Is Your Business Ready for eCommerce Integration?

A recent eMarketer report forecasts global retail eCommerce sales to reach $4 trillion by 2020, making up 14.6% of total retail spending that year. That’s a staggering number. As consumers continue to shop online more frequently, retailers are looking to cash in on eCommerce sales.

However, as your eCommerce sales grow, it becomes harder to manage the volume. Growing merchants probably use other systems along with their eCommerce platform to manage their processes.

Are your current systems integrated? If they’re not, check out why your business may be ready for integration and how to do it. (more…)

Retailers Still Aren’t Meeting Customer Standards for Buy Online, Pickup In Store Services

In an effort to integrate eCommerce and brick-and-mortar operations, many retailers are adding buy online, pickup in store (BOPIS) services. Retailers are adding these capabilities even if they aren’t perfected. While customers seek out this service, they still aren’t completely satisfied with it yet.

iVend Retail reported that nearly 57% of all shoppers use this omnichannel service, but only 31% describe it as being a smooth process.

92% of North American shoppers say they regularly shop across multiple channels. Buy online, Pickup In Store is an important part of the customer experience for multichannel shoppers, but retailers are still falling short. See why BOPIS is important to customers and how you can improve your processes to impress your customers. (more…)

eCommerce Strategy: 7 Common Mistakes that Turn Customers Off Immediatelyely

At the beginning of the year, NRF reported that they expected online retail would grow 8-12% this year, up to 3 times higher than the growth rate of the wider industry. This suggests that eCommerce sales should fall between $427 billion and $443 billion.

With such promising numbers, merchants are putting more emphasis on their online sales channels. It doesn’t matter if you’re an established online seller or new to it, your eCommerce strategy has to be on point to attract new customers. A poor experience can quickly turn away potential customers.

We put together a quick list of 7 eCommerce mistakes that can turn your customers off immediately and prove costly to your business. (more…)

The Best Way to Improve Customer Satisfaction

Never say no to customers. Treat customers like your boss. Always make customers the focus of your decisions.

These are all familiar tips for improving your customer satisfaction. While this advice is helpful, is it enough?

The retail industry expects to compete solely on customer experience soon. This makes customer satisfaction more important than ever. See how you can improve your customer satisfaction rates. (more…)

Need an eCommerce Shopping Cart Solution? Consider These Options

(This post was originally published on June 8th, 2012. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness.)

When running an online retail business, you need a reliable eCommerce shopping cart solution. Luckily, there are plenty of eCommerce platforms out there to choose from.

So how do you choose the best option for your business?

There are a wide variety of eCommerce shopping carts on the market. Each one comes with a whole host of features built to make your customers have an easy and stress-free experience on your site. The key is determining which online shopping cart best suites your needs based on the technical resources you have available, how much web selling experience you have, and your web development skills.

Here are some of the top eCommerce shopping cart solutions. (more…)