Author: Rodney Laws

Ecommerce is a trillion-dollar industry and Chinese companies and customers account for a huge part of that. Retail came to China much later than it did to America, but the Asian titan has taken on the Western powerhouse and may soon topple it.

China’s economy lays foundations for ecommerce success

Although U.S. tariffs have taken a bite from its growth recently, China’s economy has been one of the world’s success stories. Asia’s most populous nation has seen incredible economic growth since the 1960s, peaking at nearly 20% of GDP in 1970 and frequently making it into double figures.

China has smashed the growth of the U.S. economy for over half a century, to the extent that 2018’’ growth of 6.9% is considered “paltry.”

Credit World Bank

Economic growth in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has laid the foundation for its ecommerce success – with more money in the country, and greater business confidence than other nations, supply and demand has allowed online retail to thrive:

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The Red Dragon is the world’s biggest player in ecommerce

Retail exploded first in the USA, with the mall culture and Hollywood lifestyle spreading across the globe. As retail went online in the 1990s, American brands and customers took the lead – Amazon was a pioneer for the success of ecommerce brands and their immersion into people’s lives.

Despite U.S. success, ecommerce in the second millennium has been dominated by China. The country is now the world’s biggest player in the ecommerce space. Its total market worth stands at US$1.568 trillion and is expected to rise to US$1.8 by 2022, making it more than ten times the size of Japan and over twice that of the U.S.

Why shoppers in the Middle Kingdom adore online retail

The consumer revolution happened much earlier in the Western world than in China. Countries like U.S, U.K, Canada, and Australia embraced retail in the early part of the twentieth century. Asia’s most prosperous nation opened its economy to commercial activity at the close of the 1970s, creating a new generation of Chinese shoppers – imaginatively called Generation 2 (G2).

G2 is China’s version of millennials (starting work as the internet and ecommerce began to take hold in the marketplace). Like their Western counterparts, G2s are more fond of spending money than saving it and they love to shop.

Chinese ecommerce is a success story with global appeal

Ecommerce makes up 35% of Chinese retail sales, and startups have so many options for setting up a national or international ecommerce brand.

Ali Baba is the most popular Chinese provider, with the company and its founder, Jack Ma, known across the planet. Ali Baba has 17 million monthly mobile users, along with 552 million users on its online retail sites Taobao and Tmall, meaning it has 80% of all online Chinese retail sales.

Credit Statista

Ecommerce in The Red Dragon is a success story with global appeal that is just as enticing to Western customers and companies as it is to their Chinese counterparts. Popular international ecommerce platforms accept Chinese payments and will work in the country, but you may face some government restrictions. As an alternative, Alibaba, Jingdong and JD.com are solid national platforms.

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Ecommerce may have been invented in America but China is becoming the industry’s dominant force. The Middle Kingdom has the largest national online retail market and two of the three largest ecommerce brands in the world. If any nation is equipped to take on the might of Amazon it’s China, the only question is whether it will be Aliba, Jingdong, or a new brand – we’ll have to wait and see.

If you’ve been following the SaaS world in recent years, you’ll have noticed that tier systems have become much more popular. The reason for this is simple: while it’s become much easier for beginners to start their own stores, companies across all industries have been forced to move online, taking their enormous budgets with them. A smart SaaS service will cater to everyone from the budget user to the giant conglomerate.

And with this growth of tiered systems has come a strong focus on enterprise solutions. Across the internet, far more thought has been put into what constitutes “enterprise” ecommerce than is necessary. It’s actually quite simple: if you sell various products and services, cater to different audiences or situations, or simply need a system that can do more than repeat the same basic process every day, then there’s a decent chance you need enterprise software.

Not there yet? Are you taking your business completely seriously? Dedicating almost every day to pushing it to the next level? Determined to exhaust every last drop of potential? If so, you’re aiming for the enterprise level — the level of limitless ambition and the willingness to invest everything you have for a shot at wild success.

These enterprise solutions are custom-made to support high-level business, and if you truly aspire to reach that level, you should seriously consider investing in one. To give you some broader context, here’s what you need to know about enterprise ecommerce solutions:

They focus on scalability

Scaling is one of the greatest challenges for a new business. It’s a common scenario: you’ve done all the hard work to get your store off the ground and start bringing in enough revenue to account for your costs, but now you need to get bigger, and you’re not sure how to go about it. Plenty of standard ecommerce platforms don’t scale very well — they’re designed to handle certain amounts of traffic (and certain numbers of orders), and will simply stop working if you try to use them beyond their clearly-defined limits.

One of the central tenets of enterprise-level software is that it can scale near-indefinitely. The more performance and/or storage you need, the more you can provide for your customers. This allows you to concentrate on growing and developing your business without wondering what you need to be paying for that particular month, or figuring out how to respond to a sudden rise (or fall) in demand.

Think about the prospect of something like BFCM looming over the horizon. Without a scalable platform, you’ll have to calculate approximately what you’ll need to handle the traffic, and you might get it wrong. Enterprise software relies on a basic premise: when you need something, it’ll be there for you. You may need to pay more for it, but it’ll be there.

They’re built for flexible integration

Multi-channel retail is rapidly moving from an advantage to a requirement, and if you want to run a business capable of selling across myriad platforms (including new ones as they arrive on the scene), then you need integrations. Integrations connect your store to new pieces of hardware or software. For instance, a Twitter integration can allow you to quickly promote your products through Twitter posts.

When reviewing ecommerce software tiers, you’ll see that integrations get more varied and numerous as the cost goes up. Smaller businesses don’t need to leap on new possibilities — they can stick with regular channels and rely on core integrations to get by — but enterprise-level businesses have to be more advanced.

With an enterprise solution, your store can cleanly spread its sales and promotions across all kinds of channel, and you can be confident that whenever a new tool or channel achieves some success, the development team will start working on an integration for you.

They’re generally cloud-based

Cloud-based ecommerce just involves all the digital assets being hosted across numerous data servers instead of on your personal server. When someone visits your store and places an order, all of their details will be made accessible through an admin dashboard you can view from anywhere with internet access. This largely avoids the need to take backups, and hugely increases the level of convenience.

There are plenty of self-hosted solutions for small or medium businesses, but it’s hard to find self-hosted enterprise-level solutions because SaaS companies need a lot of access to maintain a high level of service quality. By using their own storage options and processing power, they can handle the foundation of your store on your behalf.

You can run a self-hosted enterprise-level store using something like Magento, but would you really want to? Unless you need a highly-customized store design, there’s little benefit to it. Going with a cloud solution is simply going to be easier overall.

They’re quickly getting more accessible

You might like the sound of everything we’ve run through thus far, but have reservations about the potential cost. After all, I did stress that enterprise ecommerce demands total commitment and investment. Perhaps you’re not sure whether you’re ready to take that step — but something that might make the decision easier for you is the rapidly-rising level of accessibility.

Ecommerce in general has seen a pattern repeat over and over again: new options and features enter the scene, expensive and unintuitive, but are steadily polished until they become everyday standards, just part of the mainstream-level online selling package. This is now happening with enterprise ecommerce. For instance, Shopify Plus is a scalable platform aimed at the enterprise level, attempting to do for that tier what regular Shopify has done for SMEs.

Is it something that the average beginner seller should go for? No, of course not. Shopify Plus is going to cost upwards of $2000 per month, and that’s at the cheapest. It isn’t something you should consider until your revenue justifies it — but the main takeaway is that enterprise ecommerce solutions are becoming extremely intuitive, ensuring that the main challenge you face is earning enough money (not getting your new scalable system configured).

So, there you have the basics of software for enterprise-level ecommerce. They’re wonderfully scalable, flexible, and convenient — and with each passing month, they become more accessible. They’re far from cheap, of course, but if your business gets big enough, you should strongly consider taking the leap.

For more information on starting your own ecommerce business, don’t forget to check out my guides or blog for the latest news, tips and advice.

Ecommerce can be a rewarding industry. Launching an online business gives you the freedom and control to carve your own way in the digital sphere.

But ecommerce is not without its headaches. There are several issues that every digital entrepreneur faces at some point during their business journey.

Thankfully, there’s a solution: automation. Such technology turns all your ecommerce headaches into an ecommerce breeze — read on to find out how.

Crush your customer service

A happy customer is a loyal customer. But an unhappy customer? They’re anything but.

Managing customer complaints and queries can be time-consuming. But it’s an important part of growing a successful ecommerce business, so it’s not something you can avoid.

Thankfully, automation lets you provide better customer service. It mitigates the time spent on mundane or repetitive queries and lets you focus on the most pressing complaints and issues.

Chatbots are the most common form of customer service automation. By adding an AI bot onto your website, you can deal with frequent or simple requests (such as stock queries or delivery information).

Consequently, your customer service team is free to provide more nuanced requests quickly and personably. Install a chatbot to your online store and create a range of scripts that deal with the most common queries you face. You’ll save time, deal with more queries, and keep your customers happy all at once — not bad.

Save your struggling social media

Social media is a crucial component in any ecommerce business. It gives you the power to circumvent competitive SERPs and create an online community that generates leads, drives sales, and bolster your branding across platforms.

Managing one social platform whilst juggling the rest of your business can be tricky. But coordinating multiple social platforms while doing so is downright impossible.

With such a valuable marketing channel is worth nurturing, and automation makes it possible.

There is no shortage of social media automation platforms, each with different functions and features. SocialOomph is one scheduling tool that many businesses use to coordinate and schedule their social posts, letting them plan their content months in advance in a single sitting.

Other platforms still let brands monitor mentions of their business on social, helping them spot potential PR crises and finding prospective sales opportunities into the bargain.

Ace your abandoned cart revenue

Abandoned carts are one of the leading causes of lost revenue for ecommerce brands. Your customer is all but set to pay and then they abandon their purchase. It costs online businesses an estimated $18 billion of lost revenue every year — no small sum.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. Email automation prevents abandoned carts by sending a sequence of chaser emails to the lost lead. Each email builds on the last, offering different messages and different benefits (such as discount codes or freebies) to compel the abandoned customer to buy.

And this is all done with minimal involvement on your part. Simply plan the sequence ahead of time and then let your automation do the rest. Email automation tools like ActiveCampaign make chasing abandoned carts easy, and its automation well worth investing in.

Succeed at smart enterprise scaling

Every entrepreneur is after growth. But as your business grows, so too do the problems you face. Orders increase and your customer base grows, placing strain on your business infrastructure.

This results in either ad-hoc workarounds that are akin to putting a Band-Aid on a serious wound, or more hires — a costly process that growing businesses can ill afford.

A third solution, however, is ecommerce automation. This transforms all the daily repetitive tasks associated with a scaling business, letting you focus on more urgent matters. From customer segmentation to price updates, ecommerce automation does what a human does, but better and for less.

And it’s easy to do too. Ecommerce automation tool lets you implement automation with an intuitive visual builder, creating workflows from scratch that foster business growth.

While not every automation tool is as easy to use, many are. It’s accessible and straightforward, and saves you time and money as your business grows — it’s a no-brainer.

Kill it with customer retention

In the busy world of ecommerce, it’s easy to lose yourself down a tunnel of chasing new leads. But as you pursue these potential customers, all too often your existing customers get neglected. And as a result, you lose them.

If you want to increase your revenue, you need to keep your old customers on board. But how do you balance regular lead generation with sustained customer retention?

If you’ve gotten this far in the article, you already know the answer.

Automation turns all the minutiae of customer retention into automatic tasks. Whether you need customer feedback after a purchase, want to send a freebie or discount to a customer on their birthday, or just want to remind your loyal shoppers that you value their custom, ecommerce marketing automation has you covered.

Chasing new leads is a necessity for every ecommerce business — that’s a fact. But so too is nurturing relationships with your existing ones. You’ll increase your customer retention and enjoy sustained profits for a long time to come.

Ecommerce is a rewarding — but challenging — endeavor. But automation makes those challenges easier, and it’s growing in sophistication everyday. Take inspiration from the above and let automation streamline your online business and enjoy sustained business growth in 2019.

To learn even more about building a successful ecommerce business, bookmark my blog and how-to guides, and check-in regularly for the latest tips and advice.

Even in its inaugural iteration, ecommerce was never outright inconvenient — certainly not when compared to traditional retail. And as the digital world has matured, almost everything has become easier to use. Interfaces have improved, accessibility has expanded, and educational resources have flooded the web. Today, it’s possible for a complete beginner to get selling in remarkably little time if they’re dedicated enough.

Still, ecommerce certainly has its fair share of challenges. In addition to knowing the sales industry, and being able to network and negotiate, an ecommerce seller must understand technology. This makes it a tough field for anyone who isn’t tech-savvy. And then there are the various practical problems of running an ecommerce operation.

Thankfully, that same steady design progress that made ecommerce the powerhouse it is today shows no sign of slowing down, ensuring that each year brings fresh technologies and tactics for making online selling easier. Here are some notable ecommerce challenges that are already being addressed through technology:

Trust acquisition

Trust is a tricky thing to achieve as an online business. When you have physical premises, you have various ways to encourage visitors to trust you: you can show professionalism through maintaining a spotless environment, hire capable and helpful store assistants, and — most importantly — showcase your products.

When people can closely examine products, even interacting with them, they can feel confident about their purchasing decisions. Online, you can’t showcase your products that way. All you can do is provide relevant materials, and that only goes so far. It’s better to have ten product images than just one, but even a hundred images won’t give you a great idea of what it’s like to view the product in person.

While this problem will never be fully overcome, AR/VR product resources stand to massively diminish its effects. A seller can create a 360-degree view of a product, allowing a shopper to view it far more closely. By adding the dimensions to a mobile AR app (along the lines of Ikea Place), they can make it possible for someone to preview the product in their home, getting a better idea of how it would look there than they would from viewing it in a physical store.

General admin

The advantage of doing retail the old-fashioned way is that it doesn’t need all that much upkeep. You bring in stock, open your store, and surf that wave until you need more (or different) stock. Most of the ongoing effort is dedicated to staffing the place and keeping it tidy.

Because an online store has no physical presence, though, it needs consistent effort to keep it viable in a hotly-competitive online marketplace. That typically calls for running PPC campaigns, updating website copy, producing blog posts, and — often the most time-consuming part — communicating with customers regarding their orders.

General admin for an ecommerce store can easily take up a lot of time, making it hard to scale the business, but it’s getting easier with the consistent improvement of chatbots and AI store assistants like Drift or Conversica. One well-designed chatbot can handle the bulk of the support requests for a store, and an AI assistant can make it easy for a store owner to make major updates from their smartphone — even starting a new programmatic PPC campaign with a single tap.

Additionally, the process of maintaining warehouse facilities can be smoothed out through the use of facilities management software such as FacilityBot. Keeping track of stock and dealing with the errors and failures that are unavoidable when you’re trying to handle high-level logistics can be hugely stressful, so putting a system in place to productively deploy artificial intelligence is an excellent long-term investment.

Competitive store design

Design standards in the ecommerce world change quickly. Any fresh feature or convention can catch fire unexpectedly, leaving everyone scrambling to jump on the bandwagon. We’re actually seeing this happen with the aforementioned chatbots. In a short period of time, they’ve gone from being disregarded as novelties to being considered practical necessities by most brands.

For a small (or even medium) business, it can be really tough to keep up with the pace. A brick-and-mortar store design can remain unchanged for decades without business being adversely affected, but an ecommerce store that goes without updates for a year or so will start to look very dated. How quickly can a new social media channel enter the zeitgeist?

This is a problem for SaaS to solve, and it’s doing just that through the ever-increasing use of templates, set platforms, and automatically-updated layouts. Massively-scalable systems like Shopify Plus or Magento Commerce Cloud allow sellers to sit back and let their CMS providers seamlessly keep everything in line with shopper expectations. It’s a far cry from the original need to manually implement code changes every so often.

Tax calculation

One of the fundamental strengths of ecommerce is its suitability for expansive selling. You can sell across regions, across state barriers, and even across national borders if you’re so inclined. While you could always do that from a brick-and-mortar business, you’d struggle to sell anywhere you didn’t have a physical presence — since a website is accessible from across the internet, it’s not an issue.

However, that opportunity brings a lot of complexity. Calculating taxation can be quite the annoyance, particularly given the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision to allow states to pursue sales tax from out-of-state sellers. The more you sell, the more you need to calculate — and then there’s the paperwork of registering to pay tax in different areas.

Usefully, the industry has adapted quite quickly, and an ecommerce seller can use an automated tax solution like Avalara to handle everything on their behalf — even down to filing the required forms and confirming their acceptance. This allows online merchants to benefit from the immense potential of selling online without being encumbered by the associated demands.

As time goes by, running an ecommerce business is only going to get easier. Some elements keep getting harder, of course, but those are the creative aspects, and if you don’t have compelling ideas for a store, you’re not going to be successful anyway. Technology enablers are about getting the roadblocks out of the way, allowing you to drive in any direction you think is best.

For more information on starting your own ecommerce business, don’t forget to check out my guides or blog for the latest news, tips and advice.