5G and the latest digital transformation

5G has been an overall popular conversation topic globally and it definitely dominated at Mobile World Congress. 

The anticipated low communication latency and increased network speeds with 5G are drastically heightening further interest in areas where real-time data processing and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) will be prevalent.

Sal Visca, CTO at Elastic Path is looking forward to the disruption this new technology is about to cause. “While, this new generation of communication provides up to 20 times more performance, it’s the other characteristics of 5G that will really change the game,” Visca said in an article in Gigabit Magazine. 

Many use cases of 5G will be around an overly connected world providing more convenience and safety. As the Washington Post reported, “5G’s latency will be crucial for a connected infrastructure. Improving the quality of government and utility services, in addition to enhancing public safety, health and sustainability. Smart-city technology is already in places such as Barcelona, Singapore and Columbus, Ohio, where it is being used for instant crime reporting, smart streetlights, and sensors that monitor things like air quality, parking spaces and garbage collection.”

With 5G’s network efficiency, it will enable billions of IoT devices to be added to networks. 

“5G may not have a tremendous impact on how we currently use our mobile phones, but it will bring more of the capabilities that are powered by cloud apps across networks that currently take seconds or many milliseconds to access (with limitations on the amount of data transmitted),” according to Visca. 

Healthcare, automotive, telecommunications and industrial automation are the main industry verticals that will see IoT-related benefits with the rollout of 5G.

With 5G pushing the boundaries of the networks and computing capabilities in the cloud, it’s also bringing edge computing to the forefront for industries. Analysts estimate that by 2020 more than five billion IoT devices will be in operation in enterprise and government environments utilizing edge computing for data collection.

Edge computing is already being deployed globally within the industrial automation (IA) field for smart logistics, machine learning, and factory asset management. According to Roger Billings, “edge computing is what is paving the way for a 5G rollout by helping to support virtualization, mobile and IoT applications. In addition to leading to a more scalable solution by migrating computation, networking, or storage capabilities across or through different levels of hierarchy.”

While most information will be uploaded and processed via the cloud, some business-critical applications will require the use of a computing infrastructure on the edge of the network to minimize the bandwidth needed to access data that is centrally stored (Gigabit Magazine). 

With the interconnectivity, machine learning, automation and real-time data now in play, we’re experiencing another industrial revolution. Bringing worth what is often deemed Industry 4.0– 5G, IoT and edge computing will be the essential enablers in this latest digital transformation. 

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Mobile’s impact on holiday shopping and how to compete next season

10 Magazine Lessons That Will Make You A Better Content Marketer

Even if you don't read them, did you know that your can learn from print magazines? Here are 10 magazine lessons for content marketers complete with actionable tactics and examples.

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Retail Auto-Replenishment: the Pros and Cons

Automation is a powerful and strategic tool for brands looking to scale their retail offering, from large supermarkets working to automate their stock replenishment process, to consumers themselves installing Amazon Dash Buttons within their homes, is auto-replenishment really the future of retail?

2019 is set to be a challenging year for retailers in all sectors, but just how will these brands innovate their offering to keep themselves at the front of consumers’ minds? 

The pros and cons surrounding auto-replenishment

This question has sparked debate and analysis from retail experts around the globe, arguing as to whether auto-replenishment is actuallyhow consumers want to shop, with some influencers saying that automation is just a step too far, too soon. 

Below are some of the pros and cons surrounding auto-replenishment to better understand how retailers are planning to introduce this into their systems. 

Why auto-replenishment should be integrated into retail 

Natalie Berg in the Voices of Retail ebook argues that people no longer GO shopping – people ARE shopping. 

Berg predicts that smart devices will begin to shop for consumers automatically, without ever needing to visit a store or tap on a screen to make those purchases. She explains that this is a complete convergence of the physical and digital worlds. 

To some, a self-ordering fridge might be an unsettling prospect or an invasion of privacy. Berg asks readers to imagine the time-saving benefits of this type of automation; imagine never having to remember buy milk or bread, ever again! 

Zak Edwards, MD at Prezzybox.com explains that auto-replenishment technology really could work to provide a faultless in-store experience for consumers. 

 “On your device you visit your favorite store’s website. In real time, the retailer can check the stock levels of a given item using RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology and tell you exactly how many they have left, alongside what colours, sizes and other variations, right at that very moment.”

Edwards goes on to describe how this innovation would not only benefit the consumer, but the retailer too.  

“This level of granularity has never been possible before. For example, if an item is popular, and running out of stock, then the stock order system can automaticallycreate a purchase order, which can then be shipped straight to the store. All of this can happen with zero human interaction.”

The brands already benefiting from auto-replenishment

In the US, there are clear signs that auto-replenishment is working well for some brands. The Packaging Digest reports that consumable brands such as Peet’s Coffee and Ziploc have already seen an astonishing 50% of their ecommerce sales made via Amazon’s Dash Buttons. 

Tissue brand Cottonelle also reported that their Dash Button integration contributed to them doubling their ‘share of wallet’ in the bathroom tissue category in 2018. 

Is the customer always right?

A Consumer Behavior Report revealed that 48% of consumers place high importance on auto-replenishment as part of their shopping experience, with 40% stating that they would be impressed if their supermarket used data to suggest a shopping list to them automatically. 

The above certainly indicates that consumers have a thirst for automation across everyday tasks and chores, but how can retailer tap into this new, technology savvy customer?  

Berg suggests that the responsibility is on the retailer to get this right. 

“The most successful retailers will be those that think like their customers, connecting the dots to create a seamless retail experience.”

Why auto-replenishment is just part of the process

In Forbes magazine, Ashwin Ramasamy, Co-Founder of PipeCandy dissects the tech based predictions for retail in 2019 with interesting results:

“Nearly 40% of consumers who use subscription services cancel their subscriptions within a year of subscribing as the novelty wears out.

“Subscription companies that focus on replenishment (e.g., a monthly supply of detergent) and large retailers with their own subscription services will likely experience greater customer loyalty than upstart curation-themed subscription businesses.”

Figures such as these could go some way explain why we’re not seeing as many retailers exploring the realms of auto-replenishment technology as we may have expected.  

Edwards takes a differing view on the potential pitfalls of automation in retail. 

“I think the full benefit of this is limited to a number of behemoths (like Amazon) and to a handful of Omni-channel retailers who have a full ‘self-service’ infrastructure – including manufacture – over which they have complete control. 

“There’s a LOT of moving parts – all of which are completely reliant on each other. Tech, supply chain and logistics are all vital – as is real time communication between the three elements. If one of these fails, then so does auto-replenishment – which then leads to a poorer customer experience.”

Is auto-replenishment convenient or a complete invasion of privacy?

In 2017, Walmart raised a few eyebrows with the news that they were testing a service which delivered groceries directly to the fridge in customer kitchens. Using a smart-lock system, the delivery person was able to enter, unpack and put the groceries away. 

Berg touches on this, suggesting that auto-replenishment is the perfect answer to low level and mundane household tasks.

“Shoppers will no longer have to traipse down supermarket aisles when they run out of bleach or toilet paper. They will spend less of their valuable time buying the essentials.”

The Replenishment Economy

Doug Stephens founder of Retail Prophet predicts that the retail industry is actually on the cusp of an online shopping revolution:

“Retail is entering into what I call “the replenishment economy” where our cars, appliances, connected packaging and even products themselves will begin to re-order themselves and be purchased with our approval.” 

Doug Stephans, Retail Prophet

Conversely, the Consumer Behavior report reveals that over a third of shoppers would find this level of automation ‘creepy’ rather than convenient in their daily lives and as such, retailers have a long journey ahead of them to challenge and change consumer behaviour.  

The future of automated retail in 2019

With Q4 of 2018 being tricky for the majority of online and offline retailers, it’s even more important for the teams behind the brands to show innovation and consumer-centered thinking in their plans for auto-replenishment. 

Change is happening and ultimately, it’s time for retailers to evolve, or risk getting left behind. The investment into technology seems to be on all retailers minds but it’s how that investment is made will determine how much of a difference it makes.

Customer experience and technology investment are the key to growth. Retailers that build the right customer experience through the integration of technology will be ones standing tall.

With a lot of retailers still undecided on auto-replenishment, there are arguments for both sides, but what is clear is that retailers need to put their customers at the heart of what they are doing and implement technology that their consumers will embrace. 

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Leveraging microservices for your business, Part 3: The backend for frontend pattern is not your friend

In the “Leveraging microservices for your business” series, principal architect, Matt Bishop has been addressing areas of focus to help organizations and developers determine if microservices are the right business choice. Part one described microservices as architectural qualities, while part two went through the benefits and challenges of building a microservice ecosystem.

In this third and final installment, Bishop will address one of the most critical challenges microservice implementations face, the backend for frontend pattern. 

Quick recap

Adrian Cockcroft states microservices is a “loosely coupled service-oriented architecture with bounded contexts.” Loosely coupled architectures must have very little interaction with each other to fulfil their core business purposes. They share business identifiers as the logical thread through their combined capabilities. These capabilities are scoped by bounded contexts that represent independent, irreducible states of a business concern.

This architecture can deliver correctly-modeled business systems that are resilient, scalable and highly adaptable to business needs. Unfortunately, they are very difficult to consume as a client. The independent services usually have different API semantics to access their data and change their state. They are hard to discover and orchestrate to produce what the client wants, which is a cohesive consumer experience. The microservices solution is to create a new microservice—the BFF.

BFFs Are Not Your Friends

The Backend for Frontend (BFF) pattern pulls the necessary microservices together into a single experience for a specific consumer, like an iOS app or a progressive web app (PWA). Sam Newman, a well-known author and thought leader in the microservices architecture world, explains that a BFF microservice should be tuned to serve specific clients rather than be a general-purpose service for all clients. Each client needs different data, different actions and has different protocols, so they should not try to be shared, but rather copied and modified for each new client.

The BFF pattern has problems in practice, however. Often the responsibility to build a BFF falls to the client development team that will consume it. A client team is composed of software developers who are experts in front-end technologies. They are rarely competent to build server-side services that support their clients. Server-side code has completely different frameworks, semantics and concerns compared to client-side code. Many developers who have to write BFFs do not have the experience to create a BFF that will succeed in production, under load, and over the long term.

Another problem is that this team needs to fully understand the business rules and workflows in order to create the right BFF. In commerce, this is not a trivial undertaking. The good news is that this logic, which often lives in the client code, now lives on the server where it can be better managed and maintained. The bad news is that every new client team needs to know these rules and workflows as well. Their efforts are largely duplicated and often out-of-sync with each other.

These problems lead me to conclude that BFFs are costly, risky and an agility anti-pattern. BFFs throttle and constrain the microservices architecture at their gateway to the consumer by struggling to keep up with the microservices trying to deliver business value to the humans who need it.

Hypermedia to the Rescue

The general premise of the BFF microservice is wrong. Business logic and workflow orchestration must work the same way on all clients because the business itself provides the products and services to the customer. It would not be good if the Android app had different business rules than the iOS app. 

Agility demands that new features come to market as fast as possible, yet features must follow the valid business rules and workflows provided. A single shared API can provide this correctness and agility, but it must not bear the negative attributes pointed about in the BFF justifications. At Elastic Path, we have found that a Hypermedia API offers the best sharable experience that can be shaped by the clients to produce just the right amount of data and affordances for any given client experience.

The big difference between a Hypermedia API and other forms of REST are the links in the representations. Links point to related data, and they also point to relevant affordances. Links provide next-best actions at runtime, so the client does not have to know what that action should be. All the rules and logic that drive the links live in one place on the server.

A Hypermedia API client is reactive; it must know that linked data and actions are possible, and it must react to the links (or lack thereof) accordingly. A good example is the commerce checkout flow. When viewing a Cart resource, links will point to actions like adding or removing items from the cart, but will also offer links to provide payment. The client will find the known “checkout” workflow link to be missing and will not offer a Checkout button until the link appears. Instead, it will see the “payments” link and present “Add Payment” controls tied to the linked resource on the cart. Once payment method is established, the server will send a “checkout” link with the cart representation and the client can show the Checkout button.

Hypermedia’s control of link formation and presentation dramatically improve the time-to-market for a client app. An article by Shaun Maharaj shares the Hypermedia API client experience in great detail. Clients that are fast to build and deploy deliver the promised microservice agility all the way to the end consumer without risk of failure.

What about GraphQL?

If you are familiar with GraphQL, you will likely notice the similarities between links and GraphQL “connections.” This is a good comparison as they are the way data is linked together in a GraphQL query. 

Hypermedia formats often provide a similar querying and embedding pattern. HAL uses “_embedded” links and JSON-API offers an “includes” query to fetch aggregated data responses in a single request.

One important distinction between Hypermedia and GraphQL is when an action can occur. GraphQL Mutations are a flat, almost out-of-band concept for a client. They can learn what actions can be taken by looking at the Mutations list, but they do not know when they can be taken, and worse, they must rely on documentation and naming coincidence to actuate a Mutation. The client must operate defensively and make assumptions as to when a “Checkout” Mutation can be used. The client code must know that a “Provide Payment” Mutation must be first sent before checkout. And thus, the business logic makes its way back into the client where it does not belong.

GraphQL is a query language, meant for building views for a variety of client experiences. It is not a workflow orchestration API and is only a partial solution compared to Hypermedia.

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Marketing Rebellion – Author Interview

Need to change your marketing and business to meet 22nd century customer needs? Then read this author interview where Mark W. Schaefer discusses his book, Marketing Rebellion.

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How Swisscom lost its “head” to create a unified commerce experience

How To Encourage Social Media Followers To Join Your Audience

Is your social media community at risk if the network disappears without notice? Follow these 10 tactics to persuade your social media followers to join your addressable audience on owned media.

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10 Ways to Boost Your Ecommerce Conversions in 2019

Previously published on TA Digital

In this highly competitive world, it is very important for businesses to offer exceptional shopping experience to their customers. There is no point if multiple customers are visiting your website, but not purchasing. In order to increase the ecommerce conversion rate, each and every step has to be analyzed – from the initial landing page to checkout. You need to optimize your website right now for increasing the conversion rate, because at the end of the day conversion rates mean an increase in revenue. Here’s how you can boost your ecommerce conversions:

1. Live chat support

With multiple products and service offerings, customers can feel overwhelmed and confused, and have questions that need to be answered instantly. They look for accurate and prompt responses. By introducing live chat support on your ecommerce website, you’ll see customer satisfaction increase while enhancing your brand image and trust. Customers prefer to buy from sites that offer this feature. It’s one of the best ways to quickly increase your conversion rate.

You must make sure your customer representatives or live chat agents are proactive. Ensure that they do not keep the customers waiting for a long time, or else they will get irritated and lose interest in making the purchase. At times customers are shy to start a conversation. In such cases they need to observe the customer behavior on the website and proactively start a conversation and make them feel comfortable, gradually guiding them to make their purchase.

2. Abandoned shopping cart reminder

According to statistics, the global cart abandonment rate in 2018 was 75.52%. Every engaged customer is not a guaranteed buyer. It is difficult to reduce the cart abandonments; therefore, you need to understand why they did it. There are various reasons customers abandoned the cart – such as unexpected costs, better price on another site, asking for compulsory sign up, complicated checkout process, expensive shipping, lack of payment options, lack of return policy and security concerns.

The solution for this issue is to send shopping cart recovery emails to the customers. Emails sent within three hours of cart abandonment, will get a 40% open rate and a 20% click through rate. At least 10.7% of customers who receive the email, return to make a purchase. You need to implement different personalized strategies while sending these emails, it will definitely improve conversions and sales.

3.  Optimize for mobile devices

Customers spend most of their time on their mobile devices. In 2018, mobile devices accounted for more than one third of retail sales. Your ecommerce store should provide a great mobile experience, hence you must optimize your ecommerce store for mobile devices to increase the conversion rate.

4. A/B test

Split testing is one of the best ways to increase ecommerce conversion rates. In fact it is very simple: suppose you have two headlines for your online page, and you are not sure which one to use, you can go for A/B split testing. It will help you find out which one is preferred. So now you need to make two versions of your site page, and the software will send half the traffic to page A and the other half to page B. you can use A or B according to the results. This is very easy and will save time to increase your conversion rate.

5. Detailed product descriptions

There are numerous ecommerce sites out there where product information is not provided at all. Customers can’t touch the product nor ask questions, like they can in brick-and-mortar. Therefore, you need to make sure you describe the products in detail. It should contain interesting and informative content that will make your customers interested in your product and will go ahead in making the purchase. Add a product video or demonstration for more impact. All these will definitely prevent returns and increase conversion rates.

You also need to focus on your SEO strategy. High website traffic is very important to boost ecommerce conversion rate. Therefore, SEO will enhance the traffic to your website as well as build your SEO ranking.

6. High quality images and video on your product/services

As previously mentioned with ensuring detailed product descriptions and a customer’s inability to touch or see an item – the best thing to do is to show detailed images or videos. It helps to visualize the products better, and this leads to higher conversion rates.

7. User personalization

You can personalize the user experience by using powerful user tracking and communication software. This will allow you to keep your message and desired action the main focus of the user across platforms. Once you send the customer the email with coupon codes, it should be applied automatically. Make sure the customer does not have to fend for themselves. In the emails button, have a pop a code in the URL, and have the coupon easily accessible on the website. If you can make it easy for your customers to use, they will remember and return for making more purchases.

8. Customer reviews of products

Make it a point to add customer reviews of your products on the website. According to a study, around 61% of customers read the reviews before making the purchase. Online sales increase by 18% when customer reviews are showcased. You should also give your visitors the chance to leave their reviews. This surely boosts conversion and builds trust in the customer.

9. Optimize email receipts

The regular and expected practice these days is to email the customer their invoice. You need to be innovative here by including recommendations of other products or services based on the previous purchase. 80% of customers like relevant recommendations and would return to your site to purchase. They may also make more purchases based on the recommendations.

10. Build trust

The most important thing is to build trust among your customers. Trust these days is difficult to build, yet very easy to destroy. There are certain reasons why people won’t buy from you: Not in a hurry, no need, lack of money or lack of trust. You can’t do anything about the first three, but you can definitely do something about the fourth.

For building the trust of the customers, you need to add a physical address of your company, introduce your team along with their pictures, cite articles and blogs from third parties, add genuine and authentic customer reviews and testimonials, make communication easy and live, and make the site look user friendly and professional.

You can also send them information of your products and services along with offers, discounts and promotions. This will attract your customers to your site. Use pop-up windows to get their attention. Inform them by sending promotional texts over the mobile devices or email. You can also introduce an information bar on the top of your website. This will create curiosity among buyers, and it will increase conversion rate.

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5 steps to prevent ecommerce fraud

3 Non-Marketing Books For Marketers That Will Make You Happier

Are you a marketer looking for books to improve your work and make you happy? Then dive into these 3 non-marketing books for marketers. Complete with tips!

 

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Leads From Search Are Different: How to Convert Search Leads by Tailoring Sales Practices

There are critical differences between leads generated from a search query vs. leads generated from referrals and other sources. Common sales approaches can hurt your chances with search-generated leads. You need a customized approach to convert them instead. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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The 20 Biggest Winners on Google Search Last Year

YouTube and Amazon were the sites that made the biggest gains in organic search engine visibility last year, according to recent research from Searchmetrics. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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The Ultimate Guide To Celebrate Your Customers

Want to improve customer relationships & increase marketing ROI? Use 100+ tactics based on psychological research to celebrate customers & community.

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Why January is chargebacks nightmare for retailers

What looks like booming business in November and December often turns into a mountain of returns a few weeks later, challenging balance sheets and threatening profits. January has traditionally accounted for 51% of a retailer’s returns. In 2018, there was a “first wave” of returns, with over 1.3 million parcels via UPS returning to merchants in December, with a second equally large number being returned by January 3^rd. About $94 billion worth of goods are expected to be returned this holiday season

Traditional returns aren’t the only revenue pitfall retailers experience after the holiday season. Merchants also see a rise in friendly fraud — when customers initiate refunds by claiming a legitimate charge is fraudulent — and these claims are costing retailers $11 billion yearly.

Although preventing every return and chargeback is impossible, the first quarter of the new year doesn’t have to be a balance sheet disaster. When merchants understand why customers are filing fraudulent chargebacks as a way to reverse purchases, retailers can better protect their growing online business.

How Returns Can Transform Into Chargebacks

It’s nearly impossible for merchants to predict which transactions will result in chargebacks. However, understanding the top reasons customers file them invariably helps retailers prevent them.

Customers Don’t Recognize the Company Name

The company from which a customer buys a product isn’t always the same as the company listed on a credit card statement. When customers receive their statements and see an unfamiliar retailer’s name, they may file a chargeback, legitimately believing they didn’t make the purchase.

It’s Easy

The “customer is always right” mantra that most credit card issuers hold makes it simple for customers to win chargeback disputes. In fact, customers file 81% of chargebacks because it’s easier (and faster) to go online and initiate a chargeback than to ask a retailer for a refund.

Customers Experience Buyer’s Remorse

Blowing the holiday budget happens all too often, but the overspending doesn’t always become a reality until credit card statements begin arriving in January. When the guilt kicks in, product returns start. Self-conscious shoppers who don’t want to admit their overspending may initiate chargebacks as a way to recoup their money.

The Return Window Is Narrow

Consumers who do holiday shopping early may beat the rush, but their return clock starts counting down sooner, too. Gifts purchased in the late fall aren’t discovered to be the wrong size or color until late December — by then, the chance to return the purchase has passed. Frustrated customers frequently turn to chargebacks to circumvent the return policy and get their money back.

How Retailers Can Avoid Devastating Chargebacks

Customers don’t usually file chargebacks until weeks after the transaction, which means that record-breaking holiday revenue in December for merchants can turn into catastrophic chargebacks throughout the first quarter of the new year. And those chargebacks cost retailers:

• Revenue, merchandise and shipping dollars
• Fees and penalties assessed by acquiring banks
• Reputational damage
• Increased manpower costs associated with researching and responding to chargebacks

To avoid the effects of expensive returns and chargebacks, ecommerce retailers should employ the following strategies to prevent customer disputes from escalating:

Make Policies Easy to Find

No customer should have to hunt for — or guess at — return and exchange policies. Include store policies throughout the website, on checkout pages and on customer communications. Policies should also be readable for customers shopping via tablets and mobile devices.

Offer Flexible Holiday Returns 

Institute and communicate flexible holiday return and exchange policies. Detail how returns are processed, including:

• Packaging requirements (tags still attached, original packaging, invoice included)
• Shipping preferences (who pays for shipping, preferred shipping methods)
• Method of refund (store credit, original credit card)

Clarify Business Names

Make sure customers know what company name they’ll see on their statements. Retailers who use a DBA or parent company name should include that information on order screens, transaction receipts and shipping confirmations — even packing slips. This reduces the risk of confusion and minimizes the likelihood a customer will file a chargeback over a seemingly unfamiliar purchase.

Make It Easy for Customers to Ask Questions

Customers should be able to contact retailers 24/7/365, using options like a customer call center, a monitored email account or an online account management portal. The easier it is for customers to contact retailers with questions or concerns, the less likely they are to seek chargebacks for problem resolution.

Don’t Let Chargebacks Dampen Holiday Sales

Selecting the right holiday gift isn’t easy, therefore merchants should always expect a post-holiday increase in returns. Yet, while product returns are inevitable, chargebacks don’t have to be. 

Businesses can minimize the financial impact of chargebacks by implementing a fraud protection solution that offers chargeback insuranceagainst fraudulent transactions. Don’t let product returns and chargebacks put a damper on your e-commerce business’s revenue. 

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How an HVACR supplier increased their speed to market and online sales with a modern ecommerce platform

Audience Media Consumption Data: How To Improve Your Marketing

Need to know how your customers use media and content? Use this audience media consumption data complete with charts, media statistics, analysis & marketing tips. 

The post Audience Media Consumption Data: How To Improve Your Marketing appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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Leveraging microservices for your business, Part 2: The good and the bad

In this article, senior architect Matt Bishop reviews the benefits and difficulties with a microservice architecture. While avoiding the “anti-patterns” and horror stories that are prevalent while sticking to the architecture qualities themselves.

Quick recap on considering microservices

In the first installment of the microservices series it laid out the definition of microservices from their qualities – loosely coupled, service-oriented and bounded contexts. These qualities enable a lot of things, but they also suffer some challenges.

The Good

A well-built microservices system delivers fundamental implementation independence. The services in the system are largely independent of each other and free to develop at their own pace. The system release changes often, without much coordination between the components. Over time the system acts more like an ecosystem where the whole business is supported by the coordination and ever-improving capabilities found therein.

An ecosystem like this has some observable characteristics:

• Small Teams: Amazon calls these “2-pizza” teams, where the entire team could be fed dinner on two pizzas. This small size reduces the need for process and management as they communicate with each other and share the goals and work internally. The team knows their bounded context and the shared identifiers they must work with. They understand their service’s orientation in the system.
• Self-Contained Technology Choices: Developers find this aspect of microservices the most appealing because they have the freedom to make the “right” choice for a service given its requirements. The language, the database, the libraries, and other implementation technologies are owned by the team. They do not have to share these with other components because they are loosely coupled.
• Independently Scalable: Each service must manage their own quality-of-service requirements and is free to find the most suitable way to do so. For some services, horizontal scaling is the best answer. For others, it might be caching, especially if they proxy from an external system. Similarly, microservices that coordinate with other services can mitigate problematic QoS with patterns like circuit breaker to keep their own QoS intact. The system can deal with service outages without bringing down the entire business.
• Replaceable: Every business system must respond to change, and with a microservices architecture, one response is replacement. Perhaps the bounded context was incorrectly-defined and a service needs to be split into multiple services. It might be that the external service being proxied has been changed and it is faster to replace the service with a new one, rather than versioning the code itself. In some cases, the service codebase cannot be reliably recovered and redeployed due to staff changes or technology failures. A single microservice is small enough that completely replacing it with another is an inexpensive and fast option.

The Bad

Every architectural style has its challenges, and microservices are no different. These challenges are hard to mitigate and may spell doom for the ecosystem.

• Governance: While the teams are small and independent, the requirements for each service must be governed effectively. Someone has to decide the shape of the bounded contexts, the shared identifiers and QoS for each service. The overall architecture must fulfil the business mission successfully.
• Consumption: The various services are consumed in a variety of ways, from web sites and mobile apps to external systems. How do these consumers discover the relevant services that vend a needed capability? How do they coordinate the services when multiple services are required to complete a user journey? Often a consumer team will have to build their own microservices to accomplish their goals. These patterns, like backend-for-frontend, add more complexity and coupling between components.
• Cross-Cutting Concerns: Many aspects of a system go through many, even all, parts of the microservices. A cross-cutting concern is driven by business requirements and must be satisfied by all the relevant microservices. Most concerns are solved with centralized monitoring and logging capabilities that every service must participate in. Performance analysis, state change traceability, user authorization, data security, GDPR, security, licensing and many other concerns flow through the ecosystem and must be reliably addressed by all the microservices.
• Cost: A well-designed microservice that scales well, maintains its own data persistence and participates in cross-cutting observability systems may, in itself, be inexpensive. Infrastructure technology like virtualization, containerization, serverless functions and on-demand data storage have made microservices possible yet are often more expensive than realized at the outset. Companies are often surprised by how extensive (and expensive) their AWS and Azure invoices are. A single microservice can cost several hundred dollars per month in service fees just to idle. Multiplying this out to all the microservices in an ecosystem, including the multiple regions required to run a global service, and the bill can be staggering, even ruinous. A business will be sorely tempted to combine the expensive parts like databases to reduce costs. Naturally the now-shared infrastructure violates the microservice independence qualities.

A large-scale microservice ecosystem is truly a challenge for any business to undertake. One must have significant talent and resources to take this path and follow it properly, without shortcuts or deviations. Although this article did not address the anti-patterns, they do exist and they lead to system failure.

Check back for Matt’s last installment of the microservices series where he puts it all together for addressing challenges while reaping the benefits of microservices. 

The post Leveraging microservices for your business, Part 2: The good and the bad appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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Embracing mobile commerce: 6 ways to optimize

As previously published on TA Digital

It’s projected that by 2021, mobile will account for 54% of total ecommerce sales. In today’s digital era, wireless devices have made life easier for everyone. Mobile commerce has enhanced the shopping experience for consumers worldwide by making online transactions quick, convenient and smooth.

Why optimize for mobile commerce?

With many shoppers starting and ending their shopping journey on mobile, it is imperative that businesses optimize for mobile commerce. These days businesses primarily focus on simply augmenting ecommerce sites for mobile customers, rather than concentrating on creating advanced, interactive mobile pages that are easily utilized by the consumers.

6 ways to optimize mobile commerce:

1. Start with commerce trends rather than mobile design trends:

It is a common misconception that responsive web design is mobile optimization. Responsive web design in fact enhances the desktop experience on the mobile, but it doesn’t adhere to the requirements of the customers. There are certain limitations regarding ecommerce. The customer is the primary focus; hence, businesses need to synchronize needs with that of the consumer. After all customer satisfaction is the main priority, to increase sales.

To attract customers, the ecommerce site needs to be redesigned to offer the mobile-first customer experience; allowing for easier checkout on the mobile device.

2. Connect social marketing with social selling:

The present generation spends most of their time on their smartphones or tablets accessing social networking sites. Most of the consumers make purchases after coming across these sites, and they also promote them amongst their friends. Businesses should invest in advertising on these social networking sites to increase mobile traffic and the number of customers.

3. Anticipate omnichannel mobile shoppers:

According to a study by the Harvard Business Review, 7% of consumers were online-exclusive shoppers, 20% only purchased in brick-and-mortar, while 73% were true omnichannel customers, i.e. they used multiple channels while shopping. The omnichannel customer experience involves multiple touchpoints in various locations and combinations. Customers use apps to compare prices and download coupons. They also use to in-store digital tools like interactive catalogs, price checker or a tablet. They are also turning to mobile-enabled in- store checkouts and mobile wallets. In-store applications must now contain omnichannel strategies.

4. Mobile chatbots add leverage to abandoned carts:

The typical approach to reengage a customer who has abandoned their cart is to send emails at regular intervals to serve as reminders, along with special offers for the items in their checkout cart. Chatbots are the latest addition for reminders and a replacement for emails. Businesses that do not have the chatbot facility can send text messages instead of emails for communication on their smartphones.

5. Create mobile-only personalized experiences:

For ecommerce merchants mobile is both a boon and bane. Users have a short attention span. They are easily distracted by text messages or social media notifications while they are shopping. To grab the user’s attention and keep them hooked, businesses should create a personalized user experience that will help captivate the users and convert them into buyers. This can be achieved by optimizing page layout for traffic sources i.e. by helping the customer by showing various recommendations according to traffic source, showing relevant products and popular products. Businesses can also personalize free shipping offers based on a customer’s location.

6. Tune-up for fast mobile page speeds:

It is imperative to have fast loading speed for mobile sites as it helps in acquiring, retaining and attracting customers. The mobile design is similar to that of the desktop version. At times files in the background can also reduce the speed of the site on the mobile device and the customers end up paying for the load time.

By adhering to these strategies, optimizing each part of the mobile commerce application, businesses will be guaranteed to see a spike in conversion rates and ultimately generate a healthy revenue stream.

The post Embracing mobile commerce: 6 ways to optimize appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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Shoptalk: what to know before you go

The Local Search Factors That Matter Most

Many marketers say succeeding on local search often simply comes down to a business's location, according to recent research from Moz. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2019/40497/the-local-search-factors-that-matter-most

4 Ecommerce Marketing Takeaways from Netflix’s Black Mirror – Bandersnatch

Top 4 Reasons Why Headless Commerce is Better for Customer Experience

As a follow up to a previous article on why top brands are abandoning monolithic ecommerce solutions, this article explores why a headless commerce solution is proving to be the future-proofing alternative. Leading brands find that a headless or API-first commerce solution enables them to rapidly provide innovative customer experiences.

1. Get the best of both worlds

Full-stack solutions force brands to adopt their capabilities across the board and thus require the business to match the solution. Opposite of that are flexible API-based / headless solutions which allow brands to utilize best of breed capabilities that match the system to the business needs.

Full-stack ecommerce systems are like the once convenient yet now extinct TV/VCR combos. The TV/VCR were an all-in-one solution that served a basic need of playing recorded media on a TV. Since the TV and VCR were shackled together, if either piece had an issue the entire combo had to be upgraded or replaced. Additionally, as the market shifted with new technologies coming in, such as the DVD, and later to internet viewing devices, the rigid nature of the TV/VCR combo solution forced it into extinction. Like the TV/VCR combo, if an ecommerce solution is shackled to the front-end experience, changes to either the commerce engine or the experience layer require changes in both systems. So with the natural progression in technology like today’s shifts towards user experience touchpoints (some that don’t even have screens) the ridged nature of the ecommerce full-stack combo will force it into extinction.

It’s the same with ecommerce.

Be ready for what is coming and don’t compromise your customer experiences by going with, or continuing to modify, your traditional ecommerce system to keep up with the pace of change. Choose a system where the content management system (CMS) is decoupled from the ecommerce system. In this situation, you achieve the best of both worlds and there is no confusion caused by functional overlap. The CMS provides the entire customer experience, and the ecommerce system provides the transactional, merchandising and back-end information needed for currency and tax regimes. Clear separation of roles and responsibilities promotes and fosters consistency and speed on both ends.

2. Make user experiences consistent

Your customers’ needs change along their buyer journey, but they should receive a consistent experience across all touchpoints no matter how or when they interact with your company. When commerce and customer experience are decoupled, all the customer experience pieces — like the user interface, urls and other UX features — are controlled in the CMS.  Here, digital creative professionals can best express the brand’s qualities and values, and marketing can manage content and present new offers without altering the ecommerce system.

3. Personalize the customer experience

People want to buy from companies who understand their personal needs and demonstrate this across all touchpoints. This extends well beyond the usual “people who bought this item also purchased…” The backend ecommerce system knows exactly what a customer has bought no matter how they made their purchases. It then fuels the personalization engines that can power the CMS, mobile apps and social channels — even POS — with custom offers made specifically for that customer. Marketing can design innovative customer experiences without disrupting the backend and without requiring an army of software developers and months of time.

4. Take advantage of agile marketing

Separating front-end CMS systems from back-end ecommerce puts marketing back in the driver’s seat. Marketing can rapidly roll out multiple sites across brands, geographies, divisions and portfolios.

For example, when entering a new geography, a new site can be set up in days, not months. Companies just have to theme the CMS once and it takes care of all the publishing. This allows you to dynamically alter strategies based on market opportunities and trends.

When designing new customer experiences, the headless commerce system can support new technologies as they arise. Marketing can rapidly onboard new channels and touchpoints. And on the backend, personalization engines and big data analytics can integrate with the commerce system to fuel unique customer experiences.

For companies with complex content and customer requirements, headless commerce presents an unprecedented opportunity to deliver consistent, personalized, and innovative customer experiences fast. For those contemplating how to incorporate emerging touchpoint technologies like the Internet of Things, bots, and wearables, headless commerce is really the only way to future-proof the customer experience.

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Consumers expect to transact with brands anywhere and at any time. And they expect top brands to know who they are no matter how they interact.

The post Top 4 Reasons Why Headless Commerce is Better for Customer Experience appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/top-4-reasons-why-headless-commerce-is-better-for-customer-experience