The answer seems to be variating under different circumstances. Throughout the year discounts are the best promotional vehicle for luring customers at least for the first time whereas free shipping hinders the decision-making capabilities of lured customers. The role of both the techniques are quite different but their ultimate goal is to achieve the maximum conversion rate. Checkout the statistics and face that improve your ROI by an eCommerce development company.

Statistics related to both the techniques by Statista:

1. 8% of the shopping carts are abandoned due to the lack of discounts or coupon codes.
2. 25% of the shopping carts are deserted due to the unexpected shipping charges.

As the stats suggest, unexpected free charges affect the behavioral economics of the shoppers more than the discounts. But few other stats report that discounts are a much-needed method of promotion. But do surveys really tell the complete story of buying decision, especially when the circumstances are different, occasions are not same, and locality requirements vary? I don’t think so.

My Take On The Question

The way eCommerce industry is trampling every length to acquire its customers, it is difficult to ignore any components of the eCommerce. eCommerce is a set made up of infinite subsets i.e., technicalities. Each subset plays various roles in making the complete set a successful trade. Here is the list of circumstances of when you need to apply these two tactics:

• The Newness Of The Store
• When You Have A New Store

Among zillions of domains, how do you let people know that your website exists? Of course, marketing is the answer but marketing fails if you are unable to throw the best deals for the first time visitors. The first step towards moral victory is by putting the promotional discounts and making shoppers land your page. If your store is relatively new, the promotional discount is must as a bait.

But again the important point is “moral victory is not conversion.” Conversion is all about how you let your system interact with the shoppers and give them a fascinating experience. It is all about how you make the entire shopping experience hassle-free and frictionless.

Once the customer is allured by your promotional activities, either of the two situations could take place with additional shipping charges:

1. Customers buy the products, regardless of the shipping charges. A fair trial for you and them.
2. Customers abandon your cart. Since the stats have shown that one-fourth of the shopping cart cast off takes place due to shipping charges, you can’t afford to lose the customers after putting tremendous efforts to lure them. A lured customer abandoning your cart is far more a greater threat to your business than the shoppers who didn’t even visit your store. That’s because you can make the non-visitor visit by other techniques and schemes but it is extremely tough to double-lure the customers who deserted unsatisfied.

When your Store has already Built A Decent Reputation?

It is a kind of paradox because reputation is not build up by mere talks but by actions. If the store exists from the old-time, it must have done something correct to exist until now. It doesn’t necessarily need to acquire customers because it could focus more on customer retention than customer acquisition and win the eCommerce battle. Customers are linked to the reputed store because they already find the store more economical than the other stores. A decent reputation means trust. In such a case, they don’t check the prices you offer because you have already hit their psych by proving yourself the most economical store.

So, free shipping gets mandatory because whether you offer discounts or not, your store is already seen as a trustable entity. Using free shipping under the badge of a loyalty program, the old store can reap more loyalty.

Key Takeaway: You may put significant efforts in marketing your store making discounts as your promotional catalyst but when it comes to conversion, you lose one customer every four visitors without free shipping. Hence, to challenge your contemporaries, you will need to put both the techniques in your system. Whether your store is new or old, free shipping is seen as a mandatory service.

The Budget Of the Store

Carrying eCommerce drives is not simple. It takes a lot of planning, expertise, and investment. One way to decide whether you want discounts or free shipping as your main promotional drive is by assessing your budget.

When your Budget is Low

Many ecommerce merchants enquire frequent questions like “can they set up an optimized store in less budget?” The answer is not a definitive yes nor a definitive no because plenty of factors decide the success of optimal store apart from the budget. Let’s check these two cases:

1. Low-budget eCommerce with fewer products: An eCommerce store with fewer products can easily implement the discount campaign because management of the discounts for the store with the myriad of the products is a strenuous task.
2. Low-budget eCommerce with more products: It is difficult to manage a discount campaign in a store which has numerous products. Flat rate shipping prices or free shipping delivery eases all the time required to calculate and assess the perfect revenue which in the case of discounts is very difficult.

When Your Budget Is High

The higher budget doesn’t necessarily mean the success of the store. But it is definitely one of the key pillars of the eCommerce conversion.

1. High-budget eCommerce with fewer products: A store with a good amount investment window with fewer products can work on both the campaigns simultaneously. It takes hefty bank deposits and demands high ability to absorb the loss in case of handling the two campaigns simultaneously for a low-budgeted store. But for a high-budget e-tail, the doubt is ruled out.
2. High-budget eCommerce with fewer products: When the budgets are high, I don’t see any reason of why a store shouldn’t practice both the popularizing schemes simultaneously.

Key Takeaway: For offering unique or free services, the truth is, you need a decent budget because it demands the power to let go the losses. But there is always a smart way to work if budget is not high.

The Need Of the Hour

Nothing is absolute in eCommerce. What sounds amazing and trendy today may sound trash tomorrow. The golden rule of applying a technique to your store is by standing by the trend. Your system should be smart enough to analyze the need of the hour. There may come a time when coupons become obsolete and free shipping becomes an expected service.

And there is a possibility that shoppers don’t consider free shipping a compulsory service, especially when you are able to feed your users that “shipping cost is not an additional charge, it’s the charge which you spend while traversing to the brick and mortar store”. Ecommerce merchants are trying every bit to read the patterns of cognitive decisions and generate tactics based on it. It may take an entire century to condition someone’s brain. But the truth is, conditioning can evolve the psychology.

Key Takeaway: The crux of the matter is that a smart eCommerce store reads the course of the market. It takes decisions based on the need, not some definitive and rigidly versified strategy.

Free Shipping Bar

To bring the free shipping promotion in existence, you can use free shipping bar extension developed by M-Connect Media.

Features of Free Shipping Bar (Fast Cart Checkout):

1. It helps in setting up the threshold cost for the customers to reap the advantages of free shipping.
2. Make the customers know about free shipping offer in intuitive ways.
3. It automatically calculates the remaining amount needed to obtain free shipping, when a shopper adds the products to the shopping cart.
4. Merchants get rights to add their own custom messages for free shipping.
5. Moreover, the merchant can also set font size and color of the message text.
6. A progress bar is also included to show how far the customer from availing the free shipping offer is.
7. The Merchant can set the background color of the progress bar.
8. It offers to upload images for the mini-cart loader and empty mini-cart.
9. It allows setting of own shopping cart title.
10. Reflects a successful message which shows when customer avails free shipping.

The Final Call

There are many components which contribute to the prosperity of the store. The only thing which keeps on changing is the ratio of the requirements. As of now, free shipping is an expected service and so are the discounts. But if we talk about the ratio of the necessity, free shipping impacts the store much more than the discounts. Who knows what has the evolution of eCommerce got in the coming years.

The post What eCommerce Store Owner Should Offer? Discounts or Free shipping? appeared first on Tech Web Space.

Over the course of many years, many eCommerce companies have discovered and executed some of the revolutionary steps which have helped to elevate the concept of online business and have solidified their own position among intense trade.

Digital Gift cards are one of those revolutionary steps which have played a phenomenal role in customer engagement, promotional drive, and loyalty programs. What makes it an important tool? Possibly its competency to be virtuous to both the sections, i.e., customers and merchants.

The Most Righteous Advantage Of Gift Cards

I have come across the most righteous advantage of gift cards by reading the behavioral economics of them. Behavioral economics is a study where human’s state of mind, their cognitive abilities, and their emotions are read and how they drive the entire process of purchase and other economic decisions.

Here is the simple example which explains the importance of gift cards and behavioral economics of them is:

Case 1: Suppose I get gift cash amount of 100 $. With cash, I have the best percentage of freedom to spend lavishly on myself. I personally enjoy spending cash senselessly. And as soon as I finish them like squanderers, I feel guilty of not utilizing and allocating them smartly on things like house management and education. I feel guilt-laden to such extent that I curse myself.

Case 2: Suppose I get a gift card of the same amount. With it, even though I’d want to spend it like an epicure, I will have limited places where I could utilize the card. For example, an Amazon gift card. I can’t make it work for me on Alibaba. This would immediately snatch my waggish purchasing right. I’d only buy when I am in dire need of something. By this method, I won’t be guilt-ridden anymore and I would indirectly allocate my resources wisely.

I don’t know if the philosophy of purchasing power exists or not, if it doesn’t, I would like to devise one. “Purchasing power is directly proportional to the non-rational decision making”.

Benefits From the Customers’ Perspective

Enough of behavioral reading, enough of philosophies. Let’s just check how customers are directly benefited by the gift cards.

#1 They’re A Beautiful Way to Budget

Since gift cards are available in the customized form, a customer can plan their budget and gift as per their desire. With multiple people on your gift list, gift cards can be a great solution.

#2 They are Easy to Gift

The digital gift cards have made it easier for purchasers and recipients. They don’t have to put additional efforts to either buy or receive the gift cards. Since they can be sent down the wire, a receiver could get gift cards in 5 minutes.

#3 Practical for Confused State of Mind

They are practical for all those heads who have gifting dilemmas. Choosing gifts are always a tedious job. You hunt through several stores only to end up in buying nothing and wasting your time. Gift cards are a great alternative source for solving the confused state of mind.

#4 Useful for Last Minute Procrastinators

I personally procrastinate when I have to buy gifts. Unless a sense of urgency drives my conscience, I don’t go for it. And what’s the guarantee that I would get the best gift at last moment? As a customer, gift cards are the best unconventional method of gifting. Since they are so easy and quick in delivery, I would make the most out of it.

#5 They Make the Complete Procedure Fun

The entire process is so fast and simple that it makes the gift giving and receiving fun. The recipients don’t have to carry the gift cards. Digital gift cards are not prone to get lost or stolen. They can easily be redeemed by a click. They can easily be accessed through the mobile phones and you don’t have to provide extra space for carrying them.

Benefits From The Merchants’ Perspective

While gift cards are highly useful to the customers, they don’t weaken the power of merchants. Gift cards grant equal opportunities to both the groups to enjoy its advantages. Most of the eCommerce merchants have realized the importance of e-gift cards, hence, they are working hard to serve their customers and themselves by using gift card extension.

There are several extensions available in the market but I would describe the extensive Gift Card Magento 2 extension developed by M-connect Media and how it could affect your business positively. M-Connect Media promises to revolutionize the idea of digital enterprise and exacts the transformation of brick and mortar into digital form.

The List Of Primary Features of Gift Card Module:

• It assists creation of different kind of gift cards
• Allows to send Cards via email or post office
• helps to configure the Magento gift cards according to their demands
• Supports addition of unlimited number of gift codes
• Allows to apply Gift code on the shopping cart page
• Grants admin to set distinct price options
• Keep the record of purchased codes
• Gives in-built images and also allows to upload different images.
• Choose the certificate value or specify their own custom value
• Holds potency in creating Magento gift vouchers
• Allows custom aid for creating and sending gift card template for users.
• Facility to Use 35 Free Gift Card Email Template Design Elements.

Gift cards are not only responsible for customers’ engagement and conversion but are also known to magnify your brand value. They are perceived as greater value, more than any form of gifts.

The post Why Small & Enterprise Business should Offer Gift Card Solution to their Customers? appeared first on Tech Web Space.

Similarly, you ticked all the requisites of building a great website, but what did you do to make people aware of your website’s existence surrounded by billions of eCommerce competitors? You need to put extra shots in your work to achieve the said. How can you do it? The answer lies in the concept of SEO i.e., Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is a process by which you improve the visibility of a website/webpage in a web search engine by certain tactics. The list of tactics to better the web search is unlimited, but you will have to figure out what’s ideally suited for your website.

Recommendations to Maximize SEO potential to have a good ranking in the SERPs:

Start With the Basics: Introspect your Technical Issues

Though Google has introduced smart SEO algorithms like “Penguin”, “Rankbrain”, “Panda”, “Pigeon”, and “Hummingbird” to optimize the quality search, the problem may lie in your website’s structure and technicality. Technical issues like adding images which are not search-friendly, shady links, poorly implemented navigation, etc could make it difficult for ever-changing Google’s algo-spiders to get hold of you. Before spending thousands of bucks for optimization, make sure that your website is internally optimized.

Introduce Great Content: A Soul Which Pumps Life in Web Traffic

One of the most basic steps by which you can improve a website’s SEO position is by posting useful content. Posting important content and more importantly fresh content on a regular basis would help Google and other search engines to pick up your website.

The sole motive for posting unique content is that they compel users to visit the site time and again. Publishing stale or duplicate content would not only repel your clients but would make it difficult for you to hit the top of the search page.

One way to rank well in the search engines is by writing blogs which at least contain 500 words. The chances of long post visibility are much greater than the shorter ones. Long posts are important pillars of SEO strategy.

Reason: Lengthier the post, the greater the clues for Google to determine what your blog is all about. Since you will have more headings, links, and images, you don’t need to stuff keywords.

Stick to the Fundamentals: Reflect your Work Through URLs

Just as website contents, informative URLs are important. Make certain that your URL is easily readable and is easy for Google to identify what’s the purpose of your website/page. Keeping unreadable symbols in your website URL would make your website’s discovery extremely arduous.

Include Lucid Links: Both Internally and Externally

The maximum advantage of SEO potentiality can be reaped by including correct links.

– Internal Links

Internal links are good for user navigation within the website. Internal links are known to create a bridge between your contents and supply a good amount of data to Google to analyse the schema of your website. They can build hierarchical order on your site, which empowers you to post valuable links. So opting for a smart linking strategy can enhance your SEO.

Internal links connect the site and the users and inform the user about the traffic of certain pages of your website. Optimize internal links in such a fashion that Google gets to know that these links are essential for the consumers.

Internal links like Layered Navigation, and Navigation bars, could help users to extract the correct product. You can call it an internal optimization of your site.

Role of Layered Navigation – Positives and Negatives

Layered navigation is widely used by the eCommerce industry to organize websites. It helps in drilling down the products, breaking the product attributes and broadening the decision-making abilities. A user can filter results based on several combinations of attributes. This sort of navigation gives immense control over the product search process.

Another advantage of layered navigation is that it eradicates the option of page reloads and helps in the easy comparison of the products.

Despite these positives, layered navigation can cause specific problems in SEO ranking.

• URLs with parameters or too long URLs make no sense to the user experience nor for the search engines. Follow a set of rules (parameters) given by search engines to rank your website.
• Plenty of pages appear in search when search engine’s robots crawl and filter the index results. This kills the very purpose of SEO.
• Duplicate meta tags and repetitive content are sidelined as low-quality data by the web crawler. This may possibly lead Google to downgrade your website demeaning the actual rationale behind optimizing the site.

You can use Ajax-based Advanced Layered Navigation Magento 2 Extension which not only eases the product discovery process but also resolves the above-mentioned issues by:

1. Letting you block all the web pages developed by Layered Navigation from indexing.
2. Allowing you to add brand pages indexing
3. Empowering you to filter the results using an index but by presenting them in an appealing version.

– External Links

Just as internal links, external links hold great potency in serving search engine optimization. External links are those links which navigate the users to other websites. It is exceedingly important that your external links don’t lead the users to non-existing or error pages.

Linking your eCommerce website with reputed websites can help you develop a harmonious relationship with your customers. If you post external links, search engines would definitely reward you by reflecting you on the search.

Let us check the list of Google SEO algorithms and how you can manoeuvre your site to the best rankings by appeasing these algorithms:

PANDA

Panda is known to assign marks to web pages. Based on the marks, rank is decided.

How to appeal to its algorithm?

Don’t miss the content auditing. Panda checks out the originality of your content. It is difficult to get unique content, especially when you have an eCommerce platform. You can use unique images and user-generated content smartly to appease Panda.

PENGUIN

Google’s Penguin is known to downgrade the rank of sites based on the criteria like manipulative content.

How to appeal to its algorithm?

Constantly monitor the growth of your link’s profile and don’t fear to run regular audits using backlink checkers.

HUMMINGBIRD

Unlike Panda and Penguin, Hummingbird helps Google to comprehend the input search queries and shows links that match searcher intent. Though keywords play an important role, Hummingbird is more of a smart algo. which decrypts the results based on mapping the synonyms and semantics of the search input.

How to appeal to its algorithm?

Try to focus on the concepts and semantics rather than the keywords. Hummingbird is smart enough to map similar meaning words. By generating useful content that gratifies the searcher’s intent, you can conquer both the segments – SEO and engagement.

MOBILEGEDDON

This algorithm helps Google understand which pages are mobile-friendly and let them rank the page in a mobile environment. Pages which are not optimized properly or are not user-friendly are zoned out of the top search results.

How to appeal to its algorithm?

Build mobile pages, and focus on their agility and user-friendliness. There are some tools in the market which can help you check if your page meets the requirements of friendliness.

The Final Call

There are plenty of SEO settings on which you could work to rank your website. But with time, you will need to check which one is ideal for your website based on your SEO data.

The post Best Practices to Maximize SEO Potential with Magento 2 Layered Navigation appeared first on Tech Web Space.