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  • 8 Essential Database Performance Metrics You Need to Track

    8 Essential Database Performance Metrics You Need to Track

    In general, databases play a vital role in any information system. It can store, update, and query essential business data. That’s why a database system’s availability, performance, and security are critical concerns for any database administrator. 

    To facilitate this, you need to ensure that you’re using different database monitoring tools. 

    Why Do You Need to Monitor?

    When you monitor databases, you’re doing it just like you would monitor every other component of your IT system. It keeps you well informed. That way, you can make better decision-making in the future. 

    Databases are the dynamic indicator of the health and behavior of a system. Its impressive performance directs you to particular problem areas. Once you identify these issues, you can then use these metrics to help you with the debugging process. 

    But databases have a sea of metrics that can overwhelm anyone. So, it all comes down to the metrics you need to monitor. One of the most straightforward approaches is starting with the basics. 

    In this post, we’ll talk about the essential database performance metrics that you need to track: 

    1. Response time

    Data response is vital to your business’ performance metrics. This is the average response time for every query on your database server. There are several ways that you can approach response time. First, you need to assess the live database response as a solo number on a dashboard which you can share with other developers in your system. 

    You can use a column graph or a line chart to measure the average response time for the query that your database server gets. 

    But what if your database shows a more significant average response time? Then, the best solution for this is to optimize your queries and enhance concurrency via program analysis. 

    As a developer, it’s part of your job to prepare yourself to handle concurrency problems regarding data democratization for users. This approach is practical for people that go through data within their dashboards using various business tools and mechanisms. 

    2. Availability and resource consumption

    This is where you must regularly keep up with databases, ensuring that they’re online and function regularly. 

    These tests should be done in both peak and non-peak hours. It would be best if you didn’t have to scan since your monitoring will catch any changes manually.

    3. Database throughput

    Data throughput is one of the most critical database performance metrics out there. It is the volume of work that’s done by your database server over a unit of time. Or it could be per second or hour. However, you can usually measure this as the number of queries executed per second. 

    It lets you monitor how quickly your server processes any incoming queries. If it’s less than the number of incoming queries, then this could cause your server to overload. As a result, you’ll have longer waiting times for each query, which in turn, slows down your website or application. 

    If this is the case, then you might need to upgrade your server infrastructure, or you can optimize your queries. That’s why having good database management support is essential. 

    4. Number of errors

    Your database will return an error response code if a query doesn’t run successfully. You need to track the number of queries you get for every error code. 

    That way, you can easily find out which errors frequently happen and how to fix them. 

    5. Query performance

    What’s the reason for a substandard query performance? Well, the answer lies in the query. You can look for issues in queries that often take too long. You can find necessary data and retrieve time and other important information. The objective here is to track slow queries that tend to hurt performance. 

    Let’s say you’re running an enterprise app with a MySQL server. Your database queries when a user logs in, assessing the login credentials. 

    Slower queries hurt how your database performs. This specific query also significantly impacts an enterprise app’s overall performance if users refer to it frequently. 

    But what if your resources aren’t overwhelmed, and you still get poor database performance? Well, more often than not, there are several reasons behind this. It could be because of inefficient query plans, unmanaged database statistics, and schema modifications. 

    If you want to troubleshoot such issues, you have to be equipped with knowledge related to database internals. It means you’re referring to filters, query plans, and other things your database query optimizer uses. 

    6. Scheduled tasks

    A database often runs repetitive tasks scheduled as “jobs.” Systems like Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server have these built-in scheduling facilities. Meanwhile, others have third-party schedulers. 

    Some examples of these scheduled jobs include: 

    • A full and incremental database backup
    • Applications-specific tasks such as nightly data loads, archiving, and exports. 
    • Database maintenance like analyzing, updating stats, database integrity checks, compaction, log rotation, reindexing, and more

    No matter the function, the outcomes should be monitored, whether they succeed or fail. 

    7. Buffer pool usage

    Usually, a buffer pool or cache uses as much memory you need to allocate to it so that it will accommodate maximum pages of data. 

    When the pool fills up, it will eliminate older or less used data, making room for newer information. It’s also possible for you to access information related to the buffer pool. It lets you know everything about the data the SQL servers store in the memory. 

    With a dynamic management view, you can identify every row for each buffer descriptor. This looks for and gives you relevant information about every memory page. 

    However, this may take time to query this on a server with extensive databases. 

    8. Most frequent queries

    It’s also vital for you to track the 5-10 most frequent queries from your database server, along with the average latency and frequency. 

    You can experience a significant performance boost in your database by optimizing these queries. 

    Over to You

    So, there you have it. Database performance metrics are there because it helps you with database performance monitoring. You also need it if you want to optimize your business. 

    Hopefully, the following database performance metrics we’ve mentioned will enhance the performance of your database.

  • Small Business Management: How to Build Strong Employee Relationships

    Small Business Management: How to Build Strong Employee Relationships

    You may be familiar with the seeing-employees-as-investments approach to business, and for good reason. It leads to sensible decisions with long-term implications. The problem with that stance, though, is the sense of personal detachment that it cultivates. You can obsess over returned value from a lofty perspective, remaining indifferent in an effort to stay rational.

    That approach, then, isn’t enough in its classic form. It requires expansion. You need to focus on the fundamental exchange of the working relationship, accepting that the best way to get people to work hard for you is to work hard for them in return. And that hard work has to take place in the trenches, so to speak. If you want loyalty (the key to small business growth, particularly in a fast-moving industry like ecommerce), you need to earn it through your personal involvement.

    One often-overlooked key to getting things right is having candid and productive conversations with your employees. Communication is the lifeblood of business, but it’s often below par. In this post, we’re going to consider how you can prepare for discussions with your employees, how you should address them, and how your follow-up actions will shape your success. Let’s begin.

    Preparation: what you first need to do and know

    It isn’t a good idea to go into staff conversations cold, assuming that you can simply pick things up as you go. Would you accept one of your workers going into a client interview with no talking points and little awareness of the agenda? No, of course you wouldn’t — and your attitude when speaking to your team will set the tone for how they approach their work.

    Research is a must here, then. Before you engage with someone, familiarize yourself with their company history: this should be easy in a small business, but if you’ve been distracted and don’t talk to them very often then you may have forgotten some key details. What are they like personally? What kind of track record do they have? Assuming you’ve previously held discussions and performance reviews, what came of them?

    Remember that a core component of radical candor is caring personally: when you care about someone, you take the time to learn things about them and demonstrate that you see their importance. If you don’t arm yourself with relevant details, any effort to evince a personal connection will ring hollow and likely worsen your relationship rather than improve it.

    You need to keep all of this in mind when you schedule your staff conversations. If you know that one of your employees is somewhat anxious, don’t let them know a week in advance that you want to have an in-depth discussion: no matter how you frame it, they’ll end up worrying that it’ll turn negative. Your feedback should concern performance, not personality. Instead, find time to engage in light ad-hoc conversation, then build up from there in a natural way that doesn’t put pressure on them.

    Conversation: how to get your attitude right

    When you get to the point of conversation, your focus (as noted in the title) should be on finding out what they need to be happier and more productive. Done right, this will benefit everyone. The important thing here is to be direct with your employees: you might instinctively feel the desire to talk around issues in the hope that you can avoid awkwardness, but that tactic will only add awkwardness by engendering misunderstandings and causing the conversation to drag on.

    If you’ve noticed that a particular employee’s productivity has dropped massively in recent weeks, your job is to be both blunt and compassionate. Say something like this: “I can see that you’ve been struggling to work productively in recent weeks. It’s alright, I’m not angry, but we do need to fix it — so how can I help you get back up to speed?”

    The sooner you note the fundamental issue, the sooner you can get to resolving it, so the lack of buildup is a good thing. Fearing for their job could prevent them from thinking clearly, so reassuring them — and using “we” to share responsibility — will make a huge difference. There’s also a fundamental positivity in the question since it assumes that they can get back up to speed, and your focus is on how you can help make that happen.

    On the other hand, you might see that an employee has been performing extremely well, in which case you could approach them from a totally different angle: “You’ve been doing a fantastic job recently, and I really appreciate your efforts, so I want to ensure that you’re not bored. Are you enjoying what you do? How could I mix things up to make your workday more interesting? If you have greater aspirations, I’d love to help with them.”

    You might want to simply leave them to their work and reap the benefits, but maybe they could do more for the business — and maybe they’ll look elsewhere if they’ve mastered their current role and see nowhere to go with it. Whether you’re addressing a negative or a positive, you should focus on coming away with a clear idea of how things can be better.

    Reaction: how to follow up in a positive way

    All the goodwill in the world can amount to nothing if it isn’t properly harnessed. Having a solid conversation with an employee is just the start: what really matters is that you actually deliver on the identified need (or needs) to whatever extent is practical. If a high-flying salesperson asks for their salary to be tripled, you probably can’t accommodate their request — but you can give them a raise of some kind, making it as generous as you can afford.

    Very often, you’ll find that employee needs concern businesswide services and working conditions, so you should look for the recurring themes and use them to derive an order of priority. Pay close attention to the broad context of your industry, and decide how far you’re willing to go to improve things. If you can’t take action immediately, you can at least report to the relevant employees that you’re conducting useful research, and even get them involved in the process as a way to show them that they’re important to your business.

    And with working conditions, you should strive to be as flexible as possible with a focus on productivity. If the remote-working revolution stemming from the COVID-19 outbreak has taught us anything, it’s that companies can survive massive operational changes if they trust their employees to get their work done in unusual circumstances. Don’t cling to ceremony for the sake of it. If people want to work in different conditions (as is heavily the case), let them.

    Consider, though, that employees might not know exactly what they want. To some extent, this will be because they won’t fully know what options and avenues are available to them. If you suspect that an employee might benefit from a major change even though they’ve never requested done, pitch it to them, explaining as you do so how you can help them. Suggest a research trip, or a training course. If you’re willing to use an employer of record service, let them know that they can even move overseas and keep their job if they want a fresh start in other aspects of their life. If you end up changing someone’s life, they’ll forever be grateful to you.

    Lastly, when you’ve implemented changes, keep asking questions. Attitudes and requirements change over time. Even your best employee might suddenly think of something else that could help them work effectively, and continued engagement is the best way to show them that your mind is always open. You should be so communicative that your staff members start to reach out to you directly instead of waiting for you to ask. That is the endgame.

  • 8 Best WooCommerce Filter Plugins for Better Website User Experience

    8 Best WooCommerce Filter Plugins for Better Website User Experience

    As your WooCommerce store grows, it is common to add more items to your product list. However, letting your customers comb through it can be daunting for them. 

    According to Sytian IT Productions (web design philippines), making your user shopping experience as smooth as possible is key to success. This may include adding sorting and filtering functions to help customers find what they are looking for.

    You would not want to overwhelm your customers to the point that they would want to leave your online store. As such, you need to add filtering options.

    Luckily, you can add this feature through WooCommerce filter plugins.

    YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter

    Image source: https://wordpress.org/plugins/yith-woocommerce-ajax-navigation/

    The YITH Ajax Product Filter is probably one of the most installed WooCommerce product filter plugins in the market. That’s because this plugin allows your customers to quickly sort through products to find what they’re searching for. 

    Customers can easily filter through products based on categories, color, size, and more. 

    This plugin also allows you to develop a variety of filter presets that display them on a page built by Gutenberg Blocks or Elementor. 

    Features:

    • An option to filter through products based on color, label, tags, etc. 
    • Filter-based price range.
    • Ajax-powered filtering system. (Premium)
    • Ajax-powered sorting that’s based on price, popularity, ratings, and recently added. (Premium)
    • Customized filtering table that can match your website’s aesthetics. (Premium)

    WOOF – Products Filter for WooCommerce

    Image source: https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-products-filter/

    The WOOF WooCommerce plugin gives customers a more convenient way to search for products based on attributes. This includes categories, tags, price, and more. 

    It has both shortcode and widget support that lets you insert product filters anywhere on the site. It also comes with infinite scrolling support. That way, users can quickly scroll through all of the products without jumping between various pages. 

    Features:

    • Various filtering options based on color, image, price, etc. 
    • Option in filtering WooCommerce products by metadata.
    • Ajax-powered product searching.
    • Infinite scrolling. 
    • Detailed stats that lets you analyze and understand search data. 
    • Shortcode and widget support. 

    Advanced AJAX Product Filters

    Image source: https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-ajax-filters/

    This can be an excellent choice if you’re looking for a WooCommerce product filter plugin. That’s because it lets you filter products by attributes, prices, taxes, taxonomies, etc.

    This ajax based plugin lets you immediately show the search results without refreshing the page. It also boasts an intuitive drag and drop builder that lets beginners place the filter anywhere on the site. You can also place unlimited filter options on a single widget.

    It also provides you pagination, which visitors can easily navigate on the next or previous page. You can also use this plugin on multilingual online store, both on WPML and Polylang.

    It also comes with several widget options such as radio buttons, dropdown menus, checkboxes, range sliders, tag clouds, and more. This can be customized further by placing a custom CSS via the admin page and manually setting values for the price slider.

    Features:

    • Ajax-based search result
    • Various layout options for filters.
    • Many filter combinations.
    • Pagination and sorting without page reloading.
    • Filter by product tags
    • Color and image type filters
    • Drag and drop filter building
    • Search box widget (for pro)
    • The slider can utilize strings as a value (pro)
    • Price as a checkbox with minimum and maximum values (pro)

    Themify WooCommerce Product Filter

    Image source: https://wordpress.org/plugins/themify-wc-product-filter/

    Another great WooCommerce product filter on our list, Themify, is pretty much the same as the other tools we’ve mentioned. It allows you to come up with filters for price, attributes, brand, color, range, etc. 

    It also comes with attractive filters that complement the overall look of your site. 

    The plugin has a drag and drop builder that allows you to create new filters and immediately apply them without reloading the page. The filters can also be used both on horizontal and vertical layouts and a live search results feature. 

    Customers can also choose queries and then check their search results on a new page. This filter plugin works well with Divi and Elementor, an excellent option for those who use it as a famous page builder. 

    What’s awesome about this plugin is free. Therefore, one can enjoy all of its features for no cost. 

    Features: 

    • Great drag and drop builder
    • Horizontal and vertical filters layout
    • Search widget to give live results
    • Compatible with Divi, Elementor, and Themify builders. 
    • Stunning design and excellent customizability. 

    WooCommerce Grid Display AJAX Filter

    Image source: https://codecanyon.net/item/woocommerce-grid-display-product-ajax-filter/9936306

    This filter is free and works well with WooCommerce. You can easily organize filters according to color, size, brand, style, and any other filter that you want to use. You can also use product tags to make sure customers can easily find what they’re looking for. 

    If you like to change the background’s color or style, you can change it anytime. You can also use the filter plugin to help your customers easily find what they’re looking for. 

    There’s also an autocomplete option for particular product tags. The autocomplete also lets customers choose a specific type of search that they usually use. With just a couple of automatic searches, customers can easily find popular products. 

    Filter Everything

    Image source: https://codecanyon.net/item/filter-everything-wordpress-woocommerce-filter/

    This premium filter plugin comes with a lot of advanced features. For instance, it allows users to sort through the stock list using colors, price, tags, and more. 

    It also takes a couple of seconds to find the products they want in just a few clicks. This makes searching for products as straightforward as can be for your customers. 

    Features: 

    • Works well with page builders like Divi and Elementor.
    • SEO features that make pages ready for indexing by search engines. 
    • Sort out things by images, sale prices, views, etc. 

    Jet Smart Filters

    This is a great tool that works exceptionally well with the Elementor page builder and the Butterberg editor. It comes with 17 different filter types and a couple of additional widgets to showcase active filters, apply button, reset button, and a lot more. 

    You can also build and modify filters and show them anywhere on your site. It’s also highly customizable, letting you create elegant filters that match your site’s overall look and feel. 

    Features: 

    • Compatible with Elementor and Guttenberg page builders. 
    • Indexer that shows the number of results against every filter
    • Hierarchical filter system
    • Dynamic search system
    • Extremely customizable

    Product Filter by XforWooCommerce

    Image source: https://codecanyon.net/item/woocommerce-product-filter/8514038

    If you’re looking for a great all-in-one filtering plugin, then Product Filter by XforWooCommerce is an excellent choice. Its advanced customization feature lets you easily position and optimizes your product filter widget experience. It provides seamless navigation and a smooth experience to shoppers.

    Features:

    • Lets shoppers filter through products based on price, attribute, rating, etc.
    • Filter analytics that lets you know what your customers are checking
    • Ajax-powered filtering system
    • Great customization features

    To sum it up, product filters allow you to enhance your ecommerce website’s customer experience. By using filters, customers can easily get rid of unwanted product search results and quickly find what they want to buy. Doing so can also help boost your online store’s conversion.

  • Top 10 B2B China Sourcing Websites to Find Wholesale Suppliers

    Top 10 B2B China Sourcing Websites to Find Wholesale Suppliers

    Are you hunting for the best Chinese sourcing websites to find wholesale suppliers? With numerous Chinese sourcing websites out there, you might be wondering which one you should trust. If so, you’ve found the right post.

    Starting a B2B business online always takes time and investment to ensure you don’t get scammed by the sellers. Every buyer wants to receive their goods on time with a smooth delivery process. They also want to ensure the products they buy are of premium quality.

    When business owners are planning to connect with the best B2B China sources, several questions appear in their minds. Will they be meeting with certified wholesale suppliers? Are the prospective platforms secure and reliable? Can they use multiple payment methods? Will they get deals and discounts on bulk purchases?

    In short, every supplier and wholesaler is looking for a secure and comprehensive B2B supplier website to use. This post lists the top 10 B2B China sourcing websites to help you find cost-effective wholesale suppliers with minimal effort.

    The Boom in B2B Marketplaces

    B2B eCommerce becomes has become a huge digital frontier in recent years, with the global pandemic causing a significant uplift in interest. In fact, B2B marketplaces have attracted much more attention and investment than their B2C counterparts. It’s been estimated that the B2B eCommerce industry has reached USD 149 trillion, which is 5x more than B2C.

    A recent survey showed that B2B eCommerce sales reached $7.35 trillion in 2021, and this amount is expected to grow 70% in upcoming years. It’s actually projected to reach $18.75 billion US dollars by 2026.

    List of Top B2B China Sourcing Websites 

    If you are wondering how to find wholesale suppliers, let’s dig into it!

    1.eWorldTrade

    Everyone is familiar with this B2B platform that is eWorldTrade. This global and comprehensive B2B platform offers unparalleled eCommerce solutions for small to medium-sized businesses. It operates its services for more than a decade, and it becomes the leading B2B China sourcing website.

    This digital trading platform aims to help businesses to accomplish a commercial competitive edge. It has an interactive user interface, so customers can enjoy the fastest and most secure trading. It even has AI-integrated chatbots to solve any customer query. Once you join this platform, you have ample space to highlight your brand information. It permits you to get free quotes, offers multiple payment methods, and has reordered policy.

    eWorldTrade is a good choice if you are looking for the best B2B China sourcing website to find wholesalers.

    2. Amazon 

    Amazon is no doubt a leading B2B Chinese sourcing website. This platform helps buyers to find the most reliable wholesaler suppliers from every corner of the world. It aims to build strong relationships among them. So, trading internationally is not a challenging thing for them. Amazon help businesses to grow their horizon, whether they belong to the food manufacturing industry or operating in the automobile industry.

    Once you connect with Amazon, you can access millions of products belonging to every category. It allows minimum order quantity with automated pricing. It even allows reordering your previous purchase.

    3. Alibaba

    Does Alibaba sound familiar? Yes, it is, right! This is also the world’s greatest and largest B2B platform with a huge directory of wholesale suppliers and buyers. It is even known as the pioneer of B2B wholesale eCommerce. It is open the gateways for Chinese factories to perform business activities worldwide.

    Alibaba becomes the top B2B China sourcing website, where you meet with thousands of merchants and buyers from every corner of the world. For buyers, it is the best marketplace that offers trade assurance, multiple payment channels, etc.

    4. AliExpress

    Looking for the biggest name in B2B China sourcing website to find wholesale suppliers? Then AliExpress will be another marketplace to choose from. This B2B website is the subsidiary of Alibaba. It has now built into the largest online retail store where you can easily hook up with the Chinese and international wholesale suppliers.

    AliExpress also has an incredible product catalog of premium quality products. Whether you want to buy books, electronic items, kid toys, or furniture, everything is available on this platform. It has a comprehensive incentive and discount policy as well.

    5. DHgate

    DHgate is another top name among B2B China sourcing websites. If you are new to this industry, then DHgate will be a better choice. It is highly recommended for newbies, as it offers the fastest and most simple wholesale buying experience. This retail hub offers high-quality goods and services at cost-effective rates.

    At this platform, you meet with trustable wholesale suppliers and retailers from every industry. Regardless of any industry you belong join DHgate today. It has perfect product listing, offers sophisticated search, in-depth product information, etc.

    6. Global Sources

    Are you hunting for the one-stop-shop B2B China sourcing websites? Global sources is another prominent name. This B2B platform is considered the oldest platform that was launched in 1971 and has experience of 51 years of operating businesses online. It has millions of trustworthy sellers and buyers and consistently increasing.

    Global sources have an optimized storefront and a user-friendly interface. It follows a customer-centric approach to allow buyers to get premium quality products easily. It offers the fastest and most secure payment and delivery methods.

    7. HKTDC (Hong Kong Trade Development Council)

    HKTDC is one of the most trusted B2B China sourcing websites to find wholesale suppliers. Here you find 130,000 Chinese suppliers. This platform is an organization dedicated to the economic growth of the Hong Kong Traders, and gradually, it becomes the leading online marketplace to sell goods worldwide.

    HKTDC has a directory of trusted and reliable suppliers from Asia, Hong Kong, and China. You can connect with certified suppliers who offer high-quality products at reasonable rates. This platform gains popularity due to the potential buyer journey.

    8. DIYTrade

    DIYTrade has described itself as the leading B2B trading platform and has a huge directory of Chinese products. This B2B China sourcing website claims to have 5 million products on this platform. This retail hub was inaugurated in 1999, and its headquartered was in Shenzhen, China.

    DIYTrade has an interactive and engaging user interface that encourages visitors to buy products from certified wholesale suppliers. It has a huge product listing with a massive catalog. It even offers a customer support system to help out buyers to solve problems. You can choose a payment method after connecting with the supplier.

    9. EC21

    EC21 is the most authentic B2B China sourcing website where you find thousands of reputable wholesale suppliers across the world. It has a highly interactive, flexible, and easy-to-use interface that engages buyers to make a purchase.

    If you are looking for a supplier on a regional basis, it distributes visitors by the country. It even has an outstanding product catalog. It has a huge directory of 3.5 million visitors every month.

    10. Lovely Wholesale

    The lovely wholesale market is popular for offering products for females’ clothing and garment items. This Chinese wholesale website claims to have almost 6000 products with a unique style that have to listen on their platform. This platform is highly focused on considering buyer safety; if you get damaged products, they offer a return policy and even discounts on your next purchase.

    Lovely wholesale has a robust refund policy, so they make sure to consider quality assurance and offer products at reasonable rates.

    Guest Author: Ali Hasnain is a trend researcher by passion, senior digital marketing expert, and SEO consultant. He leverages his experience to help SaaS products, influencers, local businesses, and eCommerce brands grow their traffic, leads, sales, and authority. Follow him on LinkedIn.

  • 10 Social Media Marketing Strategies For Shopify

    10 Social Media Marketing Strategies For Shopify

    Do you have a Shopify store? If so, then you are no stranger to the hustle and bustle of social media marketing. In today’s world, businesses must be active on social media to remain competitive. Here are ten strategies that can help. 

    Find out who your audience is  

    You can find out who your social media followers are by simply viewing your analytics report. However, you can also do a Twitter search for keywords related to your niche (e.g., gardening) and see who follows these accounts, which might give some good insights into what sort of people follow. 

    You can also try cross-referencing different social media platforms together; for example, see if any Facebook groups related to gardening overlap with members from Twitter or Pinterest boards about gardening interests.

    This information will be more illustrative than just checking in constantly on each platform individually because it gives you some broader indication of what kinds of people might fit into this category!

    Create a schedule

    You want to find the ideal time for your posts. The best practice is to try posting at different times of day like Drum Set Lab has done and measure engagement rates. One could set up notifications to remind themselves when various hours have passed during the day to do this properly. 

    It would help if you used various metrics when evaluating, such as likes, shares, comments and click-throughs on links shared. You should also make sure that your schedule will work with your other responsibilities. For instance, if you’re expecting deliveries or customers between certain hours. It won’t be a good idea for those products or services (to which you can directly link) to have new content available at those times either. 

    Use hashtags

    You can use hashtags to get your messages seen by people who are already interested in your topic. It’s a searchable list of keywords, and one or more hashtags are almost always included in a tweet. 

    For example, if you want to send out a message about jobs for accountants then you might tweet, “Accountant jobs now being advertised #jobs #hiring #careeradvice”. The hashtag provides an easy link the reader can use to find similar tweets in the future and highlights it among others.

    It’s vital that you share messages using relevant keywords and experiment with different combinations of words. 

    Respond 

    Monitor your followers’ activity so that when a follower chooses to respond to one of your posts then you’re able to interact appropriately. One best practice for interacting with followers is responding right away or commenting within hours. This helps avoid mistakes and miscommunications.

    Do not ignore questions or ignore their feedback. If they reach out on social media then it’s because they want someone to talk to and make decisions for them.

    Be human 

    You should never forget that you’re establishing a human connection with your followers and not just trying to promote something. People want acknowledgment of their comments, outrage over specific current events, self-reflection from the company on how they’re affecting the world through their work — just like they would want in person.

    Post consistently

    It is essential to post regularly. Some people can do something at the start of every day, while others need a schedule. Do what works for you, but most importantly, make sure that you do it more than once to look like a legitimate account and are not spammed with fake followers. 

    Engage with influencers 

    Engaging with influencers is an effective means of generating additional following. Through engaging with influencers, they are likely to share a reciprocal post which will, in turn, create more followers for the initiator of the exchange. This increases the likelihood of a post such as this one from Hunting Bow Lab getting more engagement. 

    Consider this engagement mutually beneficial as it makes a symbiotic relationship whereby each party benefits and generates more views through their content.

    Post images 

    It cannot be easy to read emails and share posts on social media with our busy lives. For this reason, photos are the best option if you want to get your followers’ attention. They also serve as a visual commentary for any text-based post we may make.

    The use of images in a social media post not only takes away time from reading, but they have neurological effects too. Studies have shown that the brain can process an image 60% more efficiently than it does text.

    Share user-generated content 

    Sharing user-generated content (UGC) on social media increases customer loyalty, improves accessibility to your company and generates dialogue about your products — OSI Affiliate Software is an example of how you can use UGC effectively by using both customer quotations and a rating system, providing a double validation from your users. 

    As the saying goes, “build it and they will come,” which is precisely what user-generated content does; build value around a product or service. Pictures speak more than words, so it’s worth investing in establishing a solid foundation of content for that reason alone. Social marketing specialists claim that by implementing UGC, brands can produce five times as many shares as they would have otherwise represented through earned media channels such as paid advertising or PR — at far less cost!

    Use analytics

    Measuring user activity is an integral part of social media marketing. If you measure everything, you can get more targeted and effective advertising campaigns. 

    Perhaps the most common statistic used in social media marketing is your “engagement.” Engagement is measured based on how often people interact with your pages or posts, based on several factors such as post views and likes. 

    Social media marketing is a great way to get the word out about your business, but it can be challenging to know where or how to start. At eCommerce Marketing Podcast, we’ve put together some more social media marketing strategies for Shopify that will help you reach more of your target demographic and gain new customers with minimal effort on your part. 

    It can be challenging to find the right social media marketing strategy for your Shopify store. We’ve outlined some of our favorite actions that have been proven to work in previous campaigns and could help you improve yours too! You can look at the tips above and comment if you want more information on specific strategies that might apply specifically to your business. These are time-proven systems that can help you reach your audiences on social media. 

     

  • 4+ Must-Use Channels For Ecommerce Customer Service In 2021

    4+ Must-Use Channels For Ecommerce Customer Service In 2021

    We are no strangers to the fact that consumers are willing to pay more for products that provide top-notch customer services. Think of yourself. You are a consumer of a bevy of products and services, and if you don’t get a timely response for a specific need, you might end up looking for alternatives. 

    The global pandemic has not only changed the purchasing needs of consumers — it has also been impacted by the culture of remote working in many businesses. Whether you’re working from the office or home, you might want to unlearn and relearn the best possible practices and channels to achieve your core business goals. 

    Most importantly, your priority must be to make use of the best possible techniques and technologies that are cost-effective, easy to measure and help you cut through the clutter to get noticed. 

    Before I dive in, let’s skim through some of the legit facts and figures about the need for effective customer service in ecommerce: 

    • According to a study, 81% of consumers would run through online research before purchasing anything online 
    • Research by Deloitte asserts, over 88% of businesses give precedence to customer service over everything else to amp up their customer retention rate  
    • A study of SuperOffice implies, SaaS companies are expected to get an increase in their revenue generation by $1 billion 
    • Adobe recently affirmed businesses with the strongest omnichannel customer support experience a 10% growth annually and a 25% increase in sales closures 
    • Human interaction is paramount for about 75% of consumers, according to a study conducted by PWC  
    • Healthcare, ecommerce, retail, finance, and banking services are the top customer-centric industries that should prioritize buyer-support over everything else, insists Forbes 

    I can keep adding more, but presume these facts and data are enough to validate the necessity for a better customer experience across all your ecommerce platforms. Now, let’s push through the haze and check out some of the most potent channels that can do wonders for your customer service efforts. 

    1. Phone calls: “How can we help you?”

    Don’t you find it reassuring when someone from a concerned support team picks up your call just to get your issue resolved? Providing customer support over a phone call is a traditional yet effective way to connect with your customers. 

    Customer care call support is a must-have channel to add to your growth strategy because it not only helps you gather first-hand feedback or grievances from your customers but also ensures a well-trained customer support team. 

    Now how can a telecommunication strategy supercharge your customer call support team? Cloud telephony is the key. If you are already aware of this, it’s high time you integrate it into your existing customer communication setup. For the uninitiated, it is a cutting-edge yet cost-effective system that enables business communication on the cloud or the internet. 

    Besides minimizing your costs with an IVR business number, you can have complete control of your call center construct. You will be able to monitor your team’s performance by keeping a close eye (and ears) on all the recordings of incoming calls and outgoing calls to get a fair understanding of what’s going on. 

    Besides tracking your call center operations, this will also aid your sales managers in the training and development process of their team.

    Concerned about data security? Look out for cloud telephony providers that come with an assurance of protecting your team’s credentials. 

    It can also save a lot of your business hours as it captures and controls operational data including bulk call traffic, call timings and durations, inbound and outbound calls, and a lot more. Your live agents will also thank you for reducing their work hours as cloud telephony systems can be easily integrated with ERP/CRM and they could make or receive a phone call with just the click of a button. 

    2. Push notifications: “We have an amazing deal just for you!” 

    Gone (mostly) are the days when you are hit up with a pesky notification right in the middle of your phone screen. Now, you can make use of mobile/desktop push notifications which often come with an eye-catching image or an apropos messaging to update your customers on the same. 

    Whether you are a startup or an established setup, your ecommerce business would be inconsequential without your presence on the Google Play Store or App Store. And what are the prime benefits to having an app? I’ve listed them below:

    • It is a tried and tested method to amp up customer retention 
    • If accomplished accurately with a well-thought-out plan, your customer retention rate could increase by 2-3x
    • Multiply your conversion rate with timely offer updates by creating a sense of urgency. You can trigger immediate action as the user will be able to take action with just a tap of a button
    • Your audience is already defined. That’s because the people you will be sending these notifications to have already shown interest in your product by downloading your app or subscribing to your updates, or they may have taken some action or the other in your app or website. This will help you devise your push content strategy accordingly
    • It’s not always about selling. You can also educate your audience by sharing relevant information to engage more with your dedicated subscribers, in the form of a blog or a landing page that speaks volumes about your intent  
    • You can easily track your campaign’s performance by monitoring the open rates, click-through rates, etc
    • You can target your audience specific to their demographics and share your content accordingly relevant to their interests

    In other words, there are plenty of benefits to creating your own app and push notifications.

    3. WhatsApp: “How was your experience with us?”

    In this mobile-first world, you should put your A-game into curating the best possible modes of communication to stay in touch with your customers and potential prospects. Communicating with your customers on WhatsApp is a great way to break the ice and make an indelible impression. 

    I’ll share my own experience here. 

    Recently, I purchased a product from Amazon but it arrived damaged. I immediately requested a replacement. Later that day, I received a message from the seller on my WhatsApp where they enquired about my concern and how my honest feedback is important for them to improve. I was about to give a poor rating on Amazon but that conversation stopped me. This is just one instance but I can vouch for the nuances of customer psychology here. 

    It is important to enable real-time conversations and enhance the shopping experience of your customers.  Like push notifications, you can also share updates on offers and deals to grab attention more quickly. 

    Now there are two ways of doing this. You can either make use of WhatsApp business API, or you can ask your team to initiate a conversation where the customer has already granted you permission to do so. 

    4. LiveChat: “Hey, are you looking for something?”

    Have a quick question on a specific product? Or maybe you simply want to know the status of your order but don’t have all the time to make a phone call? This is where LiveChat comes to play. With the dwindling attention span of the majority of your customers, it’s important to put up with their immediate needs to learn more about a product. 

    Integrating a live chat pop-up in your website and social media channels can take you miles. 

    Flesh out an engaging chatbot script or make use of a live agent who would be able to address your prospects in real-time. This is a great way to save both your team’s and your customer’s time. You can also make use of a chatbot where you can automate and align the most frequently asked questions with apropos responses. Let’s run through the most commonly asked concerns: 

    • Where is my order?
    • I received a wrong item
    • I want to request a refund/replacement 
    • Is this item true to size? 

    There are many more you can add to this list and most often the issue gets resolved even without the intervention of a live agent. 

    Bonus channels

    While you sink your teeth in mapping out a foolproof strategy to provide the best customer service, you should not leave aside two more important channels in your roadmap. 

    Social media

    This is a no-brainer. Most of your customers are spending their time on social media and you should be well prepared to answer in a jiffy. Whether it’s responding to their comments or attending to their concern in your inbox, you need to make use of this well-oiled marketing channel to stay relevant. 

    Emails

    This is another essential channel, especially if it’s a B2B undertaking. Most business decision-makers prefer email communication over anything else, so you would want to leverage the best email communication practices to keep your ecommerce business out of the wood. For B2C, it’s an essential channel to help your customers focus on specific products or deals where you can redirect them to relevant landing pages. This is an indispensable practice since your website must be inundated with tons of CTAs and that might baffle a lot of users. 

    So, that’s it for now. I hope that the channels I discussed here can help you provide better customer service and experience for your ecommerce business.

    Author bio: Dipannita Das is a journalist turned content marketer, currently working as a content lead at MyOperator. An OTT content fanatic, she mostly juggles between professional writing and occasional graphic designing. 

     

     

     

  • How To Rank With Keywords As An Ecommerce Store

    How To Rank With Keywords As An Ecommerce Store

    Every website owner’s goal is to get ranked at the top or as high as possible in search results and boost their site’s visibility to their target audience. 

    Every search engine aims to make sure that the most important and relevant websites are ranked high. But how is that relevancy interpreted? Does it have anything to do with the content on the website? Does it have anything to do with the words used on the website name? 

    Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keywords relate to the phrases and words that searchers enter into search queries. Including the right words in your website content makes it more likely your web will appear as high up as possible in the SERPs that are important to your business. 

    We offer some actionable tips on how you can achieve this. 

    Do keywords still matter?

    Keyword usage was very different back in the early 2000s. The search algorithm formula made it possible to rank with a very high keyword density. Keywords back in the day might be all the website owners were after, but they knew that aiming for the right keywords set them up for success.

    Conversely, in recent times, if you have no specific focus and try to appeal to anyone with no particular target audience using keywords, you will likely come out empty-handed. 

    A quick view into Google Search Console’s search query data shows that it’s never just about one keyword, but how clear and specific the terms are used in the content. Having a primary keyword target for each page gives you the direction and perspective to capture the right audience from related searches. 

    Keyword usage on the website name is one of the most popular SEO techniques, though not always the easiest to carry out — and does limit your offerings. Alternatively, there are other ways you can use your primary keywords —  such as in meta descriptions, titles, and in the body of content. Although this is good SEO practice, it can be less influential than other factors — specifically factors such as backlinks (also known as inbound links), site visits, bounce rate, premium quality content, and time-on-site. 

    You need to use keywords constructively

    For web pages to rank at the top of SERPs using keywords, the keywords need to be used in the right way. According to Google, the goal should always be to create valuable content that uses the keywords correctly and in context.

    Google is getting better at quickly understanding user intention and measuring content importance. This means that it can see beyond what a certain user types in a search box, to know what they are truly searching for, and to deliver the results that best fulfil that need. 

    This means your content should be written for the user’s benefit and not Google’s. Thus keywords need to be used constructively and naturally in your content, so the web pages add real value to the site users.

    It is important to note that keywords in website names can help because they can act as the linchpin between the content and what people are searching for. The best way to dazzle Google is to impress its users. If the users perceive the website as credible by use of keywords, so will Google. A short and crisp web address provides information, credibility and relevance, and encourages people to click on it — the more the clicks, the higher the traffic, the better the ranking.

    How can including keywords in URLs help improve rankings?

    There are many debates on SEO and the value of using keywords in URLs. 

    Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller, confirmed that having keywords in the URL does help a little in the ranking, and that keywords are a minimal ranking factor from a clarified ranking standpoint. Mueller further stated that the small percentage can still make a significant difference in the grand scheme of things. 

    There is a link between websites that rank higher for a specific keyword and whether or not the keyword appears in the URL. However, this is unlikely to be the only factor determining whether or not a website ranks first. From a usability and readability perspective, having relevant and applicable keywords in the URL lets site visitors know exactly what they are getting from a web page. 

    Google’s SEO Starter Guide also states that if the URL covers appropriate words, it offers users and search engines more data about the page. 

    Exact match domains could also help in high ranking if used well. Exact match domains are typically seen as memorable by many users, which is excellent from a usability and readability standpoint. The use of an exact match domain is a good idea but you need to be careful not to create a spammy URL. 

    Therefore, including clear and direct relevant keywords in the URL is a practice that may help with ranking.

    Credit: Moz

    The bottom line is to consider user experience when using keywords in URLs and website titles. 

    A clear and crisp URL is the best way to ensure that website visitors know exactly what they are getting from the website without wasting too much of their time. Great content is also a key ranking factor. 

    It’s important to note that writing quality content is better than filling it with keywords and the same relates to generating quality website names.

    Author bio: This article was written by Seattle web design agency, Visualwebz

  • 7 Most Common Accounting Mistakes That Ecommerce Businesses Make  

    7 Most Common Accounting Mistakes That Ecommerce Businesses Make  

    It’s an exciting time to be an ecommerce entrepreneur, especially when you start seeing the sales rolling in consistently.

    But unless you’re following accounting and bookkeeping best practices, you could be causing serious damage to your business.  

    There are tried-and-true ecommerce accounting best practices that we advise working into your workflow. In this post, Here we’re outlining the top problems we see when this doesn’t happen.

    Why is accounting important?  

    Knowing your numbers is important for a variety of reasons. At the top of these is that you’re going to make better decisions when you know how you’re doing financially at all times. It could be the difference between purchasing extra warehouse space when you can’t afford it and deciding instead to focus on product development before expanding.

    Keeping good records also is going to help you get a pulse on what’s doing well and what’s not. While it may be exciting to have a wide variety of SKUs (stock keeping units), maybe the right move for you is to focus on one SKU that sells really well. In order to know, you need to have the kind of reliable sales information that proper accounting provides.

    Finally, having confidence in your numbers is just good business, and it’s going to increase your chances of a healthy growth trajectory. Like an apple that rots from the inside, it’s not always immediately clear when you have an accounting problem. But once that problem makes itself visible, it’s usually too late. And worse, any other problems your business may have could be compounded by the pressures of accounting issues.

    What are the biggest accounting mistakes? 

    Wondering what could go wrong by neglecting to keep your numbers straight? From costly inefficiencies to even legal trouble, there’s a lot that can happen. And even if you may not suffer the more dramatic scenarios, it could mean a lot of lost opportunity and slowed business growth. Here are the top issues we see when ecommerce businesses neglect accounting and bookkeeping best practices. 

    1. Not separating business & personal finances
    2. Not paying yourself a salary
    3. DIY spreadsheet accounting 
    4. Waiting until tax time
    5. Not staying compliant
    6. Overlooking cash flow & inventory forecasting
    7. Equating profit to cash flow

    We explain each of these mistakes in more detail in the following sections.

    1. Not separating business & personal finances

    The most practical reason for keeping your business and personal finances separate is that it’s hard to get clarity on either when they’re intermingled. Not only can this lead to bad business decisions, but it can lead to bad personal financial decisions. Instead, we recommend opening a separate account for your business, including at least a debit card that’s dedicated only to business expenses. Since cloud accounting software can integrate with bank accounts, this will help keep your bookkeeping clean.

    When you get to a point where your product sales are bringing in more than just a little side money, it’s critical to get incorporated as a legal business entity. Otherwise, if your business and personal finances are intermingled and you get sued, you can lose both your business and personal funds and assets.

    Keeping your business and personal expenses separate also is going to make for a much smoother tax time. Having to tease out what’s business and what’s personal in your accounts could take countless hours — even with cloud accounting software. Not only is it a logistical nightmare, but it can also be an expensive one in terms of your time and/or hiring extra help.

    2. Not paying yourself a salary

    Not paying yourself a salary may sound valiant to a casual onlooker. It could signal that you’re so dedicated to your business that you don’t even pay yourself. The problem with this is that it’s not sustainable. You need to account for all of your salary needs as you are planning your and your businesses’ long-term financial future. This not only draws clear lines in your spending but it ensures you’re going to get paid at some point.

    Case in point: If you end up spending all of your savings to start your business, you may find that you need more money down this line. This could be a high-pressure situation where you need to either keep (or get) a job to both support your living expenses and grow your business. This can lead to a crippling cycle of borrowing, which could hold you back in the future.

    Not only is falling into a rough debt cycle detrimental to both your personal and business financial health, but it also looks bad to investors. If you ever decide to fundraise, investors want to see financially stable and savvy business owners who have accounted for their salary and aren’t having to work another job just to stay afloat.

    3. DIY spreadsheet accounting 

    At its very core, spreadsheets or pen-and-paper just opens themselves to too many bookkeeping errors. Consider how many surprise transactions you see when looking through your banking statements. Between subscriptions, banking fees, recurring bills, and more, it’s typically too much to accurately track without the help of software.

    Even if you can do it yourself, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. Spending hours on monthly bookkeeping is time that could be spent growing other aspects of business or creating new products (or whatever it is that you do best). 

    Furthermore, we recommend not passing this work off to a virtual assistant, which just compounds the problem of losing time and money when software would suffice.

    Spreadsheets and paper trails also aren’t helpful at tax time. And they can actually hold your business back from staying compliant to tax entities and the governing bodies of your specific industry. Getting either tax or legal issues wrong can mean hefty fines or even the shuttering of your business.

    4. Waiting until tax time

    As we mentioned earlier, waiting until tax time to start cleaning up your finances is ill-advised. It might be a task that, on the surface, doesn’t seem daunting, but it can quickly become one rat’s nest after another. Even if you cleared time in your schedule for all the rat’s nests, you might find yourself needing others to come through with information to help you. That’s a tall order if you’re on a tight deadline.

    If you don’t keep your records clean, it could also cost you dearly when it’s time to meet with your CPA (certified public accountant). That’s assuming they are available if you waited until the last minute. If you do get the help you need, you could end up paying significantly more for delivering messy records at the last minute.

    Most importantly, if your books are unkempt and you unwittingly submit inaccurate information at tax time, you could raise some red flags with the government. This may subject your business to an audit, which could lead to hefty penalties if you’re found to be at-fault for submitting inaccurate tax information.

    5. Not staying compliant

    Using accountancy platforms and cloud software tools such as Xero or Quickbooks can help you stay in compliance, even if only indirectly. Not only are these platforms typically built with common compliance issues in mind, but they also integrate nicely with other software you might be using to run your business – like Shopify Gusto, or TaxJar.  

    Another compliance area that requires special attention is sales tax for U.S. businesses. Not being thorough in your sales tax record-keeping and sales tax payments can mean serious penalties down the line. The good news is that connecting with the right tools — like TaxJar or Avalara — and experts can give you the peace of mind that you’re on the right track. However, using cloud accounting software is typically a prerequisite for that to happen.

    6. Overlooking cash flow & inventory forecasting

    Cash flow and inventory forecasting are two sides of a coin, but their goals are the same: to help you financially plan for the future by looking at the best-case, worst-case and middle-of-the-road scenarios. This gives you a pulse on how you’re actually doing versus how you think you’re doing.

    For cash flow, forecasting is absolutely critical. Imagine thinking you are doing a lot of sales and assuming the business is good only to find out at the end of the year you are severely in the red. People could get laid off. You may have to borrow money just to keep your business operational.

    Conversely, imagine not buying enough of a product only to learn that it’s flying off the shelves. It could mean a lot of lost opportunity. On the flip side, you wouldn’t want to buy too much inventory based on poor data and not be able to get rid of it. You could lose a lot of money — real or potential — by skipping inventory forecasting.

    7. Equating profit to cash flow

    Another problem we see is ecommerce entrepreneurs conflating profit with cash flow. Bank balance accounting is not a sufficient way to keep track of your books. And even if you can handle the mental maths, is that a risk you’re willing to take with your money?

    In addition to your accounts receivable, there is way more to the financial big picture. You also must consider accounts payable (what you owe your suppliers), payroll, taxes, business overhead, and more. Even shipping costs impact your business’ bottom line.

    We recommend the Profit First Framework for a quick way to work out the profit part of the equation. Most accounting systems use the formula of sales minus expenses equals profit. With Profit First, you flip the equation on its head — sales minus profit equals expenses. This helps ensure you keep your business costs in check, yielding the profit that you want to have. 

    In sum, one of the best things you can do for the long-term health of your business is establishing a solid financial foundation. It may be tempting to stick to more comfortable alternatives such as spreadsheets, but in the long run, it can be costly. In the worst-case scenario, it could even cost you your business. 

    Author bio: This article was written by Wayne Richard.

  • How To Start An Online Clothing Boutique: 7 Steps

    How To Start An Online Clothing Boutique: 7 Steps

    If you’re looking to start an online clothing boutique to sell clothes then this article is for you!

    This post provides seven steps that will help you get started on the right foot. They are all simple and straightforward ways to set up your own successful business without spending much money or time.

    1. Choose a name for your online store

    The best way to name a clothing boutique is to choose something that describes what you will be selling. The most popular categories are jeans, tops, dresses, and skirts, among other items. People often use catchy names or words as their titles when describing clothes in an online store.

    Here are two tips to help you choose a name for your online clothing boutique store:

    • Your name needs to be unique and catchy for it to stand out from other stores
    • Don’t use your last name or a common word as the main part of your store’s title because this can make it difficult for people to find you on search engines

    To help you brainstorm for name ideas, use a tool like Namemesh. 

    Credit: Namemesh

    Enter your preferred brand name and the tool will show you a variety of domain names you can sign up for your site.

    2. Create a logo and branding for your website

    Before you start selling any clothing online, you should have a logo and branding. This is important because it gives your business an online identity and makes it unique. It can also help make your website look more professional when customers visit to buy clothes for their wardrobe.

    Your logo should give customers an idea about what you are selling and make them want to buy from you and visit often.

    There are lots of logo design services you can subscribe to help you come up with one for your site. Canva has a logo maker that you can play around with if you’re short on budget. If you want to hand this task off to a professional then you can often find highly rated graphic designers on Fiverr who will get the job done for you.

    But branding goes deeper than just a logo because it includes colours, fonts, images and more — it’s getting a feeling for how someone views your company once they find it on the internet.

    3. Design an attractive, user-friendly website with plenty of product photos

    A good way to design a website is by using a tool such as Weebly. Weebly has templates that are suitable for fashion websites. It also has an intuitive interface, so you can easily make changes to your website’s content and appearance if you need to.

    You can also select from other great platforms like Shopify, Squarespace, and WooCommerce (for WordPress users). 

    The most important thing here is you’re comfortable with the platform and gives you the confidence to make the best possible online store with it.

    Once you’ve chosen the platform, the next step is to make custom tweaks to it to make the store your own.

    Credit: Weebly

    Weebly has plenty of themes to choose from, so you can start with one already made instead of building from scratch to save time. Then select some custom fonts and upload any logos or images that make sense alongside your company’s branding.

    Next, choose the layout that you want for your store. There are different layouts such as grid, two-column, or full-width page template where you can click and drag elements around until they’re positioned how you like them on your site. 

    Regarding product photos, there are many creative ways to take them for your ecommerce store. One of the most important things is to make sure that your pictures look clear and sharp, because this can help encourage customers to buy from you.

    And to achieve this, you may need to hire a professional photographer to ensure that the high-resolution images that put your brand in a positive light.

    4. Promote your business

    If you want to promote your online clothing boutique, you can start by creating social media accounts such as Twitter and Instagram because those are the most popular ones.

    Once you’ve done this, you’ll want to create a Facebook Page for your business. Once that’s done, use it to promote the clothing boutique by posting pictures and updates about new products or sales now and then.

    You can also run paid ads to show your posts to your audience. 

    To do this, you must determine their demographic (age, gender, income, etc.) to ensure that they see your posts.

    Lastly, if you have an email list set up (you should!), we recommend sending out emails when there are any new arrivals of popular items on your site! That way, people will know what they need to come back for next time they see something online that catches their eye.

    5. Decide on the best payment option for your customers

    Credit: Stripe

    Picking the best payment method for your customers is a key part of setting up your online store. 

    Payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal are widely accepted payment methods that also accept credit and debit cards. Both are popular among customers so you shouldn’t have to worry about receiving payment using either gateway.

    Most website platforms have built-in payment gateways to help you process the order, which makes it simple to set up your chosen payment method. 

    6. Determine how you will ship orders to customers

    Because customers want to have their orders delivered as fast as possible, you must find a way to ship them. Pick a shipping provider that works for your business, keeping in mind that you may want to send orders internationally. 

    If you’re in the dropshipping business, you need to align with your manufacturers regarding the orders to ensure that customers receive them on time and without any problems.

    7. Set up google analytics to track traffic on your site

    It’s important to understand where your customers are coming from, and Google Analytics can help you do this. You’ll know which of your marketing channels is working best.

    Credit: Google Analytics

    Google Analytics helps you monitor the number of visitors your site and how the interact with your site. Below are some metrics you should consider when analysing your online clothing boutique using Google Analytics:

    • Average time on site: how long do people stay on your site before leaving?
    • Bounce rate: how many of your visitors leave your store without doing anything?
    • Referral traffic: which online channels do you receive the most traffic from?
    • Top pages: which among your pages attract the most traffic and why?

    From these insights, you’ll have a better understanding of what your audience wants from your store. For example, if your top referring traffic is coming from social media, then you must double down on your social media promotions and efforts.

    Conclusion

    Follow these steps and you have a solid foundation for setting up an online boutique clothing store. We hope that our advice has been useful in helping you get started with starting an online clothing boutique and generating customers and sales over time.

    Author bio: This article was written by Christopher Jan Benitez, a freelance writer. 

     

  • How to Make Sure You’re Setting Fair Prices

    How to Make Sure You’re Setting Fair Prices

    Today’s guest blog comes from Prisync — a developer of price tracking and monitoring software. 

    Setting too high or too low price rates can affect your business. So, how will you decide on the fair price for your ecommerce products? 

    When the price is very low, you will not get much profit. Customers will assume that you are selling low-quality products. On the contrary, high price rates will provoke your potential customers to go to your competitor’s store.

    87% of shoppers say knowing they got a good deal is important when choosing a brand/store. Thus, perfect pricing is a must to retain customers and maintain the best position of your ecommerce store. Let us provide you with a guide on how to set the right price for your products.

    Factors important to ensure the fair price for your products

    While deciding on your product prices, you need to focus on two major things:

    1. Your business’s goals
    2. Your overheads

    Still, there are some other factors related to your product pricing tactics.

    Target ROI

    Do you want to make your business more sustainable — or maybe you want to help the business grow rapidly? These goals can change in due course. However, you need to grow your business responsibly to ensure longevity.

    Intelligent and fair pricing is the most important factor to reach your targets. Be focused on your targets and set the ideal product. That is what every successful marketer does.

    Fixed cost

    Fixed costs refer to the costs incurred by your business. 

    Regardless of the number of orders for your ecommerce products, you need to incur this cost. For instance, it includes the cost of utilities, insurance, rent, and salaries. You can work on lowering most of your business costs, but not these. Proper maintenance of product prices is the only way to spread these costs.

    Image: The Balance Small Business

    Testing

    Have you set the perfect price for ecommerce products? You may have decided on the product price. However, it must not be the final one. Test out different price levels and find one that works best to increase your sales.

    How to set fair prices

    To ensure that you have set the right price for your ecommerce products, it is essential to go through some steps.

    Analyse the industry

    Based on your chosen industry, you can find several competitors. Try to be more precise and accurate while comparing your business to competitors.

    Image: Amazon

    For instance, as a dairy product seller, you have to compare similar products in other ecommerce stores. It is better to find products made of similar ingredients. 

    After identifying your competitors, you can create a list of:

    • Products
    • Shipping costs
    • Prices
    • Any discount offer

    Researching your competitors is a great benchmark for setting fair prices. 

    Assess your product’s market share

    A new ecommerce business may not have a considerable market share. With the growth of your business, you can start calculating the market share. Find the average sales volume of your business. Moreover, you need to identify the product prices that increase and decrease your profit margin.

    Deal with different costs

    How much have you spent on buying products from vendors? Moreover, product packaging costs must also be considered. The increasing number of sales can raise these costs. Add all these costs to overheads and note down the numerical figure.

    You must also focus on some other factors:

    • How will VAT affect your price?
    • Can you achieve a modest profit margin while maintaining sales?
    • Should you take a delivery charge from customers?

    There are many costs to consider when setting prices that are fair, but you can profit from. 

    Set prices that ensure consistent profits 

    You cannot run a business without making profits. Calculate the amount that you need to invest in the delivery team, materials, and other factors. Optimise your supply chain and ensure the standard costs.

    When you have found ways to refine costs, you can adjust the product prices. Moreover, you can help your customers to save money. Although you can set a standard price, you may offer discounts on bulk purchases of different products.

    Finally, we need to say that you cannot stick to a particular price rate throughout the year. If your competitors have adjusted the rate, you may also rethink that price. It is common for every ecommerce business to find a shift in the product price. You may have to communicate this with customers to ensure that your product prices are optimal.

    Some vital elements for unbiased pricing

    These are the vital elements for setting fair, unbiased prices on your ecommerce website:

    Price transparency

    Price transparency increases the willingness of customers to purchase from your store. While selling premium products, you have to describe their quality and the reason for higher pricing. 

    Equality

    Have you heard about Amazon’s scandal in 2000? Some shoppers claimed that the ecommerce company sold them a particular product at different price rates based on the chosen browser — this shows you must maintain equal prices without focusing on customer demographics.

    Consistency

    Consistency in pricing is highly desirable. However, Amazon uses its dynamic pricing engine to adjust their prices every day. Although SMBs don’t have to make changes so frequently, they have to have some level of agility in their pricing decisions.

    How to use software to set a reasonable product price

    A reliable price tracking software helps you ensure that your product price is fair and decent. What can you do with this software? How does it help you?

    • Know your competitor: by monitoring competitor prices, you will learn how their pricing schemes affect your sales rate.
    • Match your competitor prices: the price matching system collects your competitors’ price details for the perfect adjustment of your product prices. 
    • Change your rates regularly: you may adjust your price rates at any time using the dynamic pricing software. In other words, the software will automatically adjust your prices based on the rules you set.

    Image: Prisync

    • Maintain balance in prices: you can keep up a balance between overpricing and underpricing with response to customers’ needs and market conditions.
    • Control your product pricing strategy: You will receive daily notifications on price changes and detailed reports. Based on these reports, you can test countless different price points.

    Image: Prisync

    Use the software to maintain the fair prices of your products. The proper pricing strengthens your relationship with customers. Observe how a change in price affects the demand for your products.

    Moreover, you can conform to the industry norms. The software will let you decide on the right price for your products.

    Setting fair prices plays an important role in the buyers’ decision-making process. It can be the difference between somebody shopping at your store or choosing a competitor instead. Use this guide to help ensure you’re setting the right prices to make your ecommerce store a success.