Mobile Commerce Continues to Grow and Will Impact Holiday Spending in 2013

It is no news that mobile commerce, now often referred to as m-commerce, is on the rise. Consumers have proven to enjoy the convenience and the ability to accomplish tasks while on the go. From paying bills to shopping, mobile commerce is simple and easy to use.

The latest data from Marketing Charts, which can be viewed here, shows that mobile commerce spending is continuing to rise. During the first half of 2013, mobile spending accounted for almost 10 percent, or $10.6 billion, of total online spending. This amount is a 28 percent increase from 2012. When broken up by device, 6 percent of total ecommerce spending was done using a smartphone and 3.5 percent using a tablet.

There are several types of purchases made on mobile devices that have captured a significant percentage of total ecommerce sales, according to the report.

For starters, during the first half of the year, digital ticket sales were made using a smartphone 10.9 percent of the time and 4.5 percent from a tablet.

When it came to apparel and accessory purchases, 6.2 percent were made from a smartphone and 4.5 percent from a tablet.

Other notable product categories include computer hardware, where 5.5 percent of purchases were made from a smartphone or tablet; consumer electronics, where 5.5 percent of total sales were made using a smartphone or tablet; and consumer package goods, where 4.4 percent of total sales were made using a smartphone or tablet.

Given this data, it is clear that the use of smartphones and tablets to make purchases online is on the rise. With that said, eMarketer is already predicting mobile commerce to positively impact holiday sales this season. Last year, during the holiday season, $53.7 billion was spent. Of that number, 15.2 percent, or roughly $8.16 billion, was done using a smartphone or tablet. In 2013, holiday spending is projected to reach $61.8 billion of which 15.1 percent, or about $9.33 billion, of sales will be done using a smartphone or tablet. The full report from eMarketer can be viewed here.

There is still time before the holiday season. Be sure your ecommerce website has a mobile version in order to make shopping your product catalog user friendly. Contact Azox today for more information about mobile ecommerce websites.

Nine Metrics Useful for Measuring Ecommerce Success

In an article recently published on Mashable’s website, several successful ecommerce entrepreneurs were asked what data they rely on to develop and monitor strategies. The following is a list of the nine metrics these entrepreneurs deemed most valuable along with a brief summary of why.

1. User Acquisition Costs
This metric can be used to determine the success rate of your PPC campaigns. How much does it cost you each time a user lands on a web page in relation to conversions?

2. Abandoned Carts
Monitor this metric to ask customers who bailed on their shopping carts why they did not proceed through to checkout. Was it something with the checkout process itself? Were shipping costs too high? There are a number of reasons why shopping carts are abandoned. This is a good metric to watch in order to gain insight on possible improvements that could lead to a higher conversion rate.

3. Google Analytics Experiments
This is a tool accessible from your Google Analytics account. It can be used for split testing. Use experiments to test different web pages against each other to determine what is working and what is not. For more information on experiments, follow this link.

4. Visitor Value
Determine how much revenue each one of your visitors generates. From here, you can come up with a strategy in regards to how much you want to spend to draw new traffic to your website.

5. Lifetime Value
Yet another important metric to consider is the lifetime value of a customer. Consider why some customers return and spend more than others and then think about how to market old and new products to both new and return customers.

6. Traffic
Look at where your traffic is coming from and what the bounce rate is. Information like this can be viewed from your Google Analytics account. This entrepreneur suggests that the best money making opportunity comes from non-branded, organic traffic.

7. Lead Source ROI
Monitor the ROI of each different advertising method to determine which ones are most effective.

8. Purchase Funnel
Analyze the purchase funnel to understand where and when a customer drops off the sales process.

9. Percentage of Mobile Visits
With the use of mobile devices on the rise, having a site optimized for this type of shopper is crucial. 

The original article post on Mashable can be viewed in its entirety here.

Updated Customer Web Stores from Azox

The team at Azox has been busy updating current customer sites to the latest version of eSource, which is our ecommerce software. The latest completed update was for Dr. Hauschka. The Dr. Hauschka web store sells natural skin care products and makeup.

Dr. Hauschka’s new website runs on eSource 3.4. The company also chose to add one page and guest checkout. This feature helps provide a better user experience in several ways. With the checkout process, users want to complete their transactions quickly and easily. By offering one page/guest checkout, users are able to make purchases without creating an account. Further, all the information required for the purchase can be entered on one screen. The upgraded web store can be viewed here.

Another one of our customers, Recreation Supply Company, has chosen to upgrade to eSource 3.4. This company sells swimming pool supplies on their ecommerce website. The upgraded version of their web store also includes one page/guest checkout in addition to dimension groups. Dimension groups is a tool that allows similar items in your database to be lumped together under one item. For example, a clothing retailer would use this feature to group together several pairs of denim that are all the same style, but are available in various sizes and washes. Recreation Supply Company’s upgraded web store can be viewed here.

Dental City, a provider of dental products, is also now running their web store using eSource 3.4. They too opted for one page/guest checkout and also added filters. The filters feature allows users to better refine their search results using specific attributes, such as color or size. Check out their updated web store here.

If you are a current customer and are interested in how an upgrade can benefit you, contact our sales team to schedule a demo.

August Webinars Hosted by Azox

Each month Azox hosts three webinars. Each highlights a different solution offered by Azox. These include ecommerce, payment processing and online bill pay, all of which are built on Microsoft Dynamics GP. These webinars are free to attend, all you need to do is follow the link to register.

Integrated Ecommerce for Microsoft Dynamics GP
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
1:00 – 1:30 p.m. EST

Grow your business online with a web store that integrates with your Microsoft Dynamics GP back office solution. This includes the ability to offer customers real time inventory and pricing updates, shipping calculation from UPS, USPS, FedEx and Purolator, one-page guest checkout, advanced search capabilities including the ability to deeply refine results and much more. Signup for this webinar and learn more about the Azox ecommerce solution for Dynamics GP.

Secure Credit Card Processing in Microsoft Dynamics GP
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
1:00 – 1:30 p.m. EST

Get the most out of your Microsoft Dynamics GP investment by adding the ability to process credit cards securely. With Azox Credit Card Extension, you will be able to accept payment via credit card, ACH or credit memo. This solution is PA-DSS Certified and allows you to pre-authorize, post-authorize, sale void and credit. It can also store multiple credit cards for each customer and keeps sensitive data offsite through use of tokenization. Join Azox for this online event by following the link to register.

Advantages of Online Bill Pay for Microsoft Dynamics GP
Thursday, August 22, 2013
1:00 – 1:30 p.m. EST

Providing customers with the option to pay their bills online gives them greater convenience and allows you to get paid quicker. Customers can make payments that will be validated and processed 24/7/365. Those payments are captured and recognized in real time. All this is done by logging into an online portal. In addition to making payments, customers can also log in and view or print invoices. To learn more about this solution, follow the link and register.

If these dates don’t fit your schedule, be sure to check back next month for webinars. Or, contact our sales team to setup your own personal demo.

Real Estate websites in China

Real Estate websites in China

China has know these past 30 years one of the most amazing real estate growth of all times, everything has changed, the skyline of large Chinese cities and the way apartments are rented and sold. E-commerce is now the key of Chinese real estate, with very important websites.

Different kinds of websites: who is the targeted customer ?

E-commerce in China is a bit different depending on if the Chinese customer or the foreign expatriate customer is targeted. Some sites exist that are designed for a foreign customer base, such as Scout Real Estate, a real estate agency in Beijing. This is a good website with a lot of information about real estate in China and you can have a look at it to have an idea of what the actual market is. Indeed, real estate in China is about compounds with apartments available in every one of them, the apartment compounds listed on Scout Real Estate are luxury ones.

Apart from this type of websites, most of the websites are designed for the largest real estate market in the world, the Chinese market which is about 20% of the real estate market in the world and has been a source of growth for the Chinese a,d the world economy during these past decades. Real Estate agencies such as Century 21, Wo Ai Wo Jia and Hoze are examples of real estate agencies with good websites, that are representative of websites in China, a bit messy with a lot of information.

A difficulty in the e-commerce and real estate websites in China: the reliability

A specificity of these websites in China is that all of them display a lot of information. Be aware that a large part of it might be irrelevant. Real Estate agencies want to attract customers and once the client is hooked, they will do anything ti find an apartment that more or mess looks like the apartment the client in interested in. Many of the ads on the websites are outdated, the apartments are already sold or rented. A part of a real estate agency work in China is to collect pictures of apartments in compounds just to put them online.

The real estate agencies put ads everywhere, from sites for expatriates to sites abut furniture. Massive presence online is preferred to quality presence.

The answer: real estate portals in China and their response to the markets expectations

Web portals have been set up by Chinese real estate professionals to give information to the Chinese public. Some of these sites are Haozu, 58 and Ganji. Their specificity is the massive information you can read online when you browse these pages.

Chinese customers feel at ease t have a large amount of information on the pages, with a large choice of places to look on the screen. Websites are much less focused than the western countries sites that try to rationalize the focus of the people visiting the site. Chinese websites have messages everywhere, and this doesn’t  blur the people's focus.

Open architecture website: Soufun

The website that has modified a lot of things in e-commerce in China is Soufun. This site has real estate informations about 300 cities in China, and is now the number one website for real estate e-commerce in China. The growth has been impressive, one figure to illustrate it, Soufun's e-commerce services sales went from 23 million dollars in 2011 to 100 million dollars in 2012. This is what you can call growth in e-commerce.

Soufun has seized the Chinese market. The competitors are loosing market shares and Soufun has become the reference site. Its success is based on open architecture? Every user shares its information and this has created probably the largest world flux of real estate information, with marketing tools, updated data about the compounds and the apartments.

The new trend of Chinese real estate websites and their services is that they are going global. Until now, you may have the feeling that the Chinese situation is apart from the rest of the world, but this is a feeling you might not have for long. Chinese real estate websites are going global and they are extending their services. For example, Soufun, in addition to the 300 Chinese cities has now apartments and houses available in the USA. Chinese customers want to buy abroad and they find this site reliable, hence a real success.

China real estate e-commerce going global

Another website that represents this trend is Juwai. Juwai has apartments and houses available in Europe and the USA for Chinese customers. Chinese people want to buy abroad but they might be afraid. The Chinese presence in the world is more and more important and Chinese people are beginning to have a real understanding if real estate markets abroad. Juwai is helping them with a lot of information about the places they want to buy property in. This might be the thing to see about Chinese real estate E-commece, it is ambition and rationalization, these sites success might only be the beginning of something new and really impressive in the future.

 Nico

http://ecommerce-china.blogspot.com/

Tips to Improve the Performance of Landing Pages for E-Commerce Websites

Landing pages can be used to help increase the conversion rate of different items on your ecommerce website. In order for this to happen, it is important to create strong landing pages. A landing page that lacks a clear message may only draw a consumer to your site briefly. The point of a landing page is not only to get a consumer to your site, but also to get them to make a purchase. In order to ensure this happens, try these tips that will help you develop strong landing pages that drive conversions.

Make the Call to Action (CTA) Standout

Whatever it is that you want the consumer do should be clearly expressed on the landing page. This may be to “shop now” or to “watch a video” to try to drive them to your site and to ultimately make a purchase. The CTA needs to standout in a distinct way. It should be in a centralized location on the landing page in order for consumers to know what they are supposed to click on. The use of visual cues can help with this as well.

Offer Incentives

Consumers are not interested in only benefiting your web store. They also want something for themselves. With that said, offer consumers something for engaging in the CTA designated on the landing page. This could be a free demo, coupon or other gift.

Keep the Landing Page Simple

Your landing pages should focus on one thing. The more clutter you add to the page, the less likely it is that a consumer will get the message.

Concise, Relevant Headline

Avoid puns or other fluff copy when it comes to the headline used on your landing page. Compose a headline that is concise and relevant. If you can, write a headline that sums up what the landing page is about in no more than 17 words.

Strong Design

The layout of your landing page must flow well. It should be easy to read and devoid of distracting, unnecessary images. Use readable fonts, consider bulleted lists to display information and appropriate use of white space.

Landing pages are a great way to increase conversions on an ecommerce website. Try implementing these tips to improve the performance of your landing pages.

Which Resources Drive the Most Traffic to Your E-Commerce Website?

With all the resources available to draw traffic to an ecommerce website, it is hard to determine where to put the most effort. The obvious answer is to choose the resources that result in the most website traffic and that have high conversion rates, but, which resources are those?

Monetate did some research and provided data about where ecommerce traffic comes from and how it is converted. The data was gathered during the first quarter of 2013. The full report can be downloaded here.

When it comes to direct ecommerce traffic, the report states that:

• 31.43% landed on an ecommerce website from a search engine
• 2.82% from an email and
• 1.55% from social media.

When this information is compared to the first quarter of 2012, note that traffic from email has decreased from 3.72% in 2012 and so has social media traffic, which was 2.36% in 2012.

This does not mean that social media is irrelevant for ecommerce. While social media may not bring a lot of traffic to a website, it still drives purchase decisions. Research from Google showed that instead of being a last interaction, social media often acts as an assist in the purchase decisions. Consumers often use social media in the early phases of the decision making process. With that said, focus on driving traffic using search engine marketing and use other marketing strategies to entice consumers across social media and with email.

Other statistics in relation to traffic and conversion rates were also included in the report form Monetate. When it came to conversion rates:

• email came in first with 3.19% 
• followed by search at 1.95% and 
• social media at 0.71%.

Looking at the same sources, the add-to-cart rates were as follows:

• 10.51% from when coming from email
• 6.81% from search and
• 3.24% from social.

And finally, average order value from each source was as follows:
• $96.32 when coming from search
• $83.72 from email and
• $72.31 from social.

Simply having an ecommerce website is not enough. With all the inbound marketing strategies available, and many of them for free, it is important to figure out what works for your business in order to consistently drive website traffic and sales.

Are Your Social Media Strategies Helping You Drive Sales?

Social media is one of many digital marketing tools available to businesses. Further, many know that listing their business on these social sites and posting to them regularly is important; but, are you measuring your success rates to know if your efforts are worth it? A survey conducted by Vision Critical provided some statistics on how customers use Pintrest, Facebook and Twitter and how likely these customers were to make purchases either online or in-store. Some of the key points are highlighted below. For the full report, follow this link. The survey included almost 6,000 respondents.

When you look at usage of these three social networks, you will find that 15 percent of the population uses Pintrest, 73 percent uses Facebook and 24 percent users Twitter. Of those people, 29 percent of Pintrest users made a purchase after sharing or liking an item, 38 percent of Facebook users did that same and then last were 22 percent of Twitter users. Taking those statistics into consideration, it is important to discover which social media networks your customers use as different topics are popular on varying platforms.

The survey results showed that for do-it-yourself projects, recipes and fashion and beauty tips, users look to Pintrest. Facebook was most popular for human interest or funny stories and topics that fall under arts and entertainment are popular across all three platforms.

Survey results also showed that 21 percent of Pinterest users made purchases in-store, 22 percent online and 29 percent made purchases both in-store and online. When it came to Facebook, 30 percent of users made in-store purchases, 29 percent did the same online and 38 percent did both. Finally, with Twitter, 17 percent of users made in-store purchases, 18 percent made online purchases and 22 percent made both.

There is no question that consumers use social media to research products that they will either buy in-store or online.  The question to ask yourself is which platform will help your business draw the most sales. In order to figure this out, you will need to consider your industry, customer demographics and determine what it is they use social media for. Then you can work on earning your portion of social media generated sales and hopefully in time, grow that number.

In addition to detailed statistics about purchases in relation to social media usage, the report also includes questions to ask your customers that will help you determine how to make these social media networks work best for your business. To join the world of ecommerce so you are able to take full advantage of these social media platforms along with other digital marketing tools, visit our website to learn about our solutions. Azox develops ecommerce websites that integrate fully with Microsoft Dynamics GP. We also provide payment processing solutions and online bill pay.

Tools Used to Acquire E-Commerce Customers and a Look at Their Effectiveness

As an ecommerce business, what tools are you using that have helped you successfully obtain and keep customers? Custora did some research and created a report highlighting the most popular channels used to acquire customers along with which ones offer the best customer lifetime value, which is described in the report as “the future profit a company expects to earn from a customer throughout his or her relationship with the business.” The survey included 72 million customers from 86 U.S. retailers in 14 different industries and can be read in its entirety here.

The survey results show that the top channels used for acquiring new customers online are organic search, CPC (Cost Per Click), email marketing and referrals. It may be surprising to see email marketing at the top of the list given that so many of us receive and delete such messages on a daily basis, but according to survey results, since 2009, the amount of customers that ecommerce businesses have acquired using this tool has quadrupled. The other tools at the top of the list are no-brainers as most of us go straight to search engines to find the products and we are looking for along with reviews of those products.

Now, the tool used to acquire a new customer is important, but if it does not offer a strong customer lifetime value (CLV), is it worth it? According to survey results, customers acquired from organic search traffic have a CLV that is 54 percent above average, followed by CPC customers who have a CLV 37 percent higher than average and then those that become customers through email marketing have a CLV that is 12 percent above average. On the other hand, when social media is analyzed, customers acquired from Twitter have a CLV that is 23 percent lower than average and customers coming from Facebook have a CLV that is just one percent above average. Does this mean social media is a waste of time? Absolutely not; social media is a great tool that can be used to give a brand a personality and also gives customers an outlet for writing reviews or sharing testimonials.

There is no question that ecommerce will continue to grow. For some, doing business online can be a lot of work, therefore when it comes to digital marketing efforts, knowing what tools are most effective can help. Read the full report from Custora for a deeper look into the survey results.

Data Shows That Online Shopping Habits are Conducted Similarly on Mobile Phones, Tablets and Computers

It goes without question that consumers are using mobile devices more frequently for online activities. New data released by eMarketer shows that online shopping activities are conducted almost equally across computers, mobile phones and tablets.

The survey conducted included 180,000 web users in 31 countries. Results are reflective of the first quarter of 2013. Of those surveyed, 93 percent said to have been using a computer, either a desktop or laptop, during the last couple years. Further, 60 percent said that they used their mobile phone to access the Internet and 66 percent said they used a tablet to access the Internet.

When it comes to online shopping activities, the data showed that 68 percent of those using a computer used the Internet to search for a product or service to buy. Likewise, 61 percent of mobile users and then 60 percent of those using a tablet did the same. Of these consumers, 61 percent using a computer made a purchase online while 52 percent of mobile phone users and 52 percent of tablet users did the same. The percentage of Internet users that purchased services was a bit less with only 35 percent of computer users, 32 percent of mobile phone users and 37 percent of tablet users completing this activity.

Aside from buying habits, the research showed that 50 percent of computer users, 50 percent of mobile phone users and 52 percent of tablet users reviewed a product or brand online.

While Internet users still turn to their computer a small percentage more than to a mobile phone or tablet, the use of these technologies is on the rise. With that said, consumers will continue to demand websites that are friendly to their devices without limiting any functionality. Keep up with this trend and give your consumers what they want by creating a mobile-friendly ecommerce website.  For the entire article, which includes additional statistics, visit eMarketer’s website here.

Video: An Important Tool For Ecommerce Websites

According to ComScore, today in the United States, 89 million people will watch 1.2 billion videos on the Internet. These videos of course include those purely for entertainment purposes, but some will also be viewed on ecommerce websites. As online shopping evolves, consumers are demanding more and video is one resource available to marketers that can be used to fulfill this request.

In the past, images and text were used to paint a picture of a product for consumers. These were further enhanced with the use of color swatches, alternate views and zoom. Now ecommerce websites are increasingly incorporating video to provide consumers with a clearer picture of different product offerings. The use of video in this way has been proven to improve conversion rates and SEO. Video can also increase product visibility when shared in email newsletters and across social media sites in addition to web stores. Overall, the use of video in ecommerce is a more engaging way to showcase products.

How to Incorporate Video

Videos can be user-generated or created by a company. Companies might create videos to:

•         Offer product advice
•         Provide instructional videos
•         Assist with product selection
•         Inform about the product category
•         Showcase the product with real life views
•         Give deeper product details

Contrarily, a user-generated video would be a testimonial. The testimonial might show the product in action or offer a review after the consumer has used it.

One company that makes great use of video on their ecommerce website is Zappos.com. Zappos films employees wearing and talking about the different shoes sold on their website. By using employees rather than hired models, consumers can relate better to the people in the videos. And further, hearing in-depth product information and seeing the shoes being worn by these employees helps consumers not only make purchase decisions, but also have a greater level of confidence in what they are buying.

As more people begin shopping online and ecommerce sales continue to grow, make sure your website has what your customers want to assist in their purchase decision making process. To learn about what ecommerce and payment processing solutions Azox offers, visit our website.

Upgrade eSource to Get the Most Out of Your Ecommerce Website

If you are still on an earlier version of eSource, our ecommerce solution for Microsoft Dynamics GP, you are be missing out on features that can take your website to the next level. In addition to improving the code and vulnerability testing, which has enhanced the overall operation of eSource, many new features have been added.

Adding and editing products is now easier than ever with built-in CMS and what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) interface. These features allow you to see text and graphics onscreen while editing, rather than looking at hard code. This will give you an idea of what the final product will look like and is very user friendly.

eSource has had filtering capabilities for some time now, but with the latest release these are even better. Now users are able to filter and sort product search results with multiple criteria in each category. This means, if you sell shoes for example, a potential customer would be able to search your web store for shoes that are Nine West pumps in brown, black or white, are size eight with two to three inch heels, depending on what attributes you set up.

Online bill payment is another highly sought out feature that you may be unaware of. This add-on allows merchants to accept customer payments online via credit cards and ACH. For customers, online bill pay provides a portal for them to log in to and view the remaining balance on an invoice, apply a credit memo to an open invoice and review payments that have been made.

Another feature of eSource that helps with online advertising is web-based promo pricing. Some examples of this include coupon codes, offering free shipping, buy one, get one specials and markdowns. These are all different pricing options that you can take advantage of when you upgrade your version of eSource to the most current release.

Please take this survey to let us know how eSource is working for you!

Other standard features of eSource include wishlist/saved cart, one page/guest checkout, store locator and support for both crystal and SSRS reports.

Updates that are specific to the latest release of eSource, version 3.4, include guest user checkout, which allows a customer to make a purchase without making an account and CAPTCHA for forgotten logins and passwords.

To learn more about the benefits of upgrading eSource, join us for a webinar May 15, 2013 from 2:00 – 2:30 p.m. EST. For more information now, contact our sales team or view this eSource version comparison document.