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The Future of Ecommerce: One Shop, Thousands of Windows
25
Nov
Nov
Ecommerce has reshaped how people shop these past few years. More and more people now search information and buy products or services online.
And this current trend is here to stay. That is why online buyers and sellers have to adapt themselves to become smarter and then benefit of all opportunities offered by ecommerce.
Here are a few brief thoughts about the future of ecommerce.
Ecommerce as Custom-Tailored Experience
I think there is no doubt that successful ecommerce sites will have to create a unique experience for each visitor.
What I mean is that online retailers will have to provide you with a custom-tailored experience that can remember your preferences, estimate your level of interest in a certain item, and make dynamic adjustments to prices and options.
In brief, do everything so you have a great online shopping experience, and therefore transform your visit into a sale.
In my opinion, by implementing powerful online marketing features, combined with attractive design, Ecommerce of the future will look like a static catalog less and less, and feel more and more like a dynamic offline shop.
Adapt to visitor’s environment
Don’t get it wrong, ecommerce websites already adapt their shop to visitors, but I’m sure this will go further.
Today, when you visit multilingual online shops, have you ever asked yourself why your default language (if available) is displayed?
Actually webmasters can set language of their website according to your web browser preferences or your IP location. For instance, if you have your browser in Chinese, ecommerce websites can choose to display their website in Chinese to you.
The same applies for mobile devices. When you visit an online shop from your iPhone or Android, you can be redirected to a mobile version if available.
However, I'm sure online retailers could go even deeper to adapt their shop windows to their visitor’s environment. Many have talked about a convergence of “mobile, local, and social”. I think ecommerce is clearly going this direction too.
1. Mobile
As Internet users access Internet from their mobile devices (phones, tablets) more frequently, mobile commerce (also known as m-commerce) has been booming the last few years.
Even though mobile commerce is still an emerging channel and only accounts for a tiny share of all ecommerce market, I'm convinced it will continue to grow in the next years.
2. Local
Online retailers could go further in terms of local customization. I’m actually thinking of three examples:
- Adapt your shop window according to your visitor's location. If your visitor is located near the seaside, maybe you could show him sunglasses and swimming suits! If he’s near mountains, he could be interested in walking shoes, backpacks, or hiking jackets.
- Adapt your shop window according to weather. Imagine today is really sunny, what about display sunglasses and swimming suits in your main shop window?
- Adapt your shop window according to period. Many offline and online shop already do it. For example, if your target market is located in a country where Christmas is celebrated, show them items related to Christmas.
3. Social
Social will also be the key of ecommerce in the future. Why? Because you are more likely to buy something that your friends recommend you.
Adapt to visitor’s behavior
In addition to adapt your windows to your visitor’s environment, you could also think of adapting your shop to your visitor’s behavior.
Let’s pretend one of your visitors visited cameras in your online shop. Well, maybe when he comes back to your homepage, it could be relevant to show him some cameras.
This technique could be actually similar to retargeting, also known as behavioral retargeting. You could therefore target your consumers based on their previous actions on your website, especially when their actions did not result in a sale.
China is Future of Ecommerce
China will undoubtedly play a major role in the future of ecommerce. China is expected to overtake the US as the world's largest ecommerce market by 2015, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
China's ecommerce market is projected to reach more than 2 trillion RMB (approximately $314 billion) in transaction value by 2015, the number of Chinese ecommerce shoppers growing to 329 million during the same period. See our previous article about China's Ecommerce Market in 2010.
How do you see the future of ecommerce? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
14 Ecommerce Drupal Themes
20
Oct
Oct
Here we come back about web design with more Drupal themes, and this time we focus on ecommerce!
Most of the shopping templates below are compatible with Drupal 6 and a few ones with Drupal 7.
However, all are optimized for Ubercart. Ubercart is a Drupal module that unlocks the power of ecommerce functionalities, from inventory, payment to reporting tools.
Here are 14 Ecommerce Drupal themes ranked by alphabetical order:
Acquia Prosper is a classic free ecommerce Drupal theme created by TopNotchThemes. With a monochromatic look and clean lines, it is designed as an Ubercart e-commerce theme that is easy to customize, but is also extremely flexible for any type of website. Acquia Prosper is compatible with Drupal 6 & 7.
Also designed by TopNotchThemes, Clean Commerce is a premium shopping Drupal theme. With minimalist and monochromatic design, it is an Ubercart-optimized theme. Clean Commerce is currently only available for Drupal 6.
Ecommerce Pro is a professional premium Drupal theme. The theme can be customized. For instance, you can choose 5 theme colors among blue, red, orange, pink, and green, and customize the front page slider, as well as a dropdown product image gallery. Designed by Themesnap, Ecommerce Pro is compatible with Drupal 7.
Designed by DrupalStyle, Frame Ecommerce is a beautiful free Drupal shopping theme with clean and contemporary look. It is optimized for Ubercart and compatible with Drupal 6.
5. Inci
Inci is a premium ecommerce Drupal theme designed by SymphonyThemes. It is compatible with Ubercart and Drupal 6.
6. Luxe
Created by TopNotchThemes, Luxe is an elegant premium shopping Drupal 6 theme.
7. Market Share
Also designed by TopNotchThemes, Market Share is a corporate ecommerce Drupal Theme. Many possibilities to customize this theme compatible with Drupal 6.
Modern Ecommerce is a free shopping theme for Drupal 6 with clean layout and powerful features.
Pump up the Volume is a dark Drupal 6 theme optimized for Ubercart by TopNotchThemes.
10. Seashell
Designed by ThemesShark, Seashell is an original ecommerce Drupal theme compatible with 6.x.
11. Sharp Sales
Sharp Sales is a shopping Drupal theme with a classic look and compatible with Drupal 6.
12. Shoppica
Designed by Themesnap, Shoppica is a beautiful ecommerce Drupal theme compatible with 7.x. It notably features unlimited color combinations.
13. Tech Stop
Tech Stop is a professional shopping Drupal theme by TopNotchThemes compatible with 6.x.
Designed by DrupalStyle, Traffic Ecommerce is a free Drupal theme with a very catchy design.
If you want other Drupal themes, please read our previous blog posts about 25 Free Drupal 7 themes and where to download best Drupal themes.
Alibaba Wants to Acquire Yahoo
11
Oct
Oct
Jack Ma, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, recently confirmed his strong interest in buying US Internet giant Yahoo, during a speech in a conference entitled "China's 2.0: Transforming Media and Commerce" at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The video is really worth watching since Jack Ma also talks about ecommerce, notably about his companies Alibaba and Taobao, and explained how these company have succeeded, the mistakes they have made and the difficulties they now face.
Here is the full video:
Yahoo currently owns 40% of Alibaba while Alibaba owns Yahoo China. Last year, Alibaba acquired an US ecommerce website named Vendio and bought shares in Sogou, a Chinese search engine.
Google Launches Trusted Stores
8
Oct
Oct
Google unveiled a new feature, namely Google Trusted Stores, which will help stores having greater authority online. An ecommerce certified by Google will be therefore considered as a professional service that can be trusted.
Here is the official video on Google Trusted Stores:
How to get Google Trusted Stores badge?
To be accepted as a Google certified trusted store, your ecommerce website has to meet several requirements and performance standards. For instance, you have to be used to shipping products in a reasonable amount of days, resolving issues quickly and having a low percentage of customers reporting issues.
The Google trusted stores badge will display reliability of shipping and customer service as below:
The program is still in a beta phase. However, you can apply to become a Google Trusted Store. Some merchants who have already tested the feature include Overstock, BabyAge and Wayfair.
What benefits for customers?
In addition to enable users to clearly identify ecommerces that can be trusted, Google also offers purchase protection to customers.
Google Trusted Stores purchase protection will consist of helping users who have an issue with their order and cannot resolve it with the merchant. Google will work with them and the retailer so the issue can be resolved.
Implications for SEO
From a SEO perspective, what are the impacts of Google Trusted Stores on rankings?
User experience has always been important to Google which takes it into account as a ranking factor for search (for example site speed). However, with Trusted Stores, Google moves beyond the simple user experience and deep into the more complex concept of customer experience.
Measuring customer experience is far more difficult than measuring user experience since it requires data detained by merchants and customers. However, Google will be able to access data from merchants and customers through Trusted Stores, and can therefore assess the customer experience by benchmarking retailers for example.
I cannot believe that negatives scores, such as late shipping and bad customer service ratings, would not affect search results.
Exclusive : 3 Suisses is Leaving China, One more Foreign Victim
13
Jan
Jan
3 Suisses is leaving China (the online ecommerce I mean) One More victim on the chinese ecommerce market. It seems that foreign companies are cursed in china. You heard about google leaving china, ebay, or facebook, youtube, and twitter being blocked in the country. The list is increasing year after year, and the reasons on how foreign companies fail on the Chinese market are debated on many forums.
3 suisses is not a newbie online, the company is one of the leaders on the French market. 56% of their turnover comes from their online store! Obviously they know how to deal with it… but not in China.
They fired everyone in the company in china in the past weeks and they will close the company in February. They made no public announcement yet but it’s obvious that they will have to since everyone in the company here in china knows about it.
What is really surprising is that they were among the firsts to enter the Chinese internet market, even before many well known Chinese companies. But maybe the competition level is too high, and new comers like vancl.com have just a too massive advertising investment to compete with them (basically, you see vancl everywhere online, on buses, on TV, on Outdoor advertising! and you also see their delivery guys everywhere in the city delivering the orders)
It must be a hard decision to leave such a huge (and growing) market, but maybe it’s part of a more global strategy to focus on their core markets.
Well, on the other hand we also can see that no online Chinese player has made it in the West, it seems that the invisible border between the Chinese internet and the West is still unshakable… until When?
Rakuten and Baidu open online shopping mall
22
Oct
Oct
Japan's top eCommerce site Rakuten and Chinese search engine Baidu have opened an online shopping mall.
The B2B2C (business to business to consumer) platform, named Lekutian, was previously open to vendors for registration. Now, there are currently more than 2,000 registered sellers.
The objective of the site is to become China's top eCommerce platform. Alibaba's marketplace Taobao currently holds 75% of all online transactions operated in China in Q2, according to Beijing-based consulting firm Analysys International.
Products sold on the platform mostly come from Chinese and foreign SMEs. Lekutian will help businesses to market their products.
Rakuten's CEO expects that revenue generated by Lekutian will overtake Rakuten's revenue in Japan. Latest June, Rakuten bought French eCommerce site Priceminister.com for about 200 million euros.
Lekutian must benefit of Priceminister's experience in eCommerce, notably with tools to monitor vendors and detect counterfeit goods.
Taobao to launch a shopping search engine
4
Oct
Oct
China's largest online retailer, Taobao, is about to launch a new shopping search engine, named Etao.
Etao, Taobao's new shopping search engine
Taobao, which is part of Alibaba Group, wants to enhance its position as the leading online retail and auction site in China.
According to Beijing research firm Analysys International, Taobao currently holds a 75% share of the online retail market in China.
Even if Taobao specializes in eCommerce, the company has also been developing its own search engine technology.
Last year, Taobao launched a search engine for products being sold on its website. Moreover, Alibaba also recently acquired shares in Sogou search engine.
Search war between Taobao and Baidu continues
The launching of Etao may be seen as a new episode in the search war between Taobao and Baidu.
Analysts say Etao will bring more users to Taobao and will put the eCommerce site in more direct competition with Baidu.
Indeed, a lot of people use Baidu for shopping searches. In 2008, the search engine giant launched its own eCommerce site called Baidu Youa, which only holds 0.11% of the online retail market.
China's E-commerce Market up by 60% in Q1
23
Aug
Aug
China's eCommerce market has increased by 60% in Q1 compared to the first 6 months of 2009.
China's eCommerce market is soaring
The amount of online transactions, including B2C, B2B and C2C transactions reached 2,250 billion yuan (331 billion dollars) in Q1. In 2009, the trade volume of eCommerce in China surpassed 3.6 trillion yuan (530 billion dollars).
This growth was driven by businesses more and more numerous to open online retail shops.
E-commerce is becoming the backbone of China's Internet industry which is now the world's biggest online market. China's online population also recently hit 420 million, making the country the world's leader in terms of Internet users.
According to the Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology Xi Guohua, more than 142 million Chinese people have shopped online in the past 6 months, it's almost 35% of all China's online population.
But online security issues remain
For most online shoppers, security is the main concern. More than half of Internet users have been attacked by viruses or Trojan horses in Q1.
Challenges and opportunities in the eCommerce market: bwin case
4
Aug
Aug
I attended yesterday a very interesting seminar organized by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China on "challenges and opportunities in the eCommerce market". The speaker was bwin's CTO Dr. Thomas Kiessling.
bwin, now the world's largest online gaming company
bwin is the world's leading publicly-listed online gaming platform after its merger with British gaming firm PartyGaming in July 2010. It's an Austrian based online betting company which offers sports betting, poker, casino games, soft and skill games to more than 20 million users in 25 countries.
Among the 1,600 bwin employees, Dr. Thomas Kiessling manages 750 people in Vienna, Romania, Poland and Stockholm, including 320 developers.
Localization is vital to succeed in eCommerce
When you talk about eCommerce, localization is a key success factor. You have to customize your eCommerce for a particular geographical market (it can be a country or a region) in order to understand your local target customer base.
What is important to realize is that it goes beyond simple translation of products.
bwin's approach relies on 3 points:
- Customize sport offerings for local markets ;
- Local domain names utilized ;
- Local payment methods ordered by consumer preferences.
Due to the differences of the markets and regulation, bwin has also to face many challenges like KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), customer verification, content and payments.
Why localization is important: example of payment methods
bwin offers more than 100 different payment methods. Why that? Because despite the open market, the EU is a good example of a highly heterogeneous environment where many cultural differences still remain among the countries.
Europeans do not have the same trust and usage towards payment methods. bwin has to offer several payment methods for each specific country. For instance, while bank transfers are the preferred payment method in Germany, the French will preferentially pay with credit card.
By the way, Globally credit card usage is on the decline while online banking usage is rising.
Moreover, Dr. Thomas Kiessling says that fraud management is a topical issue for bwin. He claims that fraud makes-up 1% of all eCommerce transactions and car-not-present fraud is on the rise.
bwin in China
As you may know, online sports betting, poker and casino games are forbidden in China. However, bwin decided to open offices in Beijing in 2007 in order to find opportunities and study the Chinese market.
In case of an opening of the market, bwin China wants to be ready. bwin is also assessing the possibility of joint ventures given China's market specificities.
bwin's CSR: responsible gaming
A dedicated Corporate Social Responsibility department of the company guarantees that products are designed in a way that offers maximum social responsibility: protection of minors, protection against manipulation of bets as well as prevention of gaming addiction.
In order to prevent users from gaming addiction, bwin develops software that can detect patterns among possible addicted users. However, due to strong European regulation about privacy, bwin's main challenge is to find a right balance between personal data usage and responsible gaming.
bwin also supports research in this field in a joint project with Harvard Medical School.
China approves online buying of medicine
14
Jul
Jul
China's State Food and Drug Administration has approved a list of 27 websites to sell medicine online to individuals.
The administration has stipulated that the 27 online pharmaceutical dealers could only sell over-the-counter (without prescription) medications to individual consumers, not to other businesses or medical institutions.
Many websites have been already selling drugs online but they weren't complying with any regulation.
According to the provisional regulation regarding the online transaction of medicine, businesses selling medications online have to pass a regulatory review by the administration and receive a license. Their license code has to appear on the front page of their transaction websites. Licenses are valid for five years.
The list of websites approved can be consulted on State Food and Drug Administration's website. Every organization which will obtain a new license will be added to the list.
