eCommerce Archives

3 Reasons to Move Your Magento 1 Site to Shopify

by Michael Dennis | Jun 14, 2019 | Adobe/Magento, B2B, eCommerce

As the owner of a Magento site you’re going to have to make a decision as to what move is best for you before support for Magento 1 ends in June of 2020. And this decision must be made relatively soon. Your migration to M2 or to Shopify will take time to be completed properly. You must be aware of your current needs and limitations. You also need to have an expectation as to where your business needs to be in the future in order to determine which platform can best meet your needs.

With all of that in mind, you may want to consider migrating your Magento 1 site to Shopify, rather than Magento 2, before the end of life support occurs for Magento 1 in June of 2020. In this blog, you’ll learn the 3 reasons why you may want to move your Magento 1 site to Shopify.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization – Shopify has been optimized for mobile and allows your customers to experience a complete shopping experience directly from their device. As a Magento 1 user, you know that this is a feature that has not been utilized to its full potential under the current platform. The good news is that Magento 2 offers greater mobile capabilities, but Shopify’s mobile support is tried and tested and ready for your online store.

Ease of Use

If you would describe yourself as ’non technical’ then Magento can be a bit overwhelming. The open source platform comes with a learning curve for even some of the most basic of customizations and a much steeper learning curve for more involved customization. Meanwhile, Shopify’s platform is one that is much more of a ‘drag and drop’ interface, similar to what you would experience building a website in Squarespace or Wix. This user-friendly functionality makes it easier for you to build and customize your store if you lack programming experience. Shopify also features a robust App Store, where plugins can be purchased and installed with ease, extending the functionality of your site. Think the iTunes App Store but for eCommerce. If you’re currently limited with the amount of resources and man-hours you can dedicate to your eCommerce site, then a move to Shopify might be what’s best for you in the long run.

Customer Support

Magento boasts an extensive library of user guides and their Magento Forum is famous for hosting a large database of educational, user generated content. The guides are easy to find, are usually simple and very comprehensive. Whatever your problem is, there is no doubt that another Magento user has experienced this same issue and has created a how-to for solving it. But while these user-generated guides are readily available, there is one major piece of support that Magento is lacking and that is customer support. There isn’t a phone number to call or an email address to reach out to if you want the guidance of a trained professional. There’s something reassuring about knowing that there’s a trained person you can reach out to with intimate knowledge about your platform. That is something Magento isn’t able to offer. Alternatively, Spotify offers 24/7 phone support, live chat and email options for users experiencing problems. To get the Spotify level of support for your Magento eCommerce site you would need to enlist the services of a certified Magento developer (just like the certified pros right here at InteractOne).

Shopify’s features cater directly to smaller businesses with limited budgets and resources. While Magento 2 is better equipped to handle larger, more complex eCommerce sites. It really all depends on your needs, size and capabilities. To learn more about where your eCommerce site would be best served and how to unlock your digital potential call the team at InteractOne at 513-469-3345 or submit a form here for a consultation.

4 Reasons to Migrate Your B2B Site From Magento 1 Today

by Michael Dennis | Jun 13, 2019 | Adobe/Magento, B2B, eCommerce

The end is nigh for Magento 1!

Just because Magento is ending their support for M1 in June of 2020 doesn’t mean there’s reason to panic. Quite the opposite. This shift provides B2B Magento 1 merchants with an opportunity to upgrade their current platform to one that more meets the demands of modern B2B stakeholders.

Since M1’s public launch in 2007, the digital B2B marketplace has changed dramatically. B2B customers now more closely resemble B2C customers. Demand Gen’s 2018 survey shows that 93% of B2B customers prefer to purchase online, directly from vendors (compared with 85% of B2C customers). And 45% of B2B buyers report an increase in the amount of online research they complete before making a purchase.

The B2B landscape has evolved and the end of life for Magento 1 support provides an excellent opportunity to upgrade your B2B eCommerce site to meet the new demands of the marketplace and keep pace with your competitors. In this blog you’ll learn the 3 reasons why you need to migrate off of Magento 1.

New B2B Features

Magento 2 promises to maintain the same features that made Magento 1 so popular. There will still be an Open Source (Community) version of M2 which will allow for custom extensions to be added to native features. The Magento Commerce (Enterprise – paid/licensed) edition will continue on as well. But it is the M2 Commerce platform that will include a number of new features built directly into the architecture. These new features include:

Company Accounts

In any B2B online store there may be many individuals who need to have access to an individual account. Supervisors, buyers, accountants, and managers may all require individual access. With Magento 2, store administrators will have the ability to moderate accessibility to the account. Buyers will also have the ability to assign full access or limit the access of their team members.

Quick Order

As previously mentioned, B2B customers are more and more likely to arrive at your website having already engaged in and in many cases completed their research and ready to complete an order. For these users, Magento 2 features a new SKU quick order feature, which allows users to add an item directly to their cart by entering the SKU numbers rather than having to navigate the site manually to locate the item and then add it to their cart. This feature extends beyond an individual item as well. M2 allows users to upload a file containing all the matching SKU’s and their desired quantity directly to the platform. Thus, improving the speed and quality of the purchasing experience for those visitors with a long list of items.

Quotes & Price Negotiation

When it comes to dollar amount and in actual product volume, B2B orders are quite often much larger than B2C orders. This dynamic increases the likelihood that your business may need to negotiate or provide terms with a custom quote. Magento 2 will allow for customers to request a quote from you, directly from the product page while also allowing the customer to submit their own price request. The administrator on the page then has the opportunity to refuse, accept, or continue negotiating the offer. If the offer is accepted, the customer then has the option to complete the purchase at the negotiated price directly from their cart, just like a normal purchase.

Requisition Lists

The wishlist feature on Magento 1 is pretty standard. It allows for customers to move items back and forth between their wishlist and cart, while removing the item from the wishlist upon completing a purchase. With the new Requisition List in Magento 2, customers can set up lists of favorite items and recurring products that will be continually purchased. This streamlines the purchasing process for renewables and other frequently ordered items making it easier and faster.

Accessibility

Magento 2, both the Community and Enterprise versions, will allow for the management of three separate databases; products, orders, and checkout. This is being done to prevent data overload and reduce incidences of system failure. The result being increased data security, speed, and scalability. By separating these three databases, Magento 2 will give B2B visitors to your website a smoother, faster, and more accurate experience as well as improve the ability your certified Magento developer has to make refinements to the platform.

Speed

The result of many of the aforementioned enhancements will be increased speed. M2 will optimize your webpages for a faster delivery with accelerated server response times, which will ultimately result in an increase in loading time between 30% and 50%. M2 users can also expect to see a 38% decrease in checkout time compared with M1. These improvements will also be extended to mobile as well with Magento 2’s responsive design structure. Magento 2 has the ability to handle 10 million views per hour, which is 50x the capacity of Magento 1. Magento 2 also can also handle more than 90,000 orders per hour, more than double the ability of Magento 1. With these kinds of improvements it’s easy to see why an upgrade to Magento 2 is better completed sooner rather than later.

M1 is going bye-bye and all you can do is prepare

June 2020 may seem like a long way off but it will be here before you know it. Upgrading your site to M2 or migrating to another platform will take a great deal of time to plan, build, implement, execute, test, and launch. The experts at Magento estimate that a simple website migration will take between 5 and 7 months and our experience reflects and supports that timeline Any site with customizations that needs migrating could take up to 9 months. And any migration with integrations could easily take more than 10 months to complete. Keep in mind that there will also be tens of thousands of business owners in a similar need for migration before support for M1 falls off in June of 2020. The sooner you can get started on your migration or conversion, the better. Think of your M2 move like you would a semester project in college. You feel like you have all the time in the world to complete it, but why wait until the weekend before finals?

Simply put, the benefits of both the Enterprise and Community versions of M2 far outweigh the costs of migrating. Magento 2 is mobile-friendly, more scalable, boasts an improved checkout experience, and is easier to upgrade. If you’re ready to upgrade your M1 platform or just want to learn more about the process, speak to one of the certified Magento developers here at InteractOne at 513-469-3345 or submit a form here for a consultation.

Additional Resources:

Why Migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2

4 B2B Features for Merchants Moving to Magento 2

Magento 2 for B2B

3 Ways to Improve Your B2B eCommerce Website Today

by Michael Dennis | Jun 6, 2019 | B2B, eCommerce

For your B2B eCommerce site, the online store is the critical factor to your success. Most companies shop online once they’ve decided what they want. In a market that is already saturated, waiting around for clients to come to you is not an optimal solution.

New eCommerce websites go live every day, and in order to thrive and stay ahead of your competition, you must be more creative with your sales strategy and enhance the online experience you deliver to online B2B consumers. In this blog we’ll cover three ways that you can you enhance your B2B eCommerce site to boost conversions and ultimately generate more quality leads and sales.

Factors Influencing User Experience

For online buyers, a B2B eCommerce site is often the first point of contact. And since you never get a second chance to have a good first impression, it’s important to craft a great experience from the get-go. Here are some factors that can make or break a user’s experience on your site:

Discoverability
Website load time
Website UI
Checkout workflow
Overall site navigation
Payment options
Delivery time
Product quality
Grievances redressal

User Experience, also known as UX, is critical to eCommerce—maybe even more than you might think. UX can impact these areas of business and more:

The number of visitors on your site
Sales conversions
Profits
Revenue growth

Optimize Your B2B Site

Improve site usability:

Simply put, a site that is hard to use does not make for repeat buyers. Visitors are less likely to return to your site, or trust you as a partner/client if your website isn’t friendly (including mobile compatibility) and doesn’t provide a positive overall experience. The best time to work on the usability of your website is during the initial site development phase. Collect feedback from early users to determine what needs to be improved. Use this insight to make improvements to the website and create an eCommerce site that doesn’t leave users unhappy or confused.

Focus on User Needs:

Start by asking yourself, why are users visiting your site? Some users want discounts, some users want information, some users are doing preliminary research. Others already know exactly what they need and want to find it fast and efficiently. Serving each user’s interest in the most efficient way helps to optimize your eCommerce site.

Dropout Points:

Observe user behavior with the help of analytics tools to identify areas that need improvement. Through tools like Google Analytics, you can see exactly where users are leaving your site, called ‘dropout points’. Analyzing dropout points provides an excellent opportunity to see where there may be a gap in your website design or content. You can gradually test new copy, designs, imagery, or forms on a particular page for improvements in a user’s time on your website and leads generated.

Enhance the B2B Buyer Experience

It is not enough to optimize the site; businesses also need to ensure buyers are taken care of throughout the buying process. Some ways to enhance the user experience include:

Create Informative Content:

No matter what space your B2B site occupies, chances are high that there’s another B2B entity selling a similar product or service to you. A Forrester report indicates business buyers are highly self-directed with over 68% doing their own research online. 62% plan to make a purchase decision based solely on digital content. Investing in an experienced content team gives you an opportunity to educate potential business buyers through informative and original content. Free downloads, how-to guides, and relevant news links can showcase to B2B buyers that you’re an industry thought leader and insider and that you have the knowledge and know-how to solve their particular problem. Original informative content inspires confidence in new users. Just make sure that your eCommerce content is readable on all devices including mobile, tablet, and desktop. Because you never know how your B2B buyers are consuming your content.

Deliver Excellent Customer Service:

No matter your product or service, there are multiple competitors on the web providing similar products and services. The level and quality of customer service influences sales, brand loyalty, and conversion rates. In the long term, providing exemplary customer service wins over buyers. A large percentage of business buyers will refer a company to other businesses if they experience good customer service. Make sure that you’re getting notifications if a prospect submits a question or a form to you via your website or social media channels and and be sure to respond in a timely fashion. Provide a contact phone number that is easy to find on your website so that existing clients can reach out to you quickly, if they need to. These are small but important actions you can take to provide excellent customer service that will reassure current customers and perhaps sway potential customers in your favor, while setting you apart from your competitors.

Improve the User Experience

Ultimately, you want to make it as easy as possible on the site visitor to complete a purchase with you. There are four places you can optimize the user experience to fulfill orders, satisfy recurring customers, and bring new customers into your client base.

Check Out:
Business buyers prefer a speedy and efficient checkout process. Incorporating features such as requisition lists, instant purchase, and quick checkout makes it possible to conclude business in minutes.

Delivery:
Make it easy for B2B buyers to schedule deliveries and pick-up options. This can be achieved through visible options on the site and checkout page and ensuring users can easily change delivery or pick-up preferences at any time during the purchasing process.

Inventory:
Display inventory by location if there is a physical address. This offers convenience for contractors and anyone who is looking to make a purchase at a particular brick and mortar location.

Account Management:
Offering account management services for repeat customers shortens the buying process. It also makes it easier to track order status, pay invoices, and access product catalogs.

No matter what services or products are featured in a B2B eCommerce site, the profits determine success. Focusing on usability, the checkout process, and customer service can significantly increase your eCommerce conversions. But all the good intentions and customer service won’t result in profit unless you have a functioning and user-friendly website. To learn more about how to unlock your digital potential call the team at InteractOne at 513-469-3345 or submit a form here for a consultation on how to optimize your eCommerce website.

Can a B2B eCommerce Site Actually Attract New Customers?

by InteractOne News | May 30, 2019 | B2B, eCommerce

Businesses are driven to find the most efficient and cost effective solution to any problem they may have—just look at the advisory and consulting industries. When seeking to expand business operations in the B2B sector, eCommerce just makes sense—individuals prefer to research and buy online these days. Self-service is a rapidly growing trend.

Modern eCommerce has the ability to remove purchase barriers that have previously existed, such as a delay while waiting on a specialized price, a noon fax, or when waiting for account creation. eCommerce enables customers to create their own accounts, see items at list price, and make a spot decision about their purchase.

eCommerce can provide a balanced approach to growth and efficiency—sales reps have more time on their hands to dive into other tasks while customers have their every desire at their fingertips. Did we mention that B2B businesses love fast shipping? High-speed shipping and instant gratification culminate in a highly effective way to boost sales numbers across the board while reducing the bottom line.

Spoiler alert: B2B eCommerce sites can and do attract new customers. Here’s how:

How can eCommerce be Adapted to B2B Sales?

B2B sales can be time-consuming—some salespeople have only a handful of cases, some of which are prospective customers. eCommerce allows businesses to automate the top of their sales pipeline—list price items can be moved, increasing overall profit on some sales, while customers walk away with more time than traditional sales processes.

Once a client has decided to purchase again, their pre-existing account can be used. As the business owner, you have to ability to program customized pricing based on the client and their needs. Why redo a task like ‘collecting initial client information’ and ‘list price sale’ at the cost of time and money? A modern eCommerce website powered by Magento or Shopify will provide you these capabilities and create a fire-and-forget solution to improve your quality of sales and remove redundancies in order to free up valuable time for salespeople.

How Does eCommerce Promote Getting New Customers?

eCommerce can be used in conjunction with digital advertising to attract B2B customers who need your products or services. If you’re selling physical products, Google shopping listings can be created through digital ads, which will allow interested parties to view and compare your products against your competitors directly. This saves them time and increases your overall visibility.

Customers today also expect to have a smooth buying experience. Having to wait for responses from salespeople will only slow their day down and decrease your odds of making the initial sale. 93 percent of B2B buyers say that they prefer to buy online once they’ve decided they want to buy. 74 percent of them say that buying from a website is more convenient.

When paired with an effective content strategy, eCommerce educates buyers about the particular concerns they should note when looking to purchase as well as how a particular line of items removes their exposure to these risks, in addition to providing other valuable pieces of information.

What Difference can eCommerce Make on a Sales Workload?

Sales workload can be substantially reduced by employing B2B sales automation with eCommerce. One of the most notable places where sales can become more efficient is in the ordering and reordering process. Once a business has provided their information and proceeded to purchase, they can be assigned a unique discount. For any future purchases they will then receive their goods at this assigned discounted price, without having to discuss purchases and rates through your sales team.

The key takeaway is this: sales automation through B2B eCommerce isn’t putting sales jobs at risk, it is helping secure them by finding and retaining new clients. Relationship management can begin with fewer prospects, but higher overall satisfaction when customers can serve themselves. Want to learn more about how to properly expand your business in the B2B sector? Contact our team of eCommerce experts today.

How to Grow In An Amazon-Fueled Market

by Zach | May 23, 2019 | eCommerce

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.

Grow With Amazon

First, you should be selling on Amazon if you’re not already. No joke. This isn’t a how-to beat Amazon article – you can’t beat them. It’s more about focusing on growth so you don’t live in fear of the evil empire. After all, 53% of sales on Amazon are actually sold by third-party merchants using their Amazon Marketplace. Getting into marketplace sales does involve updating your software integrations and logistics, but it’s a significant potential revenue stream well worth pursuing.

Don’t ignore other marketplaces either. eBay only has 19.7% share of the online marketplace, but they are significantly more seller-friendly than Amazon, allowing you full access to your customer and their contact info. That allows you to remarket and openly communicate to your customers to build your brand and relationships, as opposed to Amazon, who hoards all of their consumer data from merchants.

Tweet: What you can do better than Amazon is be the absolute expert in your category and build and nurture relationships with your customers.

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.

Optimizing your eCommerce Site for Mobile to Boost Sales

by InteractOne News | May 16, 2019 | eCommerce

Optimize eCommerce for Mobile

In 2019, mobile phone users utilize their devices in many more ways than just communicating with someone on the other end. Today, individuals often also surf the web and shop on the go using mobile devices. This is why it is vital to have an eCommerce website that is completely mobile-friendly. Optimizing your business website for mobile commerce is an absolute necessity if you want to capture the growing number of individuals who use such devices to shop online. Here are some tips on how you can optimize mobile eCommerce as a way of boosting your sales.

Get Rid of Invasive Ads and Pop-Ups

Websites with frequent pop-ups, opt-ins, and ‘special offers’ are a nuisance for users because they inhibit attention to the core tasks of browsing and shopping. It is also important to note that Google considers invasive on-site ads and pop-ups as part of the causes of poor user experience. The implication, in this case, is that Google will most probably ensure that your eCommerce site is not part of the results that appear after a particular search, making it harder for people to find your site. Eliminating invasive ads and pop-ups from your company’s website optimizes it for mobile devices, which increases the potential of realizing more sales.

Prioritize Fast Site Load Times

The last thing that online shoppers want to encounter whenever they visit your eCommerce website is delays due to site loading times. Buyers who experience the frustration of lengthy load times on your website will move on to competitors. If your site loads various pages fast, it will not only encourage existing and potential customers to stay longer, but it will also increase the probability of realizing conversions.

Some of the approaches you can use to improve the load times for your company website include implementation of AMP protocols, optimization of images, use of a caching plugin, and limiting the amount of content on the pages of your site. Remember that the internet is full of online stores and for that reason, individuals who shop using mobile devices will always have options to choose from if your website is not fast enough.

Avoid Bulky Content

While it may be true that online shoppers want to know just about everything about your products and services before making a purchase, it still doesn’t mean that they want too much information. Bulky content that includes way more information than is necessary makes it difficult for mobile users to make a decision about whether or not to buy your product, a significant setback for your enterprise. Strike a balance between too much information and not enough by providing only the necessary details for online shoppers, as this promotes readability on mobile devices and will eventually improve sales.

Consider Responsiveness and An Attractive Web Design

Investing in mobile eCommerce when your company website is not compatible with mobile devices does not make sense. Compatibility is a necessity if you want your online store to boost your sales. For instance, you may realize that your site looks great on your desktop, but inappropriate for mobile devices for various reasons including difficulties clicking on certain elements, loss of some information, loading challenges, and more. If your website does not meet your expectations and those of your customers when you visit it using your phone, you should consider a redesign to enhance the appeal and responsiveness of that site. Mobile-friendly website designs directly improve user experience, which allow you to extend the reach of your online store.

Redesigning your website to be more mobile-friendly may call for the involvement of an expert, but the investment is worth it because the end result will promote increased sales and profitability. If you need more information on ideas for optimizing mobile commerce to increase sales, contact us today!

5 Key Reasons to Integrate Your ERP With Your B2B eCommerce Platform

by InteractOne News | May 7, 2019 | eCommerce

Regardless of your business’ market niche, software integration is inevitably one of the major drivers of efficiency. This is why for many companies, including those in the eCommerce space, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software suites have quickly become a standard tool for managing a business.

However, many existing ERP solutions function separately from some of the most common eCommerce systems, leaving the purchasing process outside of an otherwise tightly integrated network of software.

This article takes a look at five key reasons why it may be worth the financial investment and IT effort to integrate your ERP with your eCommerce platform—but first, we’ll hit the brakes and get into the basics of ERP for the uninitiated.

What Is ERP?

ERP—a shorthand for Business Process Management Software—is a system of fully integrated software for managing most or all aspects of a business. Rather than having many entirely isolated databases, trackers, and tools, a functional ERP seeks to share data across each aspect of a business in real-time. All aspects of a business can utilize an ERP: sales can access data from project planning, marketing can look at sales results immediately, and development can check on manufacturing to target inefficiencies—all from the same interwoven ERP solution.

While this may sound great, many eCommerce platforms are often built in isolation from this internal system, in part because they are customer facing. From a continuity and simplicity standpoint, this is a major missed opportunity. Let’s take a further look at several major reasons why efficiency for any business doing heavy online sales means integrating ERP with eCommerce platforms:

Organizational Readiness

Rolling your eCommerce platform into the fold of your ERP creates a major opportunity for organizational readiness. With eCommerce data available at a glance for all departments, each sales teams can react to changes in customer behavior—fast.

Why get caught flat-footed? Integration between ERP and eCommerce keeps everyone on the same page, even during periods where market circumstances are changing fast.

Full Access to Important eCommerce Data From Anywhere In the World

B2B eCommerce differs from consumer-facing sales in a major way: it requires hands-on attention between your business and prospective clients. These are inevitably niche products and services, that often require ongoing support. So empowering sales representatives and troubleshooting staff with data at all times and places is an incredible tool to leverage. If a customer has an issue that inevitably ends up interwoven with the eCommerce side, having support staff have the answers to their questions straight from their mobile device even while attending to a customer in person is crucial.

Accounting Stays Consistent

Accounting is rarely a one-size-fits-all process, even while working within the same market niche. Fully integrating ERP with eCommerce simplifies the process and gets it much closer to a level of true standardization. Full integration results in fewer mistakes, faster results, and much less time spent on manual data entry.

Simplified Processes

One of the stranger things about doing business in the digital era is how complex all of these systems often are. Before ERP systems became prominent, employees spent massive amounts of time training on multiple software suites, and yet more time dealing with bugs and mistakes between these isolated systems. Integrating your eCommerce platform with your ERP suite cuts down on yet another source of this type of problem. Your business will spend less time on training and more time focusing on some of the more important tasks at hand.

Making Your IT’s Job Easier

Not only does integrating ERP and eCommerce platforms cut down on the various patchwork solutions IT normally has to come up with to connect databases, but it also centralizes security.

IT no longer has to monitor multiple separate systems, instead having firewalls and other security measures in place across the entire integrated system. Less total working hours are required, and a single security pass gives a boost to every aspect of your business.

These points are just the beginning of how integrating eCommerce platforms with ERP can streamline the hard work that props up a top-tier B2B company. Interested in learning more? Don’t hesitate to contact us at InteractOne today.

Strategies for Product Page Optimization

by InteractOne News | Apr 25, 2019 | Digital Marketing, eCommerce

Optimizing your product pages with well-researched and thoughtful content that speaks to your target customer can have a big impact in terms of visibility and sales. Fortunately, there are a variety of tips and tricks your eCommerce business can employ to make your products stand out in a world of similarity. Begin this process by trying to understand your customer as much as possible, and then try the tips we’ve listed below to effectively optimize product pages.

Do Your Research

Don’t make the mistake of targeting completely generic keywords associated with your products – you’ll be missing out on an abundance of terms that may assist with organic traffic. Instead, research how your customers search for solutions to problems or products that you offer. Start by Googling phrases and don’t hit enter – review what Google suggestions appear in the search box or interview your customer service staff (or customers directly) to better understand their journey in finding your products. Answer the Public is also one of our favorite search insight tools to help generate content ideas for the next steps in optimizing product pages.

Embrace SEO Best Practices

Once you’ve established which phrases customers search for in relation to your products, incorporate them into your product page and surrounding content. Aside from the required product details, all content on the product page, including images and video, should explain how and why that product solves problems and improves the lives of customers. Highlight features and benefits, lifestyle improvements and how-to style content with whatever media your demographic best consumes.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Typically your page title and meta descriptions are the first messages customers see when your product appears directly within a search results page. Understand that often times customers arrive to your products via different avenues, but fine tuning the messages that customers see will help you stand out from the proverbial meta tag templates that have grown in popularity for the sake of automation. If it’s worth putting on your site, it’s worth doing right.

For more SEO tips and tricks, check out 3 Ways Merchants Can Improve SEO.

Rich Snippets

Rich Snippets are typically set up within your template and forgotten about, but recently we’ve seen module updates or lack of attention result in broken snippets. Google is also making use of more markup as the search landscape evolves, especially in the travel and food industry in recent months. We recommend auditing your markup every few months to ensure the basic product schema (SKU, title, price) as well as additional snippets, such as reviews and ratings, are identified properly.

Internal Linking

This is more about providing multiple pathways to your products than optimizing the actual product page, but it’s important to note that the more links you include to specific products across your site increases the importance of said products to both customers and search engines. Don’t go crazy, but link to specific products from relevant content within your blog, cross-link between similar or complementary products, highlight popular or new products from your homepage, categories, or custom landing pages. The key here is relevancy – create journeys to your products from multiple touchpoints in an effort to lead customers to the ultimate answer to their questions or problems.

Supporting Content

In addition to the on-page product descriptions and content, more popular or profitable products are worthy of additional content in the form of blog articles, press releases, case studies, testimonials, influencer reviews, or additional how-to and review videos. This shareable content should all link directly back to the product page and, again, target specific answers to questions or problems that the product helps to solve. This kind of supporting content will educate your audience about your products and brand, as well as provide links back to the product page.

Implementing SEO best practices and making sure you have the SEO basics in place will also help you succeed in other marketing initiatives. If your website is not accessible and your content is not relevant or, if your page doesn’t display well on mobile, you will be penalized. Fortunately, InteractOne is skilled and experienced at SEO implementation for eCommerce. For more details on SEO and how we can help get you going, please contact us today.

Magento 2.3.1: What’s New?

by InteractOne News | Apr 4, 2019 | Adobe/Magento, eCommerce

Like many people in the Magento community, we’ve been waiting for the release of Magento 2.3.1 since its arrival date was teased at the MagentoLive convention in Australia back in February. Now, that wait is up. Magento 2.3.1 was released on March 26 and includes merchant tool enhancements, infrastructure updates, performance boosts and more. This marks the first major incremental update to Magento version 2.3.x.

This release includes over 200 functional fixes to the core product, over 500 pull requests contributed by the community, and over 30 security enhancements, so unfortunately, we can’t discuss them all. We are going to highlight some of the most promising updates that Magento 2.3.1 has to offer, but if you’re searching for more detail or want information on a specific improvement, read the release notes here.

Here’s what’s new:

Page Builder

The new Page Builder functionality within Magento will allow merchants to customize web pages without writing HTML or CSS. Features will include:

Drag and drop content creation
Content block editors
Live previews and updates to your design
Form editors for data collection

See Page Builder User Guide and Page Builder Developer Documentation for more information. This feature is only available on Magento Commerce.

Inventory Management 1.1.0

The Magento Multi-Source Inventory (in short MSI) allows merchants to manage all inventory sources without any third-party extensions or platforms. In this update, multiple new features have been added after multiple requests from the Magento Community Hub. See Inventory Management Release Notes for more information about specific fixes, but see below for a few improvements.

Improved Support for Elasticsearch and Inventory Management. This community-developed feature means that all site searches now return correct products and quantities when Elasticsearch is used as the search engine. As of this release, this will be the default option from Magento 2.3 moving forward.
Distance Priority Source Selection algorithm (SSA) option. When enabling this algorithm, merchants can reduce fulfillment costs by shipping orders from the closest inventory locations. This option utilizes address geocoding through the Google Maps API to assess which delivery route is the shortest. See Manage source selection algorithms for more details.
Enhancements to mass inventory transfers. This process has been optimized to improve speed and reduce locking during transfers.

Merchants Have the Ability to Set Resizing and Compression Requirements

Previously, when merchants uploaded product images larger than 1920 x 1200, Magento automatically compressed and resized the image. With this update, merchants can set requirements for resizing and compression as well as target width and height and compression quality.

Updates to Bundled Extensions

This release of Magento includes extensions developed by third-party vendors like Amazon Pay, dotdigital Engagement Cloud, and Vertex. More specifically,

Amazon Pay:

Added multi-currency support for EU and U.K. merchants. See Use multi-currency for an introduction to using this new feature with Magento 2.x.

Dotdigital Engagement Cloud (formerly dotmailer):

Support for Marketing preferences has been added to the customer account dashboard area.
If enabled, the customer consent text in the customer’s account dashboard area is now displayed as the general subscription text.
The abandoned cart and automation process now benefits from a retry function if contacts are pending in dotdigital Engagement Cloud.

Vertex:

Added support for B2C VAT.
Added support for configurable logging.

Magento Shipping Updates

New features for Magento 2.3.1 include:

Shipment Cancellation: You can now cancel a shipment that has not yet been dispatched by accessing the shipment and clicking Cancel Shipment.
Portal Access via Magento: You can now access the Magento Shipping portal directly from Magento using the Magento Shipping credentials that are stored in your Magento instance.

Don’t Already Have Magento?

Updates like this one prove that Magento is constantly making strides and aiming to be the best platform out there. If you need more information on how it compares with Shopify and BigCommerce, check out this comparison guide. For additional questions or assistance with Magento, please contact us.

Magento for B2B eCommerce

by InteractOne News | Mar 28, 2019 | Adobe/Magento, eCommerce

Fact: 93% of business-to-business buyers prefer to purchase online, with self-serve information, direct from vendors. As trends change and eCommerce continues to grow, B2B customers now desire (better word: demand) a B2C shopping experience. Luckily for merchants, Magento has been hard at work creating the ideal platform for online B2B sales and have made massive updates to the platform in 2017 to stay ahead of coming advancements in the world of eCommerce.

Since its 2017 update, Magento has emerged as a fresh face and ideal candidate for B2B organizations looking to simplify their processes and work more effectively. For those still unsure of what Magento has to offer to B2B companies, we’ve compiled a list of just a few of the great features the platform offers.

The Benefits of Using Magento for B2B eCommerce

Designed to Drive Growth

Magento is chock-full of features that have been designed specifically to elevate B2B sales success. Streamlined workflows are already in place upon installation, meaning that administrators can effectively handle quote requests and pricing negotiation without a hitch. Users also have the option to create custom catalogs and price lists to send to specific clients and companies.

Additionally, you can integrate Magento with any ERP, CRM, or backend using extensive API’s and off-the-shelf extensions, and drive recurring revenue with frictionless ordering and reordering of common purchases.

The Stats

Without any sort of statistical analysis, it’s hard to tell what works and what doesn’t when it comes to B2B eCommerce. Luckily, Magento has publicized some eye-catching numbers that are sure to pique any B2B organization’s interest:

$101 billion in sales in digital commerce in 2016
51 million consumers worldwide who purchased from Magento Merchants
260,000 total merchants (and growing!)
30% faster sales growth for merchants than any other platform

Corporate Account Management

With Magento, B2B companies gain access to a host of self-service account tools and some of those tools are ideal for organizations who sell to corporate accounts with numerous buyers. Magento merchants can submit requests for company accounts, arrange buyers within a hierarchy to match business structure, and designate super-users to manage a company’s account.

Beyond these features, companies have the freedom to map company profiles in order to meet a variety of needs. Whether a business wants to break up clients by teams, regions, or any other method, Magento can support those goals. Companies and buyers all have their own permissions and roles assigned to them in order to ensure that everybody has access to what they need (and nothing more).

Personalized Quoting

Countless B2B companies rely on quoting for a massive portion of their work. Thanks to Magento’s effort to configure their B2B functionality, B2B clients can request quotes from their cart and even from previous orders. Sellers have the option to offer quotes to everyone or set parameters based on things like purchase size, dollar thresholds, etc.

Merchants have the freedom to configure quotes any way they’d like. From expiration dates to comments, names, and adding or deleting products from a quote, Magento allows administrators the time they need to do the work that keeps a business running.

Encourages Speedier Purchases

Magento implements a variety of methods in order to drive clients to check out and make purchases quickly. B2B administrators have the option to enter SKUs that clients are interested in so that Magento can automatically notify customers when that inventory becomes available. Clients are also free to upload CSV files during their buying experience to make completing the order process quick.

Customers Can Pay on Credit

Previously, buyers could only complete transactions with Magento Merchants through PayPal or credit card payments. Following the Magento 2.2 update, though, clients are now free to utilize a payment on credit option if necessary. Merchants, of course, retain the ability to configure the credit options for their store and create purchasing conditions that work for them.

For merchants interested in offering credit payments to their clients, setting limits on who can pay on credit and when is easy. It’s also simple to adjust minimum and maximum order limits and restrictions for certain geographical areas.

If you’re interested in learning more about utilizing Magento for your B2B company, contact us today. We have extensive knowledge in the realm of B2B eCommerce and are eager to speak with you and address your concerns about implementation and growing your business effectively.

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