Tag: online retail stores

The impact of the pandemic on consumers across the globe has dramatically changed their demands, needs, and behavior. Many of these changes have critical implications for businesses in most sectors. To succeed in the next normal, businesses must respond proactively.

COVID-19 jolted consumer demand in a way that sets it apart from past disruptions. As a result, customer loyalty took a hard hit. Executing the four Ps of marketing (optimization of product, price, place, and promotion) became more complex than ever. Businesses must redouble and broaden their efforts toward meeting ever-changing customer demands and behavior.

As with everything else, it is important for an organization to know and understand its customers. If your company is at crossroads with today’s Ecommerce customers’ needs, this article will help you understand how technology can help satisfy these uprising demands quickly and effectively. So then, let’s first understand how customer behavior, needs, and demands change.

Read more: What are 3D Web Configurators? How do they Boost Ecommerce Sales and Drive Customer Satisfaction?

Ecommerce Customers’ Behavior, Demands, and Needs

Customers are like the moving targets. The key to success is to understand their behavior trends and use technology to help satisfy these uprising needs and demands. Linnworks research pointed to five such trends:

• Convenience is the need of the hour: 76% of consumers feel that convenience is the top priority in choosing a retailer. 90% of shoppers focus on using a trouble-free online store.

• The frictionless shopping experience is most valued: It was noted that 58% of consumers abandoned an online store altogether because they were difficult to use.

• Omnichannel shopping is gaining traction: One in three consumers has purchased an item while on social media. 71% of consumers prefer to complete a purchase on a social site without having to exit to the retailer’s site.

• Consumers demand flexible payment options: Four in five shoppers expect the “buy now, pay later” payment option.

• Delivery convenience: 95% of consumers say that fast and reliable delivery methods play a crucial role in their decision-making.

How Can Technology Help Satisfy these Uprising Needs and Demands of Today’s Consumers?

1. Allow your consumers to experience products before they buy

The biggest roadblock facing Ecommerce businesses has been the inability of consumers to experience products before they buy. Everyone likes to try on clothes they like to buy or see how is their new couch looks in their living room.

This is where AR (Augmented Reality) can help your business. AR can help your consumers try on clothes or closely inspect the components of a mobile device. AR market is expected to reach 2.54 billion by 2023.  Online retailers who fail to take full advantage of this technology may likely experience business disruption.

2. Bring your product to life with virtual shopping

Virtual reality shopping can bring your products to life. It helps your customers to have an in-store-like experience, without actually being there. VR technology allows you to tag products so your customers can purchase on the spot. It can instantly connect buyers with customer service executives.

VR can make product recommendations based on customer metrics. It can also cater to both desktop and mobile users. Thus, it provides a better customer experience attracting more customers to your online store.

3. Be omnichannel ready

Todays’ Ecommerce customers like to cross-channel research and purchase. So, they expect smooth interactions across these channels and devices. Technology can help you to provide your customers with what they want, when they want it, and where they want it to. Some of these technologies include video chat, screen sharing, document interaction, e-signature, and more.

Co-browsing is an effective visual engagement system. It can bring your sales executives and customers together on the same page, at the same time. This allows your executive to guide your customers through the complex procedures making their customer journey as smooth as it can be.

Read more: Custom Retail Software Solutions: Everything You Need to Know!

4. Enhance customer communication with chatbots and AI

Artificial Intelligence has a major impact on how we live and work. Voice shopping is expected to jump to $40 billion by 2022, rising from $2 billion today. And 45% of millennials have already been shopping using voice assistants.

Chatbots and AI improve customer experience and boost brand image. These chatbots can be personalized to order food, get recommendations for almost anything, receive details regarding payment or order status, and more.

5. Hassle-free checkout process

Inefficient checkout processes can raise the chances of cart abandonment. However, this problem can be avoided by embracing technology that provides quick and efficient checkout solutions.

Technology enables speedy mobile payment solutions, allows your customers to save card details for repeat purchases. Above all, it proves one-page hassle-free checkouts and offers a range of payment options. All these can alleviate any potential difficulties your customers may face at checkout.

6. Enable m-commerce to enhance Ecommerce

Today many shoppers shop on the go. Hence, mobile platforms have gained greater importance. So much so that m-commerce is emerging as a concept. Given that, providing a mobile-oriented shopping experience will certainly help you win potential customers, maximizing your chances of future success.

Ecommerce mobile apps offer continuous engagement with your brand. It can help them familiarize with new and relevant purchasing opportunities. These apps also allow you to market products relevant to the specific geographical location of your customers.

Read more: 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP

How Can Fingent Help Deploy These Evolving Technologies For Ecommerce Businesses?

It is one thing to understand your consumer behavior but another thing entirely to implement technology to satisfy their demands and needs. Fingent is here to help you implement these technologies efficiently. We can help you move the needle and dominate your niche in the Ecommerce industry.

Fingent can help you implement those that make sense and put the rest on the back burner. We can aid in the success of your Ecommerce venture by implementing cutting-edge technologies. Our development experts will help you promote your products in new and innovative ways.

Choosing Fingent can help you save a lot of time and money and avoid unnecessary complexity as we can provide all the needed components. Our platforms are easy to manage yet robust enough to house thousands of products. We can handle unique order processes and payment terms for your Ecommerce sales. Let’s get talking.

Being an Official Partner of Odoo, Fingent has always catered to the needs of various customers and streamlined their operations, thus saving their costs, time, and resources. In this post, you will see how Odoo ERP implementation helps retail management.

Odoo ERP: A Highly Customizable Cloud-based Platform for Retailers!

The retail industry is one of the primary beneficiaries of digital transformation. In 2010, eCommerce accounted for only 5-6% of the aggregate retail sales in the US. The industry has witnessed phenomenal growth over the past decade with the development and adoption of retail technology, ERPs, eCommerce applications, custom retail solutions, and stiff market competition. At present, online retail sales in the US account for 21% of the total retail purchases. Isn’t that mind-blowing?

The paradigm shift from the traditional operating landscape to a digital world presents both opportunities and challenges. Many people look for products online, make buying decisions based on social media reviews, and order products to be delivered home. They even use the internet to search local shops, order online and collect from nearby stores (click & collect) or find retailers that offer discounts in their area. The message is clear: physical/ in-store retailing also needs to pace up with the change.  

To overcome the challenges in managing physical and digital selling, retailers need to adopt a modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Read more: 5 Reasons to Integrate Your E-commerce Application with Odoo ERP

Today, ERP is extensively used to simplify and automate customer relationship management, project management, accounting, compliance, inventory, and supply chain operations. ERP is a reliable investment for business owners as they can control and monitor their operations, get reports, and gain insights on consumer behavior and market situations.  

Odoo ERP for Retail Management

ERP software allows integrating the core processes to run a company in one place, such as finance, manufacturing, HR, supply chain, inventory, procurement, tracking, transactions, etc. It also integrates all the data and related business processes of an organization. 

Odoo ERP is a popular, open-source, cloud-based business management software that helps manage various business needs such as manufacturing, finance, inventory, point of sale (POS), eCommerce, purchase, logistics, etc. Odoo is an intelligent ERP system that allows retailers to integrate their whole data and all the processes associated with the retail industry. For retailers, Odoo is a perfect choice that increases profit and enhances productivity as it provides comprehensive solutions that can seamlessly integrate with eCommerce.

Read more: 5 signs which imply that your business needs Odoo ERP

How Odoo ERP Benefits Retail Management

Following are the significant benefits of using Odoo ERP in retail:

1. One-step checkout 

In online shopping apps, the checkout stage tends to have several processes spread across different web pages. This can put off some customers who don’t want to spend their time navigating through each. Odoo eliminates these multiple processes by offering a one-step checkout that is fast, convenient, and intuitive. It has the potential to reduce checkout abandonment and thereby increase sales.

2. Craft stunning product pages

For eCommerce websites, high-quality product pages are crucial to gain maximum traction. Long descriptions with dull-looking pages are outdated. Odoo ERP lets you build beautiful and stunning product pages with a simple drag and drop feature. You can also customize your online store’s look, layout, color, and theme with Odoo and make last-minute changes to meet the demands and expectations of your clients. You can also make changes and enhancements at regular intervals to add more features to your store. Make sure that your digital store is mobile responsive to be compatible with the changes and new features.

3. Payment module integration

Having different payment options can enhance the customer experience. With Odoo’s plugins and extensions, retailers can integrate and customize various modules like wallets, cryptocurrencies, credit and debit cards, and UPI. It also supports PayPal, PayUMoney, Buckaroo, Sips, Stripe, Ingenico, Adyen, and Authorize.net.

4. Sales, purchase, and finance management

Odoo offers non-retail and retail companies different sales management processes. Odoo has a Point of Sale (POS) module, which is integrated with the sales and inventory module. This module helps retailers track stock and commodities in real-time. The module also allows for the use of biometric devices to log in and out. It’s compatible with any hardware and doesn’t require installation. What’s more, the POS remains operational even when offline.

Read more: How Odoo ERP Simplifies Sales Management in Your Organization

5. Inventory management

It’s a known fact that inventory management in a volatile and dynamic consumer goods market is an arduous task for many retailers. With several issues such as excess inventory or out-of-stock scenarios, inefficient inventory management processes result in financial loss and lead many retailers to bankruptcy. 

Odoo ERP offers inventory management as its integral feature, where it stores details of an organization’s entire inventory, including the individual product details. Odoo enables retail managers to keep track of crucial information such as:

• The present status of the inventory
• Items that will run out of stock
• Shelf life details of each product
• Notifications related to product expiry
• Ability to make demand forecasts based on past trends and customers’ online behavior and buying habits

Odoo ERP enables retailers to gain a competitive edge by modifying inventory to meet the fluctuating customer demands.

Read more: Fingent’s new plugin facilitates the scheduling of Zoom meetings from Odoo! 

6. Manufacturing and production

Retailers who are also engaged in manufacturing and production can use Odoo’s module to help run functions. The Manufacturing module can assist in creating bills of materials (BoMs), managing semi-finished products, subcontracting manufacturing, etc. It can also help in configuring work centers and managing and configuring kits.

7. The Cloud Advantage

• Odoo solutions are cloud-based, allowing retailers to access their e-commerce stores from anywhere in the world. 
• Odoo is flexible, customizable, and scalable, making it especially ideal for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 
• Odoo is an affordable ERP solution with the maintenance fees included in the license fee.

In a nutshell, Odoo ERP serves as a high-performance retail management system where retailers can manage everything on a single system. It can bring tremendous benefits to the retailing industry. They can integrate Odoo’s various business apps such as Sales, Accounting, Customer relationship management (CRM), Inventory, etc., with Odoo e-commerce. 

The Odoo App Store features nearly 10,000 apps that connect to the same database on Odoo’s own servers. A testament to Odoo’s popularity is in the numbers: it has more than 5 million users worldwide, from start-ups to large enterprises. 

With a simple checkout process, robust customer portal (order tracking, advanced shipping rules, and return management), order review, and wish lists, Odoo ERP provides real-time information to users.

Read more: Why Choose Fingent as Your Odoo ERP Partner

Fingent has an ace team of Odoo developers that offers consulting, development, and implementation services. Whether you want to integrate Odoo ERP with your existing e-commerce store or build an online store from scratch powered by Odoo integration, give us a call right away.       

Predictive Analytics has put a strong footing in the retail sector where companies are able to understand what their customers want, what products are in demand and are able to allocate their resources optimally. Going a step further, this very analytics is beneficial for targeted marketing to an individual level. Yes, individualization via predictive analytics is the biggest boon that companies can use to their advantages. Achieving the most granular of data today is possible and such multiple endpoint creations help in providing a customized solution for individuals instead of putting them under a group.

Why Individualization?

The huge wall between physical and online retail stores has fallen due to rapid digitization. With Omnichannel marketing strategies and by utilizing predictive analytics, a company can find what a particular customer requires. Their past history and behavior help in predicting what they might want or what more can they be offered. Individualization helps in narrowing down the possibilities of product attributes and can be presented as per the user’s data.

For example, if a person is constantly trying to look for a particular color or is worried about size, the retailer’s website can show them such options instantly. These can be even used for personalized emails or messages that can lure them to a nearest retail store.

Making the Most of Predictive Analytics

There is vast information available that can be used in different ways to implement predictive analysis. Retailers can tap into it and use it in the following few ways to make the most of it.

1. Improve Targeted Marketing

Individualization in a way invokes ‘a feeling of being special’ in the users. At the retailers’ end, it merely helps in offering these customers what they would purchase, understand their styles, trends, and sum up a personalized service. It can be even leveraged to understand what they want so that retailers can try to acquire or create a new segment of products for the same.

2. Keeping Them Interested

In today’s time and age, the pool of information for both retailers and users is so much that they can be lost in it. Customers are quick at switching from one retailer to another when they do not get what they are looking for or find things uninteresting. Using predictive analysis can definitely reel new customers but at the same time, it will keep them engaged. Retailers are able to sense if the customers are staying or leaving by simply surfing or checking the purchase history. Such actionable intelligence can push the retailer to bring back the customer by throwing incentives or providing offers that are based on their data analytics. Also, such data helps in keeping the current customers engaged by sending them timely offers and planning appropriate promotions.

3. Physical Store Value

User data analytics such as demographics, financial market conditions, and recent customer purchasing history can be used to understand where customers hang out the most. Although here it is more of a group analytic, such a data can help retailers to understand where to open a physical store location. Once the store is in place, individuals can be lured via various offers to a place where they prefer to visit.

4. Offering Better Customer Service

Predictive analytics helps the retailers to come up with a better marketing plan. Based on their individual data such as their interests, purchase history, likes, and dislikes, retailers can help them make informed decisions. Also, offering query resolution at individual levels makes the customers feel valued and can retain them in the long run. Such smart analysis will also help in using social media marketing to the fullest of potential.

Predictive Analytics for individualization can be used as the ace in the already swarming pool of marketing strategies. Get in touch with us to understand how predictive analytics tools can help in maximizing the potential of such huge data gathered and reach out to your customers better.