For a startup, the world of online sales, whether products or services, can be daunting at first; the options seem confusing and the information conflicted. Too many people advise too many things, there are thousands of choices to get started with ecommerce, you can choose to build your own website or have your product listed on a market place like Flipkart or Amazon.
However, some big questions remain unanswered, do small retailers really stand a chance online? What about these factors that the big guys dont face but startups do?
Variety of product choices
Logistics and supply chain
Storage and inventory management
Web technologies including server costs, payment options, COD (cash on delivery)
Even if you cross all these hurdles, how do you market your business? Do a prospective customer trust you to open their wallets?
We at GBG Women, Mumbai are here to help you out. We are bringing in experts speakers from the ecommerce domain who will share their entrepreneurial journey on how they got started and how they are profitablysustaining their ecommerce venture.
Whether you are a woman wanting to take the entrepreneur plunge, or a running a business from home (it can be cute candle making or awesome Dhokla recipes), This event is for you! We will be talking about technology and e-commerce in plain simple English so that you can understand, learn and implement.
Date & Time: Saturday, 11th October. 4pm to 6.30pm.
Did you hear about this, 40,000 units of Xiaomi Redmi 1S smartphones sold in 4.5 secs on Flipkart? Ya, we heard that too and wanted to help our community members to figure how to do cool things like that.
So, here’s our next event, it is all about the big booming eCommerce in India. How to get started, how to optimize your existing store, how to create a fulfillment model that’s efficient and then we added even more interest things like, what is Hybrid Commerce, why should you care to know about it? What roles does vernacular language play in eCommerce?
Get to know it all, we have the best in business as our speakers this time. Sign-up soon, limited seats and entry by Invitation Only
Speaker Profile:
Mr. Rajaiv Prakash (IIM-A, former CEO of futurebazaar.com, currently founder and CEO of Next In Advisory Partners where he helps multiple startups leverage the power of eCommerce)
Mr. Harish Singla (ISB Hyderabad, Director and Co-founder of REIT India, An eCommerce Enabler for Selling Online. REIT India builds connect between Brands/Labels and eCommerce Marketplaces with its professional ‘End2End’ services.
Date: 20th September | Venue & Time: Will announce soon.
So you have a great product line and a website that talks about every detail of your products, but wait, how will a customer search for what he/she is looking for? Is your website’s search function technologically sophisticated enough to index all of your site’s content? and then display accurate results within seconds when searched for?
A great website is only as effective as its search function, give your website the power of Google Custom Search & provide high quality search experience for your users.
What is Google Custom Search?
Google Custom Search enables you to create a search engine for your website, your blog, or a collection of websites. You can configure your engine to search both web pages and images. You can fine-tune the ranking, add your own promotions and customize the look and feel of the search results. You can monetize the search by connecting your engine to your Google AdSense account.
With Google’s custom search, you can tailor the search interaction in your project to your users’ needs, using the same search index technology that powers Google.com, with accurate and blazing fast results.
GBG Mumbai brings you an unique opportunity to learn through an interactive and hands-on workshop on how to get the best for your business website with the use of Google Custom Search in combination with Google Webmaster Tools.
Event Date and Time: June 14th, Saturday. 4.00pm to 6.30pm
Entry: Free and by registration only (scroll down to register)
Address: Seminar Hall, Harkisan Mehta Institute of Journalism, Mithibai College, Vile Parle, Mumbai.
Agenda:
3.45pm to 4.10pm: Registration and Introduction
4.15pm to 4.30pm: Welcome & keynote address by Sreeraman (Chapter Manager)
4.30pm to 5.30pm: Google Custom Search Workshop by Pareen Lathia (Entrepreneur at RedCom & The Alumni Portal)
5.30pm to 6.30pm: Google Webmaster Tools demonstration & implementation workshop by Rushabh Vasa (Entrepreneur at Instinct Media)
6.30pm onwards: Group photo session and networking break (hot beverages provided)
Note: The event is a hands-on workshop tailored to benefit entrepreneurs, small business owners, bloggers, SMEs and web developers to understand and implement Google Custom Search and Webmaster tools on their website. No programming skills or knowledge is required. Anyone interested to learn is welcome.
We all know how important smartphones are in our lives, how our lives have become dynamic. Allow me to take you through an extraordinary journey, actually an evolution –At one point of time a mobile phone was for voice calls only, it progressed to games, internet, camera, chat, storage device, social media, and apps by the time we realized it was already a “smartphone”.
How consumers have adapted to this rapidly changing mobile technology? Today’s consumers behave in a different way and consume content on a smartphone.
Gone are the days when they would trust the retailer blindly, today they are more inclined to see the opinion of colleagues, friends or acquaintances before making any major purchase or even a general set of reviews online. How will this govern the purchase or user behaviour in near future?
Isn’t it interesting and simultaneously important for marketers/companies to understand?
A very basic question to you, what would consumer research online about a product or service?
Simple, a consumer will research about the prices, features, other user’s feedback, coupons, and any additional offers or promotions.
Why is it important? What should a marketer do?
How will ROPO (research Online, Purchase offline) help/harm? ROPO will enable creating informed consumer behavior. Internet will be the enabler to research. Get smart about alternatives, read reviews, look for coupons, or compare before deciding a purchase. Today each one of us is carrying an intelligent device with social media apps. Have you ever seen anyone with smartphone in hand and researching about the product in a store? The answer would be “yes” many times, we ourselves do that and so does a smart consumer. Research before purchase is expected to grow exponentially in coming years with increase in number of “smart handsets”.
Role of Smartphones in ROPO effect:
Today the mobile device has evolved many folds and is better in terms of looks, speed, data connectivity, processor and possesses uniquely advanced features which fuels the ROPO.
Smartphones are available in various technology versions from business phone “Blackberry”, to newly jazzed up “Windows 8”, elegant and style icon “iPhone”, not to forget the game changer and exponentially growing “Android” based devices, along with better data connectivity, 3G, introduction of 4G and WiFi, smartphones have brought a mobile revolution. Graph below shows smartphones influence on purchase decisions. (Graph source: ThinkWithGoogle)
Usage of Smartphone in Purchase Journey.
ROPO is also termed as O2S (Online to sales) behavior of consumers. It is evident 4 out of 10 people research offline before purchase. Most of the digital properties help consumers formulate a stand and impact offline purchase.
Search and Social as enablers for ROPO:
Mobile data evolution has become advanced growth of “social media”. Few years back this was considered as tool to promote brands, later on it evolved into reputation management tool. But now, it has formulated a “Customer Voice” on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and various other social platforms. Where customers interact with brands, share their reviews, which are further crawled, indexed, and ranked by various search engines.
Mobile phones have enabled a concept of research on the go. Google conducted a comprehensive study with shopper-sciences using 5000 shoppers across 12 categories called ZMOT “Zero Moment of Truth”. This gives the guidelines on how companies can sway online decision making process of consumer till the very last goal “purchase” through various touch points.
What should a marketer/company do? Marketers need to think locally and plan holistically for all the touch points, right from stimulus (TV/Print ads) to digital (website, mobile site, social platforms, review sites, deal sites, classifieds, blogs, videos etc.), there has to be good marketing mix.
Innovative marketing strategies especially for mobile devices, as mobiles have changed the way people search, behave. Now it’s on to conversions, registration on mobile are hectic, instead they can be replaced with “app like” permissions, resulting in better impact. Placement of QR code at essentials offline touch points will lead the consumer to the information which you want them to read.
It is difficult to track each and every touch point of your present or potential consumers. The basic rule remains the same “Top of Mind Awareness” (TOMA).
Just to sum up the article, increase in penetration of the smartphones across geographies will have dramatic impact on ecommerce and retail business, keeping marketers on the toes as they understand this behavior is poised to increase.
For a startup, the world of online sales, whether products or services, can be daunting at first
