Blog
BLOGS
The Growing Pains of Indian E-Commerce: What You Need to Know
A survey conducted during the middle of last year had revealed that India has an internet user base of around 137 million. Of course, the penetration of e-commerce in India is rather disappointing as compared with many other developed or developing economies of the world. But it is noteworthy that e-commerce is steadily becoming more and more widespread in India because of several encouraging factors:
- Robust growth in broadband internet and 3G penetration
- Expanding middle class population with surplus income and hence greater purchasing power
- Availability of an ever widening product range
- The natural disinclination to do offline shopping due to modern lifestyles, traffic congestion, crowded outlets, lack of time etc
- Online shopping means less prices as compared to brick and mortar retail outlets.
Do not forget that India is indisputably the most rapidly growing online market among BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations and this obviously is trigging a highly promising e-commerce market. Many economist and market experts opine India will soon emerge as one of the largest online retail markets in the world.
It is universally known that any growth is accompanied by pain. But instead of becoming overly obsessed with the pain aspect, one should draw solace from the fact that Indian e-commerce is healthily growing. Admittedly, there are certain grim issues India has to contend with when it comes to e-commerce growth:
- The digital divide is still very pronounced and internet penetration is quite low.
- The profitability in online retail segment continues to be rather tardy.
- Despite having 110 million internet users, it is only a minority that is opting to use e-commerce
- Presently, online retail is woefully low at less than 1 percent of India’s retail market
- Bulk of Indian consumers does not have bank accounts or debit and credit cards.
Special efforts are needed to make buyers switch over to online shopping. But, the cost associated with popularizing online shopping in India is reportedly unaffordable for many online retailers.
India is still in infantile stage as regards e-commerce and investments have to be made to drive buyers and brands to the world of digital commerce.
To direct customers to online shopping, retailers in India must make inducements like payment by cash or through credit card on delivery and offer unambiguous return policies. Consumers in India will start buying online more once there is greater trust in the system.
How Social Tools Lead To Business Opportunities
It is common knowledge that social media has tremendously grown in importance in recent times and business enterprises are becoming aware of the diverse business opportunities that social tools provide.
Businesses that are utilizing social tools to oversee and connect and collaborate socially with their customers have a positive edge over their competitors – particularly in today’s age and time when people have become social media addicts.
You can use social media tools to oversee the market trends, obtain clearer insights regarding what buyers talk about, what specific needs a prospective buyer is looking for etc. The social tools help you to ascertain who the market influencers and trend setters are and the type of products in demand, the prevailing prices and the overall market behavior.
Tools facilitate marketing teams to maintain social ties with large sections of their target audience. The tools positively enable teams to reach out to a much wider sections of the market within a short time as compared to cold canvassing calling or even email shots. Social media tools can be seamlessly integrated into CRM methods and other market support systems.
It is a fact that blogs have become one of the most effective technologies in the social web and blogs are generating business opportunities aplenty when properly utilized. Blogs have become an impactful method of communicating to the prospective purchasers all that they need to know about your company and your products
Merely inflating the number of your fans on Facebook does not help sell your products. The time you spend on Facebook must be rewarding for your business. It is suggested that you get to the next level by investing in a Facebook marketing platform to promote your business interests.
Agorapulse is an effective Facebook marketing platform that offers wide array functionalities like page management, the convenience of building up your fan profiles and converting your fans into sales leads.
It is possible to enhance your interaction with existing as well as prospective customers through social media and Nimble is a Social CRM tool that aids you to manage and improve relationships with your customers.
IFTTT is a purposeful tool for automating few of the tasks pertaining to social media. The advantage is if a development takes place then another is triggered. For instance, when you write a blog post it can be made to automatically share on twitter.
The common complaint is social media stealthily consumes a lot of your time. But, by employing the right social tools, your social media strategy can pay enormous dividends.
The Future of the Web: The Case for Responsive Design
Technology is advancing at a rapid pace and users are finding it overwhelming to cope up with the number of new devices and platforms that keep emerging. However, many experts believe that Responsive Web Design will work uniformly well regardless whatever changes of mobile devices the future holds.
According to surveys, mobile subscribers are increasingly opting for smartphones and tablets sales are swiftly overtaking the sales of laptops. However, it is said that with responsive web design, your website will react perfectly well to any device that is accessing it – be it a smartphone or tablet or whatever.
Instead of building numerous apps or separate websites for compatibility with various devices, it is only logical to make your website uniformly responsive to multiple devices.
Responsive web design is indeed the most talked about subject in the web industry nowadays, However, what remains to be seen is whether responsive web design is one more short-lived craze or is it the lasting solution to the web future.
A study conducted last year by Google revealed that more than 75 percent of users prefer a mobile-friendly site. In other words, they expect that your website to be favorably responsive to mobile devices.
The users are happy that the responsive design builds on one site and they want it to function uncompromisingly perfectly across all devices. This means you have to just maintain a single site and content alone needs to be updated in one spot.
Designing a responsive website will no doubt be less expensive and less tedious than designing/building multiple unique sites and apps for various devices.
But there are some opposing views on whether responsive web design is the technique of the future. While blogs may ideally fit into responsive designs, large content-heavy sites with images will have to be compromised with – as any heavy design that looks superb on a 22” monitor will not be the same on a mobile phone device.
Notwithstanding criticisms, responsive web design has a promising future. Already you can discern some tremendous progress in Ecommerce. A recent case study has conclusively proved that smartphone users are more interested to buy from a responsive website than download an app.
Responsive web design is certainly the best way to cater to the mobile audience. One thing must be acknowledged by both proponents and critics that the concept of responsive web designs are steadily evolving. Soon will come a time, when all websites will become truly responsive and whatever limitations there are will be surmounted.
Top 7 Web Design mistakes Small Businesses make
We are living in a digital age and small businesses can ill-afford to ignore the over-powering impact internet has on marketing strategies. Any small business that does not have a well-structured, imaginatively designed and functional website risks the possibility of losing numerous potential customers.
Many small businesses have imperfectly designed websites because they fail to realize the importance of web presence. They do not entrust the job of web designing to competent professional web designers. It may be worthwhile to know some of the seven common web design mistakes that small businesses commit.
1. Flash lets web designers to create appealing elements like video, audio and animations. Despite the wonders of Flash, constructing an entire website overly using Flash can be self-defeating. Please know that visitors who are impatiently searching for relevant information will often find excessive Flash design annoying.
2. Many websites give little importance to navigation and so creating a frustrating experience for visitors. If customers cannot find information quickly, they will exit the site thinking your business will be as disorganized as your website.
3. Color and contrast do not receive the priority they deserve. If your website text does not have sufficient contrast in relation to its background, visitors will find reading your content difficult – more so, those suffering from poor vision or color-blindness.
4. Sadly, a large number of small businesses overload their site with dense text and graphics instead of establishing a proper visual content hierarchy so that visitors can quickly gather relevant information. Besides, a website that is heavy with graphics, also takes a longer time to load. Please bear in mind potential customers that visit a website are invariably impatient.
5. Many small businesses tend to cram as much information as possible making the web pages cluttered and reader-unfriendly. A cluttered website will also impede traffic because visitors will avoid re-visiting the site. This will result in poor traffic, higher bounce rate and a low Page Rank.
6. Website not getting promptly updated with the latest information about business happenings, products and services. This sends a wrong signal you are no longer in business or you are not ahead of the competition. Besides, visitors may resent reading content that is stale.
7. Directionless targeting can be suicidal. The website becomes messy when it tries to satisfy every kind of visitor. There is need to focus on designing the website with the right target audience in mind and provide them best possible user experience. Trying to please too many may end up pleasing none.
How to make your website to be Social Media compatible
A website that’s optimized for social media sharing usually attracts more traffic and more engagement with customers. The most small business websites have deserted the importance of including their social media connections into their website.
There are some easy things that you will be able to do to begin including the social media outlets you use into your website today.
Make Your Website Interactive & Engaging
A company must have a clear mission declaration, vision and rules of engagement. A company’s website is much more than a source of information on the services and products. Client expectations have changed considerably in last few years. Clients today expect the website to be interactive and engaging. You require being able to meet up this prospect if you want your website to be successful.
Make a quality content
Providing quality content expected at your targeted audience is one of the most effective ways to develop your website. This is not only important for blogs although is equally significant for business websites. Whether you are an ecommerce business that sells online or offering quality information related to your specialty is the most effective way to attract a targeted audience to your website. Once you are able to make enough traffic, you will have the chance to promote your business and change visitors into leads.
Build your site more social
Whatever your business is, you must be socially active. Social media is an effective way to promote your business online. It is mostly helpful for small businesses as it is cost effective and provides the chances to compete effectively with established businesses. Social media permits a business target a big customer-base. There are lots of ways to use social media for your business. Your company’s website is one of the best channels to build and develop your social presence.
Update site Regularly
One of the biggest mistakes, most of them do is not updating the website on a regular basis. Search engines like fresh content on your website. It also gives an encouragement for people to come back to your website. Website technology changes on an almost daily basis, so make certain you take advantage of the modern functions and trends in order to stay over the competition.
Actively respond to feedback
Allowing your visitors to leave you feedback about your website, products and services is a best way to find out what you can do to improve your business. Client created content can provide answers and information to other visitors on your website. Just make sure to keep an eye on what’s being posted.
Track diligently and make adjustments
You may accept that certain brands are simply more probable to win in social engagement than others; however that is seldom the case. Success frequently comes down to a more vital process of testing and making adjustments.
5 Entrepreneurial Skills that will make you more Influential and Successful
Anybody can be an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, not everybody has the proper skills essential to succeed as an entrepreneur. The right skills are surely a plus, but just like a participant, an entrepreneur can forever learn skills to improve their performance.
But, any fresh entrepreneur with the following skills will experience more less despair and much more success.
Self confidence
Building your own enterprise is a risky business, and those who trust in their own capabilities and abilities to get them out of the small tangles are the ones who prosper compared to the ones who distrust themselves always. So trusting that you are brilliant enough, capable, diligent, deserving and destined for excellent things will no doubt take you to precisely where you need to go, and beyond. When you have this skill down, the other entrepreneurial skills will follow suit more effortlessly.
Being an action taker
For things to advancement you should do something and you should be ready to invest in yourself, your education, your marketing, and your business in common to succeed. Provided that you actually need the lifestyle and money that the top earners have, then you should get to work and be eager to pay for the tools and systems needed to get you there.
Learn new things and accept change
As your business develops, so may as well you. You need to consistently be learning new things to stay in front of the diversion. You will never know the lot, which indicates that there is constantly going to be something unique for you to learn. Furthermore, when trends change, you need to have the capacity to adjust to these changes. Learning and adjustability sort of go as one, and if you are eager to learn new things, you are obviously very suitable to changes, which can be good for your business in the long run.
Administration skills
If you cannot manage, do employ an assistant who will arrange your office space and document your papers. But, most start-up entrepreneurs could not afford such luxuries. Well beyond the jobs of managing, marketing and planning your business, you also require to possess a great deal of administration skills. You need to record your receipts so tax time should not be an outing to someplace. You require doing all the work in terms of billing, printing invoices, collecting payments, and managing your receivables.
Promotional Spirit
An entrepreneur is the greatest cheerleader on the team. Yet previous to the business is off the ground, an entrepreneur must promote their experience and expertise, and also the business concept to potential investors. An entrepreneur will need to promote their business to clients, business partner, and other joint business enterprise possibilities as well. And while the entrepreneur has the business vision, it’s dependent upon him or her to make the right choices on promoting and marketing the product or service to the end client.