In today’s digital era, gaining the top spot has become more like a compulsion for businesses. They believe the harder they work the more success they can get and of course, nothing happens by chance. However, the rivalry between eCommerce platforms may not be as well-known but turns out to be its no less fierce a competition. However, with a plethora of technology advancement sprucing around making it all look like a rat-race but Magento is one such name that keeps on winning all the time. The following post mainly focuses on how B2C eCommerce businesses can sell more and better by using Magento.
Over a couple of years, we all have encountered a continuous rise of paint-by-numbers, out-of-the-box eCommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento, creating a weird impression at heart, much the same. Fortunately, there is a cookie-cutter approach feasible when it comes to a strictly retail B2C offering. But at the same time, when the businesses start falling of its limited sphere, everything seems to falls down. (It feels like Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall!)
Meet the Two Tribes: B2B & B2C
Before we delve into the details of B2C, let’s differentiate between the two main e-commerce tribes. One of the essential yet crucial differences between these two businesses are its customer. Imagine a situation where you as a consumer want to purchase something and where you as a business want to purchase of course keeping all the business needs in mind. It is altogether a different story, isn’t it! Therefore, irrespective of your situation whether you are a consumer or a business person, it is very crucial to understand mindsets and requirements accurately. Here’s a quick rundown for you-
B2C Customers
The selling process here is typically less-labor intensive. Much like B2B customers, they start with pitching in the market very carefully. And this art is done in such a way that they can easily manipulate the buying decision, but as soon as the conversion process begins, businesses are easily able to figure out their needs.
I am sure you will agree with me when I say that we as customers often use our hearts while making a purchase instead of using our heads. In fact, several studies show that their purchases are often one-off, standalone buys to be precise. So, for you as a business do not require to do any aftercare or follow-up; even when we have been taught that customer care can create a significant impact for your brand. Now each B2C customer is more likely to be somewhat similar in its ultimate goals. And that’s the reason why there is no cookie-cutter solution available, the answer is it always depends.
B2B Customers
Unlike B2C customers, for these bunch of professionals, emotions are such an invariable part of their purchase decision. On the contrary, you may find their decision cold, strong, and rational, I mean they are more like carrying a checklist and buying the product that ticks the most checkboxes on their list. It may quite interest you to know that one particular emotion rules their purchases; which is fear! And that’s the reason why they are supposed to make a wise and careful decision. Spur of the moment purchases are simply out of their league.
Choosing an E-Commerce Platform
- Magento open source
- WooCommerce
- OpenCart
- Prestashop
- Shopify
According to this analytics, Magento is considered as one of the most dominant e-commerce platform available across the globe. With 29.1%, there seems to be no turning back for this platform. As you can see, the share of WooCommerce, Shopify and Prestashop are the ones not lagging far behind featuring a significant amount of segments.
According to Data of BuiltWith approx. 13 thousand (red line on the graph) Magento online shops within the Top one million (note: their Top 1 m isn’t Alexa’s), and they measure 235,000 Magento-based online stores on the entire web – May 2017 figures.
Right from America to Indian, Australian, Canadian, Estonian, and Vietnamese, the popularlity of Magento eCommerce stores cannot be ignored at any rate. Most of these stores tend to incorporate clothing products and accessories, instead of electronic devices, toys, servers, footwear. Which means there is no obvious dominant market segment rather a quite a mixed picture seen for the time being.
Reasons to Use Magento for B2C
Personalization – Gone are the days when consumers would make an instant purchase as soon as they see their kind of product. Product itself isn’t enough to tempt a customer to buy from your store these days. Offering a personalized shopping experience is at great paramount. And here Magento plays a very crucial role by collecting and storing ample of purchase information of both current and potential customers. By doing this, you can provide an additional or great value to your end users. Imagine the movement they find the exact product they have been looking for time and again. Amazing, isn’t it! Of course, this is possible all you have to do is allow your store to collect product attribute information. If simply put, any product viewed or liked by the shopper should be brought in front of them again and again so that they can make a hassle-free purchase. Moreover, it is something that makes them feel special that you are important to them. All you require having is:
-
- Customer attributes
- Address information
- Products wish,
- Information related to all the past orders such as shipping
- Address, Sales amount, Number of orders, quantity purchased and so forth.
Great search options
- Likes: As the name suggest itself, Likes enables customers find products similar to the one they have already been viewing or browsed before. For example, if they search for a Maroon skater dress, results will be shown for both the keywords- maroon and skater dress.
- Full text: Here shoppers can easily find products similar, more like an exact match for the search query entered. Pretty precise!
- Combine: Unfortunately, using one of the above-mentioned search seemed way too rigid. Moreover, it also incorporated a risk of losing potential shoppers, especially if the product names are different for you and your customers.
Apart from this, several other features like ‘Quick search’ where the product can be searched easily. All you have to do is enter just a part of the product name or even entering the attribute might work wonders. Many times present in the footer of your website, the search functionality allows the shopper to specify what they are exactly looking for.
- Improved security features– Using Magento for your eCommerce platform provides a storefront featuring amazing security capabilities. For example, enhanced password management. As we all know, instead of using firewalls, most people choose passwords as their basic defense. Magento as a platform offers great amount of security features that cannot be easily beaten. In addition to this, we have a wide range of community featuring skilled Magneto developers who have the potential to actively identify threats way before anything worse can happen.
- Streamlined checkout process– Can you tell me the best way to expand your brand loyalty? Yeah, its when you allow shoppers to do a smooth purchase process. And that’s exactly what Magento as a platform offers your eCommerce business, a streamlined checkout process. Right from guest checkout to a shipping quote, ease of providing an address, mini shopping cart and so forth are certain features which will definitely result in enhancing the checkout experience for shoppers.
- Easy to navigate– Honestly speaking Magento does a great job when it comes to integration and navigation. It is a great communicator, and it integrates like a dream with your ERP, PIM, and CRM. With Magento integration becomes comfortable with a variety of databases that include various third-party tools too.
What’s more to ask for?
‘Tip of the iceberg,’ Magento can do a lot for your business as a platform. Take a whiff!
Shipping solutions for your Magento e-commerce business
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Author Bio:
Vikash Kumar working in an offshore outsourcing company https://www.tatvasoft.com. Apart from his profession he likes share some useful blog post on ecommerce, Web Developments and many more. As a passion, he likes to roam around the world and explore new things. You can follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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