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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
