If you are unclear on how to do competitor analysis, start by asking yourself these questions:

• Who are my competitors? Are they a direct competitor?

Typically, it is a company that sells the same products or services as yours or fulfills the same customer needs you meet. This company could be bigger, smaller, or similar to yours.

• What are their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? This is called a SWOT analysis.
• Are there any gaps in the market that my company can fill?
• Are there any gaps in the products and services offered by my competitors?
• Finally, how can I use this information to increase my company’s market share?

Research your competitors well to get the answer to these questions. 

Why is competitor analysis important?

The benefits of competitor analysis are huge. It can set the rhythm and speed of your business’s success.

Understand your advantages and disadvantages

This is where doing a competitor SWOT analysis helps. Analyzing your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses will help you identify your business’s advantages and disadvantages in the market. 

Determine your past, present, and future business strategies

Analyzing your competitors helps you formulate effective strategies for your company. Knowing where you stand in the market can give you early warning signs of threats and opportunities. Use these insights and foresight to take steps that will lead you to your goals.

Know the objective and profile of competitors

By understanding where your competition stands in the market, you can think of strategies to either beat them or fill the gaps.

Identify what you need to get ahead

You learn from the success and failure of other brands. This analysis establishes the reasons behind the failure of unsuccessful companies, thus helping you identify the key assets and skills needed to beat your competition.

Know your threats to tackle them better

While analyzing your competition, you identify threats and challenges your competitors bring into the ecosystem. It helps you fortify your company’s strategy against the competition.

Leverage category convergence

Brands today are offering products across variant segments. Today brands are competing in segments where they have been historically absent. Hence, consumer perception of your brand plays a prominent role in defining competitive benchmarks.

Sources of information to study competitors while doing competition analysis?

Recorded data: It includes data that is published publicly, such as annual reports, brochures, newspaper articles, and press releases.

Observable data: It is collected from several sources, such as competitor pricing, promotions, and patent applications.

Opportunistic data: This kind of data involves exclusive planning. It is basically derived from customers, suppliers, seminars, and conferences.

Also read – Tips for Launching Successful Mobile-Friendly Online Store.

The post Competitor Analysis: Why is it important for your business appeared first on PayU Blog.

What is brand building?

How people perceive your business is your brand. The brand building process is about creating a unique image for your business. It starts with a strategy to define your brand’s relationship with its customers and how it will get there over time. A brand building strategy will help you be consistent in communication and experience across environments and assets, such as print and packaging, customer service, or social media.

6 Simple steps to build a successful brand

There are different ways you can build a strong brand. But here are six steps to get you started on a successful brand building journey:

Step 1: Determine Your Target Audience

The first thing you need to know when building a brand building strategy is your target audience. You can determine your audience based on age, location, interests, etc. This will help you define what you communicate, where, and how, so your audience can deeply relate to your brand. Depending on your target audience and their needs and aspirations, you can create a brand persona that resonates with them. Over time, your brand will need to evolve with your target audience to stay relevant.

• Pro tip: Start with smaller, specific sets of target audiences. As your brand awareness and loyalty grow, you can expand your audience base to include more diverse groups.

Step 2: Define your brand mission

Your mission and vision statements describe why your brand exists and what it is passionate about. The brand mission is what you promise to do and how you will add value for your audience. It also dictates how you execute your brand strategy daily. It will guide your branding process across channels. All this should help you achieve your brand vision – what you want to be for your audience.

Step 3: Research your competition

Every brand has its unique selling point (USP). Analyze your competition and find out what works for them, what does not, and where your brand can do better than them. The brand building process should focus on that differentiating factor. This will help you define what can set your business apart and use it to your advantage in branding and marketing. Competitive analysis is a continuous process that helps you:

• Define and refine your USP
• Improve your products and services
• Encourage research and development (R&D)
• Benchmark your branding and pricing strategies
• Identify business opportunities and threats

Step 4: Create a strong value proposition

You have studied your markets, competition, and audiences. Use this knowledge to clearly define what your brand offers and why your audiences should only choose you – what makes your brand unique and valuable. Include this value proposition in your marketing communication across channels to create a successful brand. For example, PayU’s scalable and robust platform makes it one of India’s best payment solutions providers.

Step 5: Set your brand markers and guidelines

Brand building is all about making your business recognizable and memorable. And it is done by playing on the human senses, particularly with visuals and sounds. Think Coca-Cola logo or Nokia jingle. Creating such unique and remarkable markers will create a special place for your brand in your audience’s minds. Once you have done that, document how your brand will be represented across channels. These guidelines will ensure consistency and quality.

Step 6: Market your brand

The last step is to tell the world about your brand! Set a definitive marketing strategy and create noise on channels your audiences frequent to grab their attention. Using your brand guidelines and marketing strategy, you can communicate with your audiences in relatable and engaging ways.

Apply your branding in every piece of communication, from packaging to stationary and website to marketing collateral. Identify new channels such as email, web, and affiliates to promote your brand.

Conclusion

Brand building is an ongoing process; you need to revisit it every now and then to ensure your branding is maintained consistently. The process requires expertise, and it is best to get professional help to get the best out of your efforts. You can learn more about branding in our blog on the importance of brand guidelines.

Frequently asked questions about the brand building process

What is brand building?

Brand building is creating awareness and promoting a business using different strategies and plans. In other words, it is building and displaying a brand identity through different campaigns such as on social media, websites, and events. Branding is essential for a company as it is what people see and think about it. It is your logo, tagline, ads, everything!

Helpful articles related to brand building:

• Social Media Marketing Tips
• Content Marketing Tips
• Quora Marketing Strategy
• Video Marketing Tips

Why is it important to build a brand?

Branding is important to build recognition and trust. This can help you acquire more customers and their loyalty over time.

How to plan a brand building process?

You can start with the six simple steps mentioned above to build a successful brand.

What is a brand roadmap?

A brand roadmap comprises concepts and strategies you can follow while building your brand. It includes goals, objectives, and ways to achieve them within set deadlines.

How can you build a strong brand?

We can build a strong brand with various methods and strategies. To start with, one needs to conduct a brand audit of the company. This includes a thorough competitive analysis and identifying your brand’s USPs. Make sure you are original and authentic across communications. Re-analyze your strategies regularly so you can maintain your brand identity.

How does advertising help in brand building?

The motive behind branding is to build recognition and attract more customers. Advertisement plays a great role here. It helps businesses remind their consumers of their presence. Advertisements help build brand salience. It reminds people of the product or services offered by a business by looking at its logo or advertising campaign.

What is brand reputation?

As the term suggests, brand reputation is how people see your brand. Do they see your brand as fun and quirky? Or do they see your brand as an authority in your industry? A good brand reputation means consumers trust you and like your offerings.

The post 6 Simple Steps For A Successful Brand Building Process appeared first on PayU Blog.

People indeed associate quality products with high prices. But if you price your product too high, only a few people may buy it. While pricing the same product too low might result in losses. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for pricing! Before we decode how product pricing is done, we need to understand what product pricing means.

What is pricing?

Product pricing is setting prices for products and services to help you meet your goals and make a profit. There are many factors to consider when setting the right price for your products. This blog will discuss 7 easy tips to ensure your product pricing is just right.

7 Pro tips for pricing your products correctly

1. Define the business goals your pricing should achieve

Before you start pricing your products, it is important to define business goals aligned with your brand’s overall mission and vision. Do you want to increase your market share? Do you want to increase customer loyalty or maximize your profits? The goals you choose will determine the pricing strategies you use for your products.

2. Include all costs efficiently

When you consider pricing, include all the costs associated with producing and selling your product. This consists of the cost of materials, labor, storage, transportation, marketing, and more.

Ask yourself:  

• Have I considered discounts or deals I can get from my suppliers?
• Did I include post-sales costs such as customer service in my pricing?
• Or any tax incentives and other benefits I can take advantage of?
• Is it just breaking even or adding to your profits as well?

Imagine this. Leena sells jewelry for Rs. 100, making it at a loss of Rs. 10. If Leena sells the jewelry for more than Rs. 110, she will make that much more profit.

Pro tip: Fill in all the costs in an Excel sheet, so you don’t miss out on anything and can easily see the gross revenue you need to generate.  

Here is a hypothetical example of the product pricing of a t-shirt:  

3. Understand your customers’ budget

Conduct market research to find out –

• who your target audience is
• how much they pay for similar products
• what the perceived value of your product is

The better you know your customers, the more value you can provide them. You can tweak the pricing according to your customers’ location, use cases, purchasing capacity, etc. It is good to ask customers for feedback to understand their needs and determine the right product pricing and development strategy.

4. Study your competitors’ pricing

You can also look at the prices of similar products. This will help you set competitive prices that are attractive to your customers and align with industry standards. See if your product offers any additional value or if there is an uneven supply-demand ratio. Also, pay attention to any special offers or discounts your competitors offer. This can help you determine if you should offer similar discounts or promotions to stay competitive.

5. Apply psychological tactics to pricing

Use psychological cues, like the power of suggestion, to influence customer behavior. For example, offering a product at $5.99 and another at $6. Customers will most probably buy the one that is priced at $5.99. You can also provide offers and discounts whenever possible to attract more customers.

6. Use different product pricing methods 

You can use many product pricing methods to offer your products and services. Here are two examples that are very easily actionable:

a) Tiered Pricing

Tiered pricing involves setting different prices for different levels of product features. For example, you could offer a basic version of your product at a lower price and an upgraded version at a higher price. This allows customers to choose the version that best suits their needs and budget. Service providers like software companies and travel agencies typically use a tiered pricing method.

b) Bundled Pricing 

Bundled pricing involves offering several products together at a discounted rate. One classic example of this is ordering combo meals at leading fast-food joints. This gives customers more value for their money and encourages them to make larger purchases.

7. Keep your pricing flexible

You can even keep your pricing flexible to quickly adjust your prices to changing market conditions. For example, if your competitors are offering discounts or promotions, you should be able to adjust your prices to remain competitive. You should also be able to adjust your prices to take advantage of any seasonal trends or changes in customer demand. Measure your sales performance and customer satisfaction to figure out what works best.

Set the right prices for your offerings and earn more

Remember, the product pricing process may look different for all. Focus on finding the right balance between earning profits and providing value for money. More importantly, pricing is a continual process. You may need to revise your prices with changing times.

If the pricing strategy works well and buyers start flocking to your stores, you may need some help to streamline all your payments and settlements. That’s where PayU can come in. With 150+ payment modes and plenty of useful payment solutions, PayU can help you provide the best checkout experience.

Click here to learn more about how PayU can help you grow your business.

The post 7 Tips for Product Pricing the Right Way appeared first on PayU Blog.

Top-notch service

Customers are the centre of all business activities and look for foolproof service. To win their hearts and loyalty, it is essential to serve them well. After all, they trust the business with their money more than the product. Therefore, it may seem that they are using your eCommerce business platform for just a simple buy, but it is much more than that. They are looking to build a relationship where they are heard for feedback, concerns, and also improvements. Hence, ensure that your service is top-notch, from homepage landing to checkout. Focus on the website’s UX (user experience), such as a quick-loading site, informative content, beautiful yet responsive design, and so on. Remember, people are quick to judge businesses based on the website’s design, and you’ve only a few seconds to make an impact.

Engagement across windows

While your online presence has already got you one brownie point, it is important to enhance this benefit further by engaging with customers across social media platforms. Brand recall and brand equity are critical today on social media. Therefore, having an interactive engagement platform across the online windows is essential for more extensive reach and presence. And to achieve the same, one needs to plan it well with a proper social media strategy. This strategy should marry well with other offline marketing strategies and must be seen as exclusive to the online presence of eCommerce companies.

Adaptive and on-the-move

Technological advancement is taking place rapidly; therefore, to remain in the game rather than become obsolete. It is essential to be agile and adaptive. To start with, it is crucial to make a responsive design architecture for the eCommerce store that is adaptive to requirements and exclusive to each online platform. Remember, more people will browse your website via mobile devices and tabs (Google Chrome and Safari) than on desktops and laptops; hence, nailing the mobile UI experience is a must.

Cross-selling is a must, but not on the face

It is always advisable to cross-sell customers when they are browsing your eCommerce website. But making it too obvious would ruin the game completely. Hence, a balance between the two is important. Make recommendations when it is essential and as per the customer’s browsing history. Do not pop up with recommendations when your customer is highly engaged in a purchase on the eCommerce store. Remember, it just takes a click to abandon the cart and move on!

Checkouts are critical

You might be serving them with the best information and user interface throughout their buying journey, but if the checkouts are a pain, then you have lost the game. According to research done by Baymard Institute, there is an average cart abandonment rate of 69.82% due to a choppy checkout. Therefore, building a seamless checkout experience is critical for eCommerce businesses that involve no more than three steps of a happy buy closure. Moreover, the checkout should have a clean window design with payment options, coupons, delivery information, and item details listed for a quick glance.
These are the five proven ways to grow your eCommerce business. Each has its own criticalities and requirements. However, checkouts have their own criticality above all. PayU’s Token Hub offers eCommerce businesses a way to provide their customers with a safe and quick checkout. It provides you with a superior experience and the promise of security at all times. Our quick pay suggestions enable your customers to make a fact-based decision on the choice of payment mode in real time. Hence, making the entire buying experience seamless and quick.

FAQs

The post Grow Your eCommerce Business in India with These 5 Steps appeared first on PayU Blog.

The Basics Of Organic Traffic 

There are two ways of driving consumer traffic to your e-commerce stores – organic and inorganic. Organic traffic is generated through unpaid means, i.e., not having to pay for ads and affiliates. So that means if you are in the early stages of your business growth, you should become an expert at organic sales. You wouldn’t want to burn cash on expensive marketing early on and pile on debt. With research, trial and error, and experience, you will get better at driving organic traffic and overshadowing your competition.

How Does Organic Marketing Work? 

Organic marketing works on the concept of ‘keyword search’. Whenever potential consumers search for a keyword on a search engine, they get directed to the website with the best offering. You must have experienced this phenomenon yourself. Suppose you want to buy a personalized notebook online. You look for this product on a search engine, say, Google. Google calls the words that you enter in the search bar ‘keywords’. Now, Google uses its advanced search engine technology to find an e-commerce store with a matching product on sale. That’s it. The more relevant and valuable the content, the higher your ranking.

What Should Be Your Organic Marketing Strategy? 

Researchers believe that the highest-ranked page gets 30% of organic traffic, the second one gets 17%, and the third gets 12%. These percentages keep decreasing as the website rankings go down. If you operate in a highly competing business environment where many traders have transitioned to online selling, ranking high will not be easy. High competition does not mean that you should endeavour for anything but the top-most rank – the more formidable the challenge, the better the rewards.

So here is what you have to do to improve sales –

1. Create good quality content that appeals to your audience. 

2. Make use of links. 

Let’s dive right into the ways of driving organic traffic to your e-commerce website in India.

SEO A.K.A Search Engine Optimisation 

To develop your search engine ranking, you must understand how they work. Search engines use bots to crawl web pages. Algorithms analyze the content on these web pages and rank them according to predefined criteria. For strengthening your SEO fight, pay heed to the following points:

1. Choose the right mix of keywords at the optimum density for your content. 

2. Use catchy headlines and keep the content easy to understand. 

3. Use suitable images that get the consumers’ attention. 

4. Explain your product offerings exhaustively. Remember, you provide product descriptions for your customers; hence, write the features to connect with your audience instantaneously. 

Create A Blog For Your Brand 

People trust you if you provide them with guidance and reliable advice. Consider blogging as an opportunity to do just that. Your target audience could have several questions related to the correct usage of your product and the product that could be the best fit for them. If you operate in the fashion industry, your content should inspire your audience, keep up with the latest trends and talk about tips that work.

Consistent blogging is the key to building a community around your brand. Think about the diverse situations in which you would use the product yourself and build a story around that. If a person reads about a product on one platform, she will purchase it from the same one.

Focus On Product Descriptions 

Your e-commerce website needs to talk about your products in great detail. Make sure to use keywords here and keep the content engaging. As your business runs around these products, the product descriptions are the centre of attraction – make them unique. Add e-commerce store images that show what the product looks like along with its usage.

Choose The Right Keywords 

The entire organic marketing strategy depends on the kind of keywords that you use. Your keywords should describe your offering specifically and not be generic. Mention the colour and design of the product or any USP that you pride yourself on. A product-centeric keyword strategy will help you get to the right target audience and increase your conversion chances.

Compelling Site User Interface (UI) 

Your site architecture should be easy to navigate. Allow the customers to reach product tabs with the minimum number of clicks possible. Expand the number of landing pages on your website. With more landing pages, you get the chance to talk more about your product characteristics. You must cover all the details possible to avoid customers from drifting to another website for information.

Linking Works Magic 

Backlinks are required from industry-trusted influencers. Partnering with influencers could be tricky as your competitors would be doing it too. Do your research, and once you have figured out what works, your business can accelerate to the next level.

For a noteworthy brand, a robust payment solutions provider is needed. PayU, a powerful payment gateway, provides 150+ payment options and allows you to securely receive international payments in different currencies. PayU lets you create customized invoices and send them to customers. Also, receive payments and access the status dashboard under the same umbrella.

Conclusion 

Once your website traffic grows, you are responsible for providing a smooth check-out experience to your customers. PayU is not only your payment gateway but also a risk management tool. After opting for the service, your business will benefit from high-risk order flagging and detecting payment fraud. Grow your freelancing, startup, or SME business and make correct business decisions with PayU.

The post How To Drive Organic Traffic To Your Online E-Commerce Store or Website? appeared first on PayU Blog.

Such marketplaces allow owners to sell products without setting up their websites and online stores and enable them to scale on a limited marketing budget. They have reduced the need for marketing departments, and you can sell on the marketplace as a business as soon as you have the inventory. Let’s look at the ways to sell online in the right way to drive visitors to your products and turn them into customers.

How to drive organic traffic at online marketplaces?

Traffic is the blood of online marketplaces simply because if traffic dries up, the marketplaces become cold and lifeless. Therefore, to sell on marketplaces and survive and grow, sellers need to get organic traffic, i.e., traffic derived to the website from genuine search rather than paid search.

Driving and enhancing organic traffic is crucial for any online seller. Search engines are one of the primary traffic sources, and they care about high-quality outbound links and content. Here are some vital tips for selling on marketplaces that are organic but hold immense value to drive organic traffic and should always be on your checklist.

Use solid and related keywords

Focus on your primary and secondary keywords because organic traffic visitors visit particular pages by searching specific keywords. When they search for those keywords, you want them to find your website on top of the results page. Websites ranked on the first page alone of Google, Yahoo, and Bing get 30% of organic traffic through specific keywords. If you are on page 5, no one will even open your webpage, irrespective of how good it is. So be precise with your keywords and never stuff unrelated keywords.

Make a strong foundation for SEO

SEO is one of the most crucial drivers of organic traffic. Here is a simple SEO checklist :

• Implement the perfect keyword density.

• Take care of image optimization.

• Structure the data to make it more understandable.

• Optimize meta descriptions.

• Use exclusive and different product descriptions to get a favourable ranking.

Create high-quality content

High-quality, consistent and engaging content is the key to selling on marketplaces and making the content actionable for visitors. Adding to user experience has the potential to create wonders for your business.

• Since a potential customer spends only about 20 seconds looking at a product, provide a summarized section about your products.

• Highlight the format of the content to improve its readability.

• Videos are more effective and actionable, build more credibility, provide a personal touch, and help you deliver a crisp and concise message to your target audience.

Work on the detailed description of products

Once a customer like your summary and presentation, they would like to read more about your product.

• Describe how your products can add value, save time or reduce trouble and cost to them.

• Highlight your USP and all the reasons for how your products can improve your customers’ lives.

• Explain in-depth new/unique features of your products to help customers understand quickly. 

Online store architecture and design

Keep your online store user-friendly and easy to navigate.

• Keep the buying process simple with minimum steps. If your visitors decide to buy your product but cannot purchase it, that’s a convinced customer lost, which is the last thing you want.

• Keep noticeable navigation pages to help visitors walk through the product. 

• Pages should be fast and responsive.

• Provide multiple call-to-action buttons on the website and highlight them.

Make the most of your social proof

Human beings are social creatures and are hardwired to follow the herd mentality. Therefore, social proof has always been a decisive selling factor and is especially important in luxury businesses. Quite simply, social proof is the evidence of other people buying your products and loving them. When your potential customers see this, it encourages them to follow the herd and buy your product as well. 

Another reason this works is that people can see other actual people that have used your products, rather than just you trying to sell them. Thus, it is a highly effective tactic for selling, and it is easy to show social proof online. The primary ways of social proof online are displaying testimonials of happy customers, 5-star ratings, and excellent product reviews. Here is how to use them : 

• Use references such as “90% of the people got results within 45 days of usage”.

• Use testimonials that focus on your strengths, e.g., if your product saves time, show testimonials of people who saved plenty of time and pursued other essential things in the meantime.

• You can provide proof of high-end businesses and celebrities being your clients. It works like a magnet for their die-hard fans.

• Tell success stories of your satisfied, recurring customers.

• To accumulate social proof faster, you might send reminders to your existing customers to review your products on the platform.

• Use multiple social media platforms to display your reviews.

Conclusion

Getting lost in the ocean of searches and the online marketplace is easy. To stand out, you don’t just need to have a strategy in place. It would help if you were faster, more intelligent, more oriented and optimized, and simply better than your competition, along with choosing a marketplace that enables you to achieve your online selling goals. PayU India allows you to do precisely that and even more. Find out how you can become a seller.

The post How To Sell Products On Online Marketplaces? appeared first on PayU Blog.

Thus, it is safe to say that if you want to start a business, e-commerce might be a better platform than the physical establishment of the company. However, for new entrepreneurs, this might be a little tricky. To set up an online business, you must develop an understanding of where to set up the base and promote it, among other factors. This article will help you understand the steps in a more straightforward and organized way and learn how to start an e-commerce business in India.
Here is a breakdown of the procedure for starting an e-commerce business in India.

How to Build an E-commerce Business?

First, an entrepreneur should have a clear vision of what they want to sell in the market. An e-commerce business blueprint should be drafted, with research on the actual requirement of the product in the market, the competitors, the target audience, and the pricing of the same. See if one can enhance the development or add a ‘not available’ feature in the market.

Then, find a business model suitable as per the target audience, the product, and the approach.

What Are the Components of an E-Commerce Business?

Everyone wants to provide the best services to their customers. Still, the significant element to success for an ecommerce business is comprehending the necessary details, such as:

• Product quality and pricing
• Advertising your business on sites and pop-up ads 
• Customer engagement 
• Delivery of the product and customer support regarding the same
• Data security for the customers

Nailing these components can give an excellent boost to your business. Thus, one should thoroughly plan these components down to exact details, and that’s where the business plan comes in.

How Do I Make a Business Plan for E-Commerce?

Every business plan is drafted according to the product and the vision of the entrepreneurs. Still, for new entrepreneurs, this little roadmap will help you get a better direction for your aim, which is to start your own e-com business in India.

1. Draft a summarised version of your goal and vision.
2. Accordingly, mention the market research highlights in the sector and the findings.
3. Specify why your product is different and the services that you provide.
4. Reflect on how you expect to advertise your services and the marketing strategy.
5. Once you receive the order, think of how you will execute it in procuring raw material, logistics, processing, packaging, and shipping. Create a complete product cycle and its timeline of execution and delivery.
6. After understanding your business to the last detail, you can figure out the company’s financial boost or the capital required. If not, you have a pretty solid plan by which you can convince investors to invest their money in your business.

How to Identify E-Commerce and E-Business Strategies?

As mentioned, e-commerce strategies should focus on enhancing the experience for online transactions and business. They should mainly include the following:

• Better search engine optimisation (SEO) to help the website and the product to stand out online
• Marketing strategies on social media platforms, content creation for advertisement
• Easy-to-understand, user-friendly and simple web layout of the page
• Personalised experience and pay per click advertising
• Removal of possible bugs and errors in the encryption

After all the consideration, one can quickly build and launch a very profitable online store. However, to grow, you need to implement the following strategies.

• Once you have understood your audience, cater to their demands.
• Improve continuously and keep the audience reviews in mind
• Partner with a good firm with the same ideas and grow together.
• Reach out to the masses via an online platform and establish a presence there, keeping your motto the same for the business.

Conclusion

Some of the most outstanding businesses globally are still standing due to their originality, simplicity, adaptation, and excellent customer engagement. Most importantly, their success is due to the consistent quality of their product or service without compromise. We hope this article has given you a clear insight into how your business should be established, grow, and expand in the online market.

FAQs

The post How to Start a Successful E-Commerce Business in India appeared first on PayU Blog.

E-commerce in India has grown by over 30% over the last few years, and at present, India is a thriving digital economy with more than 500 million users. Platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Jio Mart, and many others show e-commerce is here to stay in India. Today’s millennials find e-commerce platforms very easy to use. 

Some actionable points in your eCommerce marketing strategy 2022 to increase your sales volume and profitability in your e-commerce store include the following eCommerce marketing tools. 

Remember, maximising your social media applications is one of the essential eCommerce marketing tips.

• Upsell your products: When a customer considers buying a particular product in your eCommerce store, you convince the customer to buy a premium product through either superior packaging or better quality. Be aware of how sensitive the customer is to price changes. The customer remembers the price of the original product he contemplated buying, so the new proposed change must be discernibly better and meet the customer’s needs more appropriately. The customer must feel that the pricier product meets his needs more suitably than the previously considered product in the same product group.

• Integrate Instagram: With 500 million daily users, Instagram is one of the most powerful social media apps. It brings influencers, consumers and brands together through pictures. You can run a contest to engage your audience or show pictures of your product development process. Adding products to the Instagram posts provides a link that enables your customers to purchase from your e-commerce stores.

• Reduce the number of carts abandoned at checkouts by customers: There are many reasons why customers abandon their carts at the checkout. Use email recovery campaigns to persuade your customers to return to the e-commerce store. You can add inducements like discounts, free shipping or cashback. Something catchy like “forgot something? Those items are still here waiting for you”. Retarget these customers so that you convert them into paying customers during their second visit.

• Launch a Facebook store: Facebook is one of the essential social media channels for e-commerce marketing. It is the largest social network with 2.90 billion monthly active users globally. Facebook can integrate directly with your account, so you don’t have to keep a separate inventory. Facebook audience insight tools help you delve into your potential customers to collate information about gender, education, location, language and even past purchases. You can set up a Facebook business page and allow customers to contact your store through Facebook Messenger.

• Capture your email subscribers: Emails contribute about 24 per cent of the revenues of the e-commerce store. You can give more personalised messages through email than on social media websites. Your blog or newsletter can be sent to customers through your email. Emails have to be regularly and consistently sent to your customers. When a new customer joins, you can send a welcome email. Promo codes can follow this up, thank you emails etc., to personalise the emails. Wish list reminder emails can be sent to customers who don’t purchase during their last visit to the store. 

• Make it easy for customers to navigate your store site: Have clear, easy to read fonts on your store items, show that the customers are getting a clear value proposition and avoid any confusing directions in your store. Customers should find it easy to shop at your store. The design of your store page and the segmentation of products on your page should be clear and straightforward.

• Use live chat tools on your page: You can use live pages to interact with your customers when they visit your store. You can have direct conversations with your customers and address their concerns immediately when they visit your store. This improves their shopping experience. WhatsApp and WeChat are equipped to handle commerce and payments within the apps. Artificial Intelligence can be used to deliver better and faster responses to customers.

• Content marketing campaigns: Content marketing is a strategy to attract and retain your audience by creating product and store related articles, videos, podcasts and other media. Coke’s “share a bottle” allowed everyone to personalise their favourite drink. This is a classic e-commerce marketing strategy example. You can also use influencers’ recommendations and content to drive traffic to your eCommerce store webpage.

• Personalisation: Based on their past purchase experience, preferences and actions, you can personalise your customer experiences when visiting your eCommerce store. According to a McKinsey and Company report, the world’s leading producer for marketing insights, the personalisation tactic can help to boost the sales and ROI of the E-commerce store.

• Leverage User-generated content: When people see their peers’ purchasing patterns, they will try to emulate them. This sometimes outweighs the demand from customers who have brand loyalty. Customers occasionally even post their pictures and create a product following. According to a Qualtrics survey, it is estimated that 90%-95% of online customers read online reviews by peers before making a purchasing decision. This creates increased customer trust, establishes a direct line to the customer, and your store also appears higher in search engine rankings.

• Think Local: Online stores can think like brick and mortar stores in a retail locality. Identify the local concentration of your customers and run promotion campaigns. Local or seasonal campaigns can help to drive up sales. You can consider expedited or free shipping to customers from warehouses in the area. 

• Optimising your product pages: Conversion rate optimisation helps to maximise the online conversions of customers into paying customers. Both quantitative and qualitative research can be carried out to study the conversion of potential customers to paying customers.

• Optimise your mobile pages: The mobile phone is an essential tool for brands to interact with their customers. Mobiles are ideal for marketing to customers in India’s Tier II and Tier III cities. Most retailers in India expect 90% of their sales to come through smartphones in the next few years. 

• Reward loyal customers: Start a customer loyalty point program. This will induce customers to buy from your store. This will generate brand loyalty to your store and give them extra incentive to make purchases from your store. The customer loyalty points may be converted into gifts, shopping, or increased product discounts.

• SEO has driven marketing and Pay per Click Advertising: This measures your website with Google algorithms and ranks your website higher in Google searches. Pay per click advertising is when a customer clicks your page; you will only pay for the advertisement. Both help with increasing traffic to your website through keyword search.

• Wearable and Virtual Reality tours: Virtual reality product campaigns will enable the customer to see product demonstrations and experience the product virtually. This will entice them to buy the products in your e-commerce stores. Do virtual reality advertisements for your quality products. This could be an expensive proposition, so you must do a cost-benefit trade-off before committing yourself.

• Use different e-commerce platforms: Customers may prefer to visit popular, generic e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart, so make sure your products are featured on them in addition to your e-commerce store. Increase festival season discounts and offers to induce seasonal buying, especially in products like consumer durables, apparel etc.

Conclusion

Your social media campaigns play a crucial role in eCommerce marketing strategies and make your e-commerce store a success. Using the above tactics, you can increase the footfall and improve your sales. Your store will soon have a competitive edge with the mix of the right technology, design, and e-commerce marketing strategies. Add a payment platform like PayU to integrate with your eCommerce platform seamlessly.

PayU is a secure online payment solution provider that can provide a seamless checkout customer experience. PayU is one of the most secure systems available. It is PCI-DSS compliant (Payment Card Industry Service Data compliant). It also has 128-bit SSL (Secure Sockets Layer Encryption), which reduces the possibility of phishing attacks. All your customers’ credit card information is stored on secure computers. Any refunds initiated by your eCommerce store are also processed quickly. PayU is a Netherlands based service provider to online merchants.

If you want help accessing the proper technology and obtaining an on-demand settlement of customer payments for your eCommerce store, click here.

FAQs

The post 17 E-commerce Marketing Essentials to Drive More Sales appeared first on PayU Blog.

The more time refunding takes, the more apprehensive customers get about the e-commerce brand. On the other hand, if you issue those refunds instantly, this encourages them to use your platform more and builds trust.  

At PayU, we constantly work towards bringing innovative payment solutions to improve customer experiences for all kinds of businesses. We’ve revolutionised how e-commerce businesses can initiate refunds, quickly and easily even for their COD orders!  

One of our innovative products, PayU Payouts enables merchants to provide instant refunds to their customers directly in their bank accounts. Read in detail about PayU Payouts here. 

Different Ways to Initiate Instant Refunds for your COD Orders  

First and foremost, sign up on PayU. You can use any of the following 3 ways to initiate instant refunds for your COD orders: 

1. Directly from Your Dashboard – Add details of the customer such as Bank Account Number, IFSC Code, Amount and other details in the CSV file and upload it on your dashboard; initiate a refund  
2. API Integration – It is 100% developer-friendly and easy to use. Click here to view API reference 
3. “Smart Send” with Payout Links – With our new Smart Send feature, you don’t have to worry about collecting and filling bank account details of your customers yourself! You can make payouts to anyone, anytime without collecting their bank account details manually! Click here to know how “Smart Send” Works! 

How PayU Payout Works  

You can provide instant refunds to your COD customers directly into their bank accounts in 3 simple steps:   

1.Add money in your PayU Payouts account – Deposit money in your Payouts Account provided by PayU through RTGS or NEFT 

2. Add Customer’s Details – Add details of the customer such as Bank Account Number, IFSC Code, Amount and other details in the CSV file and upload it on the dashboard (as mentioned above), along with the amount to be refunded. You can add multiple accounts and save them for repeat payments in future  

3. Issue Refunds instantly in just one click! – Your customers will immediately receive payments in their bank accounts 

Reasons You Should Already Be Using PayU to Issue Refunds for Your COD Orders

1. Helps in Increasing Customer Loyalty – Customers’ trust on an e-commerce store or business increases when they receive their refunds instantly, which also results in them coming back to your site again & again. Faster refunds makes customers happy and helps in retaining them 
2. Automatic Reconciliation of payments – The payments can be automated, and you can save time spent on manual reconciliation
3. Powerful dashboard – You can add money, track and download reports through PayU dashboard 
4. Initiate Refunds even on Bank Holidays – You can process refunds for your customers 24*7
5. No limits on the number of refunds that can be carried out in a day! 

This is what our Customers Say about PayU Payouts

“We use Payouts for disbursing payments. It is easy and we are able to track & download all reports easily from the Dashboard – Pravin Patel, MD, Maayo LLP” 

Conclusion 

You have an e-commerce business and offer great support to your customers. Why not enhance their payments experience by providing them refunds instantly and make it a memorable one? Who knows your first-time customers turn into your loyal consumers! 

You can not only initiate refunds, but disburse vendor payments, employee salaries and much more with PayU Payouts. To know more about Payouts and our other payment solutions,  

The post Ecommerce Businesses: Automate COD Refunds with PayU Payouts, Win Customer Loyalty appeared first on PayU Blog.

The Pre-Internet Era

In the pre-internet era, electronic payments, especially credit and debit cards, became one of the most dominant forms of non-cash payments. Credit card was introduced by the Central bank of India in 1980 in association with Visa and Master Card. The retailers and the consumers adopted it quickly and as an easy way of making payments.

Internet is Here!

Internet was started in India by VSNL LIMITED with an average speed of 9.6 Kbit/s in 1995. The speed later increased to 33.4kbit/s, with 14 lakh Indian users. With the arrival of the internet in the mid-90s, it brought in a new kind of boom with people selling their products and service online, known as “E-commerce”.

In 1999, Indiaplaza.com launched India’s first e-commerce website. However, with the coming of e-commerce businesses, it demanded a new payment system, an online system that can be used by the consumers easily.

Technology Brings Change

India’s first-ever payment aggregator “BILLDESK” launched its operations in India, in 2000. However, we still felt a need for creating an online payment system that focused on the needs of the merchants as well as consumers as the online business was growing!

In 2007, a startup called Flipkart opened online for business. Flipkart changed the way people shopped online by giving all products and services in one place. And as e-commerce business grew, the need for integrating a secure and reliable payment gateway on the website grew too. Payment gateways help in transactions between merchants and their consumers, quickly and safely. The payments are done in one click and all the information is encrypted and tokenized.

With the launch of PAYU PAYMENTS in India in 2011, we saw an increase in the number of online transactions day by day.

The turning point came in 2016 with the launch of UPI – Unified Payment Interface, by the Govt of India and NPCI. It did not take much time for UPI to gain adoption by the people. UPI transactions saw an increase year after year.

Seeing its utility and ease of transaction, payment gateways did not take much time to integrate UPI in their system as an additional payment option to be offered to customers. It was this time that payment gateways flourished. For instance, PayU not only provided a payment gateway for transactions with all payment options but also a powerful dashboard with which merchant could track & manage their transactions.

Choices Galore!

Today, anyone who is running a business online or offline has multiple payment solution providers to choose from. But with PayU, the choice must not be difficult. Even if they don’t have a website, they can collect payments by sharing PayU payment links with their customers via msg, email or WhatsApp. PayU provides an end to end solution with checkout to final settlement.

Know how to accept payments online using PayU payment links.

The Future of Payments

According to stats, a $1 trillion digital market is expected by 2025 in India. As e-commerce becomes more popular, the payments industry will see more innovations regarding checkouts and providing ease to the customers.

We might also see an increase in “invisible payments”. Invisible payments include more secure and improved payment systems such as biometrics and cryptography through which customers won’t have to pay anything in person, but it will be automated and hence, invisible.

Conclusion

With financial technological or Fintech evolving at a pace, which is unthinkable, there is still a lot of potential in the Indian finance sector. The number of digital transactions is going to rise, as merchants and consumers find ease in digital payments. If you are an online business and want to grow your business exponentially, integrate PayU – India’s leading payment gateway. To know more,

The post The Evolution of Payment Modes in India appeared first on PayU Blog.