5 Considerations while Making your Business Mobile

Extending from eCommerce to an m-Commerce platform is an effortless way that can give you an edge over the rest of the pack. Mobile is not just about what you do with your phones, it's about doing more and getting innovative with it every single day. This is one of the effortless ways to engage the wider range of customers. In fact, bringing the operations to the mobile platform is likely to pay off in the near future not just to the larger companies, but to the smaller enterprises as well. As the mobile industry is expected to expand, even more, a positive mobile experience for your customers is an imperative part of your success. 

Whether you already delved into the mobile platform or you are working towards getting into, here are 5 things to keep in mind. Check them out.

　　

Find your customers

　　

Finding the right customer database is the key to running a successful business. Check and monitor the traffic of the site for the mobile visitors. Keep an eye on the segment and analyze their buying behavior. Having an effective database of the prospective before you hit the mCommerce marketplace is advisable. While making a desktop purchase, the shoppers subscribe to the email list. You can pitch them the idea of downloading your app frequently. The customers who don't immediately unsubscribe from the email list are likely to become your prospective customer. Direct the mobile strategy, i.e., SMS alters to the customer who has been in touch with you for long. Analyze the growth and the changes in the mobile platform of your business segment in the last few year. At the same time, consider the expected market condition in the near future. 

Build a user friendly app

The eCommerce site should be optimized in such a way that whether it is opened on the desktop, smart phone, iPad or any other tablet, the site should look virtually the same. However, just having a website is not enough. Building your mobile application can be an ideal way to create ongoing relationships with the customers. Use an effective Android mobile app builder. The app should eliminate the various common hurdles that occur while shopping online and provide a brilliant first-hand experience to the shoppers. According to Amazon, every 100 milliseconds in loading time reduces the sale by 1%. The experience of the shopper should not be hindered by the complicated and time-consuming payment process. Knowband offers seamless Android app builder for PrestaShop, Magento and OpenCart store. These mobile apps provide free demo as well and let you get customized mobile app as per your business requirements and needs. 

Effective security

As the shopping experience is becoming handy, the risk of security breach is becoming more prominent. The app should have additional security feature in order to protect customer information. In order to reduce the potential threats, businesses must add SSL certificates to their stores as well as mobile apps. Make sure that you check the security features during the development. Not just in the beginning, you need to conduct regular security checks from time to time.

Original content

　　

Image Source: blog.lemonstand.com

Every online business whether big or small needs an effective content marketing strategy. As per a report, the average conversion rate of sites with content marketing is 2.9%, compared to the conversions of the sites without a content strategy is 0.5%. The consumers tend to view the contents related to the product before placing the order. Here are the few aspects that need to be kept in mind in this regards.

• The contents of your store should include some research work. Analyze the search behavior of the customers. Make a list of the types of information that ideally a customer needs. 
• The blog post, product description, and other such information should be aimed at fulfilling the need of the customers. The blog that includes the terms usually used by the consumers may bring new, targeted traffic to your website.
• Reviews from other customers is another important aspect. According to an article published in Forbes, 88% of the online shoppers never buy a product without checking the reviews. 
• Above all, the images of the product have the potential to increase the conversions. So, the product images should be of good quality.

Adopt omni-channel marketing strategy

The omni-channel marketing allows the customer to have a seamless shopping experience, regardless of the channel or device. Promote your business to the target market through a variety of channels. This will provide you a greater reach and optimize your conversion rate. The customers should be able to engage with your store, either through the app or social media or the catalog. The products and services should be accessible on the handset or desktop. The entire experience of the customer should be seamless and consistent across all the channels.

Final say

With over 50% of Google searches being performed on mobile devices, making your eCommerce business mobile is inevitable for being successful in the long run. As you get into the mobile business, make sure that you keep these factors in the mind.  You will be on track to end up with a user-friendly mobile store.

Mobile apps can be a wise choice while going for m-Commerce with your business. You can leverage our Android mobile app builders to get an affordable mobile app for your eCommerce store. 

5 Reliable Ways To Boost Your Social Media Engagement

Achieving customer engagement is one of the key aspects to boost the conversions. This engagement is not just essential on the website. In the world where the social media presence is the deciding factor, staying in close knit with the customers at the various social media platforms is the key.

Are struggling in achieving this milestone for your eCommerce store? Then, you are at the right place. For all the online marketers, the write-up has compiled some of the key points that may help you enhance your visibility on the social media. Check them out.

Understand the audience behavior

Finding your niche market is the key component of creating a successful engagement. While the hitting the right target audience can help you customize the campaign, getting an insight of the user behavior will help you strike the pain areas. Use the social analytical tool to understand what they are looking for and what are the things that intrigue their interest. This will help you refine and customize your messages as well as posts. Choose the right channel for promoting your products. The choice of the social media platform should depend on the user behavior. For instance, Facebook and Instagram are perfect for fashion stores while the sites offering educational stuff should target LinkedIn, Twitter.

Select the right time for the post

A study reveals that a Facebook post goes ‘stale’ after about 1 hour and 20 minutes. While on Twitter, 95% of re-tweets happen in an hour. So, no matter how strong your content, you need to find the right time in order to get maximum hits. Compare the activity of the audience on different days and different hour of the day. Post the most engaging contents when the users are most active on the Internet. Here are some of the suggestions for posting on the various social media platforms.

• Twitter – Post at least 14 times per day. The best timing for the post starts from midnight to 10:00 p.m. Never post more than once per hour.
• Facebook – 2 posts per day, seven days a week, 10:08 a.m. and 3:04 p.m.
• LinkedIn – 1 post per day is enough, and the ideal time is 8:14 a.m. No post is recommended on weekends

Provide Social Login options

Studies have shown that 77% of users believe that social login is a good registration solution. These figures explains the importance of social login option in your eCommerce store. The login and checkout option reduces the risk of the abandoned cart and reduces bounce as well as exit rates. Moreover, it even provides you with the social media details of the users. This can be further used for follow-ups and reminders ads. These follow up notifications have been observed to have been to have more conversion. At the same time, it is less annoying for the customers than the email and SMS prompts. The Prestashop Social Login plugin is one such option that can provide your visitors to browse through their social media account without going through the lengthy registration process.

Response quickly

Just engaging the customers by attracting their likes and comment s are not enough. The customers are more likely to use these platforms to file their complaints and dissatisfactions.  Be active enough to resolve the queries and take the negative feedbacks of the consumers further. Any complaint will attract double the attention than the positive ratings. While the social media platforms offer a convenient means to stay in touch with your prospective customers, it may turn hazardous if not handled properly. You need to stay on your toes while sending your responses. Auto-responders may add to the negative image. At the same time, make sure that you appreciate the positive response of the users as well.

Engage with the audience on a personal level

When every eCommerce business unit is adopting the same strategy, you need to find out a way to stand out from the crowd. Creating a personal connection with the customers is the way. Many eCommerce giants send birthday wishes along with their product promotion mails. The personalized messages will help create an emotional bond with the consumers. However, make sure that you intervene in the personal space of the customers. 

Conclusion

Most of the eCommerce store users are still on the fence about introducing the social login option on their store. While other who have installed this option have failed to make use of the same for boosting the social engagement. The Knowband store offers a simplified option to add this functionality on the various eCommerce platforms such as Prestashop, Magento or OpenCart. The social login plugins facilitate the registration process and help the store owners tap useful information. Find your solution and take your business to the next level.

5 Time-tested Add-ons that can Tackle your Abandoned Carts

Shopping cart abandonment is a prominent and likely inevitable problem in the eCommerce scenario. Ignore the situation is like running the risk of missing out on a potential honeypot of new and repeat customers. The curse of abandoned cart depends on how you handle it. You can either ignore it or you can find out ways to handle it. This blog has specifically compiled some of the addon and plugins that can come handy for the Prestashop store owners. The users that didn’t reach the payment is actually an opportunity for the future. The Prestashop abandoned cart module can utilize the unconverted accounts for future sales by following up with the users through email pitches and other such tactics. By sending reminder emails, you will be able to follow-up with those prospects who failed to complete the purchase and left their cart abandoned.

At the same time, the below-listed addons can reduce the possibility of abandonment. Arm up your store with these plugins and take your business to the next level.

Social login addon

Not having the option of guest login is one of the main reasons for the abandoned cart. While you can always give the option of guest login to your visitors, providing them the option of social logins is another way to convert these random visitors into the lead. The Prestashop Social login plugin is one such addon that provides a one-click check in for the users. 

Here are some of the features offered by the plugin.

• Allows the customers to sign-up directly using their social accounts. The Quick login makes shopping easier by reduces unwanted check in process. 
• It is mobile, tablet and desktop Responsive. It is quite easy to install this plugin on your Prestashop store. 
• The admin can enable/disable social accounts from the back end of the web store. 
• It helps track the most popular social accounts used by customers based on the reports generated. 
• Thus, enables follow-ups and future conversions.
• The extension can be used on any eCommerce store and is compatible with multiple themes 

One page checkout

The lengthy checkout process and long forms are one of the turns offs for the online shoppers. Keep the entire checkout process as simple as possible. The Prestashop one-page checkout module is one of the ways to keep the checkout process hassle-free. Minimizing your checkout flow. it makes sure that the visitor is not annoyed just before making the payment.

The module can optimize the conversions by offering following benefits to the users.

• It not just makes the checkout process fast, but secure as well.
• It has an in-built Facebook/Google+ Login.
• It enables product image preview even in cart section
• Offers option to add coupon code at the checkout page along with the convenience of changing the product quantity in the cart
• Allows the user to remove any product from the cart
• The plugin is mobile and tabs responsive and compatible with all browsers

Return manager

Nothing can stop the customer from placing the order more than the lack of return and refund guarantee. And in order to ensure the customers, you need to be sure of handling the return request efficiently. The Prestashop return manager takes this pressure off your shoulder. It adds the functionality of managing the return requests for any order placed by registered or Guest user on a PrestaShop store.

The features offered by the plugin to the users are as follows.

• It provides 3 options namely Get Credit, Replace or Refund to customers 
• Creating an interface in between the customer and the admin, it allows fast processing of the return requests.
• The customers can even return the partial quantity of purchased products.
• The mobile responsive addon allows the shopper to view his return status and history in his account.

Payment options

The prices of the product and the shipping charges are considered to be the main reason for abandoned carts. As the end-users can always compare the prices of the product with competitor site. However, this is not the only reason. Not providing enough payment option to the shoppers can cost you some conversions. Prestashop Paypal Direct Payment is one way to allows the admin to get the payment into his Paypal account directly even from the customers who don't have a Paypal account. Thus, the customers can make the payment using their credit or debit cards.

Listed below are some of the benefits of using this extension.

• The module does not redirect the users to PayPal page for making the payments.
• Customers will make the payments right from the website interface itself.
• The module supports 24 currencies from around 190 countries

One click checkout

The unwanted hassles and too many procedures to be followed before landing on the payment gateway is hazardous for an eCommerce store. Imagine a person already has a few products added in the cart, but he has no intentions of buying them as yet. Now if he wants to buy one product, he'll have to remove all the products from the cart, in order to make the payment for one. He would rather switch to another site than getting all these edition and deletion. The one click checkout module allows your customers to do a quick checkout with a single product without modifying their existing cart. Thus, he can make the transaction of a single product without removing the products from the cart.

Features offered by the addon is as follows:

• Can be Customize as per your need. 
• The 'Buy Now' button can be easily customized to match the theme.
• Holds the current cart and checks out the current product only.
• It can be translated in 17 different languages.

Over to you

Despite the fact that 67.45% of the customers are not completing their purchases online is scary for some eCommerce store owners, it opens up a huge opportunity for them. Identify the vital reasons of conversion killers that affect a user’s shopping behavior and capture his interests with innovative improvision. 

Simple Approach To Protect Your Customer Data From Hackers

Have you ever been hacked? If No, that’s great.

Have you ever been on an attack but saved the data breach? If yes, congrats because you are serious about keeping your customer data damn safe. 

In today's scenario, it should not come as surprise if someone attempts a breaching into your customers' data. It has become pretty general nowadays considering that more than 9 billion customers data record have already been stolen by the hackers since 2013. 

So, if you have ever been hacked or there has been a breach of your customer data, it's because you have not applied correct security measures to safeguard your customer data.

How would you safeguard yourselves?

Hackers with higher ambition would try to breach into the big names but the smart ones will mark the medium and small enterprises into their list. The small and medium enterprises generally leave a loophole in an attempt to save some cost, and that’s where the black hats get a chance to peek into the customer data.

If you want to secure your website and customers data from breaches, you can take a few simple steps like these to immune your site.

1. Use a secure social login plugin

Depending on your CMS, or eCommerce platform search, analyze, test, and implement a secure social login plugin for customer logins. Social login allows the customers and users to sign-up or login to your website using their social media account credentials.

The traditional account registration through emails addresses is not much liked by the users. Moreover, the email based registrations leave the customer data vulnerable to breaches and attacks since you are storing the account authentication information on your server. 

By using social login you can easily eliminate this vulnerability as with this, customers don't need a dedicated email address and password to log in. They simply use their Facebook, Google, Twitter, or Instagram account to login. 

The authentication data is just verified by your website, you don’t really store them on your server. That part is still safe on the social network account of the user. So, when you don’t even store the customer authentication data with you, how can someone steal it from you? Not possible. That’s why implementing a social login on your website is damn crucial.

Knowband offers the social login modules and plugins for Magento, PrestaShop, and OpenCart. It's a secure module that offers more than 14 social login options like Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, Yahoo, and much more. 

• Social login for Magento
• Social login for PrestaShop
• Social login for OpenCart

2. Host on cloud 

Some of you might disagree with this point, as the cloud might not be able to serve best for the bigger enterprises. However, it is still the best way for small and medium sized businesses to host on the cloud. Microsoft Azure and AWS can be a good choice. In fact, the Azure Marketplace offers the hosting for almost every popular platform. Recently Microsoft has also partnered with PrestaShop for scalable cloud hosting and maintenance solutions. 

Hosting on bigger cloud servers like Azure and AWS will secure your website with the high-end security these companies provide.

3. Encrypt your customer data

It doesn't matter if you have hosted on a private or a cloud server, hackers might eventually find a way to your customer data. In that case, the best way would be to encrypt your customers' data using high-end hashing algorithms. This encryption will ensure that no one else can decipher the data except the one who has the key.

In this way, even if someone even breaches into your customer data, they won't get anything useful except the gibberish and encrypted texts. Of course, you will have to keep your decryption key safe with you.

4. Use two step authentication 

Two step authentication will add an extra layer of security to your customer login. The customers after entering the correct credentials will be asked to provide a temporary One time password sent to their mobile number for logging into their user account on your website.

By using this authentication process on your site you can ensure a safe vault for the customer data. Even if someone is smart enough to bypass the first step authentication of email and password, he won't be able to log in until the second step verification is done. As the access to the second step authentication data will be with the original user, it's not possible for the black hat to breach into the account. 

A similar two step verification is also used by the Google for securing the Gmail accounts.

5. Don’t give full access to every employee and don’t encourage BYOD

The biggest loopholes are created from within the organization. I am not pointing that there is a mole in your organization, but even a small mistake by your employees can put your customers' data at risk. To prevent such vulnerability, it best if you allow only a limited access to your employees according to the job they perform. Provide the access to the customer data to only the limited people whose tasks are associated with the customer information. The lesser the access to the customer data the more it is secured against breaches due to mistakes.

BYOD or Bring Your Own Device culture can be great for the convenience of your employees but not for the security of your customer data and other crucial data. It's best to use the company's hardware for all the organization's related work. If employees are allowed to use their own hardware, it obvious their system will have crucial data and information stored on them. Just imagine what could happen to the data if any of such systems get lost? Moreover, it is also not ensured that employees' private device is well secured with latest updates and anti-virus protection. It's best to give them the well-secured company's hardware and do not allow them to do any office work on any other private system. 

Final thoughts

It's a simple list of simple ways to achieve a great security of your customers' data. You can realize these tips without facing any hard time. Just the straight forward cautions to get serious security. Finally, you must understand the importance of safeguarding your customers' information, it's no more an option but a necessity. Sooner you realize, better it is for your business. 

6 Surefire Implementations To Boost Up Your Ecommerce Sales

According to US Census Bureau’s release, eCommerce sale in 2017 first quarter was $105.7B, which is 14.7 percent more than the previous year's first quarter sales. Similarly, eCommerce sales whooped around $93 billion in the first quarter of 2016, as compared to 34 billion in the same quarter of the year 2009 in the US. 

Now, you are wondering why am I showing these sales stats, when I called you on this page to know about sure-fire ways to boost your sales?

I want to let you know that eCommerce market is growing like anything day by day. I also want to ask ”Is your business growing at the same pace?” “Are you making the great sales and claiming your share in this huge sales stat?” 

Sadly, if the answer is "No" then, fortunately, you are at the right place. In today's post, I am going to share 6 surefire remedies use by the most successful eCommerce stores to boost their sales. So, let's continue with our list of ideas here:

 

1. Persuade with Your Product Descriptions

 

There are two terms which are often confused with each other- Promotion and Persuasion. Believe me, you cannot interchange their usage. Especially with your product descriptions.  

Most of the eCommerce stores make their product page, a lame piece of sales copy dearly promoting the product. I just want to ask "When do we use promotion?" Probably, to let our customers know that there is a product called  XYZ on our store and it is quite useful to purchase. That's it. Once your customers know about your product and they are on your product page, they do not want you to brag about it anymore. 

They now want you to persuade them why they should buy it, and why from your website only? This is where product descriptions are used, to educate the customers about what exactly is this product and why it’s better than other alternatives in the market. So, promote, less and inform more with your product description if you want to drive a conversion with it.

• Write about every detail about the product and it’s specifications and attributes.  

• Divide the description is sections and use bullets and points as people do not read the lengthy paragraphs more often.  

• Highlight the benefits of the products. Use HTML format to write the descriptions, so that you can also optimize for SEO using the header tags.  

• Include relevant images that describe the product. 

In addition to these, you can also use these ideas to write wow product descriptions for your store.

2. Do not Compromise with Your Product Images 

 

The products sold on an eCommerce site are virtually non-tangible until they are delivered to the customers. In this situation, a customer has only your product description and product images to get a feel of how the product would look actually. 

Trust me, this is quite a big issue and a major cause of buyer's confusion. However, it can be easily sorted by using high-quality and properly taken product images. 

Beware, because sometimes images can also kill your conversions if used in a wrong way. But for most of the times, if you know how to get the best product images for your website, you can never fail with these. 

Here are some tips on images that you can use to boost your eCommerce sales:

• Use high-quality product images that do not get blurred on the zooming. 

• Allow zooming of the product images on hover or click.  

• Use multiple product images in multiple angles. Use at least 5 images. 

• Use different images for each variation of the product. For example, color variation.  

• Use product images on Category pages as well.  

• Use real photos, avoid poorly photos hoped images where same model’s head is fitted to a number more product images. 

• Hire a professional agency to take the real photos of your products.

• Avoid using product photos taken from your mobile camera, hire the professionals.

 

3. Sense of Urgency is the Key 

 

 

Creating a sense of urgency is a key way to boost the eCommerce sales. The urgency psychology, in customers generally takes over the "buying confusion" and encourages the shoppers to make a quick decision, "If used in a controlled manner".  

How will you do that? 

It's not so simple, but with certain tricks, you can do it:

• Show the stock information on the product page. When people find something is going to stock out soon, they tend to place the orders quickly. 

• Add a stock alert subscription option on the out of stock product, so that you can also get to know how many customers are waiting for the particular product on your store.  

• Create, some timed deals on your store. Putting a clock timer or countdown like the Flash sales on Amazon could be a great idea.  

• Use Urgency inducing words in the stock information text. A word like "Limited Stock", "Hurry, Only Few Left" etc can trigger quick decisions.

 

4. Capture Email Subscribers on Your Store 

 

Trust me it’s always best to build your own email list rather than buying it from some agency. The subscribers that you will get on your own eCommerce store, are your interested potential customers. They are more qualified leads than those of the purchased lists.  

You must have to understand that emails are one of the most efficient qualified lead generators for your store. Moreover, your own email data will be helpful is driving more traffic to your site, and ultimately boosting your sales.  

Probably I don't need to explain here, how emails can boost your eCommerce sales. Do I? Let's re-check what we know about email marketing and what we don’t know. 

You have got a number of email marketing tools as options, You can use any of the suitable ones for conducting your own email marketing campaign. But before that, you will need your own email marketing list that you will feed to your email marketing tool.  

Don’t worry, I have explained in detail in my post about 5 surefire ways to gather email data on your online store. You can use any of these 5 ways, or all of them to have a pool of email data for your next sales campaign. 

 

5. Offer Preferred Delivery Time Options 

Customers love it when they have a preference to choose from. The preferred Delivery time and dates is an option that allows the customers on a checkout page to choose when they want to get the purchased product delivered to their address. 

You can boost your sales to a great extent by offering this service. There are many occasion when customers purchase some special products as gifts for their loved ones. Customers have to first purchase such products and after getting delivered, they have to again ship to one' they are gifting to. 

Such a great USP could it be, if you can directly, deliver the product on specified date and time. It would be a great saving for the customers, plus a great USP for your business, and probably a great way to earn some repeat and loyal customers as well. 

I can understand that this kind of feature is not so easy to offer. You will be required to have a great coordination with your shipping partner. Moreover, there could be some overhead cost involved in integrating such features on your site.  

The coordination with your shipping partner is a relative factor. It is not a problem with most of the reputed shipping agencies. Probably, you must hire one of those. 

While I can suggest a cost effective and affordable solution for the integration to your website. If you own a PrestaShop store, you can use the PrestaShop  Preferred Delivery Time module which quite affordable. You should get a similar solution for your store too.
   

6. Sell on a Marketplace Site

Not just any other site, sell on the best ones- Amazon, Etsy, eBay etc. Amazon draws nearly 184 million visitors a month, and eBay is not far behind with 164 million active buyers.  

According to an Amazon executive, sellers report that they have received an average 50% boost in their sales after joining the Amazon marketplace. When so much is there to gain, how can you remain silent about selling on a popular marketplace?  

I can understand there are some cons as well, but they cannot overshadow the kind of exposure and opportunities these marketplaces offer. I am not a fan of selling on Marketplaces when you have an eCommerce store on your own. But yes, I am impressed with the kind of growth I have seen for some stores. Like every coin has two sides, marketplaces have their own as well. Finally, it's up to you to pick the one side that gives you sales and profits.  

These marketplace integration modules for PrestaShop can help you to get on the positive side of the coin. There are modules for Amazon, Etsy, and eBay. These modules enable a PrestaShop store owner to sell on these three popular marketplaces right from the PrestaShop store itself. How? These posts will give you a clear idea.  

• Integrating PrestaShop Store with Amazon Marketplace Web Service 

• A PrestaShop eBay integration – Making multi-channel trade seamless 

• Connecting your PrestaShop Store to the Etsy marketplace   

There are 101 ideas to boost your sales. However, I have included these 6 surefire ways that always give the better ROI. They have worked for several websites, and I am certain they would work for your store too. Indeed you need to stay in accordance wit the basic conversion optimization requirements as well, You cannot boost your sales with a slow loading website for example. Otherwise, you might be left wondering why your sales stopped while it was doing really well.  

5 most popular Magento Marketplace Extensions

List of five popular marketplace extensions for Magento

If you take a look at the biggest eCommerce sites today, you will see that all these are marketplaces. There would be a no bigger example than Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.  

A marketplace provides a two-sided business model where both B2B and B2C operations can be found on a single platform. The marketplace model of eCommerce adds up an additional entity to the whole site structure- The Seller. 

With the ability to provide a huge range of choices to the customers by leveraging the sellers' offerings, a marketplace in today's context is a more successful online business model. While a marketplace owner benefits from the commission earned from the sellers, sellers also get a reputed platform to sell without a need for having their own site.

Marketplace model of eCommerce explained

Nowadays, some really easy and effective solutions are available that instantly converts an inventory based eCommerce store to a marketplace. These solutions come in the form of plugins and extensions. If you want to turn your store into a marketplace, then simply install a marketplace extension and gain the required functionalities.

In this article, we are going to present a list of 5 popular Magento Marketplace extensions from different developers. You can also treat it as a comparison to decide which extension is better in your context.

1. WebKul Marketplace Multi-Vendor Module

     Price of extension: $ 349

The Webkul Marketplace Multi-Vendor module when installed on the Magento platform, converts the store into a marketplace site. It adds the support for accepting seller registrations and provides a separate dashboard to the sellers on the front end of the site.

The customers are allowed to rate and review different sellers which are finally approved/disapproved by the marketplace admin. Sellers can customize their profile by uploading a shop banner and a shop logo, and add other personal and business details.

For admin, there is a hassle free option to charge commissions on the different bases. Admin can set a global commission rate for all the sellers, or can also set different commission rates for each seller.

On the whole, it is an efficient marketplace extension which is quite popular because of its advanced features.

2. Vnecoms Marketplace Extension

     Price ranges from $ 399 to $ 999

Using Vnecoms Marketplace extension your Magento store will start allowing seller registrations from the front end. Each seller will have his/her separate panel where he/she can:

• Manage product 
• Manage sales and sales reports
• Manage invoice generation from seller side
• Manage shipping methods and shipping mapping to different products. 

Every seller has the option to customize the seller panel. Good news is, the seller panel is fully responsive. That means sellers can manage their store on the marketplace from mobile devices too.

The admin has the full access to group vendors in different sets. With this grouping, the admin can set desirable commission rates for each group of vendors. The admin also has the full access to manage transactions.

For accepting the seller registration, the admin can easily create custom vendor/seller registration forms right from the back office itself.

The extension supports 6 types of products to be uploaded on the marketplace.

1. Simple Product
2. Grouped Product
3. Configurable Product
4. Virtual Product
5. Bundle Product
6. Downloadable

This extension is available in different package forms where the package names include- Standard Edition, Custom Edition, and Platinum Edition.

3. Apptha Marketplace

     Price : $999 with one year support

Apptha Marketplace is another popular marketplace extension in our list. For sellers, it provides a separate panel in the front office which utilizes the default Magento form to register the sellers. That means the sellers can register using the same form used by the customers to register their user account.

The marketplace admin has the access to set different commission rates for different vendors. The admin can also:

• View live sales updates
• Approve/disapprove seller registration request
• Show labels for popular or new products
• Show a counter that tells how many products have been sold. 

The ‘Our Sellers' header link allows the customers to browse all the vendors on the site separately. The vendor can share store location on Google Map, share overall seller rating, and all the store products on this seller space.

The social login, integrated one step checkout, and access for vendors to run deals on the marketplace for their products make this extension unique from the other extensions in our list.

4. Medma Marketplace 

     Price: $ 229

Medma Marketplace is another extension in our list that has the capacity to convert your Magento store into a marketplace. Like the other extensions, it also provides the sellers with a separate panel where they can manage their shop, add products and much more.

The seller dashboard is a highly dynamic page that shows an updated report of the highest selling products, product collections, and seller profile update. The seller can easily upload a bulk of products at a time using CSV product upload feature.

The reviews and rating system on this extension will help you to guide your customers better providing product reviews and seller reviews. Only the admin is allowed approve or disapprove a review.

For admin, the extension provides unlimited functionalities such as:

• Access to approve or disapprove a seller account request
• Access to manually or automatically approve a seller account request
• Access to create different commission rates for different sellers
• Access to enable or disable seller registration on the marketplace. 

5. Knowband Magento Multi-vendor Marketplace

      Price: $ 219 with free support for three months

Off course, our list wouldn't be complete without mentioning the home team's offering. Our Magento Multi-vendor Marketplace extension is the easiest solution to convert your already functioning Magento store into a marketplace. With the simple installation and user-friendly interface, this extension can be easily managed even by the non-coders. You don't have to be a technical expert to run a marketplace site here. The extension adds various features and functionalities to the Magento store that make it a fully functional marketplace site.

Top features for Marketplace admin:

Top features for seller/vendors

• Admin can approve/disapprove a seller registration request
• Admin can monitor and manage list of vendors
• Admin has the access to approve/disapprove a seller product upload
• Admin can set various commission rates for each seller or a global commission rate for all the sellers.
• Admin can change the order status to update the seller that payment has been done by the customer.
• Admin can enable/disable marketplace features from the admin panel itself
• Admin can allow or restrict a seller from uploading products in specific categories
• Admin can add shipping options for the sellers.

Top features for seller/vendors

• Sellers can register their account from the same form used by customers to sign up. 
• A customer can convert his/her account to a seller account anytime by sending a one click request from the customer account.
• Sellers can manage their profile and upload shop banner and shop logo
• Sellers get a separate dashboard at the front end itself
• Sellers can track their sales and manage the orders
• Sellers can upload multiple types of products supported by the Magento platform
• Sellers can send category request to admin
• Seller can show their social link on the seller page on front

The module also supports a number of advanced marketplace features which can be easily acquired by installing the Marketplace addons available for this extensions. You can add the advanced features like:

• Admin to seller support system
• Bulk product upload through CSV
• Product return management
• Seller vacation mode and 
• Low stock alert. 

To conclude 

There are many more magento extensions available in the marketplace. Almost all of them possess similar features and functionalities. The difference is between the price they offer, Number of addons available, and kind of support they provide after sales. 

It's not just about which extension provides more features, it's about which features you actually need and what is the reputation of the developer who has developed it. For example, Knowband Marketplace Extension has been developed by a team of certified Magento developers. Also, make sure the company has the dedicated support team to fulfill the after sales requirements. Moreover, you must also consider the support cost in the long run. So, after considering all these situations, which one do you find best suited to your Magento store ?

How important is it to send a product update notification?

Researches suggest that many eCommerce customers spare products in their shopping carts for further thought and don't buy immediately. These customers are in a circumstance of decision and for the most part, need few motivating forces continuing their purchases. However, they will surely rush with the choice- to buy or not to buy. You as a Magento store owner would be facing this for sure- you might know or not now, but the situation is still there. 

There are two situations when customers would not choose to continue the purchase- Either the customers find the price out-of-budget or the product itself is out of stock. In the later situation, you might choose to disable the out-of-sock product from the site, but the circumstance still remains the same- customers would still not be able to purchase. Thus, an addition to the loss of potential sales. 

Both the situations have one thing in common- you are losing a potential sale. 

To overcome such situation on a Magento store, the product update notification would be a great tool in aid. 

Let’s assume a situation when, using the Magento product update notification , you can: 

• Out of stock:  Allow the customers to subscribe for product update notification of the out of stock products.The subscription will enable an automatic cron-based notification system where the customers (subscribed) will receive a mail from your side when the product is back in stock. 

• Out-of-budget: The same subscription can be used to send the customers a notification whenever the product prices are changed on the store. It will help you to recover those customers who could not purchase the product because it was out-of-budget last time they checked.  

The Magento product update notification extension is one such extension which implements the above-mentioned functionalities just after a simple installation. 

Why is Magento product update notification an essential feature?

On every eCommerce site, customer engagement and customer experience are the two important considerations that every CRO expert counts on. A customer experience cannot be degraded more than this when a customer fails to purchase a product that is there on the site. Products being out-of-stock and out-of-budget are the two non-controllable factors that somewhat degrade the customers’ experiences.   

Having the product update notification feature is something that can be a life saver for the Magento based stores in this situation. 

Products being out-of-stock is purely a depended scenario. Even the largest eCommerce sites face this situation because of the limited supplies and inventory. For any reason, if a product (already listed on the site) is showing out-of-stock, you need to handle the situation wisely, because the product is just not available for a while. You need to handle it so that the customers can be converted back into a sale as soon as the product is available. 

A Magento product update notification utilizes the email subscription feature to capture the email address of the customer and use this email data to send automatic email notification as soon as the product is back-in-stock. In this way the, a sale that could have been probably lost can be hoped to get recovered in case the customer had not purchased it already from somewhere else.   

Similarly, customers generally look around the sites to find out if their desired product is available at a budget price. Such customers have sure chances for conversion if the product fits into their budget. Unfortunately, if a product ends up being out of their reach due to unexpected price, a Magento store can be configured to ask the customer for subscribing to a price change alert using this extension. 

The Magento product update notification feature will make sure that your marketing campaigns would have some more likely to get converted data.     

It's more important to follow up the customers lost due to out-of-stock or out-of-budget scenario. Since these customers generally have a mindset of finally purchasing a product, you don't have to follow them for convincing, you have to notify them for what they would like to know. Use of proper email contents and suitable message on the product pages are some of the important things that you should focus on after installing the Magento product update notification extension. So, install the extension, configure it, modify the email templates, customize the product page texts and you are ready to go.

Related Post:

• Magento Product Update Notification – User Manual

Features that make a true one page checkout

You might have come across various one page checkouts as of now. Each of them having their own look and feel and providing different ways to complete a purchase. The Magento platform too provides a built-in one page checkout that comes with every installation. Question is, does this default checkout provide a true one-page checkout experience?   

If we take a look on this checkout interface, despite all the checkout steps being shown on a single page, it is not a true one-page checkout in various aspects:

• It’s not one-page: You cannot go to the further steps until you complete a preceding step. If you do not complete and submit the ‘checkout method’ , you cannot move to the ‘Billing Information’ and so on.  

• Shopping cart update: The ‘order review’ is a static page which just allows the customer to see the order summary. The customer cannot remove or update a product quantity in the cart from the same page. To edit the cart, it takes you to a new page, breaking the checkout process in the middle.  

• No Social login: There is no option for the customer to use a social login so that he/she can be spared from manually registering a user account. It’s not a necessary requirement for a true one page checkout, but having this option will provide some upper hand in various cases.   

• No information saving: If checkout process breaks in the middle, there is no way to recover the already filled forms. You have to start the whole process again.

 Now, if we compare the checkout page of a custom one-page checkout extension we would be able to understand these drawbacks in a clearer way. 

The checkout page shown below is an example to explain what a premium one-page checkout extension should necessarily offer.  

If we contrast the drawbacks that we see in default Magento checkout, we can see that the customized one page checkout eliminates all of them.  

• Everything on one page: Unlike the default checkout, the one page checkout handles all the checkout steps on a single page structure. You can switch between any of the steps whenever you want. 

• Ajax based shopping cart: The Ajax based shopping cart makes it very easy to update the cart during the checkout. The shopping cart here is dynamic and user can remove a product, or update a product quantity from the same page itself. The benefits of Ajax allow the users to do this without a need to refresh the whole checkout page.      

• Social login: The default checkout lagged this functionality. However, it can be considered as an additional feature in a customized one page checkout that allows a user to login to the customer account without manually creating it. It uses the Google and Facebook Social login option.   

The reason behind this small comparison is to shed a light on how you can make your checkout, even more engaging by implementing some user-friendly tweaks. The default Magento checkout page is a well organized one, but with some tweaks as in a premium one-page checkout extension it can be made even more engaging and conversion friendly.  

Good news is you do not have to knock your head with the codes to make your checkout engaging. Experts have already done this in the various customized checkout extensions. The Knowband-Magento one page checkout extension is one such implementation that you can install on your Magento site to get an already optimized one page checkout for Magento.

Related Blogs:

• Why do you need a One page Magento Checkout Extension?
• One-page checkouts: A customer’s viewpoint
• Why you need a one-page checkout extension for Magento?