Cyber Monday fever is back! Biztech Store is giving away 30% discount on all products today i.e. 28th November. Just use the coupon code CYBER30 while you are shopping for your favourite Magento extension or SugarCRM plugin or Odoo apps/themes at https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/?utm_source=cybermonday_offpage Hurry! There never has been a better time to buy stuff from Biztech Store!
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It’s Thanksgiving time folks! And we are back with a special offer to make your Thanksgiving Day even more special this year. Biztech Store is running a limited period offer and giving away 20% discount on all products from 21st to 25th Nov.
Just use the coupon code BIZTHANKS20 while you are shopping for your favourite Magento extension or SugarCRM plugin or Odoo apps/themes at https://store.biztechconsultancy.com/?utm_source=Thanksgiving_offpage_promotion. Hurry! There never has been a better time to buy stuff from Biztech Store!
For an ecommerce business to succeed amidst the increasing competition, there are a few central things which should be managed proficiently. Among these, proper Inventory management is vital to the smooth running of a business. Choosing the products you want to sell, and setting up a proper business model to source products and a way to make them available to customers is an important part of any business.
But how do you manage your inventory? What are the aspects you should take care of? Not every business owner is an efficient supply chain expert and hence, need guidance on the same. The first step in the right direction in this regard would be to get a robust inventory management software for your online store that helps you manage purchases, stocks, documentation, stock keeping, etc and automated routine tasks like generation of purchase orders and invoices. But even to get the best out of any software you should know how inventory management is done. Here’s a list of 7 ecommerce inventory management best practices that will get you started. 1. Priority Stock Up To ensure that your best selling items are never going out of stock, you should regularly check that they are enough in stock to ship to the next customer. Going ‘out of stock’ for the popular products on your site can be destructive for your business. Other products which might be seasonal or shows one or two sales now and then can take this for once, but high priority merchandise should be reordered immediately after the product is ordered by a customer (not waiting for the actual shipment process. 2. Drop Shipping Drop shipping almost means that you never run out of stock without even having a physical inventory. What merchants do is take up the order and engage drop shippers to pick up the product from the supplier, pack it, and send it to the customer. The customer needs not to know if any third party had been engaged in the transaction. This also doesn’t come to be hassle- free. You need to continuously sync in with the shipper for updates regarding inventory, order, and delivery. You can then convey the order status to the customer. But it’s worth the effort. It also allows you to offer a huge array of products to your customers and enhances customer satisfaction. 3. Immediate Inventory Updates You should keep a close check on your inventory. As soon as a product is sold, you should get the space refilled immediately. Don’t postpone it to a certain time after sales, your next order could be in another half an hour, so keep yourself geared up for that by having immediate updates and take quick actions by sourcing that product at the earliest. If you fail to do so, it’s not good for your businesses revenue sheets. If your site shows a certain product is in stock and the customer is later informed about the unavailability, you might lose the customer for life. 4. Cross-Platform Inventory Management If you are selling across platforms, you need to be more vigilant with your inventory. For separate channels, manage different warehouses and inventory records or you might end up messing it. If a product is out of stock and any of the channels fail to update it, a customer might order the product and you are left with no option but to inform them later that it’s out of stock. Therefore, you must make it a point to handle all channels efficiently. You can also take help from ecommerce inventory management software which helps you integrate the channels and manage the inventory. 5. Managing Variety of Products Stocking up your inventory timely gets more difficult when you are dealing in variant products. It can be easy to stock up items like books or kitchen accessories, but the same goes complicated when you are dealing in apparels and footwear. That’s because you don’t just need to refill a particular design or color for apparels or similar items, but different sizes as well. A proper and full inventory means having all the sizes, in all designs and colors ready at any moment. So, if you are dealing in businesses like these, it would be difficult to keep a check through the e-commerce platform and will need a proper inventory management solution to ensure that your stock is updated. 6. Kits and Combos When you are offering products as individual items and as a part of combination sets as well, you need to keep a check on these products. If any of these products go out of stock individually and you don’t take heed, you might not be able to ship the kit/combo on time and that’s definitely not good for your business. You can also engage in partnership with a third party to manage responsibility for collecting the combination products from different sellers, pack it, and ship it. Your inventory remains intact and your customer satisfied. 7. Calculate Re-Stocking Time Managing an ecommerce store means sourcing products or raw materials from different sellers and further putting them up on sale. When you are sourcing products from different sellers, you should know in advance of the time they will take to send out certain products. Note that they are actually re stocking the items within that time period. Synchronization with your sellers is as much important. When you know how much time is required for you to get a product, you can plan to restock your inventory accordingly. If you are ordering raw materials, you need to speed up a bit as it takes time to get the final product that is to be shipped to the customer. So, calculate the average time it takes to restock a product and plan accordingly. Conclusion Though it is true that it’s not easy to run a hassle-free business, but it is certainly not impossible. If you align your strategies properly with the day to day activities of your business, the sail will be much smoother. If you once get a formula which works fine for the kind of products you deal in, your inventory would get much easier to manage. But as no particular thing fits for all, you need to come to that stage where you have discovered it yourself. Once you know how buying and selling goes swiftly for your e-commerce, you can follow it to grow your business further and generate more sales and revenue. Knowing These 8 Secrets Will Make Your Online Survey Best Practices For Effective Results11/14/2016
For businesses to develop and improve with every passing day, it is vital to know the areas of their business operations where they are lacking or the areas where more enhancements are possible. Everything isn’t mentioned in the rule books promulgated to run the organization. There are aspects which demand new study and research with the changing trends. For the said concept, it is important to know what is being liked and disliked by people, and what might interest them. To know this on a large scale, Surveys come out as the best option. In the contemporary world where everything is online, getting a survey done has become easier. But, like everything else, it comes with its own challenges. Let’s have a look at some online survey best practices to follow while conducting an online survey to get effective results.
1. Keep it short The first and foremost thing that you need to take care of is the length of the survey. It’s a busy world and nobody is interested in spending out much time filling out lengthy surveys. If your questionnaires are short, more people will participate in it and you get more results to compare and take actions accordingly. Most people tend to opt out in the middle if it is taking more than a few minutes to fill out a survey. 2. Intelligent Questionnaire The designing of the questionnaire should be done intelligently. Don’t put in long answer questions to your survey. Thinking from the scratch is what people don’t like. Try to put in multiple choice questions. If it is important to get a few words from people filling out the survey, start with a yes/no option. For example, instead of ‘How do you think we can better our customer services?’ You should ask ‘Are you satisfied with our customer services? If no, please provide your feedback on the same.’ It’s all about convincing and coaxing someone to answer your unwanted questions. Answering the first question needs somewhat taxing to your mind, while the second one takes you step by step towards answering the question. Try to use a rating scale questionnaire which would be easier to analyze. A uniform method would make it easier to upload input data from which relevant output can be drawn through use of various softwares. 3. Target Population When it comes to surveys, one size doesn’t fit all. Be specific about your target audience and create the survey accordingly. Use terms that they can relate to. For example, if you want to survey people of a particular region, you can use their local language. Similarly, if the survey is meant for youngsters, your tone can be funky that would attract and not bore the youngsters. For middle aged working people, you are expected to be more professional with the language and tone of the survey. 4. Clear and simple This one is one of the most important points to be considered while preparing a survey. The language should be very lucid. Each word of the survey should be clearly understood by the participant. If a survey contains jargons, the participant wouldn’t care about looking into the meaning of it. He will just skip the survey. The questions should also be direct without much beating around the bush. The participant of the survey must not feel like he is taking a test. It should be a simple activity which can be easily filled out without much effort. 5. E-mail surveys Mailing out the surveys is always one of the options. When the survey is asked to be filled out in a pop-up, a click on the cross is all one needs to get rid of it. And then, even if one is willing to fill it out later, they won’t be interested in making efforts to find it again. Mailing the survey ensures that the survey stays in the inbox of the target respondents and that they can fill it out later given their convenience of time and place. It will also help you promote your survey. If you have a CRM system it becomes even easier to email surveys from within your CRM using an app like Survey Rocket. 6. Test your survey For anything that is important, a ‘test’ is mandatory. Same goes for surveys too. After you are done preparing the questionnaire, test it on various browsers, devices, and operating systems. It should work without any glitch and should be fast to load. Send it out to a first set of people, which includes insiders and close people. See if you are getting the desired results and are able to analyze the data received. Once you are done with the testing part, you can delete all the test data and send out the survey to the potential respondents. 7. Rewards at the end This is a relatively new method being adopted by businesses to get their surveys filled. And, it definitely works! If it is your customers that are the potential respondents, you can offer them a certain discount on their next purchase if they fill out the survey. A code is generated when the survey is filled which they can use to redeem their discount. Leading businesses like KFC, use their invoices to promote these kind of surveys where the bill number is filled out while filling out the survey, which they can use to get the discount on their next purchase. 8. Compatibility on mobile People like to do things on the move, while they are on devices like their phones and tablets; they are more probable to be available to fill out the surveys. Therefore, your survey should be compatible and look good on these devices with smaller screens as well. While testing your survey, mark it in the list to check the survey is working fine from various phone browsers and tablets. All these points will help you get more responses to your survey which you can further utilize for effective results. Apart from this, you should keep some simple etiquettes in mind. For example, using the words like ‘Please’ in the beginning of the survey and adding a one line thank you note after filling out the survey.
Odoo Ecommerce, with its native integration of Odoo apps, has changed the way how e-commerce businesses showcase their stores online. And a large part of the attraction of Odoo Ecommerce is the theme itself. In an Odoo theme, you can experiment with the snippets instead of defining the entire layout of the page. This definitely impacts the user experience to a great extent.
Biztech has been leading from the forefront by launching one bestselling theme after another. After the success of Crafito, another recent addition to our portfolio of awesome Odoo themes is Furnito. About FurnitoFurnito is a next generation Odoo E-commerce theme which is particularly designed to serve the best design for web stores related to the furniture industry. Furnito gives a new definition to website management for home furnishing and furniture stores. It’s a best-in class Odoo Ecommerce theme based on HTML5 and is full of features and custom snippets.What Makes Furnito Worth Buying?The designFurnito offers you an elegant and responsive design which is unmatched to the normal e-commerce website designs available on the web. Though majorly it is designed for the furniture industry, it can very well accommodate any category of products an e-store wishes to showcase. This answers for the flexibility of the theme as well. Ease of Usage The theme is easy to use as minimal coding has been used in the software that makes the installation, usage, and maintenance trouble-free. It offers you one click installation and optimized speed for better experience. Snippets The snippets are one of the best features of the odoo ecommerce themes. Furnito polishes it further with effortless drag and drop snippets. There are multi product slider snippets from where the customer can directly add products to the cart and see the ratings as well. That too is available in different widths. Additionally, the snippets can be used multiple times and is fully alterable. Customizable The theme is largely customizable in terms of snippets and other configurations. The headers and footers of the page can also be experimented with. Multiple language and Currency Support Furnito supports multiple languages which makes the e-commerce stores reachable to more number of customers. You can also customize it to accept various currencies, which is definitely a plus from business point of view. Customer Connectivity The theme provides an option of newsletter subscription along with the leverage of managing the product reviews and product ratings by the customers. It also provides with choices to attractively position testimonials. In a way, it helps the e-commerce businesses help connect in a better way with its customers, facilitating conversion. Better Shopping Experience Furnito provides an advanced menu page and a completely new and innovative cart page. The category list can be collapsed according to the requirement of the customer. The products added in the cart can be reviewed quickly. Multiple product images are accommodated with a zoom option to give the viewer a better understanding of the product. Also, the products can be sorted according to price and other features. All this certainly results in a better shopping experience for the customer. And according to the ultimate rule, a happy customer is undeniably a returning customer. Other features Apart from all this, Furnito provides the e-commerce businesses with some special features which include a range of choices to put up when the site is under maintenance, separate section for blog, and store support in variant languages. All this answers for the reliability of the product and why you should most certainly go for Furnito and why it is the best Odoo ecommerce theme for furniture industry.
There are certain factors which determine the success of an E-commerce business. Apart from the quality of products an online store is offering and the amount of advertising it is doing, a significant aspect that wins customers is the ‘Shipping’ of the products. In an e-commerce business, the customer is virtually dealing with the seller. He chooses the product online and buys the same only through a few clicks. In spite of the effortless process, the customer is satisfied only when the product reaches him physically.
It is not enough that the product reaches the customer, but it should be in its best condition and must reach the customer at the earliest. This is one of the things an online buyer is concerned about. If there is anything a buyer cares about after the quality and cost of the product, it’s the shipping of the product. Therefore, to provide a great shopping experience to its buyers and grow its business, an ecommerce business must focus on the shipping strategy of the firm. Attributes of An Ideal Shipping PartnerTo follow a seamless shipping strategy, you will require the right shipping partner. Here are some aspects of a shipping partner that should help you determine the right partner for you. 1. Service and Accountability The first and foremost thing to look at is the category of service your carrier partner is offering. When a shipping company is tying up with an e-commerce business, they should be very transparent about the time period they need to deliver the parcel(s).’Today’ shouldn’t be ‘or tomorrow’ in any case. In the competitive ecommerce market, you must be at a position to inform your buyer at every step about the whereabouts of their product and the exact day and time when the shipment is reaching the buyer. You can only do so when your carrier company is accountable to you at every step. As a thumbrule go ahead with the leading courier and shipping companies in your country. For example for US it might be FedEx or UPS, for UK it might be Royal Mail, for Australia it might be Australia Post or Star Track Shipping. 2. Delivery Rates For any business, it holds very crucial to manage cost. While tying up with a carrier partner, you must compare the rates with the industry standards. Since the shipping industry is full of unpredicted liabilities and accidents, your business should be fully equipped with the knowledge of insurance regarding the products you trust your shipping partner with. All the extra charges and surcharges should also be made clear beforehand to avoid any conflicts later. To ensure that all your shipping rates are updated live on your online store, you might consider using your shipping partner’s API to display live rates. For example Australia Post Shipping provides live rates for its freight charges through its API. 3. Location The success of an e-commerce business is as vast as the area it covers. The more geographical corners you can touch the more you grow. This factor is also to be considered while choosing a shipping partner. The company should be transparent about the areas they cover and the quality of service they provide in certain areas. Whether they function only locally, inter-state, or international, is surely a concern for your business. Compare the service days various service providers are offering and go for the most promising one. 4. Flexibility It’s very important for a shipping company to be flexible with its services. Since the work is to move shipments beyond boundaries, there are bound to be uncertain occurrences which might delay the delivery. It’s the responsiveness of the carrier company that matters then. Do question whether they have other options, like to send it through other services so that your customer is not kept waiting. 5. Updated Technology Nothing sells without technology today. Since the very base of your business is technology, the partners who are facilitating the growth of your business to a considerable level, should also be technologically updated. Your shipping partner must have up to date shipping technologies and an ability to integrate with other companies to complete the task in case their services are interrupted for some reason. Effective Shipping StrategyShipping is an undoubtedly a critical aspect for your ecommerce business. It directly influences customers’ experiences and therefore makes or breaks the reputation of your business. Therefore, it becomes really important to adopt a proper shipping strategy for your online store. Here are some crucial points to keep in mind to enhance your store’s sales through an effective shipping strategy: 1. Free Shipping When it comes to online shopping, additional shipping costs were found to be the primary reason for abandonment of shopping carts. Free shipping definitely acts as a consumer driver. If providing free shipping is keeping your sales at loss, you can try distributing the shipping costs evenly among the products. The buyer won’t feel the burden of that ‘extra cost’ then. It hence enhances your sales without affecting your revenue accounts. 2. Cash on Delivery Cash on delivery of a product is the most popular thing about e-commerce businesses these days. People love to shop when they are certain that they are not spending a penny before they get to hold their product. You will need to tie up with your carrier partner for this service but it’s definitely worth it. Most people are now looking for Cash on delivery as one of the factors while buying any product online. If your carrier partner is an expert at this, there is less at stake and a lot to win back. 3. Same or Specific Day Shipping Now when the seller is alluring customers with new and different facilities, one of the latest’ happens to be same day delivery. Now a customer doesn’t have to wait for days to receive their product. This surely makes online shopping experience better for them. You can charge some extra bucks for that but demand transparency from your carrier partner about the places/ cities where they can provide these services hassle free. You can also provide specific day delivery to lure customers who might want to gift to their acquaintances on special days. Conclusion Shipping is an integral part of any e-commerce business that deals in selling of physical products. It might break or make your company’s branding. A customer will stay and come back when they know that their products will be delivered in its best form. One messed up transaction might lead your business to lose that customer forever. A well formed shipping strategy does not only satisfy your existing customers but helps in boosting your sales to a significant level. |
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