Category: eCommerce

eCommerce in India is picking up at a pace we have never expected. The growth of eCommerce start-ups has fueled the growth of few more start-ups who provide support services for e-commerce start-ups.

Logistics is one of such support services or you can say an inevitable and essential part which can lead to failure or success of any eCommerce. Since the internet adoption and penetration has increased up to Tier-II and Tier—III cities, the orders on e-commerce sites have started flowing from these towns.

Apart from this; COD, various promotional and referral offers, all this combined further aggravated online shopping for customers. With this, the “delivery of products” to the remotest town and cities is the challenge which comes in the picture here. And as it is rightly said, “Necessity is the mother of invention”, this gives rise to new breed of hyperlocal logistics provider for eCommerce business set-ups.

This hyperlocal logistics provider works best for small eCommerce businesses or new ventures that recently entered into this click and buy business.

Why these hyper local be a perfect match for small businesses?

• They are affordable like you hire cabs or rickshaws for your own movement for one place to another in your city.
• They are quick, local and easily manageable.
• These start-ups have adopted different models: while some are marketplaces and simply connect customers with service providers, other start-ups directly employ, train and offer electricians, plumbers and other service providers, so you have diversified options for your business.
• Product and Delivery team being in the same city reduces turnaround time by a great margin giving you happy customers.
• Being able to outsource the whole delivery chain, they help you in cutting down significant costs and focus on core things for your business.

We heard and read a lot about these hyper local logistics service provider and thought of sharing few of these on-the-go buddies to help you out in delivering right things at right time to your customers.

1. Shadowfax

Started by Abhishek Bansal and Vaibhav Khandelwal (IIT-D Alumni), Shadowfax has grown big in their business. They have also raised a good amount of money from VCs to take the business to the next level.

Currently, they are serving merchants in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru and delivering goods and services around these cities. With the recent funds received from few big sources, they are in the phase of expanding their reach and making their system more robust. Their current clientele includes restaurants, pharmacy, florists, and grocery stores.

The pricing structure of Shadowfax is very flexible without any fixed costs involved. They charge customers on per delivery basis and thus, easily affordable for merchants or small business owners.

2. Opinio

Opinio is founded by Mahesh Kumar and Lokesh Jangid, two engineering graduates with entrepreneurial skills.

A company is serving grocery stores, electrical goods stores, laundries and bakeries on per order basis in and areas near Bengaluru.

Opinio also have apps registered on Apple and Google play store to track the deliveries. They give merchants Opinio App from where they can book delivery boy (Which they called us pilot), he picks up the order and do the delivery.

They also have kept the pricing model pretty simple to enable customers to reduce costs on their delivery model. They have adopted per order/per km pricing model which doesn’t incur any additional or fixed costs per order.

3. Pickingo

This one year old start-up started by IIT and IIM graduates is simplifying local commerce for customers and merchants in six cities. Right now, this start-up is catering to Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bengaluru and New Delhi.

The pricing of Pickingo is also in par with other players of the industry like Shadowfax and Opinio. They have distinguished themselves with one point of accepting payment only for timely deliveries of goods or services.

They are also catering to reverse pick up segment for eCommerce portals and are charging eCommerce companies on basis of weight of shipment.

Pickingo received a strategic investment from online food ordering, and restaurants listing giant Zomato and is backed by several big VCs. Sources suggest Picking go raised around $1.3 million from Orios Venture Partners along with Angel investors.

The company is investing in technical areas and upgrading services for merchants and taking business to next level as soon as possible.

4. Grab

Grab started in 2013 and since then it is one of the players in hyperlocal logistics provider market. A latest article published on grab and its upcoming strategies stated that they have more than 600 clients. Their clientele is mixed of e-commerce stores, grocery, pharma, and electrical goods.

They have established variable pricing model with no signup fees for merchants. They are currently operating in 10 cities and planning to launch their operations in two more cities (Chennai and Hyderabad by end of this year).

5. Parcelled

This on-demand hyperlocal logistics provider gained momentum with their new model of C2C logistics provider and delivery model. They eliminated the franchisees who act as middle men.

They pick up the goods or services, pack them and submit it to company’s warehouse from where they choose suitable courier partner to get the things delivered. Meanwhile, they also take care of packing and saves customer time.

Started by ex-flipkarts, they have been experienced with the kind of problems customers face while ordering and receiving goods via e-commerce portals. With Parcelled, they are trying to solve the same. They are currently operating in Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedbad, Jaipur, Chennai, Mumbai, Indore, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Surat.

They are operating on Business based pricing rather than franchisee based pricing which falls light on customers’ pocket as they don’t have to bear extra charges.

Technology changes at the blink of the eye and for e-commerce; it’s been a decade now. The onset of e-commerce 1.o is marked with starting of Amazon and Ebay. It was riding on wheels of pricing, convenience and selection. But the rules of the game have been entirely changed with industry shifting towards e-commerce 2.o.

The major attributes which come up for e-commerce 2.o are quality of product, service and platform, Curation and Personalization, Rich User Experience coupled with Omni channel presence and various payment options.

How your Online Business can adjust with e-commerce 2.o?

1. Quality of Product, Service and Platform

With the whole game changing, pricing in e-commerce 1.o is replaced by quality (be it of product, service or platform). With rise in per capita income, customers are ready to pay more if you deserve more. The top concern now is quality of product and service which they are encountering. The quality here covers a broad term of pre-sales, sales and post-sales experience.

With technology expanding its area, you cannot ignore the platform on which you are delivering the product and service. The platform also needs to match user experience.

E-commerce 2.o has enriched shopping experience with options of review and comparisons about the product and manufacturers. This shifted the power to the hands of consumers and thus, making it more important for brands to stress upon their quality of product, service and platform.

2. Curation and Personalization

Though still customers need variety of options when it comes to shopping, but the next phase is selection of products is curated and personalized stuff. Personalization has already touched every aspect of lives. Be it apparels, lifestyle, grocery or any other kind of e-tailing, cutomers want personalized experiences from brand.

With e-commerce 2.o, options of personalization have increased. There are various tools and technologies integrated with e-commerce 2.o, which have been used to provide curated experiences to the customers in terms of product, marketing campaigns, shopping platform, their interest areas and many more.

Thus, if your online store is providing a whole lot of range to select from but lack in curated and personalized experience, it’s time to join hands with e-commerce 2.o.

3. Rich User Experience

To keep it in simple words, I would define Rich User Experience as more pervasive, dynamic and interactive platform for customers to interact with a brand or brand representatives. Previously during e-commerce 1.o, convenience in terms of shopping, delivery and payment was more stresses upon. With technological advancement, these areas are taken care of and now replaced by Rich User Experience.

E-commerce 2.o has been evolved to provide users with seamless shopping experience enriched with rich-user interface. With coupling of this with Omni channel presence of brands and their customers, e-commerce 2.o has taken the whole industry to next level.

4. Pay at ease

Drawing out payment from someone’s wallet is the toughest thing to do. But e-commerce transition has made this thing easy. Now, it depends on quality of service, product or platform, peripheral experiences your brand provides to consumers and various options of payment which makes easier for them to consider your brand first.

With technological advancements, options of wallet payment, mobile payment, cash-on-delivery, EMI and various other payment alternatives bubbling up to provide seamless shopping experience to customers.

Thus, if your online business is lacking on these options, you are keeping yourself behind the industry trend of e-commerce 2.o.

We have come across a lot of clients who always wanted to have their online store in the form of a mobile application but they even had a fear of investing a huge amount in building the application and not sure if Apple would approve the application. As we all know publishing an application on the Apple’s App Store is a big deal… yes a real big deal. With millions of apps in the app store they have tighten the policies and security to avoid any tom, dick and harry create anything rubbish and publish it on the app store hence lowering their standards.

Their discriminate review process makes sure all the apps that are published on the app store are the best in all the aspects be it content, user friendliness, navigations and application design. No doubt it gives a tough time to the developers while making the improvements and resubmitting the apps expecting it to get approved. Hence everyday thousands or may be lacks of applications get rejected by Apple.

While being a premium mobile commerce solution company, MobiCommerce was successful in listing down few top reasons why application gets rejected over Apple and a few tips to take into consideration while submitting your app to the App Store and increasing its chances of getting accepted in the first effort itself.

Engaging Content:

Make your app engaging while creating an interactive content that users would love to read. You may write about the wow features of your app, the usability that will entice users to use the app. Do not use content as similar to any regularweb content, attract your users with content that makes them download the application and user it regularly.

The User Interface:

Make sure the application you have created has a user friendly interface and it is tested thoroughly before submitting to the App Store. Make sure the app is bug free.

Erroneous Descriptions:

Make sure the description of your app clearly mentions the purpose of the app and the functionalities. The description acts as a guideline for those who browse through your app details before downloading. Hence the description should be precise and up to the mark before making it live.

Broken Links:

Each and every link on your app should be functioning properly. All the contact details, email addresses mentioned in the app should be functional. If any information is missing or found faulty, the application will definitely get rejected.

Images:

Make sure to upload all the application screenshots and app images before submitting the app to the app store. Applications without images will definitely get rejected.

Since the App market place is growing, it is obvious for Apple to be selective and strict in verification process. Hence once needs to be creative enough when plan to submit the application to the app store.

The emerging eCommerce business has taken the shopping experience of customers to the next level. In order to design and develop an amazingly swift eCommerce store, Magento is the best platform. Being a free Open Source platform it gives immense customization capability. To keep up with the increasing customer demand and fulfill their needs. It has become a must to have a mobile app for an eCommerce store.

According to experts if your business is not investing in a mobile eCommerce solution, you are probably missing on attracting potential customers and directing them to the competitor’s business. 43% of smartphone users claim to find mobile shopping quick and easy rather than shopping through the site.

Mobile App is one such platform which allows a shopper to make the decision whenever required. Making your webstore available in the form of Mobile App would definitely increase your store availability at the same time increase exposure of your products and your brand. Having a Magento mobile app would provide the advantage of easy integration with your existing Magento store. This enables you to manage your web store and your app all from the administrator’s panel. An integrated mobile app builds trust factor among the shoppers as it allows them to compare products and prices and take advantage of promotional offers all through the mobile app.

The advanced version of Magento is categorized into two parts Magentowebstore with an XML Connect extension and a native application. The new version comprises of several features that are beneficial for both consumers and merchants. Some useful features like online payment, gift cards and credit card acceptance while purchasing are now available. Easy access to the order details and also a facility to write product review and rating through the smart phone is now available on the maganto mobile apps. Magento Mobile App comes with default features which are already available on Magento eCommerce site. And also add-on features like push notification, mobile shopping cart and many more which enhances the mobile shopping experience of the customers.

Hence it becomes a must to adopt a mobile application for your eCommerce store as the number of people searching for products online using the mobile shopping apps has been tremendously increasing. Shoppers prefer mobile apps in place of ecommerce sites as there is less navigability. A recent studyby Comscorestates that shoppers who search for products over mobile app 78% of those shoppers place an order right away through the mobile app. The amazingly high conversion rate builds high opportunity for eCommerce business and has been cementing roles of mobile applications like ecommerce magento iPhone app and magento android app as the backbone of the modern eCommerce.

Magento Mobile apps play a major role in leading the mCommerce business and all the foremost eCommerce businesses can leverage the technology and earn high ROI while attracting more and more customers to the online store.

If you are uncertain about the co-relation between mobile and business, it is high time you accept the fact that Mobile is no longer a future but it is the present. Our day today activities are getting mobile rather than stagnant the conventional way, however the wearable device is yet to take off the market,the statistics say it all. A leading Media states that ”The mobile industry will be valued for more than $1.6 trillion and the numbers are expected to rise up to multi-trillions in next 10 years” from now.

With the increase in mobile usage, there has been a vast change in the consumer’s shopping habit. With increase in the number of various payment options and the security protocols consumers find it a better preferred source to shop through mobile. Now this puts a lot of online businesses into pressure to create a prominent mobile presence. For any business to attract customers over the mobile app it becomes a need to deliver a user-friendly mobile app which is as easy as using the desktop site. Studies by tech experts say that “76 per cent of shoppers so mobile shopping while at home while whereas 31 per cent of mobile users shop while at work”.

• Around 67 per cent of mobile users have installed an ecommerce app on their smartphones
• 30 per cent of mobile app users have more than four applications installed in their smartphones

Ecommerce experts recommend not to compromise on mobile applications however put efforts in making them more user friendly to enhance user experience. A usual mobile shopper use mobile to search the store information, compare pricing, check for discount coupons and read the reviewsand rating of the product.

What is it that businesses need to do to enhance shopping experience?

Enhance Mobile experience:

Although your online store has the best of brands available and best of support you might provide but if the mobile app is not that user friendly all the other efforts are worthless. 43% of shoppers claim that they prefer purchasing on ecommerce sites that are available on as a desktop version as well as a mobile application.

Create a prominent social media presence:

While retailers struggle to achieve sales numbers through social media, studies reveal one third of the sale has been made by being influenced through social media or friends sharing their purchase over social media. Hence a prominent social media presence is required where you can promote your products; share discounts and offers whereas customers can give the rating and review of their overall purchasing experience with you. This real time active social media sharing helps a lot in boosting up the sales numbers.

Add Push notification:

Apart from providing the mobile experience it is good to send alerts when the sale is about to begin and this will boost up the sales.

Ensure Data Security:

No matter how user-friendly your app may be, if there are security issues then it will create a negative impact. Ensure your clients of the data security which will give them confidence of a safe financial transaction.

Multiple Payment Options:

Facilitate customers will multiple payment options for their convenience.

With increase in the number of people using mobile app days are not far when mCommerce will take over eCommerce for the only reason as it gives flexibility and mobility.