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Tag: E-Commerce

8 Steps for Creating an Omnichannel E-commerce Strategy

With the digitalization of commerce, customers are adopting new shopping patterns. According to Salesforce, 78% of customers use several channels to start and complete a transaction. Additionally, on average, customers communicate with companies through nine different channels. That’s why it’s essential to optimize your e-commerce strategy for omnicannel purposes.

However, providing omnichannel experiences requires substantial effort, resources and competence from the retailer. Therefore, future-thinking merchants should focus on a comprehensive e-commerce strategy if they want to advance their omnichannel initiatives.

READ: From Clicks to Conversions — How to Craft an Effective Online Advertising Strategy

What is omnichannel e-commerce?

Omnichannel e-commerce is the integration of a brand’s separate sales channels to provide uniform, seamless shopping experiences. With omnichannel capabilities, customers can start their buying journey in one channel, switch to another and pick up shopping right where they left off.

Why is omnichannel e-commerce important?

Wider reach

Omnichannel e-commerce enables companies to provide meaningful customer experiences across numerous popular channels, thus reaching more people and making brand interaction hassle-free.

Sales growth

Delivering relevant shopping experiences consistently across channels can strengthen customer relationships, which positively influences sales. According to a Sprout pulse survey, 77% of customers are more likely to buy more from brands they feel connected to.

A better understanding of customers

E-commerce businesses can collect and merge comprehensive customer data from multiple integrated sales channels to gain insights into customer behavior, deliver personalized experiences across touchpoints and plan data-driven marketing campaigns.

READ: Determining Your Business’s Target Market – Why It’s Necessary and How To Do It

8 steps to an effective omnichannel strategy

1. Make your e-commerce strategy mobile-friendly

Companies striving to make cross-channel shopping seamless need to first check that store visitors using their desktop, smartphone or tablet can access it with equal convenience. If not, then merchants should redesign their websites to provide consistent experiences for different devices. 

2. Tailor your message to the channel

Once a business chooses the channels to be present on, it should define the purpose of each channel and create content relevant to this purpose. Even though all channels should deliver a consistent brand message, they don’t have to duplicate it. Instead, store owners can adapt content to the specifics of the channel and use different timelines, tactics and formats.

READ: Email Drip Campaigns — 3 Examples and Best Practices To Boost Customer Engagement

3. Map the customer journey

For each channel, businesses should understand how customers behave during the purchasing process. This will help merchants visualize the customer journey and ensure a convenient transition between every step as well as different channels, providing seamless experiences and increasing the chance of a purchase.

4. Power up omnichannel with data

Omnichannel commerce requires integrating back-end systems and sales tools to enable data sharing across various touchpoints and cross-team collaboration. This way merchants can track inventory across all sales channels in real-time to maintain supply chain stability and deliver orders on time. With their tech stack integrated, brands can synchronize critical commerce-related data and provide more up-to-date and relevant information to their customers.

5. Set up cross-channel customer service

In the omnichannel approach, companies should consolidate individual support requests from different channels into a single source of truth to give context to support reps and enable them to quickly resolve customer issues.

According to Gladly’s 2021 report, 63% of customers love brands specifically for excellent customer service. This means that establishing omnichannel customer service will also help companies increase customer satisfaction, improve retention rates and maximize customer lifetime value.

6. Keep testing

Companies should regularly review their customer-related activities to determine if current methods are working. The testing scope can include various marketing and technology components, from reviewing the correctness of customer segmentation to website performance testing, making sure it properly handles the traffic.

7. Remarket across channels

With omnichannel marketing campaigns, store owners can remind their customers of unfinished purchases by showing relevant ads on marketplaces or social media, sending targeted emails, or pushing personalized notifications in the app. Such omnichannel re-engagement helps accelerate conversions, reinforce brand recognition and encourage brand loyalty.

READ: How Brands Can Grow Customer Loyalty and Build a Positive Reputation in 2023

8. Invest in human talent

Even if a business adopts best-in-class omnichannel technology, improper or poor use by the employees will undermine the investment in the long run. That’s why employee training should accompany the introduction of the omnichannel e-commerce strategy.

Additionally, companies can identify areas where they lack in-house resources or expertise and hire external specialists to support every tech component and strategic initiative within their omnichannel agenda.

The bottom line

Omnichannel e-commerce strategy enables merchants to erase the boundaries between multiple shopping channels by centralizing data acquisition and providing consistent, personalized experiences. With the right omnichannel strategy, e-commerce businesses can turn their brand experience into a competitive differentiator, fostering customer loyalty and driving more sales.

 

Alena KuptsovaAlena Kuptsova is a Technology Research Analyst at Itransition, a software development company based in Denver, CO. She analyzes current digital transformation trends and explores the opportunities the emerging technologies bring to businesses across industries.

Protect Your Online Business: Minimizing Cybersecurity Risks in a Remote Environment

Cybersecurity risks can do significant damage to your business. Not only do they risk your own time, money and information, but they can also be harmful to your customers. The Marriott breach that made international headlines several years ago compromised the personal data of hundreds of millions of people. 

Your remote business probably isn’t operating at quite such a large scale. Nevertheless, if you lose people’s private information, it will come at the cost of your clients, and your reputation. You don’t want that. 

READ: How to Minimize Cybersecurity Risks and Balance Customer Friction for Your Online Business

The remote business problem

Remote businesses are not necessarily uniquely vulnerable to cyber threats save for one factor — they do not have a brick-and-mortar location, so every action you make takes place online. This gives you more vulnerability. 

With no centralized location, you are subject to your team member’s decisions. The phrase “you’re only as good as your weakest link,” definitely applies here.

Hackers don’t need very much to get in. One mistake even from a low-ranking member of your team can be all that a bad actor needs to gain access to your entire system. Once they are in, it’s an enormous amount of trouble trying to get them out. 

Denial of service attacks

Denial of service attacks aren’t as destructive as they are disruptive. Basically, DoS attacks flood your computer system with hundreds of thousands of fake requests. While your computer is overwhelmed, it can’t function the way it is supposed to. 

Even a relatively simple denial of service attack can knock you out for several days. They also may require professional intervention. DoS mitigation companies can set you back hundreds of dollars, further increasing the damage done. 

Phishing emails

Most people think that they are above phishing emails. You know that if an African prince writes you up asking for money, you’re better off politely declining their request. But what if Amazon writes in to tell you that your preferred payment method has been declined on your Audible account? Or if Microsoft writes to let you know that they are currently processing your subscription renewal payment for $1000?

These emails look like they came from brands you use and trust. The fonts and formats are the same. The email addresses look legitimate. But they are designed to trick you into handing out sensitive information. 

In your right mind, you probably know that Microsoft doesn’t just charge people $1000 for no reason. However, when you get that message saying you’re on the hook for a huge bill, it naturally initiates a panic response. You don’t think clearly, and you make mistakes. 

READ: Prioritizing Cybersecurity When Building Your Company Website

Ransomware

Ransomware attacks hold your computer or personal information hostage in exchange for money. These attacks usually target large businesses or even countries, but private individuals and small businesses have been known to experience them as well. 

Of course, there’s no winning here. People who would break into your computer and demand money can’t be trusted to leave you alone once you pay them. It’s almost always better to repair or replace your system once it falls victim to ransomware. 

Complacency

This may sound like an “only you can prevent forest fires,” type of line, but it’s true. Complacency is the biggest threat to cybersecurity for small businesses, and even for powerful organizations and countries. Almost all of the major breaches that you hear about in the news happen because someone got careless. 

Well, ok. Not actually all of them, though. For example, I read about this thing that happened in Ireland a couple of years ago. You wouldn’t—

You must mean when Russian hackers broke into Ireland’s national health network? They locked the government out of their own computers for months and published hundreds of people’s personal data online as part of a cyber terrorism initiative. 

Yeah. Terrible stuff. But you can’t blame complacency for something that big. 

Oh no? It happened after a relatively minor-ranking government official opened the wrong email. We could go on and on naming specific examples, but you’ll find the same story playing out time after time. People let their guard down, and they forget to exercise their usual caution. It’s common, and it’s also catastrophic. 

Don’t let that happen to you. Stay on top of your cybersecurity risks to help keep your business going strong. You don’t have to be a software engineer to make sensible cyber-security choices. A little common sense can go a long way toward protecting you and your customers. 

 

Andrew Deen HeadshotAndrew Deen has been a consultant for startups in a number of industries from retail to medical devices and everything in between. He implements lean methodology and is currently writing a book about scaling up business.

Combatting E-commerce Fraud: Best Practices for Fraud Prevention in Online Sales

With the fast-paced growth of online sales, e-commerce fraud risks are higher than ever. Fraudsters attack online shoppers and e-commerce stores, causing customer dissatisfaction and revenue losses for merchants. Remarkably, the total cost of fraud is on average much greater than the value of the goods sold. Signifyd’s State of Fraud 2023 report claims that every $100 in fraudulent orders results in $207 in tangible losses for online retailers.

To achieve high e-commerce cybersecurity levels, online store owners should take timely and effective fraud prevention steps.

READ: How to Minimize Cybersecurity Risks and Balance Customer Friction for your Online Business

What is e-commerce fraud?

E-commerce fraud is an illegal, deceptive activity on an e-commerce website where a fraudster impersonates a legitimate user to achieve personal or financial gain. In contrast to fraud at brick-and-mortar stores, in e-commerce offenders can use personal and credit card information for online transactions without producing a physical card.

How to detect e-commerce fraud

To be able to combat fraud, e-commerce merchants first need to identify it. Here is a checklist of red flags to help spot fraudulent activities on your e-commerce website.

  • Inconsistent order data (e.g., mismatched zip code and city)
  • Larger than average order volume
  • Multiple orders from different credit cards
  • Repeated declined transactions
  • Orders coming from unusual locations
  • Different billing and shipping addresses
  • PO box shipping addresses instead of physical locations

8 best fraud prevention practices

Merchants around the world are increasingly relying on e-commerce fraud management, with almost 90% of companies finding it very or extremely important to their overall business strategy. By adopting the following best practices, retailers can minimize the risk of fraud for their e-commerce websites.

READ: The FTC Safeguards Rule — Why Your Business Needs to Improve Cyber Security in 2023

1. Implement fraud detection tools

E-commerce businesses can implement ready-made fraud detection solutions to identify red-flag transactions and protect themselves and their customers from fraud. In particular, fraud detection tools enhanced with machine learning capabilities can effectively recognize suspicious account activity, detect the most common fraud patterns and predict fraudulent actions.

2. Comply with the PCI standard

All businesses dealing with online payments have to adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to ensure that credit card and cardholder details are stored and processed safely. While the PCI compliance level can vary depending on a business’s transaction volume, all merchants fulfilling the principal requirements will be less likely to suffer from fraud.

3. Use verification software

The verification software helps merchants identify billing, shipping, or card details inconsistencies. For example, an address verification system (AVS) verifies the customer’s billing address against the cardholder’s address filed with the issuing bank. If the addresses don’t match, which happens when fraudsters use multiple stolen cards to order goods to a single address, the AVS declines the transaction or flags it for manual review.

Another verification method involves checking security numbers written on the back of payment cards, such as card verification value (CVV), card security code (CSC) and card verification number (CVN). Store owners can ask customers to submit the security code at the checkout page, making sure the customer has their physical card.

4. Limit order quantities

By analyzing previous sales data, merchants can define the average daily order volume and cash value to set purchase limits. Orders beyond this limit should be automatically blocked to reduce the risk of fraud.

5. Collect proof of delivery

To protect against false claims of non-delivery and refund abuse, e-commerce merchants can cooperate with reliable logistics partners that provide tracking numbers or proofs of delivery like a customer’s signature or photos of delivered packages.

6. Tighten your return policies

Ambiguous return policy terms and conditions can allow scammers to easily exploit the returns system. Therefore, a store’s return policy should describe in straightforward terms what qualifies as a return, what refund options the seller offers (e.g., a product exchange or store credit instead of cash) and how the seller handles the entire returns process.

7. Be particularly alert during peak shopping seasons

Since people buy more from e-commerce stores around Black Friday, Cyber Monday and December holidays, they often overlook security measures. Predictably, fraudsters become highly active during these busy times, hoping merchants won’t be vigilant enough to detect fraud among the skyrocketing number of orders.

Businesses should prepare the staff and fraud prevention system for peak shopping times and be careful when handling rush orders, numerous low-value purchases and possible foreign orders, which all can be a sign of fraudulent behavior.

READ: Top 5 Ways to Ensure Cyber Security During the Holidays

8. Create blocklists

A good practice for warding off repeat offenders is to add customers with unusual activity to blocklists and ban them from future transactions with the e-commerce website. Usually, blocklists contain names, credit card details, shipping, email and IP addresses spotted in suspicious transactions. When the information from a new order matches the list, such transactions will be automatically blocked.

However, this tactic requires caution because a legitimate customer can unknowingly use a credit card previously marked as fraudulent. In this case, blocking the order without explanation can discourage the consumer from returning to your online store.

The bottom line

Modern e-commerce fraudsters can employ an array of tactics, so merchants have to keep modernizing their security methods to keep payments and orders safe. The first step is to implement comprehensive anti-fraud technology to detect and avert malicious actions. Next, e-commerce companies should adopt and closely follow fraud prevention strategies to minimize risks. In the long run, these efforts will enable merchants to protect their customers and revenue as well as the future of their online business.

 

Stan PopovichStan Popovich is the author of the popular managing fear book, “A Layman’s Guide to Managing Fear”. For more information about Stan’s book and to get some free mental health advice, please visit Stan’s website at www.managingfear.com

How to Minimize Cybersecurity Risks and Balance Customer Friction for Your Online Business

If you launch an online business or want to improve your existing brand, you must set up a good security system, not just to minimize cybersecurity risks, but also to compete with established rivals.

In addition to a shared customer base, your competition may already have a productive balance between security and friction that keeps their business safe without driving people away. That’s the standard you should aim for to avoid losing traffic to competitors.

It seems easier said than done, but there are a few key strategies that can help you plan the ideal cybersecurity system for your business and customers.

READ: The FTC Safeguards Rule — Why Your Business Needs to Improve Cyber Security in 2023

Understand and Minimize Cybersecurity Risks

Do you run an e-shop, banking service or website that stores medical records? Each type of domain may have something of interest to criminals, such as personal data that can be used fraudulently or by account hackers who can exploit such information for money or access to otherwise secure systems.

Think about what assets could attract bad actors to your online business and read up on threats you could face down the line, as well as the damage they’d cause if successful.

Take synthetic identity fraud, for example — also known as sleeper fraud or credit bust-out fraud. It uses IDs made of both fake and real details that were stolen, but they can also be a combination of real information, or even completely manufactured by an algorithm that creates sequences, such as fake social security numbers, with randomized data.

Statistics show that up to 95% of legacy security systems can’t spot synthetic IDs. As a result, they cause around 80% of credit card fraud losses.

But how does knowing about this threat improve your security? For one, you learn just how valuable stolen data can be, but also what it can do in the hands of fraudsters. They can take out loans, file insurance claims, grab more sensitive details and more.

As a business owner, you come to terms with the importance of fraud detection and, with further research into the workings of different cybercrimes, you should be able to find the best possible suite for your platform.

READ: Increased Cybersecurity Risks Are a Threat to Corporate Governance

Go for a Multi-Layered Security System

There are too many threats to online businesses to justify relying on basic cybersecurity and manual checks — even more so as your platform grows in popularity.

It’s telling that less than 40% of consumers in the US, UK, Germany, and France felt they could trust businesses’ ability to counter scams in 2021, according to Statista. To ensure your customers are secure and confident in your services, focus on attaining improved fraud prevention measures.

The same statistics reported that processes like card verification number (CVN) and email verification make a difference, but don’t hesitate to make your KYC system even more sophisticated.

If you have data or tools that criminals would want to get their hands on, protect your business records with additional measures like encryption, two-factor authentication, device fingerprinting, data enrichment, and intensive training in online security.

Set Internal Safeguards

The biggest question is: How do you balance multi-layered security and frictionless user experience for customers and staff? Start by taking responsibility for part of your cybersecurity.

For starters, know that the most common cybercrimes to safeguard your business from include phishing and identity theft, both of which could be tackled manually if you know what you’re looking for.

For instance, your business should train employees on how to spot and report suspicious transaction patterns, as well as what phishing messages would look like and how to protect their passwords.

Build on this foundation with regularly updated software that scans for malware and vulnerabilities, while also checking credentials without needing too much input from customers or even potential employees.

Prepare yourself for the latter scenario as insider fraud cost businesses 5% of their annual revenue in 2020.

Choose Customer Security Checks that Limit Friction

Just using reverse email or phone lookup tools can spare your users unnecessary trouble and give you plenty of information to verify their identity and purpose. Look for this balance in your security efforts.

Advanced options like device fingerprinting can be frictionless, too. Such systems collect information about a device and its configurations, including the presence of proxies or emulators. This is especially useful as many people use these technologies alongside VPNs for nefarious purposes.

The Bottom Line

With all this in mind, it’s clear that moving onto a more complex digital footprint, behavior or other types of analyses will minimize cybersecurity risks — just don’t let the friction overwhelm your users.

 

Jimmy FongJimmy Fong, CCO at SEON, is a young veteran in the fraud detection space. The last three leading fraud and payments startups he has been involved in have been acquired by Visa, Ingenico, and American Express. He’s a regular speaker on disruptive technology in the fintech space and a massive advocate of flattening the tech barrier for merchants and financial institutions to fight fraud effectively. A graduate of Edinburgh University, he looks to marry his passion for tech with doing a bit of good in the world.

What are Your SEO Content Gaps? Plus, 3 Ways to Fix Them

An SEO content gaps analysis is all about identifying topics and additional content that may be missing from your existing content library. This will assist you in identifying new opportunities in your content marketing strategy and improving your SEO. Content analysis also allows you to build successful content strategies that target consumers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

READ: 7 Reasons Local SEO is Excellent for Small Businesses 

The Importance of Identifying SEO Content Gaps

It is a fallacy that people think content gaps are barriers between a business and its closest competitors. Content gaps are, more accurately, a gap between a business and its customers.

This gap indicates how your content strategy can meet the needs of your consumers at each stage of the journey. A good content strategy aims to create go-to content for prospects and customers.

Conducting Your SEO Content Gap Analysis

Now that you know the importance of finding content gaps, it’s time to answer the million-dollar question: How do you begin your content gap analysis for SEO?

1. Research the competition

The easiest way to identify content gaps is to do competitive keyword research. You can use a content gap analysis tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to help you find the right content.

All you have to do is extract a page from a competitor’s website and enter it into the app to see how their keywords rank in search results. From there, you can Google those keywords and see the results generated. If you look at the search results and you don’t see many sites that have authority for those keywords, there’s a good chance you’re the one who does.

READ: Determining Your Business’s Target Market – Why It’s Necessary and How To Do It

2. Review the subject

The next step is to check the pages listed for subjects. This step is important because it helps you identify the gaps in the selected content. You will want to look at each page and review the following areas:

  • Quality: How well does the page cover the topic? You have a chance to outperform your competitors by covering that topic in more depth.
  • Focus: Does the content stay on topic? If there is content that seems all over the place or lacks structure, you have the opportunity to create well-targeted content.
  • New: How long has this content been created? If there are pages that are three years old or older in the results, you have a great opportunity to create new content. You can provide updated information to the researchers.
  • Reading: Can you understand the content? If the jargon is too heavy or confusing, you have the opportunity to explain the topic clearly and concisely.
  • Style: Is the content interesting and engaging? If other businesses aren’t creating shareable content, you have the opportunity to create a more engaging piece that attracts leads and shares value.

3. Find out what is missing in the content

The last step in your content gap analysis is to identify what is missing from the selected content. Reviewing the points listed above is a start. By finding out what content competitors lack, you can find opportunities to fill those gaps and create better content.

READ: 12 Ways to Repurpose Social Media Content for Email Marketing

How to fix keyword SEO content gaps

Once you find strong keywords for your posts, there are many ways you can fill in the content gap in SEO. Add new keywords to your upcoming content, but don’t just throw them in. Instead, add keywords naturally to increase the quality of your content.

How to fix SEO content gaps by analyzing your customer journey

Content gaps are the easiest type of gaps to find and fix. Once you’ve mapped out your customer journey, you’ll have a better idea of the buying process you want to add to your existing content.

How to find and fix SEO content gaps with manual competitor analysis

First, make a list of your main competitors. If you don’t know who they are, Google some of the most important keywords you’re looking for and see who else ranks them. Next, visit each competitor’s page and list the keywords your website is missing.

Conclusion

Conducting content analysis is an effective way to guide your audience through the customer journey. Filling in blanks is a subtle way to show customers that they are at the heart of your business.

 

Ghia Marnewick is a creative content writer for the Aumcore digital marketing agency NYC, an agency that specializes in brand design and PPC management services. She is passionate about finding new ways of sharing information on trending topics in the digital world.