• Today is: Sunday, July 26, 2026
Christmas, Sales

Cyber Monday? It should be called Cyber Week!

Phillip Smith
November19/ 2014

Cyber Monday is a hot date in the diary. Dubbed by many as ‘Mega Monday’ it’s presence in the UK is starting to grow and it’s even beginning to surpass ‘Black Friday’ with an ever increasing number of retailers offering discounts and offers for online shoppers. So with all businesses jumping on the bandwagon to make sales, getting ahead of the game to ensure your business can compete is crucial this year.

Let’s look at a top five list of how to prepare and ensure great service throughout the day and afterwards. Remember: Do not make the mistake of getting set for just one day. Cyber Monday should really be seen as Cyber week!

Lengthen the campaign

To really capitalise on the potential of Cyber Monday ensuring everything is in place for just the official date, isn’t enough. The execution of the run-up, the date in question and post-event has to be coordinated as one campaign. Treat it as a one-week event so that customers know about the business and what it can offer well in advance to avoid missing the boat and losing out to competing brands.

Ramp up marketing

Step up brand and product awareness the week prior to Cyber Monday. If on a usual week one-two marketing emails are sent out, this should be increased by 50-100%. If Adwords are a normal part of the mix too, increasing the PPC budget for the week will mean ads and Google stars get the extra attention needed to drive sales.

Consider shopping behaviour

Just because it’s Cyber Monday that’s not to say shoppers won’t already have shopped on the high street or online beforehand – afterall pay day and Christmas holidays mean bargain shopping can start from as early as the 25th. Don’t miss out on a chance to lure customers in earlier. Black Friday might not be as big in Europe, but you can always use it as a way of getting noticed by customers that can be offered a sneak preview.

Spread the love with social

Social media is a great way to shout about Cyber Monday and pull in customers with offers such as free shipping and extra discounts. Even adopting a co-buying campaign is worth pursuing to help encourage the sharing of offers to generate increased recommendations, drive traffic to the website and engage shoppers.

Prepare for post-event 

Think about extra orders. Retailers will leave themselves vulnerable to lost future business or negative reviews if they fail to consider resources to accommodate picking, packing and customer service. This could mean offering overtime for teams or even asking couriers for extra collection slots on the Monday and Tuesday to speed things up.

Foreign Markets, Global, Grow, Internationalisation

How to Make an e-sellers Internationalisation Plan Work

Martina Mercer
October31/ 2014

For e-sellers the advent of good platforms, cheap translation services and global banking means that pretty much anyone can sell to a new region. To succeed however, internationalisation should not just be seen as an extension of a local market.

Customer’s expectations may vary according to each country and it’s no use sales being up if you get hit with a huge tax bill or your goods get held up in customs. All the successes generated by launching in new markets can be rapidly jeopardised with a poor delivery and supply chain.

As the CEO of a print-on-demand, e-commerce platform I have spent much of this year rolling out our marketing, sales and operations strategy outside Europe and the USA. We are already active in 19 countries, operate in 12 languages, and our customers can pay in 11 currencies. We also deliver to about 200 countries.

So how does an e-seller in rapid international scale-up mode make internationalisation work?

 Check on the local tax and business rules

This is where partnering can sometimes be a better bet than organic growth; you take on a business which already has all the right permits and understands how to do business in the region. For example, in the USA there are tax variations between the States, which need to be taken into account, along with the tax issues surrounding cross-border sales. If a customised t-shirt is sold by a YouTuber in New York and shipped to Brazil, but the transaction happens in Berlin, where is the tax paid? These are issues an international e-commerce company must be on top of. Spreadshirt is not only an online retailer, but we also provide a platform for other e-sellers, so this is especially key for us; it’s our job to make this a smooth and efficient process. No-one wants to get bogged down in tax issues when they’re creating and selling their ideas.

 Get your product to the consumer

Shipping is a vital component in the supply chain and it must be fast, reliable and priced right. This year we added delivery to over 150 new countries. Within weeks, we had to delist 10 countries due to fraud and delivery problems. However, there were some nice surprises within the mix.  Some countries even with small populations, such as Bermuda, Guadeloupe and French Polynesia, are doing very well.  Other countries had good sales, but have had to be paused until delivery issues are sorted out. Spend time getting this right.

 Plan to get on the ground

Many of our key sellers build a fan base on global social platforms such as YouTube and Facebook – making demand for their products truly international.  We see huge traffic coming from countries like India and Brazil, meaning that eventually shipping will not be enough to satisfy consumer expectations. We’ve therefore just acquired a partner in Brazil and are looking at India, Turkey and other countries, to reduce the shipping time. A demand driven approach from traffic or shipped orders always governs our next steps. You have to go to where the customer is.

Whether a customer is from one of your core regions or from a new market, you have to manage their delivery expectations and value. We intentionally locate production facilities in strategic locations to keep customers satisfied and meet their expectations and demands. For example, in the USA, our Las Vegas facility reduces a day in delivery time to the west coast compared to shipping from our east coast site. It is also ideally located for rapid and cost-effective distribution to Asia and Australia. Orders get to customers in Australia only two days after California for only $1 or $2 more.

The world is a great place to do business and in our experience more valuable orders were gained than lost due to problems. Glitches can be easily sorted out by switching off certain payment types, changing a shipping provider or turning off a whole country.

This approach is working so far: the addition of 150 new shipping countries puts us on par with retailers such as H&M and Zara and far ahead of most other custom apparel and accessory retailers. The process of going truly global has been a positive move and the outlook for the rest of the year is extremely optimistic. Each week, several hundreds of additional orders are coming from our newly listed shipping countries.

For Spreadshirt the goal is to continue global expansion via acquisition, access, and strong international partnerships with an eye towards local production hubs. Unlike traditional retailers, we are not restricted by supply chains and stock holding so I envisage an online retail future where everyone wherever they are in the world can create, buy and sell ideas on merchandising, in the language and currency of their choice and never be more than a few days away from receiving it.

Author: Philip Rooke, CEO of Spreadshirt. Follow him on Twitter @PhilipRooke

Christmas

The Christmas rush and how to make sure your ecommerce site delivers

Benjamin Teszner
October29/ 2014

Christmas always seems to come earlier each year and ecommerce site owners should make the most of it. The run-up to Christmas is a highly important time for the retail trade and it is imperative that ecommerce store owners begin preparing for the festive season well in advance. With online accounting for 30% of all sales during 2013, up from 25% in 2012, prepared ecommerce store owners stand to make a killing.

Many of the standard tips apply to anyone looking to optimise their online store for Christmas; these involve making online shop quick to find, easy to navigate and visually enticing. However, the main factor which separates the average store from the star performer, especially during the Christmas period, is often postage and shipping. If a customer receives a late or damaged product, it’s unlikely they will remain a customer for much longer.

When assessing your approach to postage and shipping, there are four key tips to bear in mind: simplify the options available; optimise resources; make special offers; and signpost shipping deadlines clearly.

Consider offering a reduced amount of shipping options and base these on the type of product offered – this will streamline your process. For example, expensive products will require at least one option which offers a tracking ability and insurance, whereas for bulky but relatively products, a flat rate option may suffice.

Although it may sound obvious, ensuring that you have enough resources to meet increased demand is worth bearing in mind. This may involve stocking up on bestselling inventory, as well as postage materials such as bubble wrap, brown paper and card boxes. A wise idea to speed up order processing is to pre-package the items you have identified as potential bestsellers – this will reduce the chances of you being caught out in an unexpected rush.

Another tactic to mitigate against risk of a bottleneck in your shipping process is to provide special offers as early as possible. For example, offering free gift wrapping or free returns during October will encourage customers to place their orders earlier and will spread the resulting workload.

The final tip is to clearly signpost shipping options. This can involve displaying a shipping calendar on your website to announce key shipping dates or simply displaying a countdown clock. Providing this kind of structure and planning reassures customers that your store is making sufficient preparations but also gives them a sense of urgency. Providing customers with a timeline serves as a psychological cue to remind them of any approaching deadlines.

Christmas can be a stressful time for all, especially ecommerce store owners, however, by starting early and by sticking to a plan, this stress can be greatly reduced. As mentioned above, getting the basics right in terms of site design and accessibility are always key, no matter what time of year. However, the defining factor which will help your store standout from the rest will be the customer experience when it comes to shipping. Streamlining and signposting your store’s postage and shipping process will hopefully lead to happy customers and in turn a Merry Christmas for all.

Customer Care, Customer Opinion, Marketing, Retain

The Customer Journey is Not What You Think it is

Carl Holmquist
October23/ 2014

The future of marketing lies in the understanding of the customer journey. As consumers, we constantly engage with brands through various marketing channels, such as emails, display ads, paid search ads, social media, and direct website visits but do we make purchasing decisions on all marketing channels?

No, we do not.

The decision-making process usually starts by the consumer becoming aware of a need and considering if this is a true need, leading to an intention to buy, and finally making a purchasing decision. Display ads and social media act as awareness builders. When we progress in our decision-making process and have an intention to buy, we usually research the item or service of interest on the internet. Once we have made our decision, we visit the website of the vendor we have chosen.

Various experiments have been conducted to create a shortcut in the consumer decision-making process, including being able to buy directly on Facebook which is in the awareness-building stages.

It rarely works.

Creating social footprints using Facebook and Twitter raises awareness, but ultimately no purchasing decisions are made on these channels. Facebook is currently very successful at raising awareness using retargeting technology whereby consumers who have shown an intention to buy a product but dropped off are retargeted with messages related to this purchasing intention. Retargeting is successful everywhere, regardless of which website the consumer is on however Facebook is a particularly effective retargeting channel as people spend so much time on the social network.

Google have just released a brilliant report based on data collected from 36,000 Google Analytics accounts mapping the customer journey and showing where various marketing channels sit in the typical online path-to-purchase. However, what this report doesn’t tell you is that online consumers complete transactions beyond the internet as well, including over the phone. This number is growing in direct correlation with the amount of time spent on our smartphones (a native voice communications device), which is quickly overtaking the amount of time we spend researching on the computer. When using a computer, the opportunity to talk to a consult at a contact centre would typically require you to pick-up a separate device to be able to talk to somebody.

Here are some interesting facts that marketers might not want to ignore when using analytics tools or when consuming data from the Google report:

The online path-to-purchase ends with either an online transaction, or a serviced transaction over the phone.

More than 50% of ecommerce transactions for non-commodity selling verticals such as finance, insurance, automotive, healthcare, and travel are serviced over the phone.

All marketing tools that you are familiar with today, including Google Analytics, lacks the ability to collect data from ecommerce transactions that have taken place over the phone. These customers are then treated as drop offs or bounces.

Marketers don’t like bounces and want to reduce those numbers where possible. By being data-driven in our decision making and trusting legacy analytics tools with big gaping holes in the transaction phase data of the customer journey, we are making sure that our most valuable audience will never find us again

Being data-driven in your marketing comes with the responsibility of being interested in data, constantly questioning the data model, and the ability to effectively collect data about user activities from marketing tools that you trust. It’s not rocket science. You can start by modelling customer journeys on a white board. While doing so, ensure you do not limit yourself by using only your existing analytics tools as input.

It’s quite easy to spot the marketers who’ve done their homework on data. When you visit websites that give the consumer two very distinct ways of buying (either through the online store or by speaking to a sales representative), you know that they have built a data-driven UX system. Both transactions are considered online sales as they come from online consumers using the web to research a business, as well as for decision making.

Despite this, there are many more websites where there is still work to be done. Everyday I see websites of major brands (that I know manage some of the best sales teams in the market) and their website makes it almost impossible for me to talk to them if necessary. That’s not a data-driven UX system. It’s UX based on what can be tracked with legacy analytics tools, not based on how consumers choose to transact with you.

That’s a dead end, unless you’re happy for your business to stand still.

eSeller Guides, Fashion, Offices

The Home Office Which Merges Functionality and Interior Design

Modular Furniture
Room4Interiors
October23/ 2014

There are any number of interior design articles on the internet which tell you how to make your office more motivational, how to personalise your space, how to make sure your office is healthy and that it promotes productivity. This post is a little different.

We assume that if you are an eSeller reader that you already know how to organise your time and that you understand the benefits of having a computer chair which supports you as you work away on your computer. We aren’t experts in being self-employed and working from home, we are the people you come to when you want an office than is attractive, that boasts all of the practical aspects of office design and yet is pleasing on the eye.

If you have a need for a home office it is reasonable to assume that you will be spending a good few hours there, be this working from home or dealing with accounts and home-related paperwork. What you need and want is a space which offers the storage and the ease of use factors yet looks nothing like a bland work cubicle.

Modular office furniture is all about making a space work for you. Building up cupboards, shelves and more so that you have what you need but also so that you may personalise the space, incorporating colour, art, plants, accessories and anything else which will make your office space a joy to spend time in.

Stepping away from the somewhat flimsy flat-pack office furniture offered by many high street catalogue stores and choosing a solid alternative is the first step to changing the way an office space feels. Choose from a number of styles, from a sleek white modern looking office or perhaps a more traditional walnut. Choose pieces which work with your individual style.

Forget the easy to maintain cactus plant, the generic desk tidy or mass-produced lamp. Choose quirky pieces for your office space. Search for art work that inspires, be these motivational quotes, photographs, sculptures or paintings. Don’t be afraid to inject colour into a space, choosing matching accessories, unusual decorative pieces or even a brightly coloured chair to pull the design together.

Light is so important in an office for a number of practical reasons. Choosing a lamp doesn’t have to be a chore however as whatever you do choose should be both practical and great to look at. Consider an industrial style Anglepoise lamp or a Tiffany style piece perhaps?

Choosing modular office furniture enables you to personalise your space, merging functionality as well as style so that you may put together a striking work place which does indeed motivate and inspire.

Payments, Sell, Your Store

Are you ready for Bitcoin?

Adrien Nussenbaum
October20/ 2014

Any e-commerce firm should want to make it as easy as possible for customers to pay them. This involves having a clear and simple payment process, secure yet not onerous and also the ability to pay in a number of different ways, making it as convenient as possible for the customer. This typically means offering PayPal, a number of credit and debit card options and perhaps the ability to pay in a different currency. But there is a new, virtual currency emerging – are you ready for Bitcoin?

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that dates back to 2009. Transactions and purchases are made with no middle men – there are no transaction fees and there is no need to give your name. Bitcoins are stored in a ‘digital wallet’ which exists either in the cloud or on a user’s computer and they can be transferred in much the same way as you would other digital funds.

Take-up has been slow but there are signs that is going to change and 2015 could be the year of Bitcoin. That’s why we are now allowing our retail customers to offer Bitcoin as a payment option to consumers on their websites and e-commerce channels.

The future of e-commerce?

Maybe, maybe not. We certainly don’t expect an immediate flood of Bitcoin payments, but do believe that Bitcoin will eventually become a significant currency. So it’s a question of being ready for when Bitcoin really takes off with consumers. There is a perception of it being risky from a security perspective, but at the same time, Bitcoin is rich with potential and cannot be dismissed as a fad.

The expected rise in use of Bitcoin, combined with online marketplaces becoming an accepted and mainstream destination for shoppers, meant that adding Bitcoin as a payment option was a natural step for us. We want our customers, irrespective of their model or strategy, to anticipate market trends and not have to react to them.

And surely that should be the same for any e-commerce firm? PayPal took its time to gain credibility and I remember many Brits (I’m from France) being unsure of chip and pin when it first emerged as an in-store payment. The point is, that if your customers want to pay in a certain way, you should do all that you can to allow them to do so.  2015 could be the year of Bitcoin – do you want to miss out?

 

Christmas

The eCommerce Christmas Gift Guides are Here!

Martina Mercer
October13/ 2014

You know, as an eSeller, that Christmas is often the most important time of the year. We spend half the year preparing for it and the other half recovering. Here at eSeller News, this year we’re hoping to make the whole process smooth from advice on drop shipping solutions to taking your Christmas products to a global market.

We’re also launching our Christmas Gift guide more for your friends and family than for you. Entrepreneurs and those in high professional positions are notoriously difficult to buy for. As we spend much of our time online or in the retail market we tend to buy what we need or want when we want it which makes us difficult to buy for at Christmas.

So we’re bringing you a few Christmas gift guides

  • What to Buy an Entrepreneur
  • The Perfect Gifts for eSeller Gurus
  • Secret Santa Gifts that Stand Out
  • Best Tech Gifts for the Office

Best Gadgets for the Home (so you have something to play with when you’re forced from the office for a few weeks over Christmas!)

If you have a product you’d like to recommend please get in touch. In the meantime, remember, for inspiration, support, advice or a little professional empathy, we’re here throughout the whole season.

Let’s make some money! (And let’s not apologise about making it the way poor Sainsbury’s had to!)

Discussion, eSeller Guides, Foreign Markets, Grow, Loyalty

Getting ready for mobile payments

Tobias Schreyer
October06/ 2014

With the penetration of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets constantly growing, attention is increasingly turning to mobile marketing, mobile commerce and mobile payments. It is still the case, however, that these trends are largely played out in specialised media, and do not influence the actual behaviour of consumers. This is especially true for mobile payments, with consumers very sceptical about this concept.

But what people often tend to overlook is that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as mobile payments. The background payment processes are always the same – on someone’s instruction, money is transferred from one account to another, regardless of whether the payment was authorised by direct debit, electronic transfer, debit or credit card, or by pressing ‘confirm’ in an app. Fundamentally, there is nothing different about the actual payment processes – they are simply adapted for mobile devices. So when we talk about mobile payments, we are dealing not so much with ‘mobile’ payment but rather with cashless payment using a mobile device.

Pilot mobile processes

Mobile payments are regularly experimented with globally. Payment service providers, telecoms companies, mobile manufacturers, merchants and service providers have  investigated a variety of technologies and developed different apps and processes. Approaches focus on scanning QR codes from a special app or creating mTANS. The latter requires a special chip in order to use NFC (near field communication) for example, or even a vendor-specific device, such as a Bluetooth-capable Apple iBeacon. With all of these developments running in parallel, rolling mobile payments seamlessly across each and every country will not be easy. The various players are essentially creating their own stumbling blocks – because sooner or later the market is going to consolidate, and it will be defined by a small number of standards and processes.

Large investment scaring off merchants

The mobile payments technology that will eventually win out will have to combine user-friendliness with strong security capabilities, but it must also come at a reasonable investment price point for merchants. After all, retrofitting or upgrading every single point of sale with new hardware and software will be a hugely expensive undertaking. So leaving functionality aside, the option offering the lowest infrastructure alignment costs will have the best chance of success.

Multichannel commerce requires multiple payment options

Regardless of which technologies ultimately gain the widest acceptance for individual payment scenarios, both device manufacturers and payment service providers must initially be able to support as many payment methods as possible. Merchants face an additional challenge here. The more the boundaries between brick-and-mortar and e-commerce become blurred, the less likely customers will be to accept that certain payment options are restricted to certain channels. They might ask for instance why they can pay by invoice online, but not on the high street. Or why they can only use a discount coupon in a shop, but not when they order online with click-and-collect.

If merchants want to keep customers loyal in the long term, they will have to offer a uniform retail experience and ensure that payment options are consistent across all channels. A key success factor here will be the range of payment schemes they make available, bearing in mind that each country has its own preferences.

Multinational companies have to consider local payment habits if they want to be successful in every market. It goes without saying that this also applies to mobile payment processes.

Choosing the right payment service provider 

Given these market dynamics, merchants will have to be very careful when choosing their payment service provider (PSP). According to a survey by the PSP Worldpay, over 40 percent of online purchasers would spend more if vendors offered a greater choice of payment systems. With customers increasingly expecting a uniform experience across all retail channels, a wide range of payment options becomes essential not just for online stores, but also at points of sale. Mobile payments will be just one of many options taken for granted in the future. Merchants should therefore select a PSP partner with international reach and an offering that includes as many alternative payment methods as possible. Ideally, they would also offer other financial services, such as prepaid cards and gift certificates, or – with mobile payments on the radar – individualised NFC products like stickers, key-rings, etc.

Compliance with regulatory requirements

For both the payment service provider and the merchant as the last operative link in the payment chain, compliance with payment process regulations is paramount. However, this is increasingly challenging as requirements are becoming ever more complex, especially in light of the need to support multiple international and alternative payment schemes. For merchants and PSPs alike, it is wise to select a partner with the relevant certifications and an e-money license. Ideally, payment solution providers should deliver one-stop financial services spanning acquiring, issuing and processing through a fully integrated technical platform and under a single contract. PSPs and merchants should check whether their prospective payment partner has international knowledge about payment methods, regulatory requirements, compliance and risk management. Likewise, when it comes to mobile payments, they should ensure that the payment solution provider supports a wide range of processes – from wallets and Apple’s iBeacon to QR code and NFC solutions. While it is true that mobile payment is still essentially in its infancy, in ten years from now, payment via smartphone, smartwatches or other intelligent devices is likely to be just as commonplace as paying by debit or credit card today.

 

eSeller Guides, Foreign Markets, Sales

It’s All in the Mix – The Link Between Preferred Payments and Conversion Rates

Tobias Schreyer
September24/ 2014

Supporting local payment methods is a simple and effective way to increase e-commerce conversion rates and reach. So why have so few traders embraced the opportunity to internationalise their business?

Imagine you run a shop on one of Europe’s busiest high streets. You have spent a lot of money on your furnishings and fittings, not to mention marketing and your business has really taken off. Lines of locals and tourists with armfuls of merchandise wait their turn to pay. But before they come to the cash desk, they see a small sign: “We only accept payment by Visa or MasterCard.” In other words, you can forget about paying by cash, cheque, EC card or voucher. So the tourists put away their American Express or UnionPay credit cards and you lose a sale.

By excluding certain payment options you are limiting your sales opportunities, because some customers will have no choice but to leave without purchasing what they wanted. They will simply go elsewhere – and probably will not bother coming back to you. You might not think that any merchant would damage their own business in this way. But most online traders do exactly that – whether they are retailers, travel companies or service providers.

Proven correlation between conversion rate and payment method

Recent studies have shown a clear link between conversion rates, customer reach and the right mix of electronic payment methods. 83 per cent of online shoppers have said that choosing between different ways to pay is important to them, while 42 per cent declared that a wider range of payment schemes would result in them spending more[1]. Credit card fraud was the number one online shopping concern for 81 per cent of the respondents, with 83 per cent of this group saying that they would shop online more often and spend more if they could use secure payment methods[2].

The message is clear: merchants need to offer a wide range of online payment methods that meet customers’ expectations and needs if they want to increase site traffic and revenue. For international online stores in particular, a variety of payment methods is a key success factor.

Across the world, credit cards are still the most common way to pay for goods and services online, but they are not equally favoured in all countries. Alternative payment methods – i.e. payments that are not made by credit or debit card – are becoming more and more popular around the world. In 2013 alone, transactions using alternative methods increased by 21 per cent compared with 2012, with a further prediction of alternative payments accounting for 59% of all transaction methods by 2017[3]. Analysts agree that the share of alternatives will continue to increase in the coming years. Payment method preferences vary by region first and foremost, but also by target group and product

group. In the Netherlands, for example, around 65 per cent of all transactions are carried out using the iDEAL online banking system. In Germany and Austria on the other hand, most digital buyers prefer payment on account and direct debit. In Russia, e-wallets have become popular and cash is the preferred method in most of South America.

But does this mean that you should just offer 20 or more online payment methods at checkout to be on the safe side? Unfortunately, it is not that simple. E-commerce merchants have to take a number of payment factors into account to ensure the success of their online shop:

  • Offer each market its preferred payment methods

Online traders must research the most common and popular payment methods in their target markets and offer these to customers.

  • Know and support the payment preferences of your target groups

A mature consumer from France purchasing a designer sofa online will naturally prefer a more secure method of payment than a Brazilian teenager downloading an online game. So aside from regional trends, merchants will also have to consider target group preferences and the suitability of various methods for different product categories.

Merchants can consult a large number of studies and surveys to establish payment preferences across countries, target groups and product categories. Checking what the competition is doing is also worthwhile. Simply look for a shop with a similar portfolio and a comparable target group and see what payment methods they are offering in each country.

  • Ensure your checkout page is clearly structured

Another critical success factor in e-commerce is the design of the checkout page. It is important that e-tailers offer their customers a wide choice of payment methods, but equally important that the checkout page is designed for ease of use and transparency.

There is no point in offering 60 international payment methods to each customer. Instead, the ideal choice would be four to six of the most popular payment methods for that country, target group and product type. The available options could be filtered through technical parameters (e.g. the shoppers country of origin) or by asking the shopper to select their country from a drop-down list. Differentiating between new customers, non-registered customers and regular customers is also an option, if for example the trader wants to offer only risk-free payment methods with guaranteed payment to non-registered customers.

As the world’s leading online retailer, Amazon adopted a clear-cut approach from day one. No complicated options at checkout, a limited number of payment options and a clear layout – all designed to steer the customer through the payment process as quickly and efficiently as possible. Amazon is actually very restrictive in this sense, generally offering customers only three to four pre-selected payment options, depending on the country, the customer’s purchase history and sometimes the contents of their basket.

It’s all in the mix

Ultimately, it is not about the number of payment methods offered – the key is to find the right mix for each market and target group. In the ideal checkout, the choice of payment methods offered will vary – based on the user’s country at the very least.

For most US-based customers, credit cards, an e-wallet, possibly ACH (Automated Clearing House) and a cash option for those without a bank account should suffice. In the Asia-Pacific region, which is projected to overtake the USA for e-commerce sales in 2014, e-wallets have a particularly large market share at just over 40 per cent.

German customers are fond of payment on account, direct debits and PayPal; in Finland around half of online purchases are made by online bank transfer; almost one in five online transactions in Portugal are paid by offline bank transfer; and around 45 per cent of Russians favour cash on delivery. 

Selecting the right payment partner

Discovering the best payment methods for particular markets and target groups is costly, time-consuming and requires a certain level of experience. That is why online retailers usually turn to payment solution providers (PSPs). Ideally, PSPs should not only provide a wide-ranging portfolio of payment methods, but also offer valuable experience of international markets.

Looking beyond technical onboarding and transaction performance, factors such as experience, a large selection of payment methods and a comprehensive portfolio of value add services generally outweigh even attractive fee structures. E-tailers who want to expand their business internationally would therefore be well advised to look closely at the payment issue. Ultimately, this is a defining factor when it comes to increasing reach and conversion rates.

[1] Worldpay alternative payments report 2013

[2] FirstData, Consumer Online Shopping Fears 2008

[3] Worldpay alternative payments 2nd edition report 2013

Customer Opinion, Loyalty, Products, Promotions, Sales, Sell

Christmas needs to come early for online retailers

Greg Zemor
September24/ 2014

Greg Zemor, Co-Founder of marketplace distribution solution Neteven, discusses how and when e-commerce companies should make preparations for Christmas

Every November consumers comment on how shops seem to put up Christmas decorations and sell festive goods earlier each year. As we all know, these shopping aisles full of Christmas-related merchandise are the product of planning that took place much earlier. However, for smaller e-commerce businesses, there can be a perception that, due to the inherent flexibility of online stores, the planning process does not need to be as long or as detailed. The truth, which many online retailers have learnt to their cost, is that you cannot be over-prepared for Christmas.

For online retailers, getting their ducks in a row for Christmas needs to go beyond simply over-stocking on existing product lines. The best approach is to see the festive season as a completely different phase in the life of an online shop. This can mean catering for different product lines, adjusting product delivery structures and, crucially, reviewing the online marketing and product distribution strategy.

After all, the online retail environment is incredibly competitive, and from November onwards, competition is ratcheted up to a whole new level. For ten months of the year, it may be appropriate for a shop to only use one marketplace to market products, for example, Amazon. However, this approach throughout November and December can be unnecessarily limiting, as it cuts off an entire section of prospective online consumers.  The important factor is that festive shoppers, by and large, will visit websites on a one-off basis in search of presents and therefore, will generally visit a multitude of marketplaces. Placing a shop’s products on one marketplace, no matter how large its consumer base, is an inherently flawed strategy.

To maximise the consumer base, an online shop necessitates a multi-marketplace marketing strategy. Of course, many shop owners would baulk at the thought of the cost and time needed to distribute their goods on several marketplaces at once. However, there are now a whole host of marketing platforms that can automate this process and ensure that product lines are put in front of a new audience over the Christmas period. As the process is automated via advanced programmes, the marketing campaign can be tailored to maximise value, even if there is only a small budget available.

To get the right technology for your shop, it is crucial to start researching and speaking to marketing companies now. This will make sure that the best technology is in place well ahead of the Christmas rush and any teething problems are ironed out. Having advanced knowledge of the marketing campaign will also enable online shop owners to buy new product lines to plug gaps in their offering.

Getting in front of a new audience during Christmas is just a small part of the preparation work needed to ensure an online retailer is competitive. A surge in new customers usually requires additional infrastructure such as customer service, multiple online payment options and a flexible parcel delivery offering. Many marketplaces offer in house customer service, which is particularly useful if a shop is working on a pan-European or global basis and has to cater to customers speaking a multitude of languages. Similarly, researching and instructing parcel delivery and online payment companies well in advance of November will make it easier to secure a better deal.

Such is the number of e-commerce companies providing services to online retailers, that there is little excuse for a shop to have gaps in its offering or poor service – especially over Christmas. Generally, the more preparation that is undertaken in the run up to Christmas, the more competitive the online shop will become. A limited budget is also not an excuse, it simply requires more preparation, research and negotiation with vendors to get the right services in place.

 

 

Copyright © 2014 eSellerNews Marketing ConsultantMartina Mercer Luxury Lifestyle Magazine Sister Site