Muddling through an unprecedented time of global disruption has been devastating for businesses, and yours may be in the crosshairs. Although closed physical retailers have increased the volume of ecommerce business, it’s still a crapshoot to take full advantage of this shift. It may be time to expand your horizons, and explore alternate selling platforms beyond the big names of Amazon, eBay, and Google.
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To be clear, any exposure is good exposure, for the most part. Once you capture a loyal customer from a third-party platform, you hold the cards in your hand. 

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• WIXStores is a highly rated venue connected to Wix, an emerging internet superstar known for web hosting and site development. Begin with a customized template offered by Wix, and use their suite of services to set up a friendly interface that will attract customers and lead to profits. WIX has superior customer service functions to help you along the way, even after your site is live.
  
  
• Just starting out, or not realizing the level of success you anticipated? Give SquareUp a shot for its free offerings. Once you build up a clientele, and learn the nuts and bolts of how ecommerce works, you can opt for a more sophisticated platform. But don’t overlook the tempting offerings of Square, with its professional-looking templates with a huge image library, great customization options, and access to payment platforms including Google Pay and Apple Pay. It also offers inventory management, SEO tools, and the all-important SSL security.
  
  
• For a nominal fee, Volusion is also a contender. Build a site with their excellent assistance, and enjoy unlimited bandwidth, a limitless number of products, and several payment options to make your transactions unfold smoothly. Volusion’s attractive, hi-res themes make your store look completely customized and professional, and the extras help with day-to-day business.
  
  
• Squarespace is also an attractive option for setting up an ecommerce store. With advanced ecommerce metrics features and award-winning design offerings, it stands out as one of the best for both beginners and intermediates. SquareSpace ranks extremely high in support, which is critical for those still becoming familiar with the ins and outs of ecommerce.
  
  
• If SEO is a priority, check out BigCommerce. A specialist in data-driven interactivity, this ecommerce platform can help you find customers looking for you, even if they don’t know it. Its best-in-class SEO features deliver on its promises, and surprisingly, its layout and interface are simple. You can have an entire store set up in less than a day. Also, its mobile responsive stores are a big hit for remote customers. Take advantage of its free trial to see if it’s a good fit.
  
  

The key to a productive, successful ecommerce businesses lies in pacing, preparation, and a progression that allows growth in an organic process. Balancing visual imaging with interface, transaction processing, and options for servicing customer inquiries will come in time, after potentially trying out different sites. Be ready with a picture of your goals, your inventory reach, and your realistic expectations of delivering. Your ecommerce business will be better for it.

Almost four months into a global pandemic that has thrown much of the world off its proverbial axis, virtually every facet of our lives is still chaotic, in question, and fraying nerves as we look to an uncertain future. The glass-half-full perspective on how Covid-19 has shifted our focus and tested our grit shows that we are, indeed, resilient. But denying the seismic impact on economies – both micro and macro – comes close to reflecting the horrific loss of life and health seen around the world, is impossible. Our survival depends on a strong economic status.

​In the United States and elsewhere, a true trickle-down model has met our dire expectations: millions of small businesses have closed permanently, thousands of larger retailers are struggling to keep up with inventory demands, and individual consumers are faced with having to make purchases on a limited income, or with sufficient funds and a lack of venues operating in the midst of a viral epidemic.

No matter where your business is on the survival scale, there are ways to navigate through an unforeseen crisis that is benevolent to online sellers. Overall, analysts estimate that online sales have increased by 50 percent compared to this point in 2019. You’re already poised to take advantage of a gaggle of virtual shoppers, but the same obstacles facing brick-and-mortar retailers and large ecommerce sellers have probably upended your operations, as well. Here are some ways to adapt.

If you’ve leveraged the power of social media to drive sales to your ecommerce business, you will be excited to hear this news. Facebook’s unrolling of “Facebook Shops” opens up wide doors of opportunity to go beyond just advertising, and straight into conducting commerce on the premier social media site.

If you haven’t bothered to engage with social media to drum up business for your business, now is a good time to start. Trends indicate the shift in retailing toward online sales is a real deal, made more robust in this unplanned and uncertain time of restricted public movement due to a global pandemic. Analysts predict that once the situation evens out and stores reopen, a significant portion of commerce will continue to occur over the internet. Put simply, the barriers that made many hesitate in the days before Covid-19 are all but shattered.

Enter Facebook, always in search of ways to capitalize on any marketing trend. Their advertising revenues—gained from more than 8 million businesses—have been astronomical, and that in turn has led them to jump in with both feet, offering up a first-line sales platform for ecommerce vendors like you.
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This new, cost-free feature allows businesses to set up product listings on their Facebook page, Instagram profile, and in stories or in ads. Future plans include direct sales through chat features of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram Direct. Facebook owns all of these entities.

Every ecommerce vendor has a fantasy of standing out among the competition. And why not? Name recognition gains new customers and retains current customers, if you play your cards right. The way to rise above the crowd comes down to the ability to provide excellent products and service or services. It also comes down to a concept known by entities for a very long time: branding.

Brand Management involves personalizing your business with an aspect of familiarity that makes you recognizable, attractive, approachable. Marketing experts call it a way to translate emotions into behavior on the part of consumers. To get there, you have to do the heavy lifting first.
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Consider large companies we all know well. Apple Computer. REI. Microsoft. Nike. IBM. Uber. All of these mega-corporations have packaged customized imaging, slogans, philosophies, and outreach through advertising that requires little attention to know whom it’s coming from.
Branding occurs with a consistent presence through all of your correspondence, advertisements, web page design, and everything connected with your business. When you have it down right, your path is practically obstacle-free. When you don’t, you’re left vying with countless others.

Our team here at Cennos is taking a break for Memorial Day. We'll be back next week with new content.

​In the meantime, we thank all who've served and celebrate in gratitude all of those brave souls who've made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of freedom. 

Marketing, marketing, marketing.

If you’re weary of hearing the term, let alone employing it in your ecommerce business, you’re not alone. It feels like a never-ending, energy-sucking pursuit. You know it’s essential, but with the vast expanse and reach of the internet and its mind-numbing competitive obstacles, it ought to be ranked among your highest of priorities.

Developers and app geniuses know this. They’ve responded to the call, rolling out a wide array of tools to assist you along the way.

Unlike advertising, marketing requires an ability to gauge your most promising audience. Real-time features of online tracking, analytics, and other tailored options that help avoid wasting too much time, are in reach. One relative newcomer is Traffic Jet, a release by SEMrush, a digital marketing firm devoted to streamlining successful marketing campaigns.

A recent study shows that more than half of all marketers indicate machine learning is speeding up their day-to-day work a bit, while just under one-third said it does so a lot. Traffic Jet, with its Artificial Intelligence (AI) process, is likely to make those numbers grow among fledgling, growing businesses.
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Traffic Jet allows full automation of your traffic acquisition, or new traffic flow, offering easy access to quick numbers. Those are all words you like to hear, so read on.

Seasoned ecommerce merchants likely have studied up on the various legal aspects and regulations related to the collection of consumer information, financial and otherwise. There are laws in place, both in the United States Code and in individual state statutes, with rather harsh consequences for violators.

Others of you who are small-time sellers might have given a thought to this issue, but not taken the time or effort to determine whether you are in compliance. That’s a big mistake.

Data protection is shaping up to be one of the most pressing factors of online activity in the 21st Century. Even with the advanced efforts from private entities developing new technologies as quickly as they can, it all goes awry when cracks form and bad actors create new and different reasons for these same virtual guardians to patch a new hole.

Online merchants face complicated, unusual challenges due to the lack of visibility and control over external services administering their websites, including the type and volume of data that is being collected. Even if you believe you have an agreement with a third-party, that doesn’t mean it isn’t farming out some of its duties to a fourth party with no such contractual relationship.

Ask any executive or analyst in a given sector of commerce, and you’ll hear the same answer with respect to fraud. It’s one of the most nefarious and damaging elements poised to put a dent in both revenues, trust, and even security.

With ecommerce merchants, fraud has found a ripe target given its virtual presence requiring online payments and strictly virtual interactions with customers. Fraudulent activity—both attempted and failed, and successful—has skyrocket in the last few years, hitting large ecommerce retailers the hardest, with a $10 million annual revenue loss. Mid-size merchants averaged 249 fraud attempts per month in 2018, and are on track to far exceed that as the platform grows and bad actors proliferate.
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What can you do? No matter how grand or minimal your business is, you can track both payment and channel fraud. Fraud detection solutions are available for both no-cost and minimal-cost investments. Entities that specialize in online commerce fraud can assess your  unique risks and advise you on how to minimize them.

If it seems as if the entire world has changed, it has. We know this. Nary a region, city, continent on Planet Earth has escaped the ravaging effects of Covid-19, now a global pandemic that has severely shifted commerce, labor, and everyday living in a social distancing environment.

As commerce is the backbone of all free societies, this is a startling fact. Here’s a jaw-dropping statistic: Global Web Index found that 80 percent of consumers in the US and UK have increased their online purchasing in the wake of this pandemic. A sudden emphasis toward ecommerce is opening up markets that in the past were strictly in-person, and padding revenues for existing online sellers. It’s critical to closely examine your business model to make the best of a dire situation. With the right information, tools, attitude, and devotion, you may get through this unprecedented time.

The most essential factor here is understanding consumer behaviors in the wake of closed storefronts and empty grocery shelves. How are average citizens choosing to replenish basic supplies? How are they spending mostly limited dollars on “luxury” goods, which were not so luxurious just three months ago?
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Commerce crashes are hitting virtually every sector of the economy and society. From entertainment to education, new purchases have all but disappeared. And in the runup to a real recession, many consumers are finding themselves out of work and unable to meet their current financial obligations for basics like utility bills, rent, and credit card payments.
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But not all. Some are positioned to ride out this storm with a modicum of buying power. Can you take advantage of that? Take a look at some digital marketing trends that are helping businesses stay afloat, taking advantage of the nearly captive audience of consumers stuck at home with only the internet as a source of information. It’s also their source of purchasing.