Smart e-Commerce: e-Retailing, e-Marketing Updates

Introduction

 

Rarely has a new area of business been heralded with such enthusiasm as "mobile commerce", that is the conduct of business and services over portable, wireless devices. Due to the astronomical growth of the Internet users, maturation of the Internet technologies, realization of the Internet's capabilities, the power of electronic commerce, and the promising advancement of wireless communication technologies and devices, mobile commerce has rapidly attained the business forefront. An m-commerce application can be B2B, B2C or any other of the classifications available with e-commerce world. M-commerce, although not fully mature, has the potential to make it more convenient for consumers to spend money and purchase goods and services. Since wireless devices travel with the consumer, the ability or perhaps temptation to purchase goods and services is always present. This is clearly a technique that can be used to raise revenue. Also, the successful future of m-commerce depends o! n the power of the underlying technology drivers and the attractiveness of m-commerce applications.

 

Motivating Factors for M-Commerce

 

Internet use has grown to such a level on the strength of PC networks. Due to the huge base of installed PCs, which is predicted to grow in a faster pace in the days to come, electronic commerce and other communication applications are bound to thrive further. Also, these computing systems will have greater power and storage capability, the best ever price-performance ratios, more powerful and sophisticated applications will likely emerge for desktop computing and the Internet. However, there are two major limitations on PCs. First , users have to sit in front of them, PCs, even portable-notebook computers, have to load software, dial into and connect with a network service provider and await for the initial process to be accomplished before launching an Internet application.

There will be a huge increase in other wireless portable devices, such as wireless PDA. The advantage with these wireless devices is they do not need no booting process and thus facilitating immediate usage of them. This makes them attractive for quick-hit applications.

M-Commerce Applications

 

The general m-commerce applications are categorized as transaction management, digital content delivery and telemetry services. The applications can be further subdivided into passive and active m-commerce applications. Active application relates with the applications in which the user has to take the initiative on his wireless device. In contrast, the passive applications themselves get activated towards accomplishing the assigned jobs or facilitate the users to carry forward.

 

arungandhi M-Commerce

Indian Retail Industry

Indian Retail Industry is the 5th largest of the world. Comparing organized and unorganized areas retail industry is fastest growing in India. Esepically for the last few years.

The high growth of Indian Retail Industry is due to huge amount of investments and breaking up traditional marketing sector. This growth is giving for Indian Retail Industry for further growth in Retail sector.

Now a days,Because of the increasing technical boom E-Shopping growth is increasing in India. And also one of the main reason Internet facilities also available in urban and rural areas.Other reason Growth in Credit Card Industry and also other online transaction methods.

The major focus area in Indian Retail Industry is supply chain management. In outside India retail sector is highly depending on the system supply chain. However development in the supply chain in Indian Retail sector is quite slow.

Other area that needs attention for growing Indian Retail Sector is including duty and tax structure,infrastructure , rising land prices and effective trend forecasting. Trend forecasting needs to be done in the country especially in the segments of cosmetics, apparel and footwear for this will help the retail companies to curtail their expenses substantially.
 
The chains in the Indian sectors needs to be changed frequently their stocks and also provides home delivery facilities.  If all these area are implemented,then the growth of Indian Retail will increase fatly.

Why Indians are fear about the Online Shopping? 
 

In India E-commerces has been very slow track compare to other countries in olden days. Because earlier days lack of Internet accessing knowledge and also lack of Internet facilities.

Some of the reasons which are working against the E-Shopping industry.  

1. Product demo is not available.
2. Bargaining is not possible.
3. Delay in product delivery
4. In security of creditable of shopping portal
5. Not sure of product quality
6. Low retail management skills.

Why People are choosing Retail Industry?

Online shopping is most convince for customers. And also it will give better deals for their money.

It has more advantages some of them are.  

1. Saves time and efforts
2. Convenience of shopping at home
3. Wide range / variety of products are available
4. Get details / demo of the products
5. We can compare various of products

 

shylaja Indian e-Commerce Industry, e-Commerce Information E-shopping, Indian Retail Industry, Retail Sector

Overview : Now the world is having closure attachment with Gift Voucher. Now a days for many events most of them used to give Gift Vouchers as gift or prize. In Live TV shows also anchors giving Gift Vouchers to winners of the participants.

 

Development of Gift Voucher :

1. Customer has to register once and has to login every time he wants to purchase the Gift Voucher.
2. Provision for customer to select a template from different types of templates.
3. Provision for customer to type a recipe name.
4. Provision for customer to type his name.
5. Provision for customer to give message, what purpose customer is giving the Gift Voucher.
6. Provision for customer to select a different denominations and expected quantity.
7. Provision for customer to check his Gift Vouchers preview.
8. Provision for customer to change another template and editing any details.
9. In the next step customer can see his invoice.
10. In the next step provision for customer to pay amount through paypall or other payment gateway with secure manner.
11. As soon as customer payment is successful Barcode, Gift Voucher number has to generate ontime for every Gift Voucher and print should happen automatically and that session should expire.

 

In the above process till 9^th step its partial transaction this information maintains in only session, not in database. At 11^th step while printing Gift Voucher its details will be store into DataBase and expires its session, This is complete transaction.

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A vexed question to many traditional retailers in Australia is whether the investment in an online presence with full e commerce capability will have some kind of return on investment. Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman, one of Australia’s top retailers has continuously said that online retailing is a waste of time and cannot provide the kind of return he is used to from his retail stores. He says that retailers making $300,000 – $400,000 a year online are just wasting his time. David Jones another major retailer attempted to enter the online retailing market in the late 90’s and had to retract from the market to prevent shareholder backlash on poor performance. I think these types of examples have been well publicized and possibly contribute to the slow uptake of online in this country. Other factors one could attribute to the slow uptake are the large distances between major cities, relatively high cost of delivery and a small population relative to the size of the country. There are a few major retail chains and brands that dominate the market and there is just no need in their eyes to pursue an online strategy.  

 

From a usage perspective over 14 million Australians use the web, and in November 2009 according to Nielsen research 46% of all Internet use was on Facebook. GetPrice.com.au a shopping comparison site commissioned some research on pre Christmas shopping behavior and not surprisingly a high percentage of shoppers researched online before buying. Now this is one of the crucial elements that a lot of retailers don’t think about. The value of an online presence to drive customers into stores. 

From a different perspective, small to medium sized businesses have attempted to harness online retailing. The top 5 online retailers are all pure play online retailers and are relatively successful. They however are not anywhere near the size of any of the major retailers in Australia. Security and trust online are still a large barrier for many shoppers.

Many shoppers would not feel comfortable paying $1500 to an unknown online retailer for a laptop for example, just in case they never see their money or the laptop. (see this link related to a site that is damaging the reputation of online retail in Australia: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/967179.html)

 

As time moves on we believe that more retailers will develop a web presence with ecommerce capabilities because their customers will demand it. There won’t be a sudden massive increase in online retailers, and at the same time as consumers get more comfortable with buying online the number of online shoppers will steadily increase.  

 

Mark Freidin

Founder

InternetRetailing.com.au

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eCommerce Website Development

Organized retailing and constantly evolving consumption will be the next big driver of India’s economic growth. Rising incomes and increased exposure to global products and global consumption patterns have changed the average peoples attitude towards consumption. Fast Market Research is an online aggregator and distributor of market research and business information.

Within the current Internet marketplace, businesses both large and small are well aware of the reasons for developing eCommerce website. By developing one or more websites focused on particular niche markets, businesses can target a wider Internet audience and capture far more sales.

The Concept of eCommerce

After the turn of the century, the concept of eCommerce was a cutting-edge novelty within the business community.Retailers use eCommerce websites to draw in additional sales or to provide valuable product research.  Every year, more consumers research and purchase products online. The result is that eCommerce is no longer a novelty, it has become a business necessity.

Website Tools For eCommerce Sites
When considering how to develop eCommerce websites to sell your product or service, it’s important to consider the basic components of such a site.

The Website: How it’s designed will determine how well you convert Internet visitors into customers.
Product Catalog: Where you present your products or services.
Shopping Cart: Where customers store purchases as they browse your site.
Payment Gateway Processing: Allows customers to pay you instantly, online.
Product Information: This is where you provide a potential customer with valuable product research.
Search Engine Optimization: Using SEO techniques, you’ll attract more Internet visitors.
Product Images: Customers like to see highly detailed images of products.
About Us: Build consumer confidence by sharing contact information, professional affiliations, and any articles published.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): Capture Internet sales by answering questions customers have about the products.
Newsletters: Quarterly Subscription of News.
Privacy Policy: Earn customer trust by putting your privacy policy in writing.
Testimonials: Convert sales quickly by providing customer testimonials.
Provides Social Network: powerful marketing tools to provide good business.

Online Transaction
Smooth and Secure online payment processing is important to online customers. Online visitors with various methods of paying for your product or service online can increase sales conversions significantly.
To build a clean and effective product catalog you have to make sure your product catalog is well formatted, and it’s easy to navigate between categories.Make sure it’s very clear how to go about purchasing the product.
There are several payment methods to consider offering includes credit cards, Paypal etc.Most major credit card companies also provide online billing services to small businesses.
 
eCommerce Shopping Cart
A shopping cart is a software application that typically runs on the computer where your Web site is located (the Web server), and allows your customers to do things such as searching for a product in your store catalog, adding a selected product to a basket, and placing an order for it.

There are many eCommerce shopping cart solutions available, like Magento, Joomla Virtuemart etc.

Typically, all shopping carts share the following structure. A shopping cart normally includes:
a) a database that stores information such as product details, customer data, order information, etc.
b) a storefront that displays this information to store visitors (e.g. product detail pages, search pages, checkout pages, etc.)
c) an administration area that allows you, the store administrator, to manage your store. For example, this is where you add products, set up shipping & payment options, process orders, etc. 

 

 

Sources of the Article:

http://web-design.lovetoknow.com/Develop_eCommerce_Website

http://www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/shopping-cart-software-101.asp

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Overview 

The use of barcode technology in an industrial setting can be traced back as far as the 1960s, with some early implementations to identify railroad cars. Today, barcodes are just about everywhere and are used for identification in almost all areas of business.

When barcodes are implemented in business processes, procedures can be automated to reduce human error and increase productivity. More accurate data entry, better document tracking, reduced inventory costs, increased sales–such benefits as these are now within the reach of any size business, with barcode’s use and its capabilities are being applied with sometimes startling results by firms that range from defense contractors to libraries.

Most firms used bar-code systems to track documents on microfilm, to follow the processing of materials in factories, to record billing time, and even to replace time clocks. Many firms begin using bar codes to record their inventory and then discover other applications for the technology.

 

Are they limited to do so?

One of the most common methods of reading barcodes is with a hand-held pen or wand-type readers and Fix-mount readers for automatic reading. These days, The few mobile phones and iPhones having facility to scan barcodes using the camera. With their scanning applications, you can scan a product and depending on the barcodes, it can be anything from opening a mobile webpage, to retrieving information about the product, to downloading a piece of content.

This app lets you shop by scanning the products, and one-click order at the end in the counter, Need not roll your trolley or carry your baskets in the shop.This can also used in all retailing industry to track products, modify orders, receive personalized recommendations, customer reviews, receive the newsletters about the retailing products, access your Wish list and check out the products then and there. And also if you have updated with the "Wish list/Monthly List" you need not come to shop for the next time, modify the list(if required) send a query to the retailing shops.

Even more, you can look for the same products from different shops and search for the price and compare them. Verify the duplication or malfunctions of the products.

Order your favorite foods, Look for the film previews and reviews and order film tickets,And Still not yet limited… Still to go… It’s all to make you and your customers to have a more happy sophisticated life.

 

References: http://www.barcodefaq.com/barcode-scanning.html

Juno Raja e-Commerce Information Barcode, Iphones, Mobiles, Shopping made easy, Smartphones with Barcode

  

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Internet retailers do a remarkable job with their paid search marketing hard work in most of the times; however the search engine optimization techniques appear to be missing according a study based upon Google search results in the 2010 edition of the Internet Retailer Search Marketing Guide. Creating a solid paid search strategy is something that major internet retailers appreciate and excel at because it is computable and can be fine tuned to meet back-end goals.

 

Working to stay at the top of the organic search results for their top product categories involves a very different approach, which is not as easy to succeed at without the right approach and plan. Since organic search results are a reflection of Google’s assessment of site content and link popularity, it means that internet retailers need to continually create content and establish links to their online store from other sites. This is not as easy as it sounds because retailers need the right type of content and links if they want to be first for their desired product category keywords. 

 

The study used over 300 keywords to determine where top internet retailers ranked on Google’s search engine for a number of product categories. It found that they only owned the top three spots in a little more than 50% of the 20 merchandising categories, placing in 35 of 60 possible spots.  

 

Results were slightly improved over the prior year, but still indicated that Google completely passes over internet retailers for the top positions in the organic results. For example, when searching for "refrigerator" 3 out of 5 of the top results did not even sell the product and were informational sites like wikipedia.org and energystar.org. Profit margins on organic search traffic are typically significantly higher than that of paid search and if internet retailers want to improve their overall profitability then they will need to focus on a strong search engine optimization strategy.

 

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Online spending in Britain rose at its slowest annual pace in September, 2009 since records began in 2000, hit by promotions from store groups, warm weather and disruption to postal services.

 

The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail sales index showed online sales rose a lower-than-normal 1.9 percent month-on-month in September to 3.9 billion pounds ($6.4 billion) and were up 7.6 percent on the year. "The results for September show a slowdown in the growth of online spending but we view this as a temporary blip and expect growth rates to return to the 15 percent year on year trend we have seen over the last year," said Mike Petevinos, head of consulting for retail at Capgemini UK.

 

Growth in online sales of clothing, footwear and accessories slowed to an annual rate of 10 percent from a recent average of 20 percent due to a step in promotions from store groups and warm weather, which encouraged shoppers to leave their homes. "Postal strikes have also acted as a deterrent for online shoppers, and will continue to be a key concern for e-retailers in the lead up to Christmas," IMRG Capgemini said.

 

Workers at Britain’s state-owned Royal mail postal service are planning a series of one-day strikes from October 22 in a long-running dispute over pay, jobs and modernization.

 

(Reporting by Mark Potter; editing by Elaine Hardcastle : Source: bnet.com)

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A contact form is a seemingly simple feature that most websites mess up. While a broken or poorly designed contact form may not be the end-all problem with a website, there’s no reason that it shouldn’t work correctly.   

 

What a contact for must contain:  

1.       Name, email, (optional: phone), and message fields

2.       Shouldn’t Contain… A ridiculous captcha verification script 

3.       Confirmation / feedback that the form was properly submitted  

4.       An email response that the form was successfully received 

5.       Finally… A response from someone that read the form (If necessary) 

 

1.) Name, email, and message fields:

 

This is the one part that is rarely messed up, but often far overdone. A phone field is often useful but you will rarely need an address or any anything more personal than a person’s name, email, phone, and whatever they want to tell you. This is not a application form, it is a contact form! You shouldn’t be trying to qualify your customer in some way with a contact form.  

The more fields a customer has to fill out, the less likely they will use your contact form, and the more likely they will call you for something that can be handled over email.  

 

2.) Shouldn’t Contain… A ridiculous captcha verification script!:

Captcha scripts can help reduce email spam from bots and automated programs designed to spam you. They also make it a complete pain to get through. Captcha itself is virtually impossible to get through at this point.

 

Use alternatives that are actually readable or ones that make a user solve a simple math problem to proceed, or use nothing if spam isn’t a huge problem. 

 

USE THIS: 

 

NOT THIS: 

Requiring anyone to decipher an unreadable image of text is not a proactive customer service approach and will undoubtedly end with frustrated and confused customers. 

 

3.) Confirmation / feedback that the form was properly submitted:  

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT simply dump your customer into another page or refresh the form itself without a clear message that the form was submitted. This is a sure way to get multiple emails from your customer, each successive one showing more frustration than its predecessor.  

Ideally, you should have a dedicated thank you, or confirmation page that the user is redirected to once the form is submitted. This is a better method than displaying an in-line message on the same page because there is no question that the form was properly submitted. This is one area where Web 2.0 is killing usability, because on-page changes are very often hard to detect and are not what a user is expecting.   

It’s also a good idea to include links to informational pages, FAQ’s, and other areas of your website that could answer a question that a customer might have. 

 

4.) An email response that the form was successfully received: 

More than half the sites that I ever have contacted do not provide immediate email response when using their contact form.  

You should always provide an immediate confirmation email that the message has been received. This will reiterate the response in the previous step, and makes your business look much more professional. Even a generic message is much better than no message. The message is a great time to provide alternate / emergency contact information in case they really need to get a hold of you, or provide links to FAQ and informational pages about your services or website.   

You can setup a automated email response on just about any web server. It’s free and takes no human interaction to send an automated response email. There’s simply no reason not to send one.

 

5.) Finally… A response from someone that read the form (If necessary):  

I put this on here because a huge number of customer inquiries are never responded to. Actually get back to your customer, by email, phone or whatever method you can. You don’t need to reply to spam, but you’re probably in business because you have customers.Providing unmatched response times is one of the best ways to set yourself apart from your competitors. Seriously, shoot for five or ten minutes during normal working hours.

 

Only when you customers reply with “wow that was fast”, is your response time prefect!

Contact forms are a cornerstone of online customer service and there’s absolutely no reason to mess them up. Stick with these steps and you can’t go wrong.

 

  

 

Source: ecommerce-blog.org

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comScore a leader in measuring the digital world today released a study focusing on Google’s strong relative position in the emerging Internet market of India. Google Sites ranked as the most visited Internet property worldwide with 854 million unique visitors age 15 and older in July, an increase of 18-percent during the past year.

 

Google usage is more prevalent in certain global markets than others. Two particular markets stand apart from the rest in terms of their dependence on Google: Brazil and India. In July, 29.8 percent of total time spent online in Brazil was spent on Google Sites, with India only slightly lower at 28.9 percent. The next highest global market was Ireland at 15.9 percent. Notably, despite Google’s high relative share of time spent in Brazil, it slightly trailed Microsoft Sites’ 30.1 percent share of time spent in the market.

 

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In 2008 German B2C e-commerce sales calculated as € 75 billion, on behalf of a market share of 31 percent in Western Europe. On a global scale, this amount stands for approximately 10% of all B2C online sales.

This makes Germany the world leader in per-capita B2C turnover with € 913, accordingly higher than in the United States (€ 906), UK (€ 737) & Japan (€ 681). According to estimates by TNS Infratest, German online sales will achieve € 145 billion in 2010.

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Growth of Retail ECommerce Worldwide

More than 85 percent of the worldwide respondents to a poll had purchased something online. Growing middle class is spurring online commerce in China and India. The growth of retail e-commerce since 2006 and projected till 2010 is provided below:

2006 : $335 billion
2007 : $419 billion
2008 : $517 billion
2009 : $608 billion
2010 : $711 billion

Growth of Retail ECommerce in India

India’s share of online commerce is projected to grow from 1.3 percent of Asia-Pacific in 2006 to 3.3 percent by 2011. The projected value of the market over the years and projected for the upcoming years are:

2006 : $800 million
2007 : $1.2 billion
2008 : $1.9 billion
2009 : $2.8 billion
2010 : $4.1 billion
2011 : $5.6 billion

 

Source: techcrunchies.com

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Now a day’s SEO is compulsory for each and every business website. People were following new techniques and ideas to increase their sales and online rankings in search engines like google, yahoo, Rediff, sify and MSN. Here I am including some of the latest trends in SEO which will give some good rankings in the search engines:

Latest trends in SEO

• Professional SEO Copywriting
• Image Optimization
• Content Optimization
• Flash Optimization
• Geographic optimization
• Blogging & Posting lot of Content
• Social bookmarking
• Article Marketing
• Getting Inbound links with targeted Keywords
• Video Optimization & Marketing
• Micro blogging like Twitter

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