Posts Tagged ‘Challenges’

10
May

Challenges of International Ecommerce and Solution through Open Source

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Introduction:

A recent study reports that almost 40% of current Internet companies turn away international orders because they do not have processes or systems in place to fulfill the order or they don’t have idea of solutions for the challenges they are facing. Even though, Internet makes it possible for a company to sell their products in an international marketplace through online, many companies are not prepared to go global. In this article we will study the general challenges faced by a company in International ECommerce and solution for the same.

Major Challenges of International ECommerce:
Cross border orders & Global Shipping:
Shipping is the key step in the International ECommerce Systems. Smaller products mean air transport is affordable but for larger merchandise the shipment through freight forwarder is feasible. The Ecommerce system should support both kinds of Shipment facilities.

Communication barriers:
Another challenge in international eCommerce is developing websites without communication barrier. It should support international audiences, i.e. customers of each country. The websites should also provide interface for translation of one language into another that addresses the culture of the target region or area.

Import and Export Laws/ Tax System:
Each country, province or county have their own law for Ecommerce trading and tax system. The eCommerce system should provide interface and facility for accommodating such region specific tax system and settings.

Internet Payment Systems & Security:
The International payments are a major concern for the online customers. The eCommerce system should support International Payment System but through a secured channel for payments.

Marketing and Promotion of products:
Many of the eCommerce System lacks the support for Marketing and promotion of products through the system.

Top 5 Challenges of ECommerce Websites:
Don’t waste the customer’s time:
Time is the most important commodity in online shopping. You want your customers to be able to find what they want and buy it as quickly as possible.

Lack of browser compatibility:
While 80% of the market uses Microsoft Internet Explorer, failing to design your eCommerce site to work with other browsers is passing up a huge opportunity

Poor UI design of website:
When a website is not well organized or looks unprofessional, many customers will immediately look elsewhere.

Poor customer service options:
All eCommerce sites should make it easy to get questions about products and purchases answered.

Security concerns of customers:
Many websites fail to recognize how apprehensive some shoppers are to enter their sensitive information into unknown eCommerce sites

Other Challenges:
The other eCommerce challenges are low conversion rates of orders, high shopping cart abandonment rates, low average order sizes, high bounce rates and low return visitor rates.

Challenges addressed through Open Source ECommerce Systems:
With some simple (and some not-so-simple) adjustments, an eCommerce site can improve its profitability significantly using the open source technologies and systems.
The Open Source Ecommerce Software such as Grove Cart (from eGrove Systems Corporation), Prestashop, ZenCart and Magento supports different Shipping Gateways, Multi-lingual support and translation facilities as well as different currency support.
Grove Cart, Magento, ZenCart also supports region based tax settings and different payment gateways such as PayPal, Authorize.net, Google Checkout, etc. The website security is addressed through the provision for transaction through the secured socket layer which most of the eCommerce systems have these facilities. Magento eCommerce systems provide interfaces for email marketing through the ecommerce website itself.
Grove Cart have the feature of one page checkout thus by saves buyer’s time and it also have the different browser compatibility. One of the most important features of Grove Cart is the vast gallery of templates that facilitates rich UI design options for companies.

Conclusion:
We have in place system for International ECommerce solution using Open Source Technologies such as Grove Cart, Prestashop, Magento, ZenCart and Joomla – Virtue Mart Systems. In future, the growth of international eCommerce is likely to be explosive, as there are vast support from Open Source Communities and entities like eGrove Systems Corporation.

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11
Jan

Ecommerce Software-turning Challenges to Opportunities

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The nature of web searchers is changing dramatically over the years. Their searches have been tilted from sex to people and commerce. That is the reason why ecommerce has become a lucrative avenue for business ventures irrespective of the industry they are serving and their scale of operation. The dynamics of business is changing with the increased popularity of ecommerce. Enhanced customer satisfaction, the opportunity to sell at a 24X7X365 atmosphere and a healthy competition among multitudes of online vendors is helping both customers and business ventures. Customers are now getting better services, access to scores of alternatives and price comparison facility. Business ventures are expanding their reach beyond geographical boundaries without a huge investment.

Ecommerce is lucrative only if you manage the challenges that are inherent with it. The most important of them is the security issue. The increased number of data theft and online cash frauds is creating an embarrassment for the online buyers. Even the most reputed ecommerce websites have faced this somewhere during their expansion and growth. While making your business venture online, you should make sure that you have installed the required ecommerce software packages that provide a safe secured online transaction for your customers for both data and money. Higher is security level, brighter is the scope for customer retention.

The second huddle in case of ecommerce is the dipping attention rate or the increased bounce rate. Presence of numerous alternatives on the web space is one of the major reasons behind it. To retain your prospective and existing you need to adapt standard tools and customer friendly ecommerce solutions. The look of the shopping cart of your website should match to the aims and objectives of your business. It offers a unique buying experience to the customers.

Hence, while ecommerce software applications for your business, analyse the requirements of your business first and then choose that package which fits to the needs better.

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Paul Benjamin is the famous free lance author in UK. He has the expertise in related field of ecommerce. He is very popular for writing about business eCommerce, eCommerce Solution and Software.


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12
Jan

Best Search Engine Optimisation Tips for E-Commerce Web Shop Owners

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Eddie Gulero asked:




SEO has been a buzzword among online shop owners. The reason behind such hullaballoo is the challenges erupted out of complexities of all existing E-Commerce Applications. It would take hours to place all these complexities in our discussions, so we would limit the discussion to certain points related to SEO. It takes a substantial period of time (even years of R&D) to develop a user-friendly application. During this course of time, it is obvious to expect various complexities creeping into the application. This is one of the established procedures of developing an application. Features those make an application a successful are flexibility, expansibility and usability. There must be scope for up-gradation of an application as it is expected to improve the performance level to deal with the ever changing technological scenario. Let’s find out what are basic complexities of E-Commerce Applications in recent times:

Technical complexities



In comparison to static websites (i.e. .html websites), dynamic websites powered by E-Commerce Applications are large sites and have the capacity to generate up to tens of thousands of web pages. So it is really a tough most task for a single person to understand, implement and manage an e-commerce website. On the other hand, a poor understanding of such an application yields bad ever worse results for both e-commerce store owners as well as store users.

Business Complexities

Lack of technical understanding of an e-commerce application affects the website’s profitability. Person or team that manages the e-commerce website faces really gruesome tasks ahead to meet the business objectives. As we consider communication and sales as two basic strengths of a business are hampered severely.

An e-commerce website should satisfy the above two complexities in order establish itself as a user-friendly one. So far we have discussed the general complexities of an e-commerce application. But Web has its own complications and has been doubled by the growing popularity of search engines. It does not make any sense, whether you have a great looking e-commerce site with thousands of popular products in your inventory. The matter is buyers must find you online easily. So, do potential buyers find your web store easily online? If your reply is affirmative then your business gets a huge boost. But a negative reply can be devastating for your business. Search engines have their own web page standards and strictly follow them. Here follows the Quality Guidelines from Google:

* Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

* Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.

* Don’t send automated queries to Google.

* Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.

* Don’t create multiple pages, sub domains or domains with substantially duplicate content.

* Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, Trojans or other badware.

* Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programmes with little or no original content.

* If your site participates in an affiliate programme, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

(Courtesy: Google.com)

So far as E-Commerce website is concerned, a lot of things one web store owner can take care of for search engine ranking improvement. Search Engine Ranking (acronym is SER) is very important for those who operate online business through web stores, because more than half of the internet users use search engines for finding information. If your web shop is not available in search engine result pages, then you lose the chunk of traffic from search engines. There are around 101 points can be implemented to make an e-commerce website search engine friendly. Here go some of the most significant points that you must prioritise. I’ve distributed all the points under three broad categories that will give you a better understanding of SEO points: On-Page Optimisation, Site-Wide Optimisation and Off-Site Optimisation.

What you think about your business may not be similar to the users’ views. So consider terminologies that your web store users would type in the search boxes to find web pages similar to your website. Always ensure that your website really consists of those terms within it. So the bottom-line is a good Keyword Analysis required to find out some relevant key phrases to target for the site.

1. Distinguish between “user end” and “admin end” web pages.

2. Target one unique key phrase per web page.

3. You can use the key phrase in your web page’s file name, meta-elements (i.e. Meta Title, Meta Description, Headers)

4. Substitute dashes (-) with underscores (_). You can rewrite the URL Structure Rules in the available .htaccess file in your website root folder.

5. Try to use the targeted key phrase number of times in the content, reasonably.

6. Make sure your content is for users, not for search engines.

7. Key phrase stuffing is a sin in the process of search engine optimisation. Don’t stuff the key phrases everywhere on a web page.

8. The major problem of an E-Commerce web store is that it generates number of duplicate pages with exact content. You can do this away with Canonicalization.

9. Do not hyperlink action words like Click Here, Enter and so on as these hyperlinks may confuse search engines.

10. Add a blog tool to your website and regularly update with useful articles, product reviews and HowTos. Some of the popular blogging applications are WordPress, LiveJournal, Xanga, Blogger and so on. WordPress is a great blogging tool which can be hosted independently.

Follow the above SEO points for your E-Commerce Web Store and adopt best industry SEO practices for quick search engine ranking improvement and targeted traffic with better ROI.

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