The announcement Amazon will invest $800MM in one-day Prime delivery has some merchants wondering if it’s another sign their brand is going to fade into the distance as Amazon consumes more of the eCommerce market. We’re not so pessimistic.

Is this really a surprise? Is it really a game-changer? This move by Amazon comes after 2 years of stagnant Prime membership growth in the US, hinting that one-day delivery is an effort to ignite more rapid growth, rather than bowing to ardent customer demand. It’s been Amazon’s mission to deliver products as quickly as possible since 2005, and this investment is just continuous motion to continue that quest, not a sweeping change.

It’s important to consider what merchants can do better than Amazon, rather than focusing on merely trying to blindly mimic their play book. One of our favorite eCommerce sales stories is from a sales rep that spent 20 minutes on the phone with a potential customer answering questions and making recommendations. After picking his brain, the customer said he was going to price shop and check Amazon. The sales rep raised his voice saying “you’ve got to be kidding me! I just answered every one of your questions and gave you a solid recommendation to solve your problems. Did you know you can’t even call Amazon?” He made the sale.

What you can do better than Amazon is be the absolute expert in your category and build and nurture relationships with your customers. Building your brand as the dominant resource for customer care is something Amazon can’t fulfill – they just let customers return items on a whim, not help them solve specific problems.

That being said, there are two fundamentals we suggest perfecting to help spur other creative, more agile marketing ideas to grow in an Amazon-driven market.

SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization

Second, get your site in order with SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). It is difficult to be agile and adjust your logistics or add new marketing tactics if you don’t have the fundamentals down solid. Merchants often want to add new features but discover they have to satisfy some prerequisites before going above and beyond. We specify marketing fundamentals as being SEO and CRO (or as we now refer to it: Site Engagement Optimization, recognizing that there are actions we want customers to take on merchant’s sites in addition to making a purchase), because the success of any other marketing effort is influenced by the results of those tactics. It’s useless to invest in social media marketing or pay for any kind of traffic if your site doesn’t convert well. Tactics like digital advertising and email marketing benefit from good CRO and site engagement. Good SEO, especially engaging, meaningful content, and improved conversion rates amplify any other inbound marketing effort you’ll try, and serve you forever as assets to your business.

That all said, if your business is positioned to compete on the logistics level and move to 1-day delivery, ShipperHQ has recently announced a partnership with Deliv, a Same Day Shipping service currently focused on larger cities across the country.

If you’d like to discuss or learn more about our perspectives discussed in this article, give us a shout.

Finding a new website development agency is never an easy task. Merchants are often running on limited resources, limited employees experienced in web development, and limited time. For those with a lack of knowledge in the field, the procurement process can be particularly daunting. Sometimes It can be a struggle to articulate what technically is required for the project or know what a realistic budget is. Therefore, merchants that put out Requests For Proposals (RFP) often do not fully understand what it is they need. Thus, the request for information in the first place.

The other option is to hire a partner or agency without engaging in a formal RFP process. Merchants who tend to go this route may feel comfortable explaining or requesting technical requirements needed for a new project without engaging in a formal RFP process. Perhaps they’ve worked with a partner before or are heavily involved in the day-to-day management of the website.  Regardless of the method used to hire a new partner and why, the process is essential. A new partner is likely going to play a significant role in the planning, building, and strategy required for a new project. Hiring the best partner for the job is vital.

There are pros and cons for an RFP process vs directly hiring an agency or partner. Understanding each will make it easier to decide what’s best for your business.

The RFP Process

Typically, the RFP process is time-consuming and regimented. When creating an RFP, merchants must request information in a specific, formal format. Meaning that businesses who respond to the RFP are limited in the information they can offer. Responses generally only provide the information requested. In other words, merchants will likely not receive alternative solutions. A lack of guidance can be challenging as frequently, the companies seeking RFPs in the first place are the very businesses who need the extra insight that would come from a scoping, or a get-to-know-your-needs call typical in a non-formal RFP situation.

Further, with an RFP process, it’s difficult for responders to sufficiently explain alternative solutions or offer creative, experienced input for optimizations. As the merchant, hiring an experienced partner that can not only fulfill needs but also provide alternative solutions that could simplify or enhance the project should be the end goal.

Pros of an RFP Process:

• Receive multiple bids from a variety of partners
• Learn more about what’s available in the industry
• Easily review pricing

Cons of an RFP Process:

• Often a time-consuming process (more responses is not necessarily a good thing)
• Requires a significant amount of work and planning for the merchant
• A formal process that often lacks creativity
• Room for misunderstandings and communication breakdowns
• Responders may not be technically capable
• The process can put an exaggerated focus on price (Winner chosen may be based on price alone)

The RFP process often wastes a lot of valuable time for the merchant and rarely generates reliable information. Inexperienced developers win RFPs due to low price quotes alone. For complex eCommerce website development, particularly for large websites, bottom dollar isn’t always the best answer. No matter how tempting it may seem. Merchants end up paying for those decisions in the long run when things break, cost more than expected, or go unfinished due to inexperience.

A Non-Formal Approach

Merchants who already have technical experience or familiarity with eCommerce development often choose to write down their project requirements and skip the formalities of the RFP process. This approach still requires diligent research of the various development partner options. Merchants will need to review the types of services offered as well as particular strengths for each partner and case studies; ensuring they are confident in the agencies ability to perform the work needed.

It’s important not only to review technical capabilities, certifications, and price but also to decide if they’re people who feel like a good personality match. Personality and getting a good feel for how the partner will work is one of the advantages that the non-formal approach has over the RFP process. A large part of hiring a partner is creating a good working business relationship. A great development partner will have your back and be honest when it’s required.   

Pros of Directly Hiring an Agency or Partner:

• Get the experience required
• Generates reliable and valuable information
• A more efficient focus on project requirements
• Get started on a project faster

Cons of Directly Hiring an Agency or Partner:

• Seeking new agencies requires a proactive approach
• Potentially more costly due to experience

The non-formal approach requires a more hands-on approach from merchants vs. an RFP process. Researching and contacting various agencies will require some upfront effort and time. However, the process of getting to know different agencies will offer plenty of value. A new project will often require a certain amount of thoughtful brainstorming and planning. With a direct hire approach, partners will be able to advise and guide merchants through the process while offering solutions that may not have been previously considered.

Making a decision

Regardless of the approach to hiring a partner, it’s critical to do some due diligence when it comes to researching agencies and developers. Merchants often send out RFPs thinking they will gain free knowledge and a very objective view from bidders but don’t realize that the RFP process often hinders agencies in doing good discovery and to quickly focuses management on making a price based decision. For many industries such as non-profit organizations, competitive pricing is an economic necessity. Such is not the case however for Magento eCommerce development. Your agency partner needs to be able to provide a solution that requires a thorough understanding of business requirements. In addition to price, both knowledge and experience need factoring into a final decision.

Experience has shown us that there is often a lack of understanding and communication within the RFP process. Both parties experience wasted time, energy, and resources. Further, agencies regularly win due to pre-existing relationships with the merchant or because of emphasis placed on the final cost instead of the quality and integrity of the project.

While RFPs may seem like a good idea to receive similarly scoped information and quotes, the better solution is to take a highly communicative approach focused on the long-term quality and reliability of the potential partner.

If you are interested in learning more about our Magento eCommerce experience, or how we can help with your project, contact us today!

The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seems to be the latest buzzword in data protection. The new law went into effect on May 25, 2018, and affects anyone in the European Union. Meaning that even if you’re business is not physically located in Europe, your customers may be. While this new law was put in place to protect citizens of the European Union, the law is having a very global impact. With GDPR, it is required for any eCommerce business doing business overseas to be compliant.

It’s imperative that eCommerce merchants understand what the new GDPR law is and how to be compliant.

What the GDPR is All About

GDPR is all about empowering individuals to maintain control of their data. Explicitly, the law enforces better protection of citizen data in the European Union. GDPR offers transparency for any saved data. With GDPR, customers have ownership of their data and control how and when merchants can use their data. Further, there are three major components to GDPR to understand: consent, transparency, and data security.

Consent involves a more explicit opt-in than what many eCommerce websites offer currently. Pre-checked boxes are not a form of consent when it comes to the GDPR. Further, merchants need an explicit opt-in for all electronic marketing channels including email. Notably, customers can withdraw their consent at any time.

Transparency involves sharing with customers the type of data stored in their name. Customers can submit a subject access request (SAR) at any time to receive this information.

In regards to data security, the goal is to mitigate any data breach. To help mitigate data breach issues, merchants need to take appropriate technical and organizational measures to encrypt data.How GDPR Will Affect Your Magento Store

As a Magento merchant, mainly if you’re located in a country that is apart of the European Union or have customers overseas, GDPR compliance is critical. Notably, non-compliance can lead to fines ranging from 4% of your worldwide annual revenue from the prior year up to 20 Million Euros.

IP Tracking

IP tracking is a component that needs to be a part of GDPR compliance. IP tracking takes the IP address of a visitor to motivate specific actions. IP tracking allows merchants to identify a customer’s location as well as their geographic preferences. Merchants can also tailor specific rules, including the way to provide calls to action and price modifications.

Under GDPR guidelines, before merchants can utilize IP addresses, they need to ask for customer’s permission to do so explicitly. Including permission to collect and store their IP address. Notably, It doesn’t matter what type of web address is used including .co, .de, or .com. Any EU site visitor should be able to accept or reject your IP tracking and checking module.

Personalized Content

Personalized content is another aspect that is going to change. Studies show that customers are more likely to make a purchase when influenced by personalization marketing techniques. For example, if a merchant uses a customer’s name in emails, or the customer receives recommendations based on previous purchases. To provide personalized content, merchants store specific data about customers with tracking cookies. However, GDPR compliance requires merchants to give EU customers a choice of accepting cookies or not. If they choose not to accept the cookies, it prevents the merchant from providing personalizing content to them.

It’s important to examine all of the data collected on your website. If any data is considered irrelevant, don’t ask for it. Fortunately, there are Magento 2 GDPR extensions available that allow merchants to make additional changes to enhance the overall privacy of customer’s data.

Support from Magento on GDPR

Magento currently offers features to assist merchants with GDPR compliance. Magento has made data mappings available for the Magento software so that merchants can identify the location of stored information in Magento. These mappings are available for Magento 1.x and Magento 2.x and cover Magento Commerce cloud, on-premise as well as Magento Open Source.

Also, Magento created a list of third-party subprocessors detailing those service providers that Magento utilizes in the provision of Services to Magento merchants.

For a detailed list of commonly asked questions and answers concerning Magento and GDPR read through this FAQ reference sheet from Magento.

Contact us to learn more about GDPR compliance and changes. Although Magento is complicated, we can assist you every step of the way.