The image above shows the main integration steps.

API Integration Steps

Merchant website

To initiate a transaction, the merchant generates a POST REQUEST (which is a particular mode of interaction on the internet). The request must include mandatory and optional parameters. The mandatory fields include a key (provided by gateway), txn ID (order reference number generated at merchant’s end), amount product info, first name, email, phone, service_provider, and hash (checksum). Merchant also calculates a hash and sends it to the payment gateway.

PayU Payment Gateway’s Website

When the POST request reaches PayU, the customer would be re-directed to payment gateway’s (PayU’s) payment page. The customer now selects the particular payment option on payment gateway’s (PayU’s) page (Credit Card/Debit Card/Net Banking etc) and clicks on ‘Make Payment’. Now, payment gateway re-directs the customer to the chosen bank. The customer goes through the necessary authorization/authentication process at bank’s login page, and the bank gives the success/failure response back to the payment gateway.

1. When the transaction POST request hits the payment gateway server, a new transaction entry is created in the database. To identify each new transaction in the gateway database, a unique identifier is created every time at gateway’s end.
2. Our payment gateway marks the transaction status on the basis of response received from Bank.
3. A final transaction response is sent to the merchant through a POST RESPONSE. In this response, the merchant would receive the final status of the transaction. Merchant will also receive the hash parameter here. This is done to strictly avoid any tampering attempt by the user.

How Different Kits Ease The Payment Gateway Integration Process

Different kits provide different APIs to automate a lot of tasks. PayU provides developers with two kinds of kits for easy integration– shopping cart integration kits and platform-based integration kits.

Shopping Cart Integration Kits

Shopping cart kits follow an easy payment gateway integration procedure with the help of codes and APIs. Currently, the PayU provides more than 30 shopping cart integration kits. Some of which are:

1. Opencart
2. Interspire
3. Joomla VirtueMart
4. Magento
5. Prestashop
6. Zencart
7. CS-Cart
8. OScommerce
9. WordPress eCommerce
10. WordPress wooCommerce
11. Drupal Ubercart
12. WHMCS

Platform-Based Integration Kits

PayU currently provides integration kits in 4 different environments

• PHP
• JSP
• .NET
• ROR

PayU has the easiest and quick payment gateway integration process. Know more about the PayU Payment Gateways Integration with your website now!

Ask us more about PayU website integration process at merchantcare@payu.in

The post How Does Payment Gateway Integration Work With Your Website? appeared first on PayU Blog.

The Making of Policybazaar.com

Like most developing countries, India does not have great social security. Most people are unaware that insurance can support in living through sudden losses easily. Policybazaar.com marched ahead with a purpose to educate the Indian public about the importance of insurance along with creating awareness about the wide range of insurances available canopying all possible scenarios in mind. Today, in just a decade the strong insurance provider has become a marketplace leader!

Challenges Faced By Policybazaar.com

Policybazaar.com is primarily an insurance aggregation portal where, customers can compare and buy insurance policies directly. With the Indian digital space, especially the digital payment space, still in its early years processing online payments for insurance policies bought on the portal was a challenge that the company faced. This is when the insurance giant decided to tie-up with a payment gateway for processing its digital financial transactions. Although payment gateways are highly regulated, most of them shy away from extending themselves to support business partners.

The company’s  another major concern centered around the complex models needed to enable vendor payouts. In the insurance sector each payout is critical. While the solutions were available, incorporating them into the organisational structure usually resulted in problems with the vendor. The company holds its vendor partners in high regard. All they needed was a payment gateway whose ideologies aligned with their need to put the Marketplace Model and Net Settlement Models into effect.

Journey with PayU

PayU provided support to Policybazaar.com by implementing a seamless payment gateway through the development of a mechanism which did not affect any of the three – vendors, the payment gateway and the organisation.

“PayU has provided extensive support in making a customised end-to-end solution for us with super-fast routing which has led to better success rates for transactions.” – Harsh Vardhan Masta

Harsh Vardhan Masta, AVP – Product Development, Policy Bazaar

Today, most of the organisations transactions are routed via the company’s payment page itself.

Future

Planning a different future for the whole country’s security is a huge and urgent responsibility of the insurance leaders! Apart from insurance, the Policybazaar group seeks to address all aspects of people’s well-being; it has recently launched a new venture – a technology platform in the healthcare space called Docprime.com. It is an aggregator of medical services and consultants. The group of companies continues to trust PayUmoney at every step to provide secure payment solutions for all its business needs.

At present, more than 4.5 lac Indian businesses prefer PayUmoney as their payment solution provider. What are you still thinking about? With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post Policybazaar’s Journey With PayUmoney Payment Gateway appeared first on PayU Blog.

The payment settlement time is very good. Being a startup liquidity is very important, which PayUmoney has helped to achieve – Amit Saini, Founder, Let’s Ryde

Let’s Ryde: The Making

Dreamt of riding the power pact Royal Enfields, Harley Davidson, Duccati and many more luxury motorcyles? Let’s Ryde is your go-to place. The Delhi based company is an online motorcycle rental company founded by Amit Saini It is considered as the biggest motorcycle rental company in Northern belt of India. Let’s Ryde’s motto is to enable people enjoy your ride, wherever you go and have a lifelong love affair with the motorcycle your dreams.

Amit Saini, Founder, Let’s Ryde

Challenges Let’s Ryde Faced

The biggest challenge Let’s Ryde faced was processing payments. As the startup succeeded from renting just 2 motorcycles to now a 42, they quaked the need of a payment gateway to collect payments. Amit says that, payment gateway is very critical for them in their business. Hence, PayUmoney proved to the best choice for them to serve the best to their customers.

The best thing about PayUmoney is the relationship managers. He is the guy we call and reach out to. He knows our business, requirements, etc. in and out and he is at a position to solve all our problems. – Amit Saini

Let’s Ryde: Future

Going forward the founder aspires to go pan India and have outlets at every 250-300 km across the country. their main mission is to help people take some time out of their stressful lives and remind them of the importance of protecting our culture and land. Customer satisfaction is a key component of their business.

Recommended Reads

How A Payment Gateway For NGO Helped Vanaja Organics To Grow

Patel Tours & Travels Journey With PayUmoney Payment Gateway

EventsHigh’s Journey With India’s Leading Payment Gateway

The post Let’s Ryde’s Journey With PayUmoney Payment Gateway appeared first on PayU Blog.

From Saurabh’s trunk of expertise….

“Customer is like a girlfriend or boyfriend. If they don’t feel the vibe, they will just go away and you won’t realize why!” – Saurabh Garg, Co-Founder & CBO, NoBroker.in

There’s a lot of noise about customer retention strategies these days! It is considered an important marketing pillar. For a very good reason – Bain & Co study shows that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%.

While it is easier to accomplish in frequently used businesses such as groceries, e-commerce, and so on, but when you talk about businesses such as home buying and rentals, the customer does not return as fast. In fact, the customer having once used the service will return approximately in a year’s time. In businesses like these, the customer retention strategies have to be even more impactful. It is like you get one chance per year to impress your customer!

The Product

Firstly, strategy for any business is to build a great product that solves a real customer problem. The customer is always the king and must be served with best possible amenities. How can one do that? One can only do that by understanding the customer and not merely by building a ‘new’ product. The product should be ‘good’ and may or may not be ‘new’. The product should address the customer’s pain point. This one quality distinguishes successful businesses from aspirants.

Secondly, any customer is bound to remember a good service. If he is happy, he will gladly spread the word of mouth. Businesses who see happy customers as hyperlocal brand ambassadors usually survive the perils of time, fund crunch, trend change, etc.

Lifecycle

Once you understand the customer and his behavior well, you can tune your retention strategies around that. You have to remember that in today’s world the customer is bombarded with advertising and forgets a brand as early as 3 days. Therefore, it is important that you keep the customer engaged along the whole lifecycle till he comes back. There is no point in doing an untargeted advertising here as it will be much less impactful.

Let’s take the example of NoBroker

The customer typically comes back after 15-18 months once he has found a house. So, we divide the life cycle into 3 stages:

1. 0-12 months: Here we push engaging and useful content for the customer. Something he can use once he has found a house. Like locality highlights, décor and interiors tips, vastu etc. This content is pushed regularly to the customer and since these are things he finds useful we get a pretty high engagement here.
2. 12-14 months: This is the pre-transaction stage and we prepare the customers for the transaction. So, we will send them things like Guide to moving out, Guide to renting a house, testimonials etc. The person is about to enter into the zone and finds this content very informative.
3. 14 – 30 months: This is the transaction zone and we target the customer with high frequency content like “50000+ non-broker houses waiting for you”, “Saved 600cr in brokerage in last 1 year”. The customer who is looking for a house gets this at the right time and decides to try the service because of this.

Impact

Our repeat users have jumped 7 fold in last 1 year and is growing even faster. This is like a snowball effect which keeps on adding continuously.

Some Things To Remember

Integrated communication (IMC) approach- SMS, Facebook, Video, Push, Email, Google

It is very important to have an integrated communication approach in lifecycle management. A customer needs to be exposed to communication at least 3+ times before he decides to take any action.

Think one step ahead

For instance, in our business, once we know that a customer has rented/bought a place, we do not sit and relax. We foresee what the customer might need next- rental/home agreement, packers and movers, etc. Anticipating customer needs and communicating the services at the right time, goes a long way in gaining customer loyalty.

Customers today want convenience and value.

If they see a brand that is with them at each step of their house rental or shifting journey, they are bound to come back and recommend you for a hassle-free experience!

Reward them for social shares

Frequently, encourage your customers to share their experience on their social media handle. Reward them for those shares. The end goal is to form a community of hyperlocal and hyper-loyal brand ambassadors.

Endnote

Retaining your customers could be the most profitable activity a company can do. But important is to remain a start-up and keep experimenting. The idea is to not fall prey to regular customer retention strategies. Understand your customer and what he would want. There is no “one size fits all” strategy that will ever come to rescue.

The above knowledge, tips, and personal experiences belong solely to Saurabh Garg of NoBroker. You can reach out to him for any advice related to this topic on LinkedIn (please check the author section below for information). If you would like to write a blog for PayUmoney as a guest please do get in touch with us: marketing@payu.in

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

Recommended Reads

[Streaming LIVE] PayU Event: Customer Retention 2018

The post StartingUp With Customer Retention Strategies appeared first on PayU Blog.

From Shrijay’s trunk of expertise….

Entrepreneurship is a journey by itself and just like any other journey, it has its own do’s and don’ts. I too, started this journey to provide business professional services a few years back. It’s only then did I realize that it would have been an added advantage for me to know the rule book beforehand! But to make the startup journey easier for all aspiring business minds reading this, here are the 5 things you must look forward to polish right from the beginning.

1. Keep Your Focus & Dedication Intact

Juggling job with a start-up on a part-time basis is a bad idea. The amount of attention, hard work and persistence your entrepreneurial venture requires is 10X vis a vis is a regular job. Eventually, I too had to call it a day at my full-time job and concentrate on my venture.

Take the hard and harsh decisions to follow the dream completely without any compromises.

Being focused on venture demands not only laser-sharp focus towards work but also on various other aspects of entrepreneurship like;

• Unique Value Proposition (UVP): Your prospective customers will have hundreds of other options. You need to work hard and smart towards making your offerings stand out from competitors despite offering the same service or product.
• Market/product fit: Keep your eye on the quality of your product/services and the size of your target market. These two points will easily help you gauge your way ahead.
• Single success metric: When you start a business, how would you define success? You need to shortlist a couple of essential metrics such as conversions, GMV and so on to choose the most valued metric for you in that time.

2. Watch Out For Data Trends

Keep a vigilant eye on your data. To achieve an armor of a successful industry leader, you need to focus on cultivating data maturity from the beginning.

If you are going to be an entrepreneur, you can’t fear failure. You have to develop a tolerance level of measured risk.  – Bernhard Niesner.

Personally, the following steps worked wonders me, you can try them too!

• Enable the current data structure to provide a holistic set of information
• Use various tools to help with data assistance
• Invest in custom data applications tailored to my services and business model

Then, I used that data to gauge whether I can take my business decisions based on the data. And then I took a closer look at how others, especially my competitors utilize it.

Sites like Etsy and Craig’s List, and even local trade shows for that matter is something wherein you can test-market early product prototypes or services and learn from mistakes. Failure is inevitable, it all boils down to how much can you learn and how fast can you pick yourself up.

3. Seek Support: Co-Founders, Employees And Consultants

Quite often, because of the way start-ups are perceived today, entrepreneurs feel shy or reserved to approach others for advice. There are loads of resources available online: blogs, videos, where you can find inspiration. But learning and consulting your own teammates, counterparts and seniors make a lot of difference. Also, the importance of venturing with co-founder enables the simplification of the gap filling process. The right sense of ownership and accompaniment gives a beautiful twist to a traditional equation of 1+1 = 11!

I would tip here with: Just go out there as a learner and implement all those lessons to be a successful entrepreneur.

4. Legal Formalities & Protecting IPRs

Newbies are often trapped in an enigma of whether to register a private company (Pvt.) or LLP in case of co-founders. Legal formalities involve more than just picking the right formation type. There are companies who tasted the sweetness of initial success and later called it a “quit” because of law enforcement. Here are the 5 things that I would like to share:

1. Choose a Right Business Structure
2. Know Licensing Regulations
3. Have legal documents and policies in place
4. Adhering to taxation compliances
5. Manage your Cash flow and Accounts

Given that many new-age startups are tech-based, protecting IP is not a luxury, it is a necessity! In fact, many successful startups enjoy massive evaluations just because of the intellectual properties and proprietary algorithms that they could create.

 It has been estimated that on an average, over 80% of the value of a startup company is based on their IP portfolio. (Shrijay’s sources)

Here are the thumb rules to follow:

• Get a Trademark: Protect your branding – name, symbol, sound or fragrance that creates a recall for your brand
• Protect with Patents: If your product or process is true to the test of the invention and creates a better value and efficiency, consider protecting it with Patent.
• Copyright for Works: If you have created original content, be it musical composition, photograph, write-up, or a sculpture; you must copyright such work.

Protecting IP leads to:

• Startup Valuation Based on IP Rights: Startups don’t necessarily have massive goods’ stocks or workforce to start with. Hence, most of the value of a startup is usually derived from its IP rights.
• No Over-Stretching the Finances: It has to be stated that unless your startup offers something that has zero production costs, you will have to loosen the purse strings at times to make money. What most startups don’t consider, are the expenses that may derive from not taking proper care of IP rights. {Need this as it talks of IP – subject specific}
• Impose Control on What You Have: Sure, it is nice to have someone else promote your services or goods for free. But what are you going to do when the quality is not up to your mark? In many cases, the answer is a simple “nothing” if you haven’t taken care of the IP rights. 

By keeping all IPRs and legal formalities in place, you will get the ability to restrict unauthorized use of your owned IP or license for others’ commercial benefit. It also helps you relax and focus on necessary.

5. Balancing Emotions With Practicality

Being an entrepreneur is not a destination, but a journey of constant improvement, evolution, and perseverance. It is a roller-coaster ride with quick highs and lows.

 It has been a long journey for me as well. But, above all, it is important to take practical decisions out of the emotional experiences.

Remember, when you hold that commanding position, by default trusteeship of everyone who signed up for the journey is an assumption. You have to make decisions that are good for the company at large.

Taking care of the employees and people who take care of your business is the ultimate key to grow. There are no shortcuts to valuing people. A compassionate entrepreneur sails the farthest! It is about understanding your customers as well. Instead of running behind clients and focusing on increasing your clientele, cater to a few clients in the best manner and others will follow suit as a snowball effect gradually!

The above knowledge, tips, and personal experiences belong solely to Shrijay Seth of LegalWiz. You can reach out to him for any advice related to this topic on LinkedIn (please check the author section below for information). If you would like to write a blog for PayUmoney as a guest please do get in touch with us: marketing@payu.in

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post 5 Things Every Entrepreneur Must Consider Before Starting Up appeared first on PayU Blog.

The Making

Netmax Computers, an initiative by Tanvir Singh is an internet service provider company in Delhi. Way into the past, Tanvir started his career in a corporate after achieving a diploma in Computer Hardware and Networking. Along with his full-time job role, he also indulged in part-time computer repairing work back then. Around 2003, he decided to go solo and start his own company where he would work door-to-door repairing computer systems.

The Challenges

With a new business, no workforce and office, things by nature were a challenge to sail through. With immense vigor and perseverance, Tanvir brought his startup on the surface and in full visibility. He set up his office, recruiting efficient resources and providing internet services to households and offices. They hosted their services mainly in the Karol Bagh arena in full swing.

Apart from the initial challenge of getting started, Netmax faced another challenge of collecting payments for the services they provided duly. More often than not, customers would staple all sorts of excuses when it came to making payments on time. Also, payment collection required manual efforts of going to every subscriber doorstep for payments. All these issues caused a delay in receiving payments and hence the company cash flow was disrupted to an extent. Tanvir found a solution for that too!

Why Netmax Feels Secured With PayUmoney Payment Links

With a couple of recommendation and hardcore search, Netmax found its payment partner in PayUmoney payment links.

“With PayUmoney Payment Links, payment collection became very easy. We just send the Payment links to our customers and they can make payment online whenever and from wherever they want” – Tanvir Singh

Payment links helped the internet service provider to receive customer payments online via payment links at any given time without paying any home visits. The tools also helped Tanvir and Netmax to focus on other important aspects of the business which needed attention. Know more about PayUmoney’s payment links now!

The Future

With the payment challenge being resolved because of PayUmoney’s payment links, the company is more focused towards its dream of providing free Wi-Fi to public places and offices in and around Karol Bagh area. The work is already “work-in-progress” mode and the targets lie fulfilling their collective dream of making Karol Bagh a Free Wi-Fi Zone by end of the year 2018.

More than 4.5 lac Indian businesses prefer PayUmoney as their payment solution provider. Why wait? With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post Netmax’s Journey With PayUmoney Payment Gateway appeared first on PayU Blog.

The Making of Vanaja Organics

With rise in social awareness and willingness to help the needy and underprivileged, a large number of NGOs have come to life in the current world scenario. Vanaja Organics is one such venture of Prodigee Foundation, an NGO founded by Vandana Chhabra, S. Natraj and M. Kishan. The NGO aims at creating opportunities of dignified living for underprivileged women of the society by imparting vocational training. The key focus of the NGO is primarily on:

• Helping the ones in need by providing employment
• Supporting the society by providing fine quality organic food products at reasonable prices

The NGO is run by a bunch of ‘heartrepreuners’ who work towards the wellness of the farmers, consumers and the planet. Vandana (fashion designer) quit her job and paved their path to make a noticeable transform in the society. Hence, the NGO came up with a dream called Vanaja Organics.

Vandana Chhabra of Vanaja Organics

Challenges Vanaja Organics Faced

The founders were not 100% satisfied with their efforts vis-à-vis results achieved by their Vocational training programs. The dissatisfaction was caused because the teachers were not able to earn steady money from those skills. Soon, during a market study, they found out a shocking reality: most of the product consumed as food contain chemicals and are dangerous to health. Today, urban crowd loves to be healthy, fit and eat right quality foods!

This study struck a chord. Vandana and her team decided to divert their focus on this segment by producing organic food products. They employed the urban poor women in Vanaja Organic Processing Facility. The techniques used are age-old traditional one (hand chakki, etc) which are labor intensive rather than machine intensive, thus leading to employment generation.

“WE FEEL LUCKY TO BE A PART OF THE PAYU FAMILY AND ARE VERY HAPPY WITH THE SERVICES PROVIDED BY THEM” – Vandana

How PayU Helped Vanaja Organics Collect Payments Easily

“High price” is associated with “organic”. It is natural that if huge manpower is needed to cultivate good quality food, price is bound to be on a bit higher scale. Vanaja Organics, already had so much on their plate to handle manually, they didn’t want the same efforts to be put in payment collection as well. Thus, after building up a beautiful website they decided to integrate with a super easy and convenient to use payment gateway. PayU being India’s best payment gateway is the ultimate choice of all businesses in the country, Vanaja Organics being one of them!

Find out all exclusive PayU dashboard features designed to help small or medium businesses grow effortlessly.

The Future of Vanaja Organics 

Vanaja organics had their first sale in February 2018 and aspire to reach to great heights by helping more people and giving back more to the society. The NGO is highly driven to spread their business across India and have different units for each city. This means creating more employment and providing authenticated food products to the people according to the needs of that particular area.

We, the leading payment gateway for NGO wish Vanaja Organics good luck for the bright future they look forward too.

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all – in- one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

Recommended Reads

Patel Tours And Travels Journey With PayU Payment Gateway

Events High’s Journey With India’s Leading Payment Gateway

The post How A Payment Gateway For NGO Helped Vanaja Organics To Grow! appeared first on PayU Blog.

As a business owner, you will know that irrespective of the size and profitability of a business, the sole responsibility of sustaining it lies in the hands of cash flow. If you are fumbling with the term “cash flow” read on to know the importance of a steady cash flow and how to improve cash flow to make it steady!

“Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise. But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters the most. – Peter Drucker” 

How To Improve Cash Flow: Cash Flow V/S Profit

When running a business, keeping an eye on these financial parameters: cash flow and profit is very important. 

1. 1. 1. Cash flow is the sum of money that is flowing in and out of a business as deposits and withdrawals, respectively.
      2. Profit, also known as net income, is the difference between sales revenue and your business expenses.

For example, you are running a highly profitable business. But some of your biggest customers are taking time (30 to 60 days) to pay. This in turn drastically affects your cash flow and even delays payments to your suppliers. No matter how profitable your business is cash flow is what keeps your business running!

Any business can have a positive or a negative cash flow and you can easily identify to which category your business falls from the following pointers:

Simply focus on these 9 steps on how to improve cash flow and change the focus of your business towards a positive cash flow.

9 Simple Tips On How To Improve Cash Flow!

1. Estimate Your Cash Flow

Estimating cash flow helps in planning your future steps ahead.

• • Start forecasting your cash inflow by putting down the previous year’s sale.

• • Also include GST rebates, assets sold, license fees, and cash inflow from other sources.

• • Then forecast your cash outflow by estimating the cost taken to make goods available.

• • Do include loan repayment, investment, building rent and so on.
  • Now, estimate overall cash flow by summing up cash inflow and outflow.
  • Finally, schedule a monthly analysis of your actual data with the estimated cash flow.

Pro-Tip: Use this information to identify potential issues and take strategic decisions to improve your cash flow.

2. Best Way To Collect Unpaid Invoices 

Implement easy and effective ways to collect payments from your customers on time! Some quick tips to make your invoicing process better include:

• • Sending invoices quickly 

• • Using reminders to prompt your customers of the outstanding invoices.
  • Changing your terms in such a way that late payments incur penalties.
  • Offering incentives for those who pay early  

Pro-Tip: Go for a plugin like “PayU Payments Plugin For MS Excel”, an all in one payments plugin. You can create and send payment links via SMS, email or both, track real-time payments and so much more. Learn more about how you can use PayU Plugin to collect payments easily.

3. Opt For Payment Platforms

Web platforms empower businesses to collect payments faster and in turn improve the cash flow. This makes collecting payments on time a cake walk. Irrespective of your online presence, you can always use a payment gateway to turn the way you collect payments easy for you. Know how to choose the best payment gateway and change the way you collect payments effortlessly.

4. Leasing Vs. Buying: Why Lease Instead

When it comes to maintaining a steady cash flow for day-to-day operations, leasing will be the best option. Leasing anything from supplies, equipment, real estate to any sort of asset, lets you pay in installments, which is a business expense anyway. Also, you can invest the extra cash on something that will benefit your business in the long run like research & development. 

5. Need Quick Cash? Extend Payables 

Looking for a quick way to improve cash flow? Then choose to extend payables – the money owed by a business or company to creditors, lenders, employees, or government (taxes).

This might not be a preferred option, but in a financial crunch, it is an easy way to improve cash flow. For this, maintaining a friendly relationship with your suppliers is a must. So, you can ask suppliers for a 30-day or 60-day extension. Also, make sure you extend the payables time in your terms as well, which gives you enough cash to make any large payments.

6. Cut Cost & Improve Cash Flow 

Figure out the unnecessary costs of your business, like operating, overhead costs and so on and get down to business. Some simple yet effective everyday tips are:

• • Opt for energy saving lights, turn off unused electrical equipment, and so on to reduce your electricity bill.
  • Keep your travel expenses in check by using tele- or video conference instead.
  • Change your shipping policies to ensure your employees use normal shipping instead of express shipping!

7. Check Inventory From Time To Time

If a large amount of money is stuck in your unsold stock then take necessary steps to maintain a steady cash flow.

• • Review your complete list of inventories like property, goods in stock, etc. regularly
  • Order less stock from suppliers when you have a surplus
  • Encourage your customers to buy old stock by offering discounts

8. Choose Steady Growth Plans 

Growing too fast might be one reason your company is running out of cash. This so-called investment can sweep away your cash reserves until you receive cash from sales. Also, before you borrow money for funds, opt for sources that offer money at lower interest.  A steady growth plan is a healthy way to improve your cash flow.

9. Make Wise Investments 

Now that you know how to improve cash flow, choose to invest your cash inflow by:

• • Repaying your loan obligations, without incurring penalties
  • Investing in ways that increase your sales
  • Opening a high-interest savings account, which can be reinvested in your business

How To Improve Cash Flow On Sales Front As Well

In addition to these 9 simple tips, here are 3 ways to improve cash flow and drive sales for your business:

1. Use Smart Strategy: Bundle Products 

Providing discounts is not the same as adding value to a product. When you bundle products along with services, you can achieve that. One great example is e-commerce companies offering free returns for dissatisfied products. This strategy increases sales by driving away the fear of buying a new product seen online. Also, read how bundling products drive sales.

Pro-Tip: Offer value to what you sell at a lesser cost to increase your selling point.

2. Generate Repeat Business

If you are running a business like the retail industry, you will know how repeated shoppers benefit you more in the longer run. You can encourage your customers to shop more by using loyalty programs, VIP cards and other offers to shoot up sales which in turn increases your cash inflow.

Pro-Tip: Offer extra stock that adds value as freebies, to make shoppers coming for more.

3. Pre-Sell To Sell Off   

Pre-Sell is an effective way for any business to promote their product even before it is launched and sell it to customers. This method saves your time and improves cash flow, as at least a part of the payment is collected even before the product is packed.  When you pitch the product you can use terms like ‘a wise way for you to plan your future by shopping now’ or so on.  

Pro-Tip: Offer to buy back old products at a fixed price to encourage sales.  

Keeping your cash flowing requires discipline, planning and more than anything proper strategies such as the 9 simple ways from your end. Now with the knowledge of how to improve cash flow, you need to make every effort to keep cash flowing as it is the life blood of your business.

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

7 Frequently Asked Questions and Answers about Cash Flow

1. How does manufacturing improve cash flow?

Manufacturing increases cash flow as the more you invest in your business, the more goods or services you produce, it will increase your business’ cash flow.  

2. How can negative cash flow be improved?

You can improve your negative cash flow by looking at your financial statements such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. It is essential to know the root of the issue. Next, you should avoid slow payers or improve your payment terms, so that people pay you on time. The other one is to cut down on your overhead expenses. Take a look at your operating costs and overhead expenses and spend on items that are actually needed and are on priority. Talk to different vendors and see if you can negotiate with them and cut down on some costs.  The last suggestion would be to find new ways to improve your sales and provide more and easy payment options to the customers. You can do this by integrating with India’s best online payment gateway PayU.

3. How to improve cash flow from operations?

You can increase your business cash flow from operations by taking a look at your current assets and current liabilities. For instance, you should examine your inventory, finished goods, and supplies to check and identify the goods or items that have not been used over a long time. You can scrap or sell those items so that a loss can be reported and cash will not flow for income taxes. Selling your old inventory at a lower price is better than keeping it on the shelf all life! Also, it will take up space that can be utilized for keeping something else.

4. How to improve cash flow in small businesses?

Small businesses can improve cash flow by:

1. Sending out invoices immediately – Send out invoices to your customers or clients immediately after they purchase the item from you. This will help you improve your cash flow.
2. Give all payment options to your customers – Give all payment options to your customers so that they are able to make the payment through their preferred mode. You can integrate with a payment gateway such as PayU to give your customer a seamless online payment experience.
3. Analyze your cash flow statements regularly – It is essential to review your financial statements to know your business performance and improve if needed.
4. Invest in your business – Invest in your people and business such as boosting marketing campaigns so that they bring in more business and thus, improve your business cash flow.

5. How to increase free cash flow?

You can increase free cash flow in your business by

1. Improve your net earnings: You can do this by increasing your sales, increasing your pricing and decreasing costs. You can increase your sales by boosting your marketing activities etc.
2. Minimize the use of working capital:  A reduction in working capital will help you improve cash flow. Review your inventory and scarp or sell out items that are no longer in use.

6. How to improve the cash flow forecast?

You can improve your cash flow forecast by:

1. Analyze your business indicators: Review your business indicators such as the various stages of your sales funnel so that you know where to invest and your cash flow improves. 
2. Estimate your sales: Gauge the monthly or weekly sales of your business to get an idea of the revenue. this way, you will know how much you can invest to maintain healthy cash flow.
3. Be diligent about payment collection: Avoid slow-paying clients and make sure you provide your clients with all the payment options so that they are able to pay then and there.

7. How to improve cash flow management?

To start with, make a cash flow budget for your business. You can improve your cash flow management by:

1. Creating a separate account for business: Open a separate account for your business and get a business credit card. This will help you understand your credits, debits and cash flow better.
2. Use short term financing: You can use short term financing for making emergency purchases. 
3. Keep a track on slow-paying customers: It’s very easy to lose or neglect follow-ups on customers whose payments are due. Keep a track on such customers, keep sending them reminders so that you are able to recover the amount owed.
4. Monitor your inventory:  Review your inventory regularly and sell-off the one that is not needed.

Recommended Reads

Importance Of Customer Feedback To Increase Your Sales!

4 Secret Ingredients Of A Successful Online Business

The post 9 Simple Tips On How To Improve Cash Flow For Businesses! appeared first on PayU Blog.

Today, many leading online and offline companies across the globe make use of coupon marketing and discounts. Since we know, coupon marketing is not a modern-day phenomenon. It has been around since the launch of the first paper coupon by Coca-Cola in 1887.

India too has a classic coupon marketing case study of coupon marketing used by a leading e-tailing brand (name not to be disclosed). Initially, the founders of this company started their own business back in 2010. In the first three itself, they sold around 15,000 coupons! It is possible to achieve such numbers in the Indian market only with efficient coupon marketing ideas. So what was the big idea? They kick-started as a coupon oriented business and soon introduced referral programs on various commodities they sold. Apart from this, they also launched ‘Get your first deal free’ offer among many other promotional events where they made efficient use of coupon marketing.   

Coupon Marketing Statistics 

Coupon marketing has seen a roller coaster ride of evolution over years! Ranging from the paper coupons to digital ones, it has seen it all – the immense success, the wrongs, and even the odds! Talking about Indian upbringing, “Money Saving” is a not a strategy. Rather, it is a mindset and this mindset can never be ignored. Hence, with the heavy use of coupons and discounts, the year 2013-2015 saw a sudden growth of 13% to 65% in buying trends.

As predicted by the experts,  2020 will witness the global mobile coupon marketing  growth rate rise up to 73% +.

Some leading research suggests that: 

• Grocery stores (41%), departmental stores (41%) and clothing stores (39%) are the most popular locations for coupon redemptions 
• 77% of mobile users said that surprise points or rewards, birthday/ anniversary discounts leave a very positive impact on their brand loyalty 
• 71% of consumers followed their favorite brands on social media to get coupons 
• 44% of customers say that getting promotional offers via social media influences their online shopping behavior 

Types Of Discounts & Coupon Marketing  

There are umpteen number of discounts, offers and coupons modern-day marketers have at their disposal.  Let’s take a look at some frequently used ones:  

Free Gift

A gift with any purchase can be the best way to provide additional value to your customers. When used strategically, it can be used to increase sales too, because who does not like to avail free gifts!   

Scaling

As the name suggests, here the customer’s interest decides the discount value. For example: Buy 1 formal shirt and get 1 towel free 

Tiering

This means that customer’s discount depends on how much he/she spends. For example: Shop worth Rs. 5000 and get 15% off. Read our blog on 7 quick steps of product pricing for more details on tier pricing.

Percentage-Based Discount

This is the most popular way to offer discounts. This includes offering a small percentage like 10%- 20% off on products to drive sales and clear the old stock.  

Showing Customer Appreciation

Loyal customers are your business’s best friend. Send out coupons to them and let them come back to you!

Some most common and effective ways to maintain customer loyalty, acquisition and conversions include: 

• Monthly discounts 
• Pre-launch offers 
• Event attendance offers 
• Referral promos 
• Minimum purchase discounts etc.  

Best Platforms For Discount & Coupon Marketing

Coupon marketing and discounts have the power to accelerate your business growth 10x. But this is true and possible only with the right targeting and right platforms. Before you layout your coupon marketing campaign, you need to check these primary things:  

• who your audiences are? 
• their profession & age group 
• interest, demographics, and preferences  

Apart from the ones listed above, choosing the correct platform for coupon marketing also equally important. We have listed down a few trending platforms you can use :

Social Media

Since the advent of social media, the first thing that strikes into our minds is hosting coupons there. No doubt, statistics reveal high success rates of social media coupon marketing. Facebook ads can be a good channel to target the right audience. Instagram’s business profiles show an insight of your audience- run ads on Instagram and make a way through the most used photo sharing app!  

E-mails

E-mailers are the best form of communication for any business. They are personal, open and direct. Statistics show that on an average 20% emails are opened every day globally across various industries. Make the most of email marketing by sending follow up or trigger emails to your database regarding offers, discounts, deals, and coupons.

SMS:

SMS still gives best recalls. Imagine you getting SMS from airlines service providers saying that they have 80% off on the next flight you book. At first, you ignore this message. You get the same SMS again. Most importantly, since there is a recall, you will make it a point to visit their website. That is it! SMS marketing, if pitched in the right manner can prove out to be a gem.  

Other Media Channels

As the internet maybe difficult to access in the extreme interiors or far off places in the countries, going offline is a good option as well. Print media like newspapers, periodicals etc. and outdoor advertising have a stronghold in such places. As their expenses are on a lower side when compared to Tier 1 or 2 cities, discounts and coupon marketing works best.  

Pro-Tip: Choose the right platform for the right product. Offers on FMCG will perform well when hosted on Radio or Television but an offer on an online merchandise might not!  

Best Practices For Coupon Marketing

• Use bold, commanding & specific Headlines 
• Use illustrations & photographs 
• Sell the benefits, not the features 
• Make the best use of white spaces 
• Mention your logo in the coupon
• Use words like- free, guarantee, money, now etc. 
• Capture the customer database efficiently 
• DO NOT stop after the offer!  

Pros And Cons Of Coupon Marketing 

Everything comes with a two-fold modeling. So does coupon marketing for your business.  On one hand, generating sales is a priority and on the other hand, keeping the loyalty loyal is a recurring call to maintain. The pros and cons of coupon marketing needs a bit of attention as well.

Coupon Marketing Summed Up

Weaving all the dots together, we can say that offers and discounts are not right for every business! The pre-requisites for a successful coupon marketing campaign are: a clear goal in mind, a firm understanding of the product/ brand and the willingness to take risks and experiment.  Like the case study mentioned above, when coupon marketing is done in its best form, it can leverage your business by 10x. It is an unsaid goal of any growing business to increase sales, widen the userbase and onboard new customers. Coupon marketing proves to be a golden key to unlock all that your business needs! 

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all – in- one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly! 

The post How Businesses Can Make It Big Using Coupon Marketing appeared first on PayU Blog.

Online customer feedback is the ultimate marketing tool, which can either make or break your business! In this blog, we will focus on the importance of customer feedback and how it helps shoot up your sales almost instantly.

Importance Of Customer Feedback

Best Ways To Collect Customer Feedback

A satisfied consumer is the best person to share your success stories!

Experts say that to be exclusive, be inclusive. So, when customers or buyers are asked to pour in their feedback or reviews for your service or products they feel highly valued and inclusive. This sense of inclusion engraves deep trust and loyalty in the customers in the long run. There are multiple ways to include customers in your business growth at several stages.

Pro-tip: The best mix is that of traditional and modern ways!

A) Traditional Ways  

1. Phone calls 

Remember the days when your landline would ring and a lady from a telecom service provider or leading brands like AquaGuard would ask a few questions about their services and products? It still happens and it still works! Making phone calls to customers is a good business practice as it brings you up and personal with them. Listening to your customers keenly makes you aware of their tone, gives a fair idea about their happiness or resentment with the product and also lets you build a rapport with them.

However, there are a few guidelines to keep in mind while making use of this tradition:

• Best timings: 08:00 am – 09:00 am and 04:00 pm – 05:00 pm
• Best days: Wednesdays and Thursdays

Image Source: CallHippo

• Best duration: 5 mins minimum and 12 mins maximum

It is absolutely alright that your customers do not answer your call, slam the phone down or show less interest in your call. You need to be persistent and patient with them. The latest research suggests that making 6 calls to your customers over a span of 90 days is healthy. 

Image Source: CallHippo

2. Emailers

The most commonly used method of getting online customer feedbacks are “Detailed surveys”. 86% of professionals prefer emails for business communications and 89% marketers use emails as a primary channel for lead generation. A perfect emailer is the one which has:

• Best and catchy subject lines: Eg: Take our survey & win prizes, We want to hear your thoughts?, Have something to say? Say it here, etc.
• To-the-point body content: For surveys, avoid spending space on introducing your company or being too wordy about the topic. Get to the point swiftly.
• Highly interactive and engaging surveys: Ask a maximum of 10 best questions which are both open-ended (eg: rate on the scale of 1-5) and closed-ended (eg: what more do you expect from our service?).

3. Couriers/Post

You might wonder that in 2018 why anyone would use couriers or posts or mails for customer feedback leaving online surveys aside?! Prestigious and legacy brands make use of couriers to maintain their tradition, exclusivity, and personalization. Just like phone calls, sending survey couriers to customers make them feel more inclusive and highly valued. One drawback of this particular way is, it involves cost and time investment from both ends: your end and your customers end.

b) Modern Ways  

1. Website Survey Form & Feedback Form

Typically a website survey form is a detailed and very detailed piece of design specially crafted to peep inside the minds of customers. In a website survey form, you can include the overall experience instead of just interrogating about a particular product feature before or after launching it. Usually,  websites redirect customers to another landing page comprising of a survey form.

Image Source: SurveyLegend

Quick Takeaways:

• Ask 5-10 questions only in website survey form to avoid customers fleeing away or increase in bounce rates
• Optimize your website with less load time. Make sure it is mobile savvy as well
• Test your forms before you make them live

Customer feedback via feedback forms is well structured and precise than website survey forms. The questions are mainly close-ended, which makes it quick to answer. They could be in the form of pop-up, a static feedback form at the bottom of the website in the sidebar or in individual product or service pages. CleverTap, Survey Monkey, Mailchimp are useful tools to create and run web-survey forms.

Image Source: Surveys by Feedback Cat & Google Adwords

Quick Takeaways:

• Make it a point to respond to feedback as soon as possible. This helps to build business value & credibility
• Introduce a customer care agent or a chatbot to collect feedback to churn the feedback process faster

2. Social Media Reviews

With all said and done about social media’s reachability, accessibility, easy to use nature, we cannot leave it untouched when it comes to customer feedback! Getting customer feedback on social media is fairly simple as the users are pro-active and more welcoming than rest of the channels.

Image Source: Facebook

At first, you need to figure which social media channel works best for your product or service. You can use Google Analytics to retrieve such specific information. Learn how to use Google Analytics to find out the site that drives the most traffic. Here are some wise words from Doron Vermaat on the same: 

[bctt tweet=”Consider asking your fans or followers on Facebook and Twitter to review your business once every while. You will have to open yourself up to criticism from people but it could be an effective way to build up a volume of reviews.” – Doron Vermaat username=””]

Quick Takeaways:

• Turn on your ‘review’ tab. Only then your customers will be able to give their feedback
• Respond quickly to customer feedback. This will keep you in their good list! 
• Make use of Twitter and Facebook polls to engage your customers better and receive the best results

3. Suggestion Boards

If you have noticed, every established business has “Suggestion Board”. It is a community where customers come to share their grievances and give their feedback. a suggestion board is an open platform where anyone can address these feedbacks or grievances with their expertise.

Image Source: Atlassian 

Quick Takeaways:

• Stick to keeping the board easy to navigate and use.
• Include features that make it easy to sort the most popular ideas
• Wait till you get a good number of customer feedback to analyze the result

5. Live Chat For Customer Feedback 

Installing a live chat feature on your website helps your customers to reach out any time for issues or feedbacks.  

 44% of online shoppers felt that is the best feature in an e-commerce website.

Image Source: Olark

It is a convenient and affordable way to fix customer issues from providing refund status to product availability. Live Chat helps you understand the most asked questions or repeated issues. This gives you enough time clarity on what needs to be fixed or addressed on priority. Live chat provides instant gratification to your customers.

Quick Takeaways:

•  Check whether the Live chat feature is evidently visible on your website or other pages
• Be quickly responsive
• you can use chatbots too instead of hiring a chatter!

Must-Have Customer Feedback Tools 

The importance of customer feedback tool lies in the fact that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that are not. Here is a list of some of the free and paid customer feedback tools which can help you and your customer simplify the whole feedback process:   

• Free Online Customer Feedback Tools: Typeform, SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, Surveys by Feedback Cat, UserReport(you can directly create survey forms using these tools)
• Paid Customer Feedback Tools: Clarabridge, TrustPilot, UserSnap, Olark, Atlassian, Sysomos (you need to integrate these tools with your website after purchase)

With markets getting highly competitive day-by-day and customers being spoilt with choices, it is advised to stay abreast of what they want, like and are looking forward to. This is where the importance of customer feedback lies. Customer feedback is no more a choice or luxury it is close to a mandate for any business(online or offline). By keeping all the above-mentioned factors in sync with your business, using the best tools for customer feedback and being interactive with your customers is a sure shot best recipe to increase your business growth and sales rapidly!

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!   

The post Importance Of Customer Feedback To Increase Your Sales! appeared first on PayU Blog.