When a brand manages to build a community around its products or services, you may call it successful.

MAC Cosmetics, for example, has a thriving community on Facebook. Over 19 million people follow the brand on that platform. But it’s not just about the number of followers. It’s about their activity. You’ll see them posting videos and photos of the products. You’ll see them asking questions and getting into discussions. You’ll see them sharing impressions and supporting each other to choose the right product.

If we stick to the world of cosmetics, we’ll find another brilliant example: Sephora’s Beauty Insider Community. It’s a special section of the official website, where the real beauty talks happen. The members can ask questions, post answers, and simply become part of the conversations.

That’s what a true community is all about. That’s what true branding is all about, too.

So how do you do it?

Tips: How to Build a Community around Your Brand

1. Show how it is on the inside

Thanks to Instagram Stories, Instagram Live, and Facebook Live Video Streaming, you can share insider information with your customers. They can see how a day in the office goes by and how your team is doing everything to make the audience happy.

If someone wants to spend a day in the office and get a package of free products, they can apply on your social media pages. Then, you’ll share those moments with the community.

This is a nice way to attract people and showcase the real vibe of your brand.

2. Make it all About Them

You always try to make it about the audience. You use ‘you’ in your blog posts, and that’s the tone you maintain on social media, too. You’re trying to deliver solutions through your content, and that’s all fine. But you’re still promoting your brand, and that’s the evident fact no matter how useful your content is.

There are people on the other side of the screen, and they want to interact! So ask them real questions and initiate useful conversations among the members of your audience.

You can do that on social media. For example, you may share intriguing thoughts through an Instagram caption and invite your followers to share their opinion. Seb Lester, an artist and designer with over 1 million followers on Instagram, is a successful example of a personal brand. In this post, he talks to his audience about online teaching. It’s not a one-sided message. The Instagram caption is written in a way that triggers the response of the community.

3. Bring your followers together in a private facebook group

When you make a group private and you invite people to join, it will become a safer place for conversations. They won’t be under the eyes of their followers, so they can loosen up and share whatever they think.

The Wanderlust Virtual Yoga Studio is a nice example of that strategy. The members share photos of their own practice, as well as info on their progress. Since it’s a closed group, they have a strong sense of community.

4. Emphasize the values

The audience will connect with your brand only if they share its values. MAC Cosmetics, for example, values diversity and that’s the factor it builds its community around. You have to make your own values stand out.

When you share content, whether it’s a blog post, image, or behind-the-scenes video, make sure it aligns with the values your brand stands for. Yes; this approach limits you to a narrower target audience. However, it also helps you build stronger connections that resonate with understanding. That’s the kind of audience that will promote your brand in the best way possible.

5. Develop a loyalty program

“Congratulations on your purchase! If you like what you get and you want more, you’ll get 10% off on your second purchase. We’ll keep increasing the discounts since you’re now part of our loyalty program!”

Who wouldn’t love to get such a message when they purchase a product? The loyalty discount program keeps customers coming back. But it’s not only about boosting sales. It’s also about creating a community.

When you attract returning users, they become loyal to your brand. At that point, it’s easier to get them to participate in online discussions and share their experiences with other members of the tribe. They will be open to surveys and various competitions. Since they already love your brand, it’s easy to engage them.

The Community Makes You Stronger

The branding process is not just about getting your brand name known. It’s about people identifying themselves with the brand’s values and the community that surrounds it. Hopefully, you’ll achieve that level if you follow the above-listed tips.

Author: Silvia Woolard is a young passionate writer at Suprior Papers from Phoenix. In a free time she writes and works in a field of popular psychology. Read Silvia at her Twitter.

According to the Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017, published by Digital Learning Compass, more than 6 million students were enrolled in distance learning programs in the Fall of 2015. Take a moment to let that information sink in. 6 million students in a single semester. In 2015! The industry lacks specific information on the current state, but we may safely assume that those numbers are higher at this moment.

So the e-learning industry is getting bigger by the day, and we’re more than aware of that fact. But what drives the industry forward? What current trends should you consider following? Let’s go through the 6 most prominent trends at this moment, so we’ll understand where this global educational movement is heading to.

1. Podcasts

Podcasts have been around for quite some time, but they weren’t attracting too much attention. With so many video courses you could follow, why would you bother with podcasts? This learning method is heavily focused on lecturing and listening, and that’s the exact aspect from traditional education that we were trying to change. That’s why podcasts weren’t popular.

But things are getting different. Podcasts are cool because you can listen to them anytime, anywhere. Fortunately, the experts from the e-learning industry understood that. We’re seeing more educational podcasts pop up by the day, and they are finally getting the attention they deserve.

2. Microlearning

Microlearning is a massive trend, which is about to change e-learning as we knew it. The usual online courses include full-length lectures accompanied with assignments and discussion boards. That’s a problem for many students. They lack time for full-time education, so they opt for online learning, hoping to find a more flexible schedule. The fact that they have to spend several hours with a single lesson is overwhelming, so they tend to procrastinate. Microlearning eliminates that problem.

It’s a relatively new concept that involves brief video lectures, lasting from one to five minutes. Each of these lessons covers a single, focused topic. When watched in progressive order, the lessons build on your knowledge. Ultimately, you’re supposed to get the same quality of education without being overwhelmed by lengthy lectures.

3. Webinars

There’s nothing new about webinars. But was the e-learning industry using their whole potential? Absolutely not. We’re just starting to see this change.

Webinars are great because they are easy to arrange. There’s not much video editing involved, so you’re avoiding one of the major constraints of creating online lessons. You’ll need a script for your webinar, and you can get writing and editing assistance from an Australian Assignment Geek Service for that purpose. Then, you’ll promote the webinar, so you’ll attract more subscribers.

From the aspect of a learner, the webinar is great because it’s interactive. It’s a great substitute for the actual classroom. They can engage with the lecturer and with fellow students.

4. Game-Based Learning

Gamification revolutionized the educational industry. Course providers finally realized that instead of forcing students to learn, they could motivate them to do that. Game-based learning encourages high levels of engagement. The learner goes through different levels and earns points, which have an additional motivational effect.

We’re already seeing great examples of game-based online education. Duolingo is an extremely popular language learning app based on that concept. In 2018, however, we expect the educational industry to take things further by throwing AR and VR features into the mix.

5. Mobile Learning

The number of mobile users is constantly growing, so it seems only natural for the e-learning industry to focus on that market.

Mobile learning is getting more popular, simply because people can access their lessons anytime, anywhere. If they are using public transport to get to work, they can easily go through a micro lesson. All they need is their device, an app that provides the course they like, and a note-taking app.

6. Content Curation

Content curation tools, such as Quora, Pinterest, and the latest one – Mix, will be the focal point for the development of the e-learning industry. If, for example, a leader wants to develop a learning strategy within their organization, they can easily start discovering materials and providing content for their team through such a tool.

A professor, who wants to introduce online learning into the curriculum, will also find these tools useful. Thanks to these platforms, sharing and collaboration are easier than ever. During 2018, we expect to see more companies and educators taking advantage of the content curation concept.

How will the e-learning industry continue to develop? With the continuous innovation of tools and techniques, it’s impossible to predict where it will be ten years from today. What we know for sure, however, is that it’s headed in the right direction. The trends we’re witnessing in 2018 push the e-learning concept forward and open up new opportunities to explore.

Author: Mary Whitman is a freelance writer and blogger based in Adelaide, South Australia. In her spare time, she enjoys talking about Sustainable Development and writing essays.

In nopCommerce the PAngV (= price information regulation), which I also refer to as base price, is supported since some versions. The law itself also regulates other things such as the indication of value added tax, etc. - more about this later.

This section cannot provide legal certainty, it only shows how certain information can be accessed in your nopCommerce system. It is expressly pointed out that the content here does not make any legal recommendations nor does it cover everything around this topic. However, it should help everyone to get an idea of these interrelationships for themselves.

The base price is the price that refers to one liter, one meter, one kilogram or one square meter.

Not every product has to indicate the base price as well as the box price. A part forms a unit as a whole, such as a car, is only shown with the product price. However, if the package is 500 grams of sugar, the base price must also be stated in relation to one kilogram.

nopCommerce solves the problem in such a way that you can fill in additional fields by specifying a checkbox so that the base price can be determined automatically. However, the prerequisite for this is the previous declaration of the necessary conversion units, for example from milliliters to liters. You will find this point for entering the conversion units under "Configuration > Shipping > Measures". On this page then in the section 'Weights'.

Under 'Weight' you enter all other units such as meters, centimeters, millimeters, milliliters, liters, etc. Since nopCommerce normally only stores weights here, the "Mark as primary weight" button must not be used in this context. Unfortunately, the base price calculation takes your information from exactly this section, so that we enter all desired information here and put it in relation to each other.

The PAngV regulation says that one must convert to main dimensions such as liters, kilograms, etc. In other words, you always enter a "1" in the "Ratio to primary weight" field.

In the example of liquids, liters are required. Create liters and enter a "1" in the "Ratio to primary weight" field. In addition, create a second entry with milliliters and enter "1000" in the "Ratio to primary weight" field. Proceed in the same way as the other units.

After completing the preparatory work, you can now call up the affected products and make the necessary entries in the "PAngV" field.

If you tick the field "PAngV (base price)", there are other fields that must be filled in.
In our example, a bottle with a volume of 250 ml is to be defined so that the base price is converted to liters and displayed.

Enter "250" in the "Amount in product" field and then select the milliliters in the "Unit of Product" field. Then the reference value - here always as "1" and in the field "Reference unit" for liquids always the "liter".

It's a little confusing why these things are managed underweight and just to explain that this new feature was added there for simplicity. It is also not entirely understandable why the two reference values have to be specified again. Probably only the texts of the dimensions are used from the configuration so that you can select them on the product page.

In the finished website, for example, a product with liquids looks like this:

Now I would like to close the circle, I wrote at the beginning that the regulation also deals with other things. For example, the price including VAT must be stated and this must also be shown. The other things can be found in the following text of the regulation. The law consists of 11 paragraphs with annexes and is very complex.

The text of the Regulation can be found at Laws on the Internet. Since the description of the regulation is in German, here is a link to a machine translation aid: http://www.deepl.com. There are other machine translators on the Internet, but DeepL has a very good knowledge of the basic languages.

Author: Christian Niedergesäß

Unless you have been living on a deserted island, you have probably heard about GDPR. The GDPR is one of the most comprehensive data privacy law till date and is bound to affect your online business (or company) if you operate or have customers within Europe. Every business is different, some of you might need more preparation than others to comply your nopCommerce site for GDPR. But, there is no need to panic. Here is a handy breakdown of what GDPR is, how it affects your online business and most importantly how you can prepare your nopCommerce site for GDPR.

Let’s get to the point - What is GDPR?

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a revised European Union’s new data privacy law which impacts how all companies collect, use and share personal data of their European customers. The regulation entered into force on May 24, 2016 and applies since May 25, 2018. The regulation is an essential step to strengthen individuals' fundamental rights in the digital age and facilitate business by clarifying rules for companies and public bodies in the digital single market. For more information (please refer to this source): https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/data-protection-eu_en Going forward, any sort of personal data collection must be in opt-in form, stored securely and used with customer’s content only. Here is an example of how your new cookie consent should look like as per GDPR: As per GDPR law, the data subject have the right to request (or obtain) all the saved personal information from the controller and to be forgotten (i.e. request to be deleted completely). Regardless of where you are based, GDPR applies to all companies that offer products or services to customers in Europe.

What is considered “personal data”?

Personal data is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable living individual. It can be something from email address to name, billing address or event I.P address. In fact personal data can also be referred to different pieces of information, which collected together can lead to the identification of a particular person, also constitute personal data. Here are some examples of what is considered as “personal data”:

• Name (or surname)
• Email address
• Home address or location information
• I.P address
• A website cookie ID

For more information (please refer to this source): https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/what-personal-data_en

Configuring your nopCommerce site for GDPR

In the latest release (4.1 version), many new settings have been added in the administration area that makes it easier for store admins (business owners) to prepare for GDPR. You can enable GDPR settings on your nopCommerce by going to: Administration > Configuration > Settings > GDPR settings Additional settings will allow you to capture a log of the following activities:

• Log "accept privacy policy" consent
• Log "newsletter" consent

You can easily add consents on your nopCommerce site by clicking on “Add consent” button: While adding consents, you can define different options such as:

• If consent is required
• If consent will be displayed during registration
• If consent will be displayed on customer info page in my account

Here is an example of a consent option on customer info page: If you have enabled the consent log settings then you can see the log activity by going to: Administration > Customers > GDPR requests (log) When GDPR setting is ENABLED, store owner can also perform actions like:

• Permanent deletion of customer record
• Exporting customer data

Here is a video tutorial to show how to configure GDPR settings on your nopCommerce site:

Conclusions on GDPR for store owners

• Regardless of where you are based, GDPR applies to all companies that offer products or services to customers in Europe
• Make sure that terms and conditions (including privacy policy) of your online store are clear, remove any pre-selected options and respect the privacy of your customers
• While initial implementation can be little overwhelming; it’s all part of working towards a future to strengthen individuals' fundamental rights in the digital age

Are you sure your business is ready for the changes and upcoming trends of 2019?

What does the US Supreme Court decision on South Dakota v. Wayfair case mean for a business?

The notable South Dakota v. Wayfair case and the Supreme Court’s decision were a real bombshell. Will it be a heavy burden on the middle-sized online sellers? Business sharks from Wall-street think that the decision can become a real hit for giant online retailers as it was illustrated by the unexpectable failures of stock prices of Amazon, Wayfair, and Overstock. The latest changes in taxation oblige you to react immediately in order to stay in the Great Game. Steve Hoffman, Strategic Alliance Manager from Avalara, will go into details of this case and its consequences for your business.

From hand to hand

What do you think about your store’s delivery efficiency? Do you know what changes and trends are expected by online business in 2019? Are you ready for them? Can you believe that shipping can take less than 30 minutes? JD.com, the second largest online-store in China, tries to supersede Amazon, the American leader in parcel shipping, by using drones, which help to cut costs by 70%.

Do you know about the following changes in shipping:

• USPS and Amazon shipping innovations that have transformed the industry, including last mile shipping options;
• New carriers, including regional carriers and same day shippers, that have affected the shipping landscape;
• New technology, including Shipping API's, that have turned the landscape from warehouse/premise-based shipping into drop shipping.

Krish Iyer, Director of Strategic Partnerships at ShipStation, will talk about eCommerce shipping trends: what do you need to know to keep up.

How to sell better than Amazon

Sounds unbelievable, isn’t it? Our experts believe that there is nothing impossible in the world. Sam Mallikarjunan from HubSpot, a co-author of the book "How To Sell Better Than Amazon" (which is - ironically - available for purchase on Amazon), was researching the effective growth strategies in eCommerce area and is ready to share the secrets of successful sales with you.

Save your time – lose your clients and money

You copy an ad from AdWords to Facebook and back thinking that you save your time. A research done by SEMrush (world's leading competitive research service for online marketing) has shown that you should take into account special aspects of different advertising platforms when you place ad copies. Ashley Ward, Digital Marketing Strategist from SEMrush, will explain how to unite competitive advertising, time, and money.

When shopping is worse than a labyrinth

Are you sure that UI/UX design of your store corresponds with demands of modern captious and lazy customers? Are they able to find what they need in your store? One of the main visitors’ request is a user-friendly interface and design. Take away all the obstacles for consumers and it won’t take long to see the result. Baymard Institute and Lauren Smith offer almost 600 practices for improvement of your website. All you need is to listen to her presentation and to find what suits you best.

What else are you interested in? Machine learning and AI, solutions to cut your hosting costs, a unified commerce, conversion rate optimization and many other things. You’ll get them, come and see, nopCommerce Days 2018 is getting closer.

More information about how to join us here.

Author: Darya Popova, nopCommerce team

As the biggest nopCommerce conference event is approaching, the excitement is building up. Whether you are already a successful developer or still tinkering with the platform to see what is possible, this conference event can give you a major leg-up in making connections and building your business.

The best two days of the year for all nopCommerce developers are less than three months away. A nopCommerce community has officially surpassed 220,000 users – so it is not a surprise that experience for attendees at nopCommerce Days has gotten better year after year.

This year we are taking the developer experience to the next level. Here is a sneak peak of what to expect at nopCommerce Days 2018:

1. Biggest nopCommerce event ever

This time we will meet in Las Vegas at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, 8-9 of November. It is going to be the biggest event ever - The diversity on the attendee list is unmatched; with 700+ attendees from 40+ countries and experts from a huge spectrum of businesses. For two full days, nopCommerce developers and experts will come together for learning, networking, and exploration of the latest nopCommerce features and innovations.

While the agenda for the conference event is jammed packed with keynotes, workshops and presentations, the sessions are strategically planned to provide ample time for networking – be sure to take advantage of this time! This is going to be a great opportunity for developers and solution partners to make connections. If you are a developer and can provide a solution to a business, make sure to attend store owner sessions and approach them with a solution during exhibition or networking.

2. Transparent roadmap

One of the best things about nopCommerce is that the roadmap is very open and transparent. The conference event will start with a keynote session where the CEO of nopCommerce (Andrei Mazulnitsyn) will be talking about the future and roadmap of nopCommerce. His speech will include all the details about what has been achieved in the past, the current state of the platform and the direction where nopCommerce will be going in future. This can be a great opportunity for developers and admins to learn about what is coming and how to prepare for it.

There is no better place to learn what is new and exciting in nopCommerce world straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak!

3. Dedicated sessions for developers

One of the two tracks at nopCommerce Days is completely dedicated to developers. The sessions are hand-picked by nopCommerce team from the best community submissions. These technical sessions have everything for beginner to advanced topics on nopCommerce ecosystem and integration. nopCommerce experts and solution partners will be presenting on topics and case studies, giving you an insight of how they handle challenging requirements and scenarios when it comes to nopCommerce development. Some of the topics are as follows:

• Architecting ASP.NET Core solutions
• Tips and Tricks when working with nopCommerce
• Tips on how to improve the performance of highly loaded nopCommerce sites
• Developing nopCommerce Plugins and Themes the Agile Way

There is something for everyone!!

4. Speaking to the experts

nopCommerce Days is the only event where you can find the most number of industry experts. This is an opportunity for you as a developer to interact with these experts and ask them various questions in person. Are you wondering how the newest version of ASP.NET Core will affect nopCommerce? The ASP.NET team from Microsoft is going to attend this conference event and will be talking about:

• Advanced ASP.NET Core Configuration and Deployment
• Building the Real-time Web with ASP.NET Core SignalR
• Serverless Workflows with Azure Functions

This event will be attended by nopCommerce partners: development agencies, technology partners and hosting providers; individual developers, product and project managers, store owners and eCommerce experts. Whether you are advanced in nopCommerce, developing or managing online stores for years, started several days ago or considering the platform for your next project, this event will help you get to know nopCommerce world and discover its ecosystem.

5. Product innovation

You can expect innovation when the world’s most innovative minds come to nopCommerce Days to present, inspire and motivate attendees. You can visit sessions from both tracks to see how companies and solution partners are using nopCommerce platform beyond your though to develop innovative products.

Make sure to purchase your tickets soon, and we’ll see you in Las Vegas at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, 8-9 of November!

http://days18.nopcommerce.com/

Don’t forget to take advantage of this location! Las Vegas is the world capital of gambling. Make sure to test your luck in the city. Las Vegas is the place to hit the jackpot.

Author: Lavish Kumar

Google Analytics, email marketing, site optimization, landing pages, and call-to-actions buttons – these are among the most important elements of eCommerce marketing strategies employed by online businesses these days. You might be using them as well.

With so much focus on these online marketing activities to drive eCommerce sales, it’s easy to forget how powerful offline interactions with customers can still be. If your target audience spends a lot of time every day browsing the net, it doesn’t mean that online is the only way to reach them.

In fact, disregarding offline marketing could be a bad idea after all, according to eMarketer. The 2018 data gathered by this reputable online source suggests that 48 percent of U.S. internet users still prefer to research a product in-store. Of them, 42 percent purchase in-store as well.

So, with online marketing also producing amazing results, why not combine both offline and online marketing campaigns and get even better results for your business?

If this makes sense to you and you want to discover some of the veteran-but-still-effective offline tools to drive eCommerce traffic, take a look at the following list.

#1. Promote Your Business by Supporting a Good Cause

It is a known fact that people tend to work with businesses they feel a special connection with. What does that mean? This means that they like a business for something they also feel strongly about. For example, a business with a strong environmental consciousness supports local communities, sells environmentally-friendly products, and frequently organizes environment-related initiatives.

#2. Direct Mail

“Many people consider direct mail an outdated technique. While the reasons for such thinking are clear, hold on for a minute before crossing this one from your list of marketing techniques." explains Simon Grinspoon, a marketer at College Paper.

The 2016 data from the Data & Marketing Association says that the direct mail customer response rate increase year-by-year by an impressive 43 percent! At the same time, lead response rates increased by more than 50 percent, reaching an unbelievable 190 percent increase.

These findings are supported by different studies. According to it, 30 percent of customers said that a catalog recently drove them online to shop.

This data suggest one thing: direct mail is far from being dead.

So, take advantage of direct email by sending your local leads catalogs with fresh offers, chances are you’ll find direct mail campaign effective.

If you want to calculate the ROI for your campaign, you can use some free online calculators. It can require some financial indicators such as cost and size and generates expected response rate and other helpful data.

#3. Newspaper Ads

If your target audience is students, you have an excellent chance to reach them through newspapers and adverts. For example, the majority of high schools and colleges have newspapers, you can buy ad space there and promote your products/services.

#4. Workshops

This is a great tool to warm visitors up and convert them into customers.

A workshop is a seminar where visitors can get helpful knowledge and practical experience about a certain product or topic. For example, if you’re selling makeup products, you can teach your visitors how to apply face makeup by walking them through every step.

You can let potential visitors know about your upcoming workshop by posting information on your website, social media pages, and inviting those who come to your shop. If necessary, ask them to sign up by providing information like name and email address (this you’ll add to your customer base later).

#5. Business Cards

Give potential customers and partners a business card whenever you meet them (and tell your employees to do the same).

Over to You

The explosive growth of online marketing tools makes us forget about how powerful offline marketing still is. As you can see, it is way too early to declare this one dead, so why not take advantage of the amazing benefits it has to offer. Take the opportunity to use the tools in this article and see how they can increase your eCommerce traffic.

Author: Audrey Pilcher. Audrey is a passionate blogger, marketer and currently provides online assignment help. Her areas of interests are very wide, but mostly she writes about content marketing and business relations. Her aim is to engage people to self-growth and staying motivated.

So eCommerce is in the boom and more and more people are launching niche stores. And with an open source software like nopCommerce which offers so many features out of box and has a great community of developers and enthusiasts alike to help with questions and customization, launching an eCommerce store can’t be any easier, faster and cost effective business.

However, if you are really serious about your eCommerce business, launching a store is just the seed. You will need to do a lot more to have these seeds grow to a big tree. In this article, I list a few mistakes you shouldn’t make after you launch your first eCommerce store.

1. Don't wait for your customers, approach them

The customers will have to know that you exist. A good SEO is obviously a way to go. Most of the themes on nopCommerce marketplace are SEO friendly. And the default theme is also SEO optimized if you are just starting. Google Adwords and Facebook Ads are your friends for the start. Their first experience with you will decide the word of mouth promotion that you get.

2. Don't play too many psychological games

While it's true that a customer makes a purchase with emotions, it's not necessarily the only thing. And you should know that. Sometimes this play can go wrong. A simple example could be showing your customer only one item left' for so many days or so frequently that it simply makes them think that either nobody is purchasing the product or you are making a fool of them by faking the scarcity. After all excess of anything is fatal.

3. Don't try to teach them something new just to look cool

When customers are visiting your website, they are aware of purchasing steps. They expect your website to work the same way as other websites do. Changing it too much can distract your customers or force them to leave your website. It all refers to Catalog Listing, Checkout Flow, Product Filtering and Product Search.

4. Don't offer discounts that you can't afford

Some store owners, in the rush of quickly acquiring new customers tend to give unreasonable discounts to the customers. While this may be good (and easy) if you have loads of money to spend, for startups this is rarely the case. Startups usually adopt tight budget frameworks. And to go a long way, it's necessary that your products are fairly priced. Remember, there are many factors that converts a visitor into customer and discount is just one of them.

Instead, devise new ways of encouraging customers to purchase with you such as next purchase discounts, better customer service, loyalty points and such.

5. Don't ignore customers after they are sold

A customer has bought from you and shown some trust in your product. Now it's your time to prove that he made the right choice by offering the best after sale service. Consider him or her as your only customer and that if they are not happy with your customer service, your business is going to shut down. Amazon knows this very well and therefore has the one of the best customer services around.

6. Don't forget to follow up with your prospects

This is similar to previous point except that it's a pre-sale situation. A customer has shown interest in your product, added the product to the cart and that's it. He didn't checkout, he didn't ask anything. He just left. Now what? There are always cases when you have lots of abandoned carts. Do follow your customers at least once after they've their cart abandoned. A simple email asking about why didn't they checkout will give you good insights about what should be your next step. This also complements step 5 and shows customers that you care.

7. Don't underestimate product reviews

No matter if it's a new customer or a returning one, if they want to purchase a product, they will read product reviews. And believe it or not, it's not easy to ask customers to provide a review for your products. nopCommerce marketplace has a number of plugins to help you with that. You may configure your shop to send automatic reminders to customers after few days of purchase, asking them to review the product they purchased. Even if a few of them clicks the link, you get some good counts.

Launching eCommerce stores surely is a viable business and making a brand is surely achievable however these post launch mistakes are some essential to be avoided in the long run. Do you have any other experience that you think you should have avoided? Please do comment in the section below.

Author: Anshul Sojatia is a founder of Sojatia Infocrafts Pvt. Ltd., a web and mobile development company from Central India. He is a tech geek and likes to try new web technologies. A passionate coder by heart, he has been writing applications with Microsoft.NET technologies for over 11 years. He has been using nopCommerce since version 3.1 and since then has been an avid fan and encouraged a lot of clients to use the software.

How many of you have been put off by a bad delivery experience?

Shipping your products is an integral part of both your customer’s delivery experience and running your online store. A shipping process which is executed smoothly can drive more sales as well as boosting your customer satisfaction. But an unprofessional or improper shipping strategy can also lead to customer dissatisfaction and drive them away from your online store.

Here are 4 ways that you can build better satisfaction with your customers and keep them shopping with you:

1. Provide Multiple Shipping Options

A 2013 study by UPS discovered that 76% of all online shoppers expect to be provided with free shipping options at the checkout process. But did you know that more than 67% of online shoppers expect to be provided them with different delivery options if they pay an additional fee?

You can provide multiple shipping options to your customers such as same-day delivery which is bound to keep your customers coming back due to such prompt service.

2. Give Enough Importance to Your Packaging Material

Unwrapping your products can either be fun or dull, this depends entirely on the way you package your products. You can choose to package your products in corrugated boxes which will create a great unwrapping experience for your customers which they may enjoy sharing online with their friends and family. Using attractive packing material to package your products primes your customers for satisfaction and leaves a lasting impression on them.

A survey discovered that the use of memorable packing materials sees over 50% of customers return for another purchase.

3. Streamline Your Process to Deliver Efficiently

A survey conducted by UPS discovered that more than 60% of all shoppers think it is vital that online stores provide a feature to track their product shipment status directly on their retailer’s website and more than half of all shoppers think it is important to receive delivery updates when the package will be delivered the following day.

Make sure that your inventory is accurate or have an inventory management system in place that can prevent any inconsistencies in product levels and ensure quick and efficient product deliveries and order fulfillment.

Ensuring that your customers receive their shipments in a timely manner is of the utmost importance. You can pinpoint where your shipments are with the use of industry-leading software and technology-driven systems and solve any problems that crop up quickly as and when they occur.

4. Provide Great Customer Service

Let your customers know when they can expect their products to be delivered along with the shipment dates. All of your impatient customers can be put at ease with the help of a simple tracking notification via email or SMS. Providing live order tracking as soon as possible with the relevant updates, is a vital part of shipping and will further increase your customer satisfaction.

Successful fulfillment of orders also includes successful returns. A well-executed return can build trust and create a loyal customer base, while poor customer returns can chase off customers and dissuade them from returning.

Helping your customers experience peace of mind about their shipments from your company is something that can make your business experience faster growth, more profits and more satisfied customers. By utilizing the above 4 smart strategies, you can take your online store to the next level and gain more loyal customers in the process.

Author: Abhijeet Shah is the head of digital marketing for Packing Supply, a leading name in the packing supply industry. He believes that its not only what’s on the inside that matters, but how products are packaged is just as important. Abhijeet stays updated with the latest trends and innovations in the industry and is quick to share them with his readers. He loves travelling and is often tempted to buy products that he comes across with unique packaging from all over the world, which he then adds to his ever-expanding collection of “bags & boxes”.

In this post we’re going to see what makes Instagram tick. We’ll also see what’s the hubbub about the latest tweak in its algorithm and how to use the changes to your advantage.

This year, in March, Instagram announced that they will be updating the Instagram algorithm. Following on the footsteps of Facebook, “Instagram now relies on machine learning based on your past behavior to create a unique feed for everyone. Even if you follow the exact same accounts as someone else, you’ll get a personalized feed based on how you interact with those accounts.”

There are essentially three core tenets to the new algorithm viz— Interest, Relationship and Recency.

Let’s begin with Interest.

Interest

The first tenet is Interest. Using machine learning in Instagram predicts the probability of your liking a particular post in your feed.

They suppose it is based on several factors and make push posts that are most likely to be noted by you. We don’t know the entire set of factors behind the ranking but past behavior on similar content seems to be the most likely one.

Here is a simple example. You watch a funny video and suddenly there are funny videos everywhere. Instagram interprets that if you’ve watched one video it’s highly likely that you’d watch two or three. I like watching woodworking videos and my feed is full of those things.

Recency

The second tenet is Recency. A post is more likely to pop up in your feed based on how long ago it was posted. The algorithm is now giving importance to posts that were made recently rather than ones say made 3 days ago. Again, based on how frequently someone logs in the feed is further likely to be constrained. Someone logging in every few hours might see all of your posts. Someone logging in once a week will see only the most recent ones.

Relationship

If you have family, markers like being tagged in photos or lots of comments from particular persons on photos of yours are sufficient indicators for the social media platform to place their value. The relationship tenet seems to be the strongest influencer. According to Instagram, users see 90 percent of the posts from their friends and family now after the algorithmic tweak than before. Earlier it was 50%.

In a business profile the relationship that you have established with the person is going to matter when displaying your posts on their feed.

The solution?

Start commenting on your followers photos and engaging more with them in other ways like messaging them. Don’t bore them with promotional offers but offer relevant interaction.

The importance of video content

As we were talking, videos seem to have the upper hand on Instagram. The algorithm however doesn’t give any leeway or prefer one media type over the other. But, most people online like watching videos and that is true for Instagram too.

Some stats

55% of the world-wide population watches videos every day.

The next stat is particularly useful for eCommerce site owners— almost half of internet users search for videos related to the product or service they’re thinking of purchasing.

And 45% of people watch more than an hour videos on Facebook or Youtube.

If more people engage with video they’re going to see more videos on their feed giving rise to the perception of videos being more popular. That said you should test both content types and see which one works better for you.

What’s the way to tie all these things together?

Interest, Relationship and Recency are all geared towards creating a more engaged experience for the user. For you to be noticed, this requires doing everything you can to remain at the front and center of their feed.

How?

Repetition.

By repeatedly being in front of your audience you’re baking your presence and identity into their minds. For instance, you can’t escape the billboards and advertorials from Pepsi anywhere you go. Recognition comes easy with repetition. Consider posting multiple times every day to score on recency and if you run out of posts consider repeating a few posts.

Over time you’ll discover content that’s always popular with your audience.

Instagram is where all the millennials are flocking to. These are the guys with the biggest pockets in the world. Again 53% of Internet users belonging to the 18 to 29 year age bracket are active on Instagram. This age bracket loves spending money. With the right targeting and interesting products eCommerce marketers like you can reach this crowd and get them to spend money. If you catch them young fleeting loyalties that characterize the generation will be a thing of the past.

Conclusion

Unlike Facebook, that put a throttle on organic reach, Instagram doesn’t have any such restrictions until now. All followers can see your posts in an unrestricted manner. And you can be in front of your audience without paying for it.

There’s no penalty for posting multiple times a day and neither is there shadowban.

The opportunity is ripe for eCommerce brands to attract a generation of loyal followers. What do you think?

Author bio: George is a professional blogger who’s been covering Conversion Rate Optimization, SEO and Marketing since 8 years now. He covers cutting edge insight into marketing at ThinkingNE and Seekdefo.

With the continued growth of the tech industry, retailers have partaken in this trend and expanded onto custom application development for their eCommerce businesses and websites. This venture provides businesses with a stake in the thriving industry of mobile retail apps. On average, a person spends over 2 hours a day on their phones making use of the various mobile apps at their disposal, including retail apps. Retail apps are in the top 4 most frequently used applications. As of 2015, an estimated 85% of the purchasing demographic own a mobile phone. This statistic continues to grow and is reflected in the 93% of individuals that use mobile for research and continued on to make purchases.

Mobile App Usage

As of 2017, there have been over 178 billion mobile apps downloaded worldwide and this number is estimated to reach over 258 billion by 2020. This shows that mobile apps development and design are highly in demand and have become a prolific market. Not only is the mobile app consumption increasing, but the revenue from these apps as well. It has been estimated that, worldwide, mobile app revenue will reach over 188 billion USD by 2020. Because of such high mobile app usage and demand for a wide variety of mobile applications, its development has been a boon for freelancers and software developers in the application development industry. With the evolution of technology and gadgets, so does mobile app design and mobile app developers evolve. Through various methods and hands-on experience gained, learning how to make a mobile app has been wide and varied. This led to a boom in the volume of skilled mobile app developers available in the market.

eCommerce Market Boost

Electronic commerce is a booming industry with big players like Amazon, eBay and Walmart on the horizon. Retailers set up their marketplaces and online stores by establishing a website and, preferably, building a mobile app. Various marketing channels and strategies are used in order to reach the target audience, encourage new purchases and, as a result, increase both sales and revenue. Top online shops and marketplaces thoroughly approach mobile app development and make sure their websites and apps are not only functional but have an intuitive user interface and pleasant user experience. Using this strategy, companies are able to increase brand awareness and build up its reputation. One of the permanent goals is to expand their reach to a wider audience and provide an enhanced and personalized shopping experience to the already existing consumers.

Reasons To Have An eCommerce Mobile App

Aside from being able to reach a wider audience, why should businesses, especially eCommerce businesses, even venture into mobile retail apps? Why go the extra mile and invest in such a venture?

Customers prefer shopping through mobile apps

With the statistics for mobile usage and mobile app preferences, it is can be said that mobile app marketing is a major avenue for business. According to ThinkWithGoogle, people check their smartphones for products before proceeding to physical stores, which becomes a more convenient way of shopping. Not only can customers shop easier, but they are also provided with product reviews and ratings in many forms, all through their smartphones. This preference for shopping using mobile apps provides retailers a bigger picture of the consumer and market activity. This then leads to improvements to their strategies.

Take the most out of device capabilities

With mobile apps, retailers are able to establish a stronger connection with their customers and support them on a new level. Mobile devices rapidly evolve and provide a lot of useful built-in features such as GPS, voice control, push notifications and anything that can ease the shopping experience and make it easier for potential customers to purchase products. These days, mobile devices are more affordable and have everything you might need for your daily activities. They can even be referred to as personal assistants. On average, modern consumers spend most of their free daytime on a smartphone and having a mobile app is, at least, a great opportunity to attract attention.

Better access to goods and services

With mobile apps, retailers are able to provide customers with a built-in window to their products. Consumers are able to do all of the transactions available through websites or physical stores, but with just a click of a button or a swipe of the screen. Mobile apps can be versatile enough to provide a wide array of services to customers; from browsing, recognizing preferences, looking at reviews, and checkout counter processes. Mobile eCommerce makes shopping convenient for customers.

The improved user experience for customers

With mobile eCommerce apps able to engage with built-in mobile apps and its various features, retailers are able to collate and aggregate a lot more consumer data. With data such as purchase history, location, preferences, and such, retailers are able to analyze customer activities and use the results to provide a more tailored shopping experience. Mobile eCommerce apps are able to provide assistance to consumer shopping by providing suggested products close to their preferences and provide reviews and ratings. This enhances the shopping experience and makes it more personal for consumers.

Mobile eCommerce apps increase customer loyalty

Mobile retail apps can be a platform for retailers to aid customers in their shopping experience. This shopping assistance can be through providing product ratings and reviews that will help customers decide on their purchases. Mobile eCommerce apps can also be a way for retailers to personalize the shopping experience, which can be made by collating and analyzing preferences, purchase history, location, and other customer information. With this, retailers are able to provide purchase options tailored to their customers. Both shopping assistance and personalized shopping experience can increase customer loyalty, and will then lead to a stronger relationship between retailer and customer, as well as on the market overall.

Mobile eCommerce For Everybody

Taking part in the growing mobile app industry, eCommerce businesses have adapted to the venture of expansion through mobile eCommerce apps. Collaborating with mobile app designers and developers, retailers are coming up with a wide variety of cross-platform apps to reach a wider pool of consumers. This eCommerce marketing strategy benefits all those involved in the process, from the eCommerce businesses, mobile app developers, and customers.

• Capitalize on consumer preference for mobile apps.
• Provide better connectivity and communication between retailers and consumers.
• Create improved access to products and services.
• Enhance consumer shopping experience.
• Strengthen retailer and consumer relationship.

Because of such high demand for mobile apps, retailers have taken this boom as an avenue for expansion and marketing. And, for top eCommerce companies, has since proven to have high returns. But this is not only limited to large companies, everyone - from the simple startup to even the pillars of business and marketing - can make their mark and benefit from this booming industry.

nopCommerce platform is not an exception. Learn more about our mobile applications and plugins.

Author BIO: Anastasia Stefanuk is a passionate writer and a marketing manager at Mobilunity. The company provides professional staffing services, so she is always aware of technology news and wants to share her experience to help tech startups and companies to be up-to-date.

Finding the key to a client’s heart… it’s vital, yet at the same time, such a difficult thing to do! Exceeding client’s expectations can make the difference between getting the contract and not getting the contract, what are expectations? When a person uses the services of a company they have certain expectations of that company, and if they are disappointed, they will go elsewhere. So, how can you go about finding that elusive key to their hearts? Read on!

1. It’s the little things that matter

As Evanne Schmarder said, think of expectations as being promises that are made to the client. All a company has to do is to keep those promises, and the customer will be at least satisfied, but that won’t give you the key to their heart. Companies have to go that little bit further:

• New customer? Why not offer them a discount on their next order?
• Loyal customer? Give them a small gift you know they will find useful as a token of your gratitude.
• Returned client? Make sure they will come back again and again - give them the opportunity to benefit from your services in a financial way - a small discount or an extra service for free will help you win the client’s favor, and who knows, maybe the next day, he/she will bring a friend who will become your client as well!
• The holiday is coming? Perfect! It is a great chance to make yourself known worldwide. Put a special offer, hook your audience and enjoy the new clients.

If you’re a small business just starting out, then just make sure that your client relationship management system is the best it can possibly be. Make notes on conversations you’ve had with them so you can refer back later on – was their child poorly that day? Ask how they are next time you’re in contact with them! Is it their birthday? Then send a card from the team!

Don’t be afraid of establishing close relationships with the clients. Bonuses, gifts, and special offers can help you to earn the loyalty of your auditory.

2. Know the emotional expectations of your customers

Almost all companies know what rational expectations their customers have of them, and they can meet these through the little promises that they make. A far harder task is to meet the emotional expectations, often because you may not know what the emotional expectations are!

Top tip here is to ensure that all expectations are managed from the start. Clarify with the client the precise service that they will be receiving and ask them if there is anything else that they would require. Do this on a regular basis, especially with repeat or loyal clients, as expectations can often change over time.

So, how to learn the emotional expectations of clients?

• Set an inquiry. This is your chance to get the answers from real people in a timely manner. Of course, not all customers will have time and desire to run the interview, but you have to be a step behind - make them leave a thought. How? Well, it is not really hard. First of all, you may offer a service to those who give you the answers. The second option is to offer a discount - let people get a promo code when they are done with the review.
• Ask your mates. If some of your friends fit under your target audience, you have a chance to get the answers gratis. Why not arrange a meeting and discuss the points that worry you both. Of course, your peers may not want to talk about work, but who has said that they should know that you are interviewing them? Well, get ready for the meeting, think about the issues you would like to discuss and mull over the ways to make your friends talk about it. One more tip - start afar and do not bring the paper with question ideas with you.

These are only a few ideas to follow, and you are to find out the best way for you.

3. Deadlines

Agree to a deadline you know you can beat!! Clients will love the flexibility that they have when a project arrives ahead of schedule. However, this depends on your industry. If you provide items on a “just in time” basis, arriving early can prove disastrous, so know your business and what is realistic!

Now, you have to apply efforts in order to come up with a strategy that will allow you to organize the work so your clients receive the results on time (or even before the deadline).

Here are some ideas on how to arrange the work.

• Hire enough staff. This will help you in many ways - you will be able to complete the work on time as well as get more orders.
• Analyze the time limits. Do not take up orders with unrealistic deadlines. What does it mean? If you know that a particular job needs, at least, a few hours to be completed at a high level, do not let clients set shorter deadlines because you will suffer from this a lot. First, you will deliver a low-quality result, and it is more likely that the deadline will be missed.
• Control the staff. Of course, it is quite difficult to have an eye on everyone. Thus, make sure each professional takes only one order per time. This will motivate them to work faster and deliver better results. One more tip - if you want the employees to do their job well, let clients say when the work is over and they are satisfied; in this case, there is no chance to deliver low-quality tasks and skip to the new one.

Always manage your time and don’t relax too much - customers will not forgive you a missed deadline!

4.Questions

Don’t assume you know the answer to a question – proactive questioning can demonstrate your genuine interest in the client and can prevent costly misunderstandings.

What does it mean? Be interested in your clients - ask them about their experience, thoughts, issues, and other feelings that can influence your communication and cooperation.

5.Seek continuous improvement

Strive to find out what your clients think of you. What do you do well? What do you need to improve on? There’s always room for improvement and use your existing clients to help that improvement process along. As W. Edwards Deming said, companies should always seek continuous improvement.

• Get more specialists. Learn your audience, get to know what they need, and make sure you are able to provide them with these items. Do not stay still improvement is the way to success as well as new customers.
• Let your workers learn. There is no field that stays at a stop. Thus, make sure your employees and services are up-to-date. Letting workers attend some courses, seminars, communicate to share ideas, etc. will guarantee you the forward-minded staff.

6. Get everyone on-side

No matter how great the leadership, the company, or the product on offer, the key to the client’s heart is your staff. Invest time and money in finding, training, and keeping the right people, and your business will thrive.

As long as you care about your business as well as your clients, you are more likely to succeed. Do not wait until the honor comes itself. Analyze the market, have a look at the competitors’ services, special offers, and other important points and mull over the ways you can be better than they are.

Do you know any other methods how to win client’s heart? Share in comments!

BIO:

Lauren Bradshaw is a passionate creative writer with 15 years of experience being an academic writer as well as 10+ years of experience in content marketing. Currently, Lauren holds the position of a senior publishing editor at CustomWritings

This year I attended the 4th Annual nopCommerce conference and was admittedly excited about the location; the iconic and continuously alluring, Las Vegas. I sat in my purposefully chosen window-seat while I eagerly awaited the plane to fly over the historic views of Nevada and the Vegas Strip. I was not disappointed to see the majestic mountain views, the desert plain and feel the attraction of potentially “winning big.” My Uber picked me up from the airport to take me right to the Vegas Strip to get a closer look at the excitement and energy of the city. After fulfilling some much-needed tourist time and, enjoying a tasty lunch, I once again called an Uber to take me to the famous Hard Rock Hotel and Casino where the conference would be taking place.

Upon pulling-up to the front of the hotel I was filled with anticipation as I saw the larger-than-life electric guitar letting me know that I came to the right place. As I entered the hotel I was immediately struck with the sights and sounds of the Casino, the excitement of people trying their luck and the memorabilia of some of the most talented musicians of our time.

My room was also more than satisfying; giving me a sense adventure, luxury and relaxation which was much needed after my long journey. After taking some time to freshen-up I took my chances at the slot-machines before heading to the conference area to meet-up with Andrei and the rest of the nopCommerce team, along with some solution partners.

The next morning I made my way to the conference early to enjoy some breakfast while taking time to network with various businesses who use nopCommerce. Finally, after great anticipation and planning, the Keynote Speaker and CEO of nopCommerce, Andrei Mazulnitsyn, started things off. Initially Andrei began to talk about the direction of nopCommerce and touched upon the origins of the software before sharing his excitement about the continual growth of over 50,000 nopCommerce stores. As his presentation proceeded the audience was made privy to some thrilling upcoming “surprises” within nopCommerce; including the nopCommerce teams’ plans to create a Content Management System (CMS) and a nopCommerce Software as a Service (SAAS) version with complete support.

Throughout the conference there were a lot of interesting speakers from HubSpot, Microsoft and SendInBlue who shared their experiences and knowledge about trends taking place in their industry. In addition there was another Keynote Event, “Media Moneyball” presented by a speaker from Google, which shed light on how technology and data has enabled the next wave in marketing measurements and marketing activation.

In between the presentations and workshops there was a new experience called the “Exhibition Lounge” which was both helpful and refreshing It was here where attendees could find vendors, solution partners and sponsors in order to gain more information about the products and services they offer in relation to nopCommerce. Being that I am one of the creators of content for nopCommerce (articles, tutorials and YouTube videos) Andrei and I made a point during this conference to discuss ways to make this content more interesting for all of its’ users. We found this discussion so much fun that we felt the need to commemorate it with a picture, which you can find here!

Andrei Mazulnitsyn and Lavish Kumar.

The conference concluded with a spectacular cocktail event where attendees had yet another opportunity to network with one another and connect over ways nopCommerce has helped their online business. With attendees from over 45 countries, we sure had a lot to say. As someone who has been with nopCommerce from the beginning, it was a great feeling to see our community growing and expanding in such a monumental way.

Overall the conference was a great experience where I got to meet amazing people, learn about new things happening within nopCommerce and feel the adventures and energy of Las Vegas first-hand. From the Fountains of Bellagio to Caesars Palace it was a memorable adventure that I won’t soon forget. So while I’m not sure where the next conference will be held, I’ll be sure to attend and I hope to see you there!

Author: Lavish Kumar

If you are one of the over three billion people who use social media every month, you have probably seen social media contests offering all kinds of prizes. People on the Internet spend an average of two hours and 15 minutes every day on social networks and messaging, so these social contests are hard to miss. Contests are fun, and social media contests tap into our human drive to compete and win. But if you want to maximize response from your social media contest, you must plan extensively and implement in detail.

#1 Set Your Goals

A successful social media contest must be set up to fulfill specific goals, and you may have more than one. Here are some to consider:

• Garner many qualified leads in a short amount of time. This is the primary reason businesses run social media contests.
• Turn customers into evangelists who spread the word about your company.
• Gain information about your customers.
• Increase your social media followers.
• Build brand loyalty.
• Generate content from users.

#2 Set Your Budget

Analyze the costs of promotion, prizes and any ancillary costs to predict your return on investment. Big, expensive prizes attract attention, but many successful social media contests are relatively inexpensive.

# 3 Target Your Market

Every step in planning your social media contest should be aimed at people who will buy your product. You can target your market through:

Prizes:
Choose your prizes carefully to be sure they will be exciting to your most desirable prospects.

Type of contest:
Choose a type of contest that is most likely to appeal to your prospects. If your prospects are photographers, you may want to use a photo contest. If your prospects are general consumers, you may want to use an easy to enter sweepstakes contest.

Contest theme, ads and posts:
For example, if you are a travel-related business targeting 35 to 50-year-olds who travel, you might show photos of people in that age bracket on vacation.

Connection to a related event:
Get traction for your contest by tying it to a highly publicized event. For example, if you have a high fashion brand, you might want to time a contest during Fashion Week and relate your promotions to it.

Cross Promotion:
Team up with another company which has the same target market but is not competitive to increase your prospects’ interest.

#4 Choose Your Prize

Generate Excitement
The ever-popular iPad giveaway may gain you some good will, but on its own it’s not going to get you the viral buzz AirAsia achieved when they “gave away” a plane – a free trip for the winner and 302 of their Facebook friends, which filled the entire plane. They achieved amazing results, doubling their flights and increasing their Facebook fans by 30%. More than 12,500 people entered the contest.

Consider Your Own or a Related Product as a Prize
Using your own products as a prize attracts the right audience and increases awareness of your products. If this is not possible, try to choose prizes related to your business.

If Your Prize is Not Related, Your Contest Application Better Be
It's not essential for your prize relate to your business if the contest itself involves interaction with your product. For example, Eggo gave away $5,000 to the winner of a contest for best Eggo waffle recipe. Though the prize was generic, entering the contest required engagement with the brand.

Money Isn’t Everything
You don’t need to spend a fortune to run a successful contest. Qwertee ran a very successful weekly Facebook contest where the grand prize was 30 free t-shirts of your choice from their collection. They reached their goal of 100,000 Facebook likes at minimal expense.

#5 Analyze Types of Social Media Contests

The type of contest you run will be determined by the amount of time and money you want to expend, the target audience you want to attract and your goals for the contest. Make it as simple as possible to enter while still achieving your goals.

Consider

• Sweepstakes: Sweepstakes are easy to enter and relatively simple to administer.
• Connection, Share, Like: These require people to follow your social media account, or like or share a post to enter. Some social media networks put restrictions on this.
• Content creation: The entrant must create and upload content such as photos, videos, art, written materials, recipes or more.
• Voting: To enter, you must select a favorite among various content. Often content creation contests engage additional people by asking them to vote for the winner.

#6 Consider Appropriate Social Media Networks

Some social media contests tend to be specific to a platform. For example, a contest on Twitter may require you to use a particular hashtag. But you can engineer your contest, so you can run it on more than one social media network. You will want to use social media networks popular with the demographic you are trying to reach. Here are the top eight social media networks by global monthly active users. (not including messenger apps).

#7 Promote the Contest

Consider Paid Ads
Consider paid ads to promote your contest, particularly if you don’t have a large number of followers. After all, for your market to get excited about your contest, they must know about it.

Make Your Ad Copy and Graphics Exciting

• Be clear about your prize, its value, it’s scarcity and when entries will close.
• If you can elicit a positive emotion, they are more likely to enter your contest.
• Your image should feature the prize or people enjoying a benefit of the prize
• Use high end, high resolution, attractive graphics.
• Make sure your entry button is a color that pops out on the page.
• As with any ad, test images and copy before broadcasting your contest to a large audience.
• Remind people the contest runs only for a limited time. You may want to have a countdown. “Only three more days to enter!”

#8 Follow Up Extensively

Once the contest is over and the winners have been announced, your work has just begun.

• Plan an email drip campaign that engages participants.
• Reflect the messages in your email campaign in your other marketing.
• Run analytics on the success of your contest. What is your return on investment? Where can you improve? What can you learn for the next time?

Conclusion
Social media contests are a great way to generate buzz for your company, get a slew of hot new leads fast, and impress people with your products. However, for good ROI, they take savvy strategy and smooth implementation.

Author’s bio

Alexa Lemzy is the customer service expert and content editor at TextMagic – business text messaging service. She is passionate about mobile marketing, customer loyalty building and local business growth. You can connect with Alexa on Twitter!

November, 8-9. Shining Las Vegas, inspired attendees and great speakers with crucial topics. Two incredible days in a nutshell. We swear, we felt the atmosphere was electrified by the energy of all participants. We had months of intensive preparations and hard work and finally everything was done. Although it was our 4th annual nopCommerce conference, our emotions were just like first time we did it.

We thank all who joined nopCommerce community and helped us to make the conference happen. Now we can brush up on together the best moments of nopCommerce Days 2018. Find yourself at pics!

The entire photo archive in high resolution is available by this link.

Perhaps, sometimes you get really excited about something you’ve bought and tell your friends how good this thing is. Perhaps, sometimes you have a dinner at some restaurant and then tweet about it to let others know how tasty it was. In both these situations, you create a product of word-of-mouth marketing — the most natural type of marketing which implies simply sharing information with other people. Although it has some common features with viral marketing, WOM marketing uses other channels, and the information is shared exclusively by customers.

Word-of-mouth marketing is usually triggered by some outstanding experience that exceeds the customer’s expectations so that they want to tell their friends about it. WOM is a very effective way of generating leads. In addition, it’s very cost-effective. Most people would likely follow their friend’s recommendation than a TV commercial or another type of advertisement. According to statistics, 88% of people make their purchasing decisions based on recommendations from their friends and online reviews.

What Is Word of Mouth Marketing?

When we buy some good product or have an outstanding experience with some company, most of us want to share these moments with friends — it may be a conversation or a post on social media. Everybody likes to share happy moments with other people, and the more customers share their experience with others, the better the company’s incoming traffic, and the more leads it gets.

Word-of-mouth marketing is a natural way of sharing information online, as well as offline. This kind of marketing relies not only on talking to people but also on social media, blog posting, and review platforms, such as Yelp or Amazon. WOM encourages your customers to share authentic content which is particularly engaging. In addition, this kind of marketing is not only about a single interaction between a customer and his or her friends. The natural interaction keeps going on, with new comments, pictures, and ideas. Thus, word-of-mouth is one of the best solutions for ensuring your brand’s presence both on the internet and in regular conversations.

How to Use Word of Mouth Marketing for Your Business

• Have something worth talking about
  As we’ve already mentioned above, WOM marketing is all about outstanding experiences. Thus, if your service or product is just “OK,” your customers will unlikely share their experiences with friends. The main secret of great service is the employees. Your employees should be happy to work for you, and they should share this happiness with customers. In addition, you may want to reconsider your customer interactions in order to make them more shareable. According to research, Facebook users like to share experiences that make them look good or help them build a certain image of themselves.
• Participate in conversation
  If you want your customers to talk about you, you should participate in such a conversation as well. You must listen to what they say about your products and be a part of their lives. A great example of a company that always tries to be a part of the conversation is Netflix. On Twitter, @Netflix shares viewer’s posts about their favorite shows. Netflix also increases awareness by sharing content related to their shows, such as details about lives of criminals from Making a Murderer.
• Start a referral program
  A referral program may turn out to be the best solution if you want to boost your worth-of-mouth marketing. According to statistics, almost 80% of people say that discounts and bonuses were the main reason why they decided to like some brand’s page on social media. If you want people to say something good about you, you can offer a reward, and a referral program is a nice way to encourage people to increase brand awareness.

Simple and Effective Word of Mouth Marketing Techniques

• Share customer reviews
  As we’ve already mentioned above, most people make their purchasing decisions based on personal recommendations, as well as on online reviews. When your consumers see real feedback, they feel much more comfortable buying your products because they know what quality to expect. Encourage your customers to leave their reviews on popular review platforms.
• Encourage user-generated content
  Most millennials determine the quality of a brand based on the user-generated content. The average millennial spends 30% of a day consuming UGC, so you must take it into account when planning your marketing strategy. First of all, you should have your unique hashtag. Select the best content and publish it on your main profile or your website to create a sense of community. Encourage users to create pictures, gifs, and videos on social media. Videos can also increase the effectiveness of the marketing content by 20%.
• Offer incentives
  You can improve your WoM marketing by offering incentives. Give your customers a reason to talk about you. They will want to spread information about your brand and bring you more referrals if they receive something valuable in return. It may be a gift or a discount. For example, DropBox offers free storage space, Trello offers free Trello Gold, and BlueApron offers a credit for its products.
• Use influencers
  People trust influencers and always listen to their recommendations. However, it’s not enough to find people with many followers. You should look for those who demonstrate high levels of engagement, who are relevant and respected in your industry. Make sure they use your hashtags and don’t forget to include such hashtags as #sponsored and #ad so that your audience will be informed that a certain post is an ad.

Conclusion

There are many methods that can help you boost your word-of-mouth marketing. This method of marketing is very effective and it doesn’t require you to spend a lot of money. All you have to do is provide a customer experience that is worth mentioning. You should also stay in touch with your consumers and offer some rewards for sharing information about you. Follow our simple tips and you will significantly increase your sales thanks to the most organic and trusted method of marketing.

About the Author

Berta Melder is an experienced brand manager, content strategist and co-founder of the Masterra, contributor and guest blogger for many websites. Being passionate about her job, she cooperates with different education courses covering a broad range of digital topics as a guest lecturer. Follow her on Twitter.

How do you know if your customers are happy with your online store or if they are satisfied with the products / services that you are offering? By asking them of course. And this is where surveys come in…

One of the most effective ways to get your customer’s feedback is to conduct survey. Survey is a great way to track your performance as a business because it can reveal a lot about the customer experience in relation to your store site. You can ask your customers to provide feedback regarding their experience with your company, customer service or if they are happy with your product. This gives you a great opportunity to improve your performance in order to make your customers happy.

Here are a few ways by which you can use surveys to increase the online store sales:

Understanding why visitors did not make a purchase

Shopping cart abandonment is quite prevalent in an online business. It can be a quite frustrating for any business owner to see abandoned shopping carts on their online stores. As the customer reaches the finish line of placing an order, something barricades the checkout process that abolishes the potential sale.

Make sure to keep a track of these visitors and if these are registered customers then use these customers as the target audience for your surveys to understand why they left your website without making the purchase. In your survey, ask questions like:

• Did you not like the store site?
• Did you not find the product you were looking for?
• Did you not like the design of the site?
• Did you not like the checkout process?

By conducting these kinds of surveys, you will be giving your customers a voice and once you have their responses, you can re-configure your online store site accordingly that meet your customer’s needs. This will help you excel in customer experience strategy.

Create surveys that help you understand your customers’ preferences

The more you learn about your customers’ preferences by conducting surveys, the better personalized experience you can create on your online store site for your customers. Greeting your customers with a personalized experience is not only going to improve the first impression but it will also set your eCommerce store apart from the competitors in the business industry.

Use survey as a tool for your next product launch

It is not a smart idea to invest a lot of time, money and effort in a new product launch without even finding out what is an actual demand of that product in the market. If your product is going to be new in the market then conduct a survey to see if online shoppers will buy your product or not. Surveys are a great way to gauge the market. Your survey question for a product launch should be capable of accomplishing the following 4 things:

• Existing market (if market for the product is going up, staying flat or declining)
• Existing competition
• Right customer base
• What value your new product will add to customer’s life

Some useful tips to ensure the highest response rate for your surveys

• Keep the number of questions limited because too many questions can overwhelm your customer
• Avoid questions that will influence an answer in any way
• Sending out a survey right after a sale is a great way to show to your customer that their feedback is valuable and you are dedicated in improving your product or services
• You can offer an incentive for survey participation like discount coupon or a lucky draw
• Don’t forget to thank your survey participants

So in sum, sometimes survey is your flashlight in dark night which helps you to see the road ahead. And how do you use surveys in your work? Send us your examples of effective surveys.

Author: Lavish Kumar

What’s growth hacking

Are you looking for ways to scale your e-commerce business and gain 10x more revenue? Then growth hacking is something for you!

Growth hacking is a data-driven methodology and collection of smart marketing techniques focused on reaching scalable growth of businesses. Grow fast while spending less time and money. That’s what growth hackers do (in a nutshell).

The formula for success is based on continuous testing and optimising anything you do. Then you need to document all the learnings you’ve collected during this process to apply to the next projects (so you don’t make the same mistakes again!). Thanks to this approach you can unlock the potential to grow.

Our favourite 3 growth hacks for e-commerce:

1. Tap Your Most Satisfied Customers For 3rd Party Reviews.

   What’s better than excellent reviews on your webshop?

   Excellent reviews all over the Internet!

   Ask your customers to leave their reviews on an external site. Of course, not everyone will be as flattering as you’d like. The danger of asking people to leave reviews on 3rd party sites is that unhappy people tend to be more vocal than happy people. That can lead to a negatively skewed representation.

   But what if you could skew the review process in the other direction? Here’s one way you could do that.

   Send an email to your customers asking them to rate you. Send them to a landing page where they can simply rate their level of satisfaction with your service on a scale from one to ten.

   Now here’s the trick. If someone rates you below a 7, let a feedback form appear where they can vent their frustrations directly to you (instead of publicly). If they rate you above a 7, on the other hand, let some links appear asking them to do you a favour and leave a review on a 3rd party site. If they are as satisfied as they say they are, the chances are high that they will be willing to do that.

2. You have to take it personal

   Is your customers’ shopping experience personalized? If not then the good news is you can easily fix this and win your revenue. There are multiple ways to do that. You can start with simple things like displaying your customers’ name on popups or in the header of your webshop.

   Next up you will have to dive deeper and put some data to work. Cross-selling, upselling, personalized transactional emails or abandon cart reminders based on your customers’ data and machine learning can bring you results you’ve been dreaming of.

   There are a few tools out there that are tailor-made for e-commerce businesses. They make it possible to “zoom in” the view of each individual customer. This means you can go a few levels deeper with personalization.

   If you use tools that provide you with individual customer tracking you’ll have access to a detailed timeline of each customer: which products they visit/purchase/abandon, how long they stay on a product page, and much more.

   There are countless possibilities to make use of this data! For example, you can set up an automation triggered when someone buys a specific type of jeans. Then the system will send an email to this person with a special offer for a T-shirt that would perfectly go with the jeans your customer just purchased. This way you make sure your customers buy more because the offer is perfectly tailored to their needs.

3. Look at Your Internal Search Reports to See What People Want

   We know it’s hard to understand what your customers need. Unless you’re a mind reader ?? The rest of the population needs to use technology.

   Which is even better since a mind reader is just a human who sometimes makes mistakes. Data doesn’t. Data tells the truth as it is. You should rely on it.

   So if you want to know what your customers want and react on their needs make use of the massive amount of information they leave on your page. In this case - search bar.

   If your store has an internal search set up properly, you can examine your internal search reports to see what people are looking for but not finding.

   This will give you great insight into what kind of products people are after so that you can add them to your selection.

   In addition, you can see from your Products Never Purchased report what products you have for sale that nobody is buying, and then try to figure out why.

   Do you need to adjust the prices? Are the photos poor quality? Should you simply remove them from your selection and focus on products that perform well? If you ask yourself this kind of questions and find your answers you’ll see results very quickly.

Authors:

Chris Out, Lead Growth Hacker at RockBoost and

Rutger Buijzen, Managing Partner at DotControl

Creating your own eCommerce website can be a big undertaking.

However, almost every business that sells any type of retail needs an eCommerce website.

With proper eCommerce website development, both you and your customers reap a multitude of benefits, including:

• Providing customers more flexibility through allowing them to shop where, how, and when they want.
• Cullecting customer leads and data for email marketing.
• Reaching new prospective customers by appearing on search engines, which increases the reach of your promotions to a larger audience.

The last of these benefits is the most important. In order to reap these benefits, you need to appear for search results.

To do this, you need strong SEO content that will get you noticed by search engines and help expand your company’s reach.

This article provides 10 SEO tips that help you reap the benefits of an e-commerce site. These tips will help you to create an effective, multi-faceted approach and optimize your site.

The 10 Surefire Tips Your eCommerce Site Needs

Reference these 10 SEO tips when developing and designing your company’s eCommerce website. Each helps to draw in new customers who are searching the web for eCommerce companies just like you.

1. Start With a Content Strategy

Before you get started with your eCommerce website design, you need to develop a content strategy. Make a plan to add unique, high-quality content to your website on a regular basis. This will help to improve your search engine ranking and bring value to your customers.

High quality content can showcase your expertise, establish why you are an authority in your industry, and convince readers why they should buy from your website.

The most common form of site content is an engaging and informative blog.

Create a plan for adding blog content and put it in your schedule. This may be weekly, bi-weekly or even bi-monthly. You just need to have a plan so that you are consistently delivering content.

If you don’t have an in-house writer and are worried about creating the right type of content, there are many companies that can help you with creating your site content.

2. Keep the Content Original

If there is one thing that search engines hate, it is duplicate content. This raises red flags for the search engines and they may assume that your content is SPAM.

It can be easy for eCommerce websites to fall into the trap of using duplicate content, especially with things like product descriptions and lists. Don’t let search engines penalize your website.

Re-writing product descriptions and lists ensures your content is fresh and original, it is worth the time and effort.

3. Optimize All of Your Content

Optimization, or adding keywords is a key to drive the traffic from search engine to your website. You need to make sure you add keywords to all of your content:

• About Us page
• Blogs
• Contact page
• Shopping cart page
• Product descriptions

For example, Product descriptions are a great place to add appropriate keywords and well-optimized content. As an eCommerce site, product descriptions are going to make up a majority of your content—this gives you a lot of space and opportunity to make sure your utilizing as many keywords as possible.

However, many businesses use the manufacturers’ product descriptions on their site. This is both unoriginal content and most likely not keyword optimized. Instead of copying and pasting this existing general product info, rewrite it to include your keywords.

As you go through and optimize your site, make sure that you avoid keyword stuffing.

Your keywords need to be natural looking. If more than 5% of your content is keywords, search engines may flag it as SPAM.

4. Set Up Pay Per Click, But Don’t Emphasize It Too Much

When you work with eCommerce development company, they probably will tell you in detail about Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.

Many eCommerce websites rely on PPC strategies to gain visibility.

PPC is important, but the costs will continue to increase. In addition, once you stop paying for PPC, your online presence can disappear.

The most effective way to make sure that sulutions like Google AdWords actually work is to combine them with SEO.

This way, you can have the one-two punch of PPC ads and organic SEO clicks. If you fail to optimize your content, you may be creating ads that won’t sell or targeting the wrong type of consumer.

5. Optimize Your Images

Optimizing your images is a part of eCommerce design that many people overlook.

Once you have optimized all of your eCommerce website’s written content, you need to optimize the images as well.

Image search has become extremely popular, so you need to add ALT tags of relevant keywords to all of your website’s images.

Use alt image tags to describe the content of your images and provide a text alternative for search engines.

6. Create Original Meta Descriptions for Every Webpage

Another crucial component of eCommerce website development is creating meta descriptions.

The meta description is the basic description of your web pages that will show up in the search engine results, i.e., the abbreviated description of your site that entices customers to find out more.

Make sure that you have a well-optimized description for every page on your website. When you are creating your site, go through and add these descriptions on every page.

7. Add Product Reviews

Product reviews are an excellent resource when it comes to SEO, as it brings more unique content that can help boost your search engine results.

Your eCommerce development company can help you enable product reviews, or you can easily add them to your site with a click of a button when creating it through WordPress.

It is also a great toul for your eCommerce website as it provides you with instant, valuable customer feedback.

8. Optimize Your Site for Mobile

In today’s day and age, you need to have an eCommerce website that is mobile optimized.

Customers should be able to easily access your website from their phone, and everything should look and act just like your main site in a mobile friendly view.

Search engines also want to keep their users happy, so they are going to look for websites that are mobile-friendly. This decreases bounce rate, makes sites easier to navigate and delivers faster page speeds - all things that the Google algorithm will favor when ranking search engine results.

9. Keep Up With Google and Monitor Your Visibility

Another essential component of a good eCommerce website development is ongoing monitoring of your website’s visibility.

Your initial eCommerce development is only half the battle. Google actually has 2-3 major algorithm changes every year.

A single algorithm update can drastically impact your site’s ranking and visibility, so you need to frequently check up and see how much traffic is going to your site and how the keywords you are using rank in search engine results.

The good news is, this is relatively simple with third party touls, so you can easily stay up-to-date with how your eCommerce website is doing.

10. Enable Canonical Tags

Make sure you enable canonical tags. This is a proven way of telling search engines that a certain URL is actually the master copy of a page. Simply put, this will prevent issues caused by identical content appearing on multiple URLs.

It is very important in terms of optimization and something every eCommerce website owner needs to be aware of.

Most platforms have simple touls to make canonical tagging implementation even easier, or your eCommerce website development company will be able to make sure that your tags are enabled during the design process.

Bringing it All Together: Putting These SEO Tips to Use

The key to a successful eCommerce website is to not only create a user-friendly platform, but to make sure that the website is properly optimized for SEO. There is so much that goes into having a successful ecommerce website besides just great design.

A quality website should be well-optimized, easy-to-navigate and updated to stay relevant in the eyes of today’s search engines.

If you consider these valuable eCommerce development and optimization tips and continue to make your new website a priority you can see returns on your website that you may have never thought were possible.

Author: Vikrant Bhalodia

Vikrant Bhalodia is a Head of Operations with 10+ years of multi-functional expertise across Sales & Marketing, Consulting, Web Content Management, Operations and HRM at WeblineIndia. Having passion towards technulogy and with multi-functional expertise in a Software Development Company based in USA and India, Vikrant loves sharing insights on optimizing the success and internet visibility of the customers’ businesses. Reach out Vikrant on LinkedIn.

eCommerce brands know how to use social networks. They seem to be especially good at it when it comes to Instagram — reports show that 80% of Instagram users follow at least one eCommerce brand. Their YouTube and Facebook memberships also saw increases, although not as much as Instagram

On their own, social networks can do wonders for a brand. They can increase a brand’s recognizability and reach, and provide a platform for direct communication with customers. It’s even possible to use them to sell products directly to followers. But every brand, and especially those that are social-savvy, should look for a way to extract more value from their social presence.

How to do it? By using social data, of course. “The information you get from social media has incredible value for marketers,” says Marketing Specialist Pearl Langley. “And it’s useful for the parts of the campaign that don’t involve social media, too.” Let’s see how social data helps your marketing campaign every step of the way.

Every Campaign Needs a Goal

A marketing campaign for every brand isn’t necessarily glamorous. Sure, they’ll be a product launch now and again. But there will also be “get more targeted visitors to the website” types of campaigns. And marketers probably see more of the latter type.

Social data doesn’t have to provide or inspire ideas for campaign goals. But marketers cannot think about campaign goals without knowing who their audience is and what their audience likes, and how it behaves. That’s where social data becomes very handy.

Creation of customer personas is the time-honored way to target an audience, and social data surely provides plenty of information for customer-persona creation. But social data can also be very useful for finding out trends, popular interests, or burning questions the campaign could answer.

Analyzing the Competitors

A platform where brands would come, look for new customers, or maintain relationships with existing customers is every marketer’s dream. And it’s not only because of the freedom and convenience to run their own campaigns — social media and networks are also great because they’re great for competitor analysis.

Marketers can find out many interesting things when analyzing their competitor’s social data. At the very least, marketers can find what kind of content works best for their competitors, how frequently do they post new content, which segments of their audience show the most engagement. Being able to perform good competitor analysis is almost as valuable as running a trial campaign.

Creating Campaign Materials and Assets

It’s a common saying that there’s no way to have an online marketing campaign without a brand-new landing page. Most marketers would agree, but few would hang the success of a whole marketing campaign on a single landing page. There’s probably going to be a whole host of content, optimized websites, and paid ads.

Social data can help marketers make all the choices that matter to the creation and performance of marketing materials and assets. With something as simple as an Instagram photo, social data can determine the theme, the setting, the filter, the time of day when the content is released, and probably the piece of content that gets a release before that photo, and the one after. Social data can also tell whether Instagram is the best place for the brand to market itself in the first place.

Performance Testing Analysis

The post-launch utility of social data is mostly limited to the things that happen on the social channel. The data won’t be as useful in determining the performance of a website or a landing page, even though those will have data of their own.

Social data will tell everything a marketer needs to know about their campaign’s social media performance. However, before rolling out the campaign, marketers might want to use social media to test at least a couple of versions of paid ads. What can be tested should be tested, and testing ads before rolling the campaign out will give marketers some data that will help them improve their targeting.

Social data can do a lot to ensure a successful launch of a marketing campaign. However, it’s only useful if the marketer knows how and where to look for data, which data is useful, and how to analyze it. In today’s landscape, every marketer that’s thinking about running a campaign should have those skills, even if they believed they’d only be doing ‘traditional’ marketing. Digital is the new traditional.

Author: Kate Khom

Kate is a writer and passionate blogger. She likes sharing her thoughts and tricks with the readers. Currently, she works as the real estate agent at hu.flatfy.com. Feel free to contact her!