Ecommerce integration options for businesses

When into ecommerce, a business is invariably up against a number of scenarios in relation to the integration strategies it has to adapt. Ecommerce is all about integration, and it is important for a business to decide on some points of this aspect. Contrary to some conceptions, an ecommerce business need not integrate all its functions (systems) fully with one another or with the backend. In fact, there are some ebusinesses that run without integration at all. This is dependent on the kind of business that is being done online. In considering integration, a business could think of these important factors: What to integrate? When to integrate? How much to integrate?With what to integrate?
What to integrate?
This is the fundamental question a business would ask itself. Which of its functions does it choose to integrate? The answer to this question lies in the importance these functions have for the business. What to integrate depends on the prospects the ecommerce business has. For instance, the business may not be sure about how it stands in relation to the industry. It may be uncertain about some elements of the business, like how much more time it is going to do business in this particular line. The business could take a decision on what to integrate based on this.
When to integrate?
The next important decision an ecommerce business would need to take after it has finalised on what to integrate, is when the integration has to be done. This again depends on the importance the functions that have to be integrated have for the business. Some functions have to be integrated at the start, while some others have to be integrated at a later time, either midway through the business or at a later stage. It is always a sensible idea to look ahead and complete the task of integration at the beginning, because doing this later would usually be arduous and expensive. This requires some foresight on the part of the business.
How much to integrate?
Once the business has decided on the first of these two options, it needs to next think of how much, or what part of its systems its needs to integrate. Some businesses think it is a good idea to integrate only those systems that cannot run smoothly without integration, and others integrate even less important systems, in the assumption that these could become more important over time.
With what to integrate?
This is a rather simple, but important question for an ecommerce business. It needs to weigh the option of whether to integrate systems with one another or with the backend. This is a purely strategic decision, as it depends on the system or function that needs integration. Some functions need to be integrated with one another, like for instance in a standalone retail store, while typically, chain stores need integration with the backend.

Do you need an ecommerce roadmap?

Asking this question is the same as asking if you need to pass an exam to know whether you have graduated to the next level. It is something like playing a soccer match without the goalpost. Where would you get if you did that? Would anyone know who won and who lost? Doing ecommerce business is much the same. In order to know where you are headed, you need to fix a roadmap.
Fledgling business line, still
Despite all that technology has ushered in, ecommerce is still inchoate. Although its possibilities are limitless, ecommerce has a long way to go before it can be termed as complete. It is still infantile, in a sense. Regulations and compliances are yet to be put in place fully. So, whatever this crop of ecommerce entrepreneurs does will serve as the path the next generation has to follow. That is why it is necessary to create goals and make sure they are fulfilled.
Defining an ecommerce roadmap
An ecommerce roadmap is, in simple terms, as its self-explanatory nomenclature says, a plan for the future of the business. A roadmap is the route to the target that those in ecommerce business set for their business. Using this as a reference, they can gauge how they performed over different points of time in their journey. A roadmap is not a goal; it is the means to one. Ecommerce businesses could be aware of what they want to achieve over a fixed point of time; an ecommerce roadmap is the trail they have to take to reach there.
The difficulty of having an ecommerce roadmap
So, how does one chalk out a roadmap in an industry that still has to grow? This is the real challenge to carving out a roadmap. Chalking out a roadmap may not be very complicated for a business that has settled in; but for an emerging business, it is all the more difficult. What makes an ecommerce roadmap doubly difficult to carve is that this business is entirely dependent on technology, which keeps changing drastically over a short period of time, making everything that was followed till then out-dated.
Keen understanding of the business
Changing scenarios present the greatest challenges to any roadmap; at the same time, it is also this environment that defines the foresight any business has. It is no doubt easier said than done, but once a business has its ears to the ground and is sensitive to all the happenings in the industry, having a roadmap for ecommerce is not impossible. Businessmen with a keen acumen have the knack of foreseeing where they are headed. This is something that a sharp businessman should be able to accomplish without being too much off tangent.

Is e-commerce going to last?

Is there a future for me in ecommerce?
The questions that are uppermost in most e-businesses’ minds are usually these –is this business here to stay? For how long are people going to shop on the Net? What are the growth prospects for this medium? Is it going to be here for a lot more time or is it going to go the dotcom way? What will happen to my business if ecommerce stops?
Scope only for hope, not despair
To assuage all these issues, let us first start by first of all congratulating ecommerce businesses for having taken the decision to start this mode of business. You have after all taken up a business in which you can reach out to anyone on this planet. What a physical store would never ever be able to do in terms of reach is at the core of ecommerce. An ecommerce business is a business without boundaries. It is a business in which you can sell to a person at the other end of the globe in no time.
Born from the Net
E-business is smart business. It is a way of leveraging technology in ways that were impossible to comprehend a few years ago. Ecommerce arose because of the spread and expanse of the Net. So, logically speaking, it should last as long as people use the Net. If anything, the Net can only grow. It still has vast tracts of the world that are untouched by its influence. The influence of the Net can only pervade those parts of the world in the future. If it cannot, it can still remain where it is –in parts of the world in which it is already there. And this can be the worst case scenario.
No way for it to go out
For the world to stop using the Net at any time in the future, the human brain that gave us the Net should eschew the faculty of using the computer altogether. It is only then that the Net, and with it, online shopping, goes out of use!When is the Net going to become obsolete? In this wired world, is it ever possible to figure a scenario in which we will return to the pre-Internet days?
Problems? Maybe, but end? No
Agreed, an ecommerce has unique issues and challenges. This is something no industry is exempt from. If there are problems, there are solutions, too. As the old adage goes, there is no problem without a solution; if there is no solution, it is not a problem. This is in no way to suggest that it is of such a nature that people will stop shopping on the Net. In sum, ecommerce is here to stay. We have already talked about the situation in which it could become out-dated or out of use!

Dealing with ecommerce site crashes

The most embarrassing of all goof ups
An e-business can reach out to a large market and help you push your products anywhere in the world. Only if it functions smoothly, that is. There is perhaps no greater embarrassment for an e-business than to have an ecommerce website with problems with its functions. Apart from the obvious embarrassment this brings; a crashed site can crash your business. Imagine if you are running a physical store and are unable to open the shop door! What would any customer do, other than take the step of walking out of the shop and shopping at the next available shop?
Costly lapse
Having an ecommerce site that does not stock what customers are looking for is one thing; having an ecommerce site that has what the customer wants and doesn’t allow her to go ahead with the purchase is quite another. A site suffering from the problem of glitches is liable to be lost forever in the mind of the shopper. An online shopper after all, expects the best. She goes into the online shop only because she wants something that she doesn’t find in the physical store. Or she could have come to a particular site looking for something that is not found elsewhere. The risk of having an ecommerce website that does not facilitate this is very big.
Getting the right ecommerce website
One of the primary reasons for this is that an ecommerce website is unable to handle too much traffic at one stroke. The basic reason this happens is when it does not have sufficient bandwidth. This happens when the resilience needed to handle heavy traffic surges at different times is not built into the software application. An ecommerce website should be able to handle any kind of traffic at any point of time. It should maintain the same performance irrespective of whether it is low traffic it is handling or high traffic it is up against. That is why a flexible ecommerce application like http://www.nichesuite.com/ is a viable solution.
Combination of the right ingredients
In addition to having robustness in itssoftware to handle any hiccup, the ecommerce backend solutionshould also have the right ingredients that go into the ecommerce site. It should make proper placement of the product features and icons. All the features should be made to function efficiently and neatly. The payment gateway, for instance, should function without any hassles. The same goes for all other aspects. It is thus very important for a business to choose the right software application, or else its business can go down the drain.

Dealing with abandoned carts

Oh, the disappointment of it!
For any ecommercebusiness, nothing perhaps is more frustrating and disappointing than finding abandoned carts. Abandoned carts are those items that a visitor to the ecommerce website puts into the cart (virtual basket), but forsakes without completing the checkout. In other words, an abandoned cart is an incomplete sale, and this can hurt an online business. It is akin to the situation of a person checking into a physical store intending to buy items, selecting them and not going ahead with the purchase, except that this is a more common phenomenon in ecommerce businesses.
Some reasons
Extensive research has been carried out to zero in on the reasons for which people abandon carts. The most commonreasons for which shoppers abandon shopping carts include:
• Finding a better or better looking product and changing the mind
• Design of the product is another reason for abandonment
• Lack of clarity about the next steps
• Being confused at the last moment about whether this product is exactly what they were looking for
• Running out of patience during the checkout time if the page is slow to load
• Apprehensions about passing confidential credit card details to an unknown entity
Difficult to fix exact reason
For shoppers to abandon a cart is easy, but unfortunately, for en ecommerce business to prevent it is not!There is no one reason for which a shopper does this; this makes the job of fixing the problem all the tougher. Each abandoner could have a unique reason. An ecommerce business would ideally have to go to the root of every act of abandonment and find out the reasons for abandonment and then take steps to prevent such an occurrence. This is easier said than done. Yet, despite the diverse nature of the problem, a few generic steps can be taken. These could reduce the rate of cart abandonment.
Working on reducing cart abandonment
As we have seen, although there are a wide range of reasons for this act, some common reasons for which people abandon carts can be worked on.
A good starting point would be to track the buyer. Recent upgrades into buying software incorporate a feature by which the email id of the visitor is obtained before many of the long processes take shape. This may not be the perfect solution, since it is always easy to leave a phony mail id or a proxy one. Yet, this gives an address to contact the customer. A follow up email could go some way in understanding the reasons.
Software that offers verified security, both at the level of the ecommerce website as well as third party payment gateways, is another way of assuring the online shopper that the payment is going to be safe and that her identity is not going to become public.
Making the ecommerce website shopper-friendly from as many perspectives as possible is also another step. Proper design, right placement of the right product and relevant and precise information about the product are some of the ways in which the online shopper will not feel like leaving the site in a hurry.

Understanding f-commerce

Commerce with Facebook
Perhaps no business has matched the phenomenon of Facebook. Both in terms of the size and growth rate, it has few parallels for any business in any part of the world, perhaps at any point of time. Started in the middle of the night, literally, from a room by its founder, Mark Zuckerberg only seven years ago; Facebook has exploded into a multi-billion dollar business. It has three-fourths of a billion users as of mid-2011.
Reaching out to your users
For an ecommerce business, the prospect of being connected to this huge a potential market looks tempting. Agreed, all 750 million may not be targeted customers, but sifting from this huge database can still make it a great source of potential buyers. For an ecommerce business to lay its hands on such a possible market, it is necessary to first connect with it. It takes an ecommerce solution like http://www.nichesuite.com/ to do this. NicheSuite enables integration with Facebook, taking an online business to the next level.
UK too
The number of 750 million may appear to be huge and disparate. This need not be so for a business that plans to sell globally. Nevertheless, for those who want to target only the UK market, there is good news. The UK, for long considered the world’s most mature market for ecommerce, is a big growth market for Facebook. It has no fewer than 30 million users in the UK, which constitutes one of Facebook’s fastest growing markets. It has been growing at an enviable rate of almost four million users a year. It is only set to grow even more in the years to come.
The UK market for Facebook presents a prospect that is too good to overlook: Half the entire country’s entire population is on Facebook. There are no figures on how many actually shop using Facebook, but it is not too naïve to assume that in a country fond of online shopping, an additional, added resource could be an important driver of online sales. Even if an online shopper does not end up buying on Facebook, she can follow a brand or product, which means a potential buyer waiting in the wings.
Connect in no time
One of NicheSuite’s major advantages is that it can integrate your business with Facebook in less than 24 hours. Facebook offers selling in these types: Facebook-facilitated on-site selling; Facebook-initiated selling, and complete selling through Facebook. Transacting on Facebook is done via PayPal after the customer places an order.

Benefits of integrating your ecommerce site with eBay

Reach out, reach out, reach out
Ecommerce drives on the mantra of reaching out. Even for an offline store, one of the most important elements for success is inbeing seen. This is natural, because you may have the best products in the market, but if you are not known in your neighbourhood, there is no chance by which you can succeed. If this is the importance of exposure to a brick and mortar business that has to compete with perhapsa handful of stores, one can imagine how important this quality is for an ecommerce site that has to be found among millions of other such sites. Exposure is of primary importance to an ecommerce business. This is exactly what eBay integration gives to your online business.
The more the numbers, the better
With a user base of over 200 million, 15 million of which are from the UK alone, and with 10 million products traded on it; eBay is the world’s largest online marketplaceat present. For an online business to get access to these 200 million users,integratingit with eBay is necessary. How does you online store integrate with eBay? And what does it take to integrate with it? When you have an ecommerce solution like http://www.nichesuite.com/, your job is as easy as a few clicks, because the entire integration process is carried out by this solution.
Integrating with eBay in toto
The beauty of having an online solution provider such as http://www.nichesuite.com/ is that your work is simplified to the limit. You cannot imagine the ease with which your site integrates with eBay. NicheSuite’s eBay integration suite automates the most important aspects of eBay:
• Best offers
• Counter offers
• Reclamation of fees for any products unsold
• Retrieving current listings of eBay categories
• Second chance offers
• Submitting products to be listed, and many more
Why both an eBay store and an ecommerce site?
This is a fundamental question most ecommerce businesses that are looking at eBay integration have. The answer is simple, and it is ‘yes’. Suppose you are only on eBay and your store becomes very popular with many visitors. Now, in this situation, if you want this success carried over to your ecommerce website, eBay does not permit this. The current situation with eBay is that when you are connected to an eBay store site, you are restricted to only eBay or PayPal users. It is because of this that you need an ecommerce solution as well.Having both gives you the additional ability to addfunctionality at any time in the future.
Your online store and eBay in a single solution
In addition to this, there is one more important reason for which you should integrate with eBay. What http://www.nichesuite.com/ offers you is a single solutionfor both the stores, which means you have the wonderful opportunity of having your customers into one single parasol under which they enjoy the best features of both.In doing this, you increase the chance of drawing more traffic into your site exponentially.