Optimize Your Online Product Display to Make Buying Decisions Easier
For every product you sell, be sure to have a good description and at least one picture of it on your website.
Online shoppers don’t get the same visual stimulation that shoppers get while they’re in a store, so you have to provide it with pictures (or video) and useful information about your product.
Pictures let shoppers see what you’re offering and they can be used (with or without video) to demonstrate your products. Even better than just a picture would be pictures of your products actually being used, providing shoppers with ideas and even more visual interest.
Picture your shoppers– or even yourself shopping – in person. If you were passing the item in your physical store, would you pick it up and look closer at something? If a shopper may want to look closer at a specific feature of the product, be sure to anticipate that with an easy-to-see closeup of that feature. Equally as important is a good description of the item with relevant and useful details. Would you need to read the box for color, features, or measurements?
Let shoppers see your products, learn about them, and (virtually speaking) touch them. Offer a complete shopping experience so shoppers can make an informed purchase decision while they’re in your web store and not someone else’s.
Do You Enjoy a Process of Continuous Improvement?
It’s beneficial for any long-time software users to evaluate how they’re using their software, to determine whether improvements can be made in their processes. For example, the InOrder Enterprise System is constantly evolving and improving. New versions are created and tested on a weekly basis.
Is your staff doing manual tasks that can be automated? Can your system automate tasks such as these?
- Sending gift card numbers.
- Processing deposit batches.
- Avoiding backorder of multiple retail orders as a result of stock rundown by high volume customers.
- Providing shipping and delivery estimates.
- Sending back-in-stock notifications to increase sales.
- Recovering abandoned carts to increase your revenue.
- Prompting customers to visit your website using your packing slips, receipts, Email confirmations, “we-re sorry” and other order follow-up Email series.
Are you getting the most out of your web cart? How fast can customers find your products? The InOrder eCommerce Module has grown by leaps and bounds in just the past year, adding to our commitment to help you improve the shopping experience you deliver, while lowering costs and increasing sales. For example:
- Top of the line search capabilities, like Solr Search and Facet Filtering, to get your products in front of shoppers fast
- Multiple carousels of related products for up-selling and cross-selling opportunities
Can your customers do this using your web cart?
- Quickly find what they want.
- Track shipments; get up-to-date order and backorder status.
- View loyalty point balances and earnings, and redeem them online.
- Check gift card balances online.
- Manage their orders and their subscriptions, including vacation holds and renewals.
- Manage their own email list memberships, including email frequencies by type of Email.
- Download and manage their digital purchases.
- Post and share product reviews, customer service Q&A, surveys, and expert forums related to specific products or general product groups.
- Share your products on social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
- Repeat previous orders and gift orders, and use a true address book to create their own new gift orders.
Do your customer service reps have the tools they need to provide your customers first-rate service and improve your bottom line? Can your reps do this:
- Call customers; enter orders, returns, and quote prices; view customers’ website visits, product reviews and other feedback; check points, subscriptions, and history; send letters and more – all from one place.
- See what your shoppers looked at, to provide a more personalized shopping and service experience.
- Offer multiple up, down, circular, diagonal, and cross-selling opportunities over the phone.
Can you use other business tools, like these?
- Use the latest technology to track activity resulting from your Emails to customers, and have the capability to improve Email deliverability.
- Check inventory or reserve stock from your phone or tablet.
- Refund gift cards.
- Keep your customers coming back with loyalty award programs.
Even more questions – Are you maximizing your SQL Server uptime? Are you thinking about moving to a cloud environment?
Yes, this is a huge list! InOrder is packed with big functions, and each version adds more, to help you improve your bottom line.
Even if you have these features, are you using them to your fullest advantage? Equally as important as having the best technology is knowing what it can do for your business, and using it to continuously improve your workflows. Have your employees reverted to old processes? Adequate training means the knowledge and support of InOrder is in the hands of qualified users.
If it’s been awhile since you’ve upgraded, give us a call and request our documents that provide details about what’s new with InOrder – and be sure you’re getting your copy of InOvation, which is our monthly update just for clients to outline new and useful features. Morse Data is committed to Change Management and Continuous Process Improvement. It can be overwhelming to figure out a change strategy, and we can help.
USA Fulfillment Selects InOrder
USA Fulfillment is updating its legacy system with InOrder ERP software to support its order management and warehouse management activities.
The selection process, which took over a year, included interviews and demos of 8 ERP systems. InOrder was selected for its superior order management, warehouse management, RF, lot control, and replenishment capabilities. In addition, InOrder meets USA Fulfillment’s requirements for PA-DSS (Payment Application Data Security Standard) compliant software.
With the InOrder ERP eCommerce Order and Inventory Management software, USA Fulfillment will have real-time access to availability of stock and ship dates, and call center reps will have access to the same real-time inventory information.
In business since 1983, and based in Chestertown, MD, USA Fulfillment provides eCommerce services, warehousing, shipping, order filling, and 24/7 call center for eCommerce businesses. For more information, visit http://www.usafill.com.
How Fast Can Customers Find Your Products?
When shoppers search for a specific product on your website, how quickly can they find it? If shoppers search for something specific, it means they know what they want, and they want to find it immediately. Shoppers spend just seconds deciding whether to make a purchase. If they cannot quickly zero in on what they are looking for on your website, you may as well not sell it.
Online shoppers often have a good idea what they’re looking for when they get started. You accommodate this by organizing your website to help shoppers find products easier and faster. But how can you get your products in front of shoppers fast enough?
Setting up your products to match how shoppers are searching for them and using top of the line search capabilities, such as Solr Search and Facet Filtering, will improve the speed of finding products in search results.
Check your search analytics (InOrder reports, Google Analytics, etc.) to see how users are searching your products. What do your shoppers search for and what are the results? Determine which attributes are searched most often, commonly misspelled terms, and how results are being filtered. If necessary, use InOrder’s superb flexibility for any modifications by setting up products to match how users are searching for them.
When setting up filters, place more important filters on top. Facet Filtering help customers fine tune their search results. It enables shoppers to make additional selections within search results based on their individual interests, eliminating the need to sift through too many results. This feature is most beneficial when there are thousands of items in inventory. Shoppers expect this capability, and it provides a lot of power for minimal set up.
Shoppers will find what they are looking for. Why not make sure they find it on your web store?
Opportunities for B2B Companies Using eCommerce
Do you know who all your customers are? If you said yes and you don’t have an eCommerce store, then how do you know you’re not missing out on opportunities to grow your business? How do you really know you’re reaching everyone you can? In addition to their traditional customer bases, B2B companies with eCommerce stores can attract new customers in surprising ways.
Anyone browsing the internet could find your eCommerce store. If, for example, he or she happens to work for a small company that can use your services or products, you’ve reached a potential customer! And, in many cases, consumers are also creating an entirely new market for B2B companies.
An article by Paul Demery, “B2B Leaps Onto the Web” in the November 2013 issue of the Internet Retailer magazine, discusses new skills and technologies B2B companies are using for these new opportunities. From managing inventory and pricing, to redesigning eCommerce stores to accommodating additional customer types, to connecting with the new customer markets, B2B companies are taking advantage of these opportunities to grow their businesses.
Some statistics cited in the article from B2B respondents of surveys:
- 44% said average order values are higher through their eCommerce sites than orders placed by phone, fax, or in person. 11% said their average order values decreased.
- 24% said they remain the same, and 20% said they don’t know.
- 52% said their customer support costs decreased for customers who place orders through eCommerce sites.
- 56% said they profit only if customers use the eCommerce sites without their assistance.
- 44% said they expect to improve their order sizes through eCommerce, and 43% expect eCommerce to result in more returning customers.
As the article shows, managing and keeping product information accurate and consistent for multiple customer bases, such as other businesses and direct consumers, possibly in multiple countries, is a big challenge.
If you are a B2B company considering an eCommerce store, you could be taking the first step in attracting new business. A system with a central database is crucial. When thinking about your ERP system, keep these capabilities in mind:
- Recommend related products for more selling opportunities.
- Make sure customers can search for products and get results quickly.
- Help your customers help themselves. Let them maintain their own account information, and let them tell you how often they want to hear from you.
- Provide pictures of your products where possible.
- If items are backordered, tell your customers when to expect them.
- Offer personalization.
- Automatically send reminders when items are left in carts but not purchased.
- Establish B2B accounts separate from consumer accounts.
- Keep your pricing structure appropriate for the customer type. For example, don’t sell an item to a consumer for less than what you charge your wholesale customers. Make sure your system accommodates multiple customer types.
- Personalize your website for each type of customer, presenting information appropriately about your items.
- Use a single database system with integrated inventory and order management and real-time inventory data.
- Keep your system flexible and configurable by appropriate management.
- Provide your customer service reps with the information they need to engage with all your customers.
- Make reordering easy.
- Make sure you keep enough inventory for consumers when offering the same items to your wholesale customers.
- Use reports to monitor your performance.
What are other capabilities needed for B2B companies serving multiple customer bases? What challenges have you met? What opportunities?
Have You Tried the New Stock Reserve Feature?
Our new stock reserve feature avoids backorder of multiple retail orders resulting from stock rundown by high volume customers.
This feature reserves a specified quantity of stock for particular customer types, making it unavailable to other customer types. It may be used for dimensioned and non-dimensioned items, orders placed on the web, and through Customer Service.
For example, a single wholesale or consignment customer could easily deplete stock levels, meaning multiple retail orders go on backorder. This new functionality allows a specified quantity of stock to always be reserved for retail customers. Any line items ordered by retail customers are allocated, but orders for other customer types without this setting can only allocate from stock levels above the reserve thresholds. This also supports reserving stock from consignment transfers.
InOrder Royalty Module Enhanced for Entertainment Industries
The InOrder Royalty Module Supports royalty payments for music, book, and video industries, and works online with Digital Delivery. The enhanced module provides the following features:
- Supports royalty contracts that pay authors based on shares, as well as percentages, enabling far more organized and more accurate royalty earnings calculations.
- Tracks the role of various authors, illustrators, and other contributors that are linked to a royalty contract
- Supports paying royalties based on mechanical rate
- Full support to pay royalties based on dollars, percentages, or sliding scales
- Clause groups, and power selection filters, for extremely complex royalty clause calculations
- Includes a full royalty payables accounting system to track advanced, minimum thresholds, payment schedules, and other royalty earnings
Hope Publishing Company, a family-owned Christian music publisher, which provides music resources to the church, uses the InOrder Royalty Module. “We love the InOrder Royalty Module. It was a huge improvement over our last system. It is simple to use, handles all our requirements, and our writers are thrilled with the reporting side,” says Scott Shorney of Hope Publishing company. Visit http://www.hopepublishing.com for more information.
This capability, along with the InOrder Digital Delivery module, makes the InOrder ERP system an attractive solution for businesses that sell music, videos, or other digital online files.
Track More Email Campaigns and Show Customer Service Reps More Detail
Tracking Email has always been a part of the InOrder Email Marketing Enhancement. Now it’s also part of Digital Delivery and Email Communications. In addition to Email Blasts, users of these Enhancements can also track activity resulting from sending Emails to customers for various order and promotional messages.
The functionality uses keycodes, tracking pixels, and URL references to record when a message is sent, the type of message sent, when the message is opened (open rates), and the number of visits to the web site resulting from the message (click-through rate) to measure conversions. This data can also be used to monitor when Email is not being opened, or when it results in a new recipient from a forwarded message. This is helpful for keeping mailing lists current, which is important for maintaining sender reputation. Used with InOrder’s capacity to enable shoppers to choose which Email they receive, this function can help increase the effectiveness of selected messages.
When a message has been sent, it is logged on the customer’s timeline, providing customer service reps more opportunity to enhance the service experience when a customer calls.
For more information about how this feature can help you measure your Email ROI, contact us at 888-667-7332 or sales@morsedata.com.
ProLiteracy Relies on InOrder
Steph Hughes, one of Morse Data’s Implementation Specialists, recently had the pleasure of visiting ProLiteracy to assist with InOrder upgrades and training.
ProLiteracy was the first client to go live with InOrder in 1998. They rely on InOrder for memberships, inventory control, customer service, and web orders. The addition of InOrder’s Digital Delivery module will enable them to provide additional items via digital distribution.
ProLiteracy, located in Syracuse, New York, is helping to improve the world by providing programs that enable adults to learn how to read, write, do basic math, and use computers. Attributing crime, unemployment, and poverty to low literacy, ProLiteracy believes that adults can empower themselves to transform their lives by learning to read and write.
And they back up this belief with services to make this a reality. These include support and training for teaching adult learners, linking adults to literacy programs, providing an advocacy network for adult education programs, and conferences to address important issues facing adult literacy programs.
ProLiteracy also created the Ruth J. Colvin Center for Innovation and Excellence in Adult Literacy, which provides adult literacy resources to their community, as well as the National Book Fund (NBF) to provide books for students who can’t afford them. Additionally, ProLiteracy’s publishing division, New Readers Press (which also relies on InOrder for their weekly subscription fulfillment) provides instructional tools to teach essential skills to adults and older teens.
You can read more about ProLiteracy’s fight for a more literate society, including membership and donation opportunities, on their website.
InOrder’s Web Cart Delivers Fast and Accurate Search Results with Solr Search and Facet Filtering
We’ve done it again. Just when you think it doesn’t get much better – we make it better. Our Web Cart, that is. Now InOrder Web Cart users can give their customers top-of-the-line search capabilities with Solr Search and Facet Filtering.
Solr is a search platform from the Apache LuceneTM project. Its many advanced search capabilities include distinguishing between plural and singular search, recognizing common typos and finding results. And it can be used with Facet Filtering.
Facet Filtering is a powerful capability that helps customers fine tune their search results. It enables shoppers to make additional selections within search results based on their individual interests, eliminating the need to sift through many search results. Setup is minimal, and shoppers expect it.
These features provide shoppers with faster and more accurate search results, adding to our commitment to help our customers improve the shopping experience they deliver, while lowering costs and increasing sales.