Surfing the E-Commerce wave
There has been a massive shift in global trade and online retail in recent years. Booming before the global pandemic, e-commerce has gone to the next level since Covid-19 hit. Businesses of all shapes and sizes, from start-ups to global organisations, can quickly raise their profile and drive sales, around the corner, across the state, the nation and internationally easier than ever before.
E-Commerce has allowed these organisations, big and small, to showcase their brands and wares to customers anywhere, and thanks to social media, they can get first-hand, often real-time, feedback of what customers like, meaning they can shift and pivot to meet the market fast.
Social commerce is now widely regarded as a must for a successful business.
It is no longer enough to just have a website. Businesses need to make the experience simple and compelling for customers shopping on mobiles and through social networks. Integrating e-commerce, mobile commerce and social commerce means working across multiple platforms to stay connected to customers.
By being connected to a product via social platforms, customers can be targeted and retargeted based on browser behaviour. It’s as simple as clicking on a platform ad or being forwarded a recommendation to your inbox from someone you know.
For mobile purchases, companies can add features like geo-targeting, in-app notifications, mobile wallets and QR codes, so potential buyers can make successful, frictionless purchases. These options are making one-click repeat purchases much easier too.
Social commerce is taking things a step further. The rise of live streaming within social commerce is driving a special kind of one-click purchase - the impulse buy. The real- time, experiential aspect of live shopping, combined with the likelihood of an online personality or influencer fronting the product, is compelling online shoppers to make instant purchases. Factor in flash sales and ability to contact the shopping host or channel directly to chat about the purchase, and brands big and small are onto a hugely successful scenario.
Online Shopping Facts at a Glance-
Locally, in APAC, mobile commerce is going up, up and up. According to the latest research by Checkout, consumers in the region are increasingly using their phones to shop, typically via mobile apps with?63% using mobile apps as their primary shopping method.
Mobile phone usage across Asia Pacific (APAC) is booming.?Research from Global Web Index?shows that smartphone use increased by 70% in 2020 year-on-year across the region — in China, that figure was 86%.
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Navigating challenges
Digitalization has made the world more connected and accessible. The rewards are high and the start-up costs are low. Owning a website is all you need to sell to anyone around the world. But precisely because it’s so easy to set up a business, there’s far more competition. Anyone can copy an original idea and start selling something similar very quickly, undercutting you in the process.
With such low barriers to entry, many small online businesses are springing up across the region, meaning more choice for the consumer. In this age of short attention spans and social media trends, SMEs have to fight harder than ever to attract customer attention.
Given these challenges to convert to a purchase decision, it’s crucial that SMEs make the final step – the checkout process – as straightforward as possible. Overseas customers want currency, fees and taxes to be straightforward, and most importantly to have the delivery process fully integrated without a hitch. Consumers, especially when shopping on their mobile or on social media, can be easily distracted, as well as put off by too many steps at the final checkout. SMEs need to remove every possible barrier to purchase completion to avoid cart abandonment.
Increasingly, e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce provide a safe, seamless, localized experience for customers, automatically displaying the checkout page in their language, accepting their preferred payment methods and showing prices in their local currency.
Sound credit policies, procedures, and cashflow management are critical to the back-end engine room of any business be it bricks and mortar or fully on-line. At TCS we can offer a wide range of services to help businesses of all shapes and sizes ensure the processes they employ in these areas are going to set them up correctly for scalable growth. Call us today for a no obligation consultation on the services we can plug into your business to help take some of these pain points away.
(03) 6213 5555
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