customers need to wait for delivery. When the performance optimization is fulfilled, the satisfaction is increased. Final notes eCommerce performance optimization takes a lot of time to be completed. You’ll need to constantly check your website to sort out errors and find a way to improve them. However, it’s totally worth investing in, especially when you don’t want your business to be negatively affected by low search ranking.
How Restaurants Under COVID19 Operate
The restaurant industry under COVID19 COVID19, along with its consequential economic crisis, has induced shock, distress, and panic all around the world. Among all the fields, restaurants have received the heaviest blow and are affected severely. Ever since the COVID19 outbreak in early 2020, the number of cases surged to millions in just a few. All over the world the borders were closed and pleaded for people who are affected to quarantine and practice social distancing. As a result, more people preferred home-cooked meals over dine-in at restaurants. Many state officials announced to shut down on-site dining restaurants. This closure of restaurants means that these businesses and their corresponding staff will take a blow in months to come. Source: Womply The effects of lockdown were seen immediately: Many restaurants were closed; workers were terminated. Overall, there’s a cut of more than 3 million jobs. In March 2020 alone, the restaurant revenue was down by 47% with 56% of restaurants announced permanent or temporary closures. The total revenue loss was around $25 billion. What a dooming time for the whole industry! Restaurants Strategies under COVID19 This situation has forced most of the industries to alter their business model and adjust to the new normal. To support social distancing and continue to generate revenues; restaurants under COVID 19 went ahead and remodeled their services in various ways. Few restaurant strategies under COVID 19 to reduce social interactions are: Contactless delivery Contactless delivery, or ‘no-contact delivery’, is the approach in which the shipper delivers an order without making any physical contact with the receiver. The contactless restaurant has become a huge trend in this pandemic. Take-outs and drive-through It has become a more efficient way for customers to have delicious food from restaurants under COVID19 without breaking any rules. In the US, 41.7 % of customers prefer to take-out food under normal circumstances. Contactless payment The government highly recommends hands-free payments for both takeaway and delivery. It’s vital to download certain payment applications that help payment transfer with just a tap of the card. Updating your restaurant website A website is an interactive and trustworthy platform to communicate with your customers. Owners should regularly update locations, photos, menu, contact information, and safety regulations of your restaurant under COVID19 on the website. This helps customers feel more well-informed and secure when ordering from your restaurants. Curbside pickup This is very similar to buying online, pick up in-store. Here you have to collect the order from a location that is convenient to you, rather than have the food delivered directly to your front door. Assuring restaurant safety and sanitation measures Restaurant owners must show that they are aware of safety measures like frequent hand washing and disinfecting surfaces in restaurants, as implemented by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Be creative with promotions There are few other things that can help to overcome the impact of Covid 19 by providing coupons/ vouchers/ gift cards, meal/ baking/ pizza kits. Promote your restaurant under COVID19 on social media and emails simultaneously. Take care of the local community, so that they can take care of each other. Use automation Running an online business under COVID19 should be abnormal and challenging for many restaurants. Categorizing every order, extract sales data, or answer the customers on every platform all at once can be confusing. Consequently, many restaurant owners had integrated automation applications to streamline their business and maintain their revenue. COVID 19 pandemic is a worldwide crisis, no one knows how long it will last. Using this as an opportunity to build new relationships with advanced measures and initiatives, you can help not only your business but also consumers adapt to the new normal.
How to Create Efficient Workflow Automation
Workflow automation is a quick and easy way to boost your efficiency with consistent results over time. Processes that include a series of tasks are often operated manually with a bunch of paper or a combination of spreadsheets, email, and tons of tabs on your browser. Either way, it is frustrating and always prone to error. Workflow automation helps you get rid of them all, by streamlining the process without human intervention. Building an automated process is also no challenge at all. Normally, there are 6 main steps to be considered. 1. Start small Don’t try to automate your business all at once. It takes time to come up with a workflow for complicated tasks. Find a process that can be translated into a simple If-then sequence. These are often repetitive tasks that are time-consuming to operate manually, such as publishing new promotion programs, labeling inventory, personalizing messages, etc. When you’ve mastered working with the system, you can based on this original version to develop similar and more complicated workflows. 2. Understand your business goal Now that you’ve seen the problem, you need to define what you want to do with this workflow. Questions to ask yourself are: What is the ultimate outcome of this workflow? Do you want to label customers based on certain criteria? Or do you want to group products based on their materials? What are the exact steps in this sequence? Are they optional? Can you remove or break down some stages to make it easier? What are the people involved at each step? How does their work affect its operation? How long does it take for one stage to complete? The key to this step is communication with stakeholders such as your marketing team to ensure a meaningful progression. 3. Create a workflow diagram Visualize the workflow with a diagram and discuss with the team whether it is clear and which can be improved. Use standard symbols and terminology so that everyone can follow. When people feel like they’re valued, they are more likely to validate your flowchart and even actively support a successful implementation. Usually, you don’t need a professional tool for this. As long as the visualization is coherent, Google Slides and PowerPoint are good enough. 4. Choose a suitable automation platform Check the app store on your host platform for choices you have. Weigh their pros and cons in terms of prices, functionality, and customer support for better reasoning. Atom8 is currently the only workflow automation application for BigCommerce. The app allows you to create a workflow using prebuilt templates without having to write a single line of code. If you want, you can always customize your own flowchart that best serves your needs. Atom8 is particularly useful in converting daily repetitive tasks into automated processes that executed exactly when needed, for example: Publish/unpublish content (banner, carousel, blog posts, etc.) on a scheduled time Change product merchandising according to prices, purchasability, etc Segment customers based on behaviors, geographics, demographics Personalize and trigger email marketing to customers Tag orders based on different criteria Notify team members about product inventory & order status Generate reports & lists on Google sheet Detect & halt high-risk orders, and many more The app would save you a lot of time spent on tedious tasks to invest in more impactful business decisions. 5. Employ the workflow and train users Once tested successfully, it’s time to roll out your new workflow automation solution. With this modern technology, it’s done within a mouse click. Thereafter, you should train your team to work with it. No matter how well-functioning your workflow is, the technology remains valueless if people don’t actually use it. That’s why it is essential to include the users from the very beginning of the transformation so that they understand everything. A clear transition path with a step-by-step guide would be a good idea. This guarantees that your employees thoroughly understand the benefits of workflow automation to your operation. Meanwhile, the guide makes it easier for your staff to deal with technical errors and for new employees to keep up with the team. 6. Analyze performance and improve After a time, gather data about the cost and time saved by workflow automation. Compare it with your manual performance to see whether it’s worth investing in. Ask your team for feedback on the process based on their usage. You can also look into the analytics report of the software to see how the workflows are running and whether it meets up your expectations. Constant monitoring and assessment of your workflow performance are highly important to identify bottlenecks and suggest improvements. Finally, don’t forget to share consequential success and tribute to the effort of the whole team. This helps leap up people’s mentality and change the company attitude. Conclusion With these simple steps, creating workflow automation is no longer a complicated task. A multiple-purpose workflow software like Atom8 would be of great help for your business in your growth. When you’re clear about your business goals, consult with your team and give Atom8 a try.
Best BigCommerce Apps to Increase Conversion Rate
One of the best parts of BigCommerce is that it offers a wide range of apps to help merchants maximize productivity and increase revenue. However, this huge number might be overwhelming when it comes to choosing the best BigCommerce apps for your store. As an entrepreneur, you are too busy with getting all the tasks done on time. And there’s only that many hours a day. Thus, the only thing you can do to boost efficiency is to make every hour more productive. That’s why automation tools are so essential for your success, for they allow launching actions according to the pre-recorded time and procedure without human intervention. In this blog, we shortlist the 8 best BigCommerce apps that help you optimize your business and make more out of the BigCommerce platform. 1. ShipStation Shipstation works to assist shipping and fulfillment by powering the delivery regardless of locations, means, and product sizes. The app tracks global delivery from BigCommerce stores to end consumers via 40+ carrier services across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. In just a few clicks, you can import the data and have your product transferred to every customer. This way Shipstation saves you a lot of time spent on manually sourcing and shipping products. Key features Combine, split, edit, and filter orders according to product details such as item use, SKU, weight, and images Add multiple delivery options to your website so that your customers can choose their preferred shipping method Connect with your customers after purchase via tracking page and return portals Price Starter plan costs $9 per month limited by 50 shipments each Most popular is the $69 gold plan allowing for 3.000 shipments per month, up to 3 users, and community support service 2. Justuno Justuno focuses on maximizing conversion from existing website traffic. This marketing platform enhances engagement via effective marketing touchpoints such as email capture popups and website messages. Moreover, the developers offer monthly product updates to eliminate every flaw and ensure the best experience for store owners. Key features Add pop-ups to your site to collect emails from your visitors Prevent shopping cart abandonment with targeted offers such as single-use and bulk coupon codes An easy drag-and-drop design canvas Price Upfront Fee: Free Recurring Fee: $29.00 per month 3. ShipperHQ ShipperHQ is the #1 shipping rate management solution that provides flexible shipping rates and delivery options. This is the result of over a decade of operation serving tens of thousands of businesses worldwide. The app allows tailoring your shipping and checkout experience to the way you do business for a variety of purposes, since it reduces cart abandonment, lowers shipping costs or international shipping. Key features Build up your own shipping rules and restrictions based on your inventory, surcharges, and promotion Show real-time shipping rates for 40+ carriers and methods including LTL freight, same-day delivery, and cross-border option Calculate dimensional shipping rates and automate real dimensional packing to avoid under and over charges Price Upfront Fee: Free Recurring Fee: $50.00/mo. 4. Quickbook Online An accounting error is among one of the most painful and time-consuming tasks to be fixed, especially when you’re having a huge number of transactions. Understanding this, Quickbook Online is built to free you from manual bookkeeping and accounting reconciliation to focus on growing your business. Key features Automatically sync your orders, products, customers, taxes, discounts, refunds and shipping charges from your store to the platform Automatic reconciliation of transactions when integrating Quickbook Online with Quickbook Payments (the payment gateway) Price Upfront Fee: Free Recurring Fee: None 5. Facebook Ads Extension Facebook is the most popular social network platform nowadays with 2.8 billion active users every month. The Ads Extension is therefore among the best BigCommerce apps to drive traffic from this channel. Key features Distribute the ads to the right people at the right place using Facebook data Connect your product catalog to Facebook to use dynamic ads Make use of Facebook ads report to understand ads sales and revenue Price Upfront Fee: Free Recurring Fee: None 6. Yotpo Product Reviews User-generated content is one of the key drivers of the brand attitude. The more appreciation you have, the higher trust shoppers have in your brand, and the higher traffic and conversion you might achieve. In this sense, Yotpo is extraordinarily useful in collecting reviews, ratings, and user-generated content, subsequently creating a strong brand’s online presence. Key features Collect product reviews, ratings, site reviews, and photos using automatic review emails or directly on-site Reviews Widget Showcase customer reviews, photos, and Q&A on your homepage, product pages, at checkout, and across your social channels Import your existing reviews only with a single click Price Free plan including all basic feature Growth plan starting at $19 per month 7. BackOrder BigCommerce BackOrder is one of the best BigCommerce apps by GritGlobal that prevent merchants from failing customers because of out-of-stock items. Out-of-stock, on average, can cost merchants ~8-12% total revenue while leaving customers with a negative impression. However, this is totally preventable with BackOrder by notifying customers about the out-of-stock products while still allowing them to order and get them delivered later. Key features Switch your product to backorder status based on a pre-set inventory condition Create BackOrder button, product message, backing slip, and cart warning Set a Backorder threshold to control the quantity and receive real-time reports Price Start for FREE FOREVER BASIC: $9.95/ month, Backorder up to 10 products PLUS: $39.95/month, Backorder up to 400 products PRO: $89.95 /month, Backorder up to 2000 products ENTERPRISE: $159.95/month, unlimited product 8. Atom8 All above mentioned are outstanding on their own. However, in order to work together, they often have to exchange customer data and automate some trivial tasks. With Atom8 – BigCommerce Automation, this process has become easier than ever. Atom8 is the only workflow automation platform on BigCommerce so far. The app helps optimize your business by automatically reorganizing tasks, streamlining processes, and feeding data to other customer-facing applications such as Mailchimp, Google Sheet, or ShipStation. It
