Tag: ecommerce web application development

How Technology is Empowering eCommerce Business?

Posted on by os_admin

eCommerce has been developing at the speed of light in the recent decade. Thousands of researchers, analysts, and marketers have been studying the holy grail of information – that’s a customer with a smartphone – and defining the strategies for more targeted and personalized marketing and products.

Today, many eCommerce businesses have tons of customer data needed to advance in the online marketplace. With data, as well as data analysis and intelligence tools and platforms, being readily available

They know exactly what their target customers need and want. For example, Amazon’s product recommendation engine generates 35 percent of the company’s net income of $10.07 billion.

In fact, those who have mastered customer research not only know your needs and preferences but also what you’ll need in the future.

This incredible opportunity, along with many other ones, was, of course, enabled by state-of-the-art eCommerce solutions that companies only dreamed about 10 years ago.

So what exactly drives eCommerce businesses’ obsession with data? What are the technologies that give them the competitive advantage they need to stand out in a multi-billion online marketplace?

  • Machine Learning Algorithms to Generate Personalized Product or Service Recommendations

The vast majority of online shoppers – 87 percent – start product searches online. Chances are you’re a part of this, too, if you rely on your smartphone to find new products. It makes perfect sense, as the experience of others can help to make a good choice.

Function of Beauty, an American fashion brand offering personalized hair-care, wants to take product research one step further. A customer looking for hair products such as shampoos and conditioners for their specific hair type doesn’t need to browse numerous websites and menu categories.

Instead, they can take a quiz on a brand’s website and receive a personalized recommendation.

Function of BeautySource: Screenshot, Functionofbeauty(.)com

This was made possible by a machine learning algorithm. A customer can choose their hair type, scent, size of a bottle, and provide other preferences.

The results provided by a quiz taker are fed into the algorithm that pulls from hundreds of ingredients to generate a truly unique set of hair care products. In fact, it’s able to offer up to 12 million custom combinations.

Inc. reports that the quiz has been already taken by more than 1.5 million times. This is truly a great example of how machine learning can help to increase the personalization and relevance of products as well as advanced customer relationships.

Algorithms like these can be used to generate custom products, services, and recommendations, and therefore, will continue to drive eCommerce businesses’ effort to maximize relevancy for customers.

  • Chatbots to Improve the Overall Online Shopping Experience

Chatbots are one of the hottest topics in eCommerce right now.

These apps can mimic human online behavior such as conversations with pre-written questions and answers, so they have a lot of applications in the area.

In fact, here’s what eCommerce businesses expect from using them, as described in the 2018 State of Chatbots report.

ChatBot ReportSource: The 2018 State of Chatbots report

Already, a countless number of businesses have developed their own chatbots to help customers.

The range of their applications, as you can see, is pretty impressive, so it’s safe to claim that any eCommerce business can benefit from using one.

Let’s consider an example of a chatbot making a difference. A well-known U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy, for example, has an impressive Messenger chatbot that helps customers with:

    • Finding products based on such criteria as price range, manufacturer, OS type, laptop type, and common applications (gaming, studying, etc.)
    • Connecting to a customer support operator from an appropriate service department (this is determined by the answers given by the customer to the chatbot)
    • Locating stores across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico
    • Getting support like in-home consultations and other service-related inquiries.

Impressive, right? And all of this is available in one place. But the best thing that a lot of customers really appreciate is that they can get almost instant replies to their requests thanks to the chatbot technology.

ChatBot

Chatbots like Best Buy’s can really improve the overall customer experience by increasing personalization and relevance of communication with brands.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, more and more people feel comfortable using them; in fact, one U.S. study found that 62 percent of online shoppers said they liked using a chatbot to communicate with a brand.

  • Hybrid eCommerce App Development

Apps continue to be a significant sales channel for eCommerce businesses around the world. In recent years, many companies have chosen to build hybrid apps, which combine the elements of web applications and native apps.

This means they’re built on CSS, HTML, or JavaScript, but use a device’s browser engine to render the HTML or JavaScript code locally.

This allows for more functions that aren’t accessible in native apps, such as local storage and accelerometer. Moreover, making an app hybrid also means that it:

    • Gets downloaded to a device
    • Functions regardless if the device is connected to the Internet
    • Integrates with the devices’ file system to allow local storage
    • Provides better access to dynamic online content
    • Integrates with web services.

The first obvious advantage of hybrid apps that many customers appreciate is offline availability. If made possible by the developers, all of their features can work without an Internet connection.

For businesses looking to build an app, these advantages of hybrid mobile app development should be considered:

    • Your app will work both online and offline
    • Launching updates and patches will be easier for your web development team
    • You’ll build the app faster, so if time to market is a priority, hybrid apps are a great choice
    • You’ll reduce the costs because there’s no need to build multiple versions of a native app for different platforms (Android and iOS, etc.)

  • Innovative Experiences with 3D Imaging, Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR)

Attracting customers to product pages is one of the biggest goals in eCommerce. Product imagery and video play a deciding role in conversions; in fact, the State of Video Marketing 2019 report found that up to 96 percent of online shoppers say they’ve watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service. 

No surprise a lot of eCommerce brands have been learning how to improve product imagery and product pages as a whole.

Technology is the answer here, too, as it can help to advance customer experience with product pages with innovative imagery and video delivered by AR and VR.

Yes, we as customers were once quite happy with conventional product images. We’re not anymore, so businesses have to use technology to win over us. 

Using the above-mentioned technologies is indeed a great way to create an immersive, 360-degree shopping experience for online shoppers.

For example, a U.S.-based travel bags and accessories seller Samsonite is one of the companies leading the revolution of product imagery with 3D visualizations to improve customer experience.

3D ProductSource: Samsonite 3D Product Viewer, Samsonite(.)com

“It is important for our customers to have the opportunity to examine the goods in detail, and 3D visualization allows us to bridge the gap between online shopping and brick-and-mortar stores,” Business Wire quoted Jay Nigreli, VP of eCommerce at Samsonite, as saying. 

Indeed, customers visiting eCommerce websites that offer this experience have a great chance to get a better sense of a product’s materials, shape, and dimensions.

The technologies could be especially relevant for companies selling small products like jewelry, so we expect them to adopt 3D, AR, and VR in the future. 

Exciting Times Ahead

Without a doubt, the next several years will be transformational for eCommerce technology. As technology continues to redefine the rules of customer engagement, many new approaches, as well as exciting possibilities, emerge to help businesses stand out from the ever-increasing competition.

The points you’ve just read are among the biggest technology trends impacting eCommerce at the moment, and it’s clear that they will become more widely adopted, as more and more businesses are looking for opportunities to gain competitive advantage.

Why Magento Is The Ultimate Choice For ECommerce Business?

Posted on by Jay

Magento is the most popular platform to implement eCommerce application for online marketplace. The reasons are like it’s highly scalable and provides great user experience with optimum performance.

This is the fast-growing solution for eCommerce development for those who are looking for online marketplace.

It has shown significant improvement over the past few years. Magento successfully integrates digital and physical shopping experiences, to the delight of customers.

According to official website, more than 250,000 merchants around the globe have opted Magento as their eCommerce platform.

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The usage of Magento has increased and it is far ahead from other platforms like Shopify and Big Commerce. Let’s have a quick look at the E-commerce statistics of various platforms.

Ecommerce

(Source: cminds.com)

The internet users are growing day by day and eCommerce business owners are generating more & more revenues. eCommerce can take your business to great success as it has more reachability.

Let’s have a look at the benefits of using Magento for your eCommerce application.

Benefits of Using Magento eCommerce Platform for Your Business

Conclusion:

Magento stands tall as a one of the best eCommerce platform, offering boundless features that grant your business unparalleled flexibility and customization.

This cutting-edge content management system is meticulously crafted to align with the latest trends, driving your website’s SEO ranking to new heights and propelling the exponential growth of your business.

With the CMS, the possibilities for developing your dream app or online store are truly limitless.

Our dedicated developers team is here to support you every step of the way, resolving any challenges that may arise and turning your innovative ideas into tangible realities.

Are you looking to develop a Magento App/Store for your Business? Contact US!

Top Factors That Influence Online eCommerce Behavior

Posted on by Lori H Morrisis

You can setup the best eCommerce store in the world, but if you fail to fully understand online customer behavior or how to align your marketing practices for best results, you won’t get the results you’re looking for.

The good news is that there is lots of information on how to best market your products and services online.

It all begins with a working knowledge of your product and the niche in which you operate. It would also help to have a basic understanding of the operating systems that support your store. Then there’s the marketing side of things, and there is a good chance you will have to cover this essential aspect of retail all on your own.

But, there is one more crucial aspect of eCommerce that is sometimes underappreciated and misplaced in all the facts and figures. This is the behavior of the online customer. While the behavior seems pretty straightforward – a customer arrives on your site, sees something that interests them and if the price and shipping is acceptable, the transaction is made.

In a perfect world, yes! But, in reality things are rarely that simple. There is a lot more that goes into the buying process. The four stages of the frameworks are these:

  • Need recognition
  • Search for solution
  • Evaluation of alternatives
  • Purchase

Each of these stages of the process has specific factors that affect them. If you are thinking of investing time and effort into your store, you can’t ignore these crucial factors that affect your success.

The FFF Model Of Online Consumer Behavior

In 2012, two management professors working at the Priyadarshini Engineering College and S. B. Patil Institute of Management proposed a model for online customer behavior. Ujwala Dange’s and Vinay Kimar’s model is not the first of its kind, but is the most relevant one I have found to this day.

The FFF model includes both the external and internal factors when affecting buying behavior. It goes on to describe in detail some filtering elements that customers apply to their selection process when choosing a store to do business and the process that leads them to the final choice of product.

Let’s have a look at the factors that influence online shopping behavior,

1. Factors

From left to right, the first thing we see illustrated by Kumar and Dange are the factors that lead a customer to purchase a particular product. There are two categories the internal and external that affects a purchase. The external factors are those that can’t be controlled by the customer. These include five different sectors:

  • Demographics (including socio-economics, technology and public policy)
  • Culture
  • Subculture
  • Reference groups
  • Marketing

From these factors, the customer produces two very different buying emotions: non-functional and functional.

Functional motives for buying include those reasons that appeal to the needs of the consumer, such as the availability and convenience of a certain outlet. This could also include the environment of the shopping location and the selection of goods available.

Non-functional motives are related to reasons such as social values or cultural reasons for a purchase. These may include the specific brands available or the store brand itself.

2. Filtering Elements

Security, trust and privacy are the three hurdles that must be countered to attain successful online marketing. Customers use these three important factors to filter their stores and arrive at the one where they will be willing to do business. In other words, if you don’t pass these three tests from the customer, there is a good chance of losing customers, even if you are the cheapest option out there.

It is important to consider the risks involved with online purchases compared to conventional transactions in a brick and mortar location. Customers feel the lack of any tangible interaction as a high-risk purchase and must be reassured their cash and shopping experience is safe in every way.

They use the three factors mentioned to decide how reliable their retail outlet is.

Security

It is a hazard of the digital realm that information can be easily intercepted, lost or stolen. This includes the important figures of the payment made and the personal information of the individuals making a purchase.

The details of the transaction can be kept in the stores database and there are numerous cases of a security breach where all this sensitive information is accessed by the nefarious. Customers are becoming increasingly aware of this tendency to identity theft and are more cautious about who they hand this information to.

Privacy

Another important risk that even the most unassuming consumer is aware of is the threat that their information can finds it way to third parties with no end of misfortune. From spam to undesirable correspondence this is a serious issue. Even though the results of a privacy breach in this form will result in financial loss the inconvenience of this situation makes it serious enough to shun any non-trustworthy online retailer.

Trustworthiness

Trust is the single most important of the three and certainly the hardest to come by. There is an increasing amount of distrust online for these smaller stores. The obvious result is that bigger name corporations like Amazon are taking all the booty.

But, if you can attain a level of trust with your customer pool you will set yourself miles ahead of the competition. Trust tells the consumer they are the most important.

3. Filtered Buying Behaviour

The last topic covers a set of motives and expectations that your customers have about the filters set above and is important study material for the eCommerce entrepreneur.

How To Use Marketing Model To Develop a Better Store

Understanding these important points will allow you to build toward a better marketing model. The following takeaways should never be forgotten.

  • Understand that different demographics will have different motives for affecting their final purchasing decisions. Make sure that every aspect of your eCommerce presence is created with these details in mind.
  • Show some personality and present your human side in the store, this makes you a “real” person rather than a potentially dishonest machine. This can be done with those personal touches that show you really know your customer their needs and even what they like to see in a valued product.
  • Focus on customer service. If you are known for going the extra mile and making your customer feel it, you will reach that success you hope for. If they see you reaching out beyond the machine they will feel more inclined to do business with you.

Conclusion:

It’s very hard to read the exact behavior of users and consumers in your eCommerce business because online shopping completely depends on customers’ mindset. The above points can make your products to reach near your target users expectations. You need to do deep market and consumer behavior analysis.

We at Andolasoft provide wide range of services such as eCommerce application development/customization including store development. We have developed our own shopping cart (JuggernautCart) with digital products and services. JuggernautCart is one of the most affordable for selling your digital products/assets such as eBooks, add-ons, podcasts, images, videos and many more and you can customize and use these according to your needs.