5 Reasons to Move Your Online Business to the Magento eCommerce Platform

Do you own an online website that you’re making money from? The ultimate goal of every online shop is to find interested parties and convert them into paying customers. The Magento eCommerce platform was designed exclusively to allow you to build outstanding online stores that provide a high level of user experience (UX) to visitors. It is used by over 500,000 highly successful businesses worldwide at the moment, and the number keeps increasing.

Why should you move to Magento?

There are a large number of advantages to moving to this platform. Here is an overview of some of the top ones:

Provide a high-quality shopping experience

Magento pages load lightning quick, thanks to a server page caching feature (and other features). You can also extensively customize your store and add an extensive array of advanced functionalities to it without breaking a sweat. All this contributes to building a shop that looks good and is a joy to shop on.

Make your store accessible on mobiles

Magento supports responsive design by default. As the bulk of your customers will probably want to shop on your store – or at least browse it – on their phones, owning a mobile-friendly shop is an easy way to boost revenues.

Make a shop that grows as your business does

Magento stores have no product limits. That means you can build as big a store as you want. Also, you won’t have to spend time building a new store if you’re looking to expand – the platform is fully scalable and will grow (or shrink) with your business, saving you a lot of resources in the long run.

Your store will be cheap to run and maintain

The platform is fully open source. That means you don’t have to pay a dime to use it or modify it. Also, finding hosting for Magento is very easy, since it’s a popular platform. Most hosts won’t charge you a lot of money per month to host your business.

You can hire developers for cheap

Magento enjoys a solid backing by experienced developers from around the world. If you’re not tech-savvy, you will need to hire dedicated Magento developers once a year to redesign and revamp your store and fill security holes.  

IoT is the Wave of the Future that Smart Marketers Must Target: Know Why

Every serious marketer has heard of Internet of Things (IoT), but few marketers account for it in their marketing strategies or have made it a priority for their brand. IoT is still in its nascent stage of development, but it is here to stay and will soon figure prominently in marketing campaigns for top companies globally.

What is IoT and why should you pay attention to it?

Internet of Things is about regular objects that we all use on a daily basis – like fridges, TVs, microwaves, and cars – being connected to the internet in a smart network. Before now, only computers, laptops and other devices were connected to the web. In 2015, about 4.9 billion everyday devices had that capability – a number which is set to touch 25 billion by 2020. The staggering increase tells us that the concept is here to stay. If so many people are using it, it should be important to every marketer.

IoT is being adopted globally

IoT makes life easier for today’s tech-savvy populace. People are using wearable tech to monitor their health and find out how many calories they burned during their run. They drive smart cars to work – with GPS trackers that help them pick the best route – open key-less locks with an app on their phone, and voice 

command lights to turn on.

You stand to gain a rollicking boost to your marketing strategy

Catering to customers is how every marketer makes money, and customers are all about IoT these days. Here is a brief overview of how embracing the concept in your marketing strategy can pay off for your brand:

• Learn about customer behavior: Internet of Things will allow a marketer to collect real-time data about what a client likes and dislikes - their behavior – preferences - and buying patterns.
• Improve experience for them: This data can be leveraged into improve user experience and keeping customers happy. It will also help promoters close sales and provide a personalized experience.
• Improved content delivery: It will allow you to deliver optimized, SEO-friendly content to the right audience at the right time – which will help build up revenues.
• Social media on-the-go: With social media integration, businesses will be able to engage and interact with their clients wherever they are located at any given time during the day. They will also be able to offer location-based discounts and services.

Customers are bombarded with a lot of adverts these days. It takes something unique and entertaining to catch their attention in the era of information overload – and IoT represents the perfect medium to deliver such content.

How to Gain a Step ahead of your Competitors by Automating Key Marketing Tasks?

Automation is standard in many business processes, like data gathering and inventory management, but underutilized when it comes to marketing. The concept is picking up steam, though, according to industry data. Automated marketing spends were $3.2 billion in 2010 and increased to over $5 billion in 2016.

What does automation mean for your marketing campaign?

Automation lets you free up time and resources that you use for daily tasks – resources that you can then put to use somewhere else. It helps you improve productivity. Of course, that doesn’t mean you won’t ever have to pay attention to the marketing process. You will just be able to do it faster and cheaper than before.

Marketing tasks that you could automate

The number of automated tools and platforms is growing daily. Here are some of the top jobs they help you automate:

• Data gathering

Data forms the backbone of every campaign. With data, you can tell what customers will like and how your campaign is stacking up to predictions. Many freely-available analytics tools help you gather and interpret data and improve your promotional efforts.

• A/B Testing

A/B testing isn’t difficult these days, thanks to some tools like VWO that help you automate the job. You can test out two versions of pages – like landing pages – to see which ones convert the most.

• Email marketing

Email marketing is still a very effective way to generate leads. Through automation tools, you can send out personalized promotional and informative emails to a large number of people with minimal effort on your part.

• Social media

Many of your social media followers probably live on the other side of the planet and are active when you are sleeping. With some automation tools, you can schedule blog posts to hook them when you are asleep. Other platforms let you sync and manage all your social media accounts from a single dashboard.

Automation should help you generate massive traffic, but your website has to be capable of converting it. If you need to improve conversion rates on your website, you can hire dedicated resources for the job.  

4 Simple Tips to Make B2B Commerce Effortless and Generate More Revenue

B2B commerce has become massive over the past decade. In some countries, it has even become comparable to B2C commerce. If you're a B2B business owner, it's important that you upgrade and modernize your existing system and do most of your work online – both to reduce paperwork and to provide your services more conveniently and much faster than before.

Here are some tips to help you make the shift to online B2B commerce:

Pick a good eCommerce platform

It isn't difficult or even expensive to build an online store these days. You can use platforms like Magento and BigCommerce to set up stores that let you sell unlimited products with a little investment. You can also turn an existing website into an e-store using a plugin or extension – like WooCommerce for WordPress.

Offer multiple payment options

Payment flexibility is essential in the eCommerce world. You need to provide multiple payment options to your B2B customers to make it convenient for them to buy from you. That includes internet banking, credit cards, debit cards, and payment gateways like PayPal.

Jump on the EDI bandwagon

EDI is an acronym for electronic data interchange. Before the electronic age, businesses used paper and documents – like invoices, purchase orders, catalogs, and receipts - to keep track of transactions and exchange of documents was done through fax. The process can now be automated through EDI, with the help of software.

Payment optimization matters

Online eCommerce allows your business to optimize the payment process. When a customer makes a payment, an extensive amount of the data has to be processed. This processing requires time and money. When you perform a move to online commerce, you make small savings in processing costs that add up to a significant amount over time.

You can speed up the entire process by hiring a competent eCommerce development team –  to set up your store. That way, you will avoid mistakes, and the regular running of your business won’t be affected either.