How chatbots can optimize customer experience (CX)

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How to Perform a Content Audit That Skyrockets Your Organic Traffic

If your website or blog has an abundance of posts and pages that aren't search-engine optimized, you should be thinking about doing a content audit to improve SEO. Here's a six-step content audit and optimization process that will markedly improve organic traffic to your site. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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5 reasons CMOs should care about their commerce architecture

Previously published on LinkedIn

Delivering a compelling experience online is an exercise in story telling, messaging, branding and creative design, things that marketers have been doing well for a long time. Delivering a compelling experience online, securely, quickly and at scale, all while being able to experiment and react to new customer insights? Now, this is a whole new challenge. And, frankly marketers haven’t been doing this very long, and currently aren’t doing it very well. It is a whole new area of expertise that has very little to do with marketing, except for that fact that getting it right is fundamental to being able to share the message and the experience with customers.

Five years ago, maybe even two years ago, selecting a platform to build out your online presence was all about the features. Personalization, product management, integration capability, content management, etc were differentiating functions of the top platforms. Today, as those top platforms converge towards an RFP optimized set of commodity tools it may seem that they are all pretty much equal. In so much as they all offer the same backend tools with a different color scheme, and a sleek, responsive frontend, they are all the same. But this isn’t 2012, and with 32% year-over-year growth in ecommerce and an expected 10% of global sales to be online by 2020, the experiment we’ve been running online is transforming from being a small part of the business run by the marketing team, to the central lynchpin in an increasingly connected relationship with the business and the customer. In a world where the CMO is regularly tapped as the “Chief Decision-Maker” when it comes to the ecommerce strategy, it is important to understand that a “get it wrong” moment isn’t a failure for marketing, it is a failure for the entire organization.

2019 has brought about the realization that the most important feature in an ecommerce platform is the architecture. Without evaluating a given business, it is hard to say which architecture makes the most sense for it. Here are the five reasons why architecture should matter to the forward-thinking CMO. 

1. Scalable architecture means uptime during peak traffic

This is by far the most important reason why architecture matters. If businesses are doing their job correctly, the day is going to come when their message resonates with their customers, and they come flocking to the business for the experience they can’t live without. When they do, it is going to mean additional load on the business’ commerce site. Whether that’s increased pageviews, additional line items during a BOGO sale or additional people asking Alexa for products after that winning Super Bowl ad, organizations need a site that can meet the demand. If the platform they’re running on can’t scale to meet these unexpected demands, businesses may lose customers before they’ve ever had the chance to really acquire them.

2. Up-to-date inventory data means increased customer trust for BOPIS and online fulfillment 

In a store, on a shelf, inventory is easy. The customer walks into the store, they find the shelf where something belongs, if it is there they buy it, if it is gone, they find a store associate who looks to see if it is in the back, and the associate either hands it to the customer, or adds it to the next order and asks the customer to come back in a week to pick it up. Online, inventory is incredibly hard. Is it available, if it is backordered, how soon will the customers have it, can it be shipped to store, can the store fulfill in-house? And if businesses don’t know the answer to these questions their customers go to a competitor who does. And that happens in the flash of a few seconds. Inaccurate inventory can mean lost sales, increased RMA costs and frustrated customers left holding empty shopping bags they thought held the item they wanted. Worse, portraying accurate inventory has its own set of customer frustrations. Slow site load times and perceived lack of selection can send potential sales to competitors who appear to have a better customer experience. Finally, accurate promises for fulfillment have shown to be one of the best ways to acquire and retain customers. Amazon is proof positive that a terrible website experience doesn’t deter customers willing to wade through the chaff in order to get their Instant Pots and essential oils just a little bit faster. Being able to deliver these functions, in a balanced combination that works for the customer, and being able to experiment with which ones work for the organization is key to success on the fulfillment front.

3. Properly executed APIs allow true omnichannel engagement

The practice of commerce is a thousands of years old, with activity dating back to ancient Mesopotamia. Digital commerce in its current incarnation is a few years younger than the world wide web, which was born in 1991. Less than 30 years ago. 

Investment in a commerce platform is a decision an organization will live with for the next decade, maybe more. Between 1891 and 1930 humans evolved from the first automobile to normalized commercial air travel. Imagine what digital commerce will look like 10 years from now? Probably looks more like an airplane than the first automobile. APIs will be the key to future-proofing an online strategy. Choosing APIs that allow flexibility of execution is paramount.

4. Well designed application cache means less money spent on CPU cycles and more for customer engagement

Investment without return is a sure fire way to get kicked to the curb at the next quarterly board meeting. Budgets aren’t limitless, and as long as the ecommerce budget comes out of a CMO’s pocket, finding a way to reduce it is a priority. It’s not a stretch to say that the days of an on-premise commerce platform are over. The notion is antiquated, and the top reason why is that SaaS and hosted platforms have a lower overall TCO. However, even under the covers, especially if businesses are paying a PVU style license, efficiency has a direct impact on the cost of the platform. Not only the platform’s cost to operate at peak, but it’s ability to shrink and right size itself when traffic wanes. Even if an organization is paying rev share, or licensing on a per month basis, they’re still getting those hosting costs passed on to them in the form of a markup to “retail” from the platform vendor, so choosing a vendor who cares about efficient ops is in their long-term best interest.

5. Properly separated application design means easier upgrades and faster access to new features 

Experience commerce, headless commerce, API commerce… same thing, different name. They all center around separating the backend from the frontend in order to take advantage of best of breed experience platforms. At their core though, they offer some surprising benefits around TCO and agility. In the past, platform upgrades have been monumental undertakings, six months to a year of high touch work that stopped new feature delivery and focused a team on getting to the next version. Separating these tiers, and pushing feature development to a CMS that “widgetizes” the frontend means that upgrading the backend tools doesn’t interrupt the frontend experience. It also means that non-core tools can be added into the mix to offer surround capabilities for personalization, fulfillment, and other short term business initiatives. These things aren’t possible without a purpose build architecture to support modularity.

Looking back at that list it should be crystal clear that before any consideration on how many promotion types a platform supports, and which devices the homepage displays correctly on, businesses should be thinking about how the architecture enables future business success. Architecture matters, now more than ever, and the winners in the online battle are going to be the ones who have a platform that scales to meet demand, costs less to operate, and is flexible and adaptable to the future.

The post 5 reasons CMOs should care about their commerce architecture appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/5-reasons-cmos-should-care-about-their-commerce-architecture

The Final-Mile and its factors for ecommerce success or failure

Online retailers face an uphill battle in securing new customers. More than one hundred thousand websites launch every day . Many of these websites serve market niches – meaning it’s becoming increasingly difficult for general ecommerce sites to maintain market share against specialized retailers.

Brick-and-mortar stores are fending off competition by recruiting entertaining, empathetic employees. This human touch is great for physical retail, but how can ecommerce sites deliver the knockout punch in their space?

Amazon is winning by focusing on the “final mile” in commerce

Amazon, the third largest retailer in the world, provides a shining example for both established and emerging ecommerce brands. The key is in what they call the “final mile”. This refers to both the physical and virtual distance between them and their customers. 

Local Warehouses and the Acquisition of “Whole Foods”

Amazon understands that their customers want their products as quickly as possible. The one thing that physical retailers beat Amazon on is the ability to deliver instant gratification. To combat this, the ecommerce giant has invested heavily in three key areas:

1. The creation of their own Uber-style package delivery service in metropolitan areas.
2. AI-influenced local warehouses with products likely to be ordered by customers in nearby neighborhoods. 
3. The acquisition of physical retail spaces, like Whole Foods, to blur the line between ecommerce and physical retail. (They are repurposing some of the warehouse space in their Whole Foods locations to serve as local warehouses as well.)

Delivering a Compelling, Personalized Online Experience

The addition of local warehouses and on-demand package delivery certainly helps them shorten the final mile. However, optimizations in the physical final mile are useless without first ensuring that the order is placed with Amazon’s platform, instead of a competitor.

This is referred to as the “digital final mile”. The key to winning customer loyalty is personalization – and Amazon excels here too. 

Serving up product suggestions based on past user history

This might not sound like an earth-shattering idea in ecommerce, but Amazon continues to refine their approach and serve as an industry leader in personalization of the online customer experience. 

In fact, Amazon is so ahead of the pack that they have created a machine learning service for AWS subscribers that provides a state-of-the-art personalization engine for their projects. Unimaginatively, it’s called “Amazon Personalize”. The earth-shattering aspect of this is that developers get to leverage what Amazon.com has learned over more than a decade of delivering a personalized online experience.

That amount of knowledge and refinement is nothing to be sneezed at. And based on a few conversations with companies that use AWS, Amazon Personalizewas a deciding factor in choosing AWS over an alternative like Google Cloudor Microsoft Azure. 

Leveraging Video Content to Communicate Value in an Engaging Way

Amazon is a platform where virtually anyone can sign-up and sell their products to Amazon’s extensive user base. Sophisticated product marketers realize that their biggest competition comes from within the Amazon platform itself – in the form of other sellers selling the same or similar products. 

An entire book could be written on the art of producing compelling product videos. Assuming a seller has created an informative Amazon product listing and engaged a professional team to create a killer product video, the next most important step is uploading the video to Amazon.

It’s a relatively simple process, yet, Amazon limits the types of video files it accepts in order to ensure fast loading on customer devices. I personally recommend using an online video converterto get around the hardware bottlenecks of most computers. The final product needs to be in one of the following formats:

• 3GP
• AAC
• AVI
• FLV
• MOV
• MP4
• MPEG-2

Amazon is dominating ecommerce by transforming the final mile – both physically and virtually. They are blurring the lines between online and physical retail with strategic acquisitions. 

To ensure they win customers’ orders, they are continuing to enhance their efforts to personalize the customer experience – including everything from product suggestions to encouraging sellers to leverage compelling product videos.

The post The Final-Mile and its factors for ecommerce success or failure appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/the-final-mile-and-its-factors-for-ecommerce-success-or-failure

4 ways to create influencer marketing that really works

Three Actionable SEO Techniques to Improve Your Website Right Now

Businesses that rely on organic search for sales and conversions know the importance of SEO, but ranking for keywords is becoming harder and more time-consuming. But there's plenty you can do about that. Complete these three SEO tasks to improve your site's organic search visibility across the Web. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Social Media Tools: What 50+ Of The Best Marketers Use

Do you need social media tools? If so, which ones are the best for you business. We define social media tools and why you need them. To improve your social media marketing, 50+ marketing experts what their top 3 favorite tools were and why they used them.

The post Social Media Tools: What 50+ Of The Best Marketers Use appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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Want to become a blog post writing machine? Follow this simple 5 step blog post formula. Includes examples and tips to create amazing content.

The post Simple 5 Step Blog Post Formula That Will Make You A Pro Now appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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Microservices: why less is more

When enterprises began implementing ecommerce platforms back in the early 2000s, the monolith architecture at the time delivered. It was one unified application; the most essential features and functionalities were pre-packaged, and the requirements were easy to meet.

Since then customer and market demands have evolved and become more complex and delivery expectations are now urgent. The monolithic architectures that took on these new features and functionalities have become slower. Posing a major dilemma, as speed and flexibility are competitive differentiators for enterprises. And, with the business driver behind this being customer and experience-led commerce, organizations are now seeking more flexible software infrastructures – like microservices – so that they can iterate faster.

Unlike monolith architectures, microservices are small services that are individually developed and deployed. Communicating via APIs, microservices reduce software complexity, scale vertically, and increase flexibility, speed and resiliency.

This turn toward microservices is enabling enterprise agility. Customer demands can be met in days versus weeks or months, which ultimately better positions enterprises against competitors, Amazon and upstarts.

Microservices architectures benefits

Faster go-to-market 

Instead of waiting for the entire platform to be ready for implementation, microservices architectures enable the fastest-go-to-market time, as businesses can launch core components in sequence versus all at once. This not only makes for quick implementations, but it also allows businesses to upgrade individual features and functionalities à la carte.

Better and clearer code

Monolith platforms operate on a tightly coupled frontend and backend. Any personalization or customization request involves editing the database, code, and front-end platform, which is extremely time-intensive. Moreover, developers must be mindful that customization changes do not infringe on future upgrades.

With microservices, development experiments are not dependent on modifications to both the frontend and backend code, and therefore less risky. This gives developers more experimental freedom to try new development methodologies and easily conduct A/B testing.

For example, perhaps a developer would like to implement a Progressive Web App (PWA). PWAs are not a new framework, but a set of practices that delivers a mobile app-like experience to users via the web; essentially users can install an application from a browser, to their phone, which will work offline just like an app. This type of experiment can be easily run and tested via microservices architecture since the backend is not required.

Pay for what is actually used and use what is actually needed

Because microservices are a componentized architecture, businesses can select and customize the features and functionalities that they truly require from their commerce platform. Moreover, microservices offer the option to either use the platform’s entire set of features or deploy individual services, one at a time.

Instead of implementing a feature-rich platform that won’t fully be utilized, microservices architectures offer the flexibility to purchase, implement and use the functionalities and features you truly need. This makes for significant cost-savings and quicker time to market with implementation and updates.

Continuous innovation is expedited

Market demands are constantly changing, and it’s not enough for the technology to be capable – it must be available immediately.

One way for businesses to stay ahead is by adopting a continuous innovation delivery model. Essentially, this method of development delivers an MVP quickly, based on crucial customer needs. From there, the business continuously iterates and improves upon the MVP leveraging user behavior insights and prioritizing market demands. This is one of the most efficient delivery methodologies.

Pairing this type of delivery with a microservices architecture enables quick innovation. Because microservices allows a business to address individual components of the commerce platform at any time, innovation happens at a more rapid pace as microservices fuel flexibility.

Previously published on Zaelab.com

The post Microservices: why less is more appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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4 reasons to love Get Elastic

10 Recurring SEO Health Checks You Need to Be Doing

Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. It takes a lot of work to achieve those elusive Page One rankings--and to retain them. Part of the onsite work is a systematic review of sources that might indicate there's trouble brewing or in full storm mode. Here are 10 checks for ... Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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4 steps to create a unified ecommerce strategy

This post originally appeared on CMSwire.com

Just when marketers solve one problem, another rears its head. Multichannel commerce is presenting marketers with a whole new raft of challenges.

Ensuring consistent messaging across many channels is one thing, but doing so while dynamically pricing, generating contextual bundles and creating promotions personalized to a segment of one is quite another.

Content management systems have gone a long way toward ensuring messaging consistency, but unifying the customer experience across touchpoint silos is proving more difficult.

If your marketing remains highly siloed, here are four tips you can do right now to break down barriers and keep your current systems:

1. Find Where the Problem Starts

Inconsistent customer experiences usually starts with fractured transaction systems based on channel.

Point-of-sale systems in store are not linked to online catalogs or carts, nor connected to a customer profile. Mobile apps don’t always aggregate information for use in the back office. Pricing, billing and fulfillment systems are duplicated for different channels or sometimes they are duplicated to serve different geographies, even though the business has the aspiration to deliver consistent brand experiences on an international scale.

Multiple channels and continuously evolving touchpoints have made CRM systems very hard to keep up to date, if they haven’t become irrelevant.

From the customer’s perspective, your brand is what they interact with, not your “app” or your “email campaigns,” not your “stores” or a national “business unit.” They build trust in your brand through consistently high-quality interactions no matter what form they take. Moreover, they expect you to interact with them that way too.

By analyzing data about customer purchases in the past, you can incorporate new offers based on actual individual preferences — as opposed to just personas — into marketing programs. But before any of that can happen, customer-facing systems need to connect.

2. Define What a Unified Cross-Channel Journey Looks Like to Your Customers

One of the reasons companies haven’t unified the customer journey is because they are too caught up dealing with the mechanics of solving today’s problems, rather than reflecting on what can set them apart from the competition in the long term, and enabling a vision that is conceived from the customer’s perspective.

Here’s an illustration of how, from an individual’s point of view, a unified experience might look:

An international grocery chain has brick and mortar stores, a mobile app, a website and social media presence on all the major sites. Hypothetical customer “Devi” has downloaded and activated the mobile app, tying her account to PayPal.

When she goes to the store to make purchases, she uses the app on her smartphone to pay through a1 bar code scanner. The app records her purchases, creates a shopping list and keeps track of reward points. Once a certain point level is reached, the app lets her know and allows her to use the points, or store them for later.

On her laptop, after signing into her account, Devi can add money to the wallet, or change payment methods, check out her points status and update her shopping list. The shopping list is ‘intelligent’ and knows approximately how often Devi purchases certain items.

This allows the mobile app to send Devi reminders to buy pods for her coffee machine and soda water. It also means marketing can send custom, automated offers to Devi. She does not need to make use of these offers in any physical way. Discounts are automatically applied based on her offers and her individual purchasing power.

Devi can also set her shopping list to auto-fill as well. In this case, Devi will automatically receive items she has identified for weekly delivery.

While traveling, Devi can access the free Wi-Fi at the grocery chain’s retail locations by signing into her account. As she signs in, she is presented with her points total and she can pay with her phone in the local currency.

The customer experience is so compelling and so personalized that Devi stops shopping at other stores altogether. It’s as if the company knows what she needs before she does.

3. Consider Integration to Tame the Moving Parts

Let’s take a look at all the parts behind the scenes which interact to produce Devi’s amazing customer experience.

Devi’s personal account with the grocer is paramount. Her shopping list, payment method, preferences and settings are all located here and should tie up to the CRM system. The mobile app is also key since, when she uses the app, it automatically ties to her account and gives her the ability to pay with a touch and auto-build her shopping list.

Her profile informs dynamic pricing and product bundling driven by rules-based merchandising software. Barcode scanners in-store or in-warehouse have to be linked to product catalog and inventory software. The grocer’s website must allow Devi to log in to access her profile. Free in store Wi-Fi allows the grocer to track Devi’s path through the aisles and marketers can push location-based ads to her cell phone.

There are potentially eight different technologies involved here.

1. Mobile app
2. Commerce platform
3. Barcode readers
4. Personalization engine
5. Website
6. CRM system
7. Content management system
8. Wi-Fi Beacons

No single company offers all of these components today. Analysts in general agree that conglomerates attempting to have a footprint in all the technologies involved inevitably offer sub par products to handle at least some aspects of the experience.

Customer experience and commerce systems that satisfy, and sometimes even redefine consumer expectations, will be multi-vendor, based on best of breed solutions. You may use some of these technologies, or none of them in your current systems. In either case, the important thing to think about is how to integrate all the moving parts to orchestrate an extraordinary customer experience.

4. Underpin the Cross-Channel Journey with a Flexible, API-Based Platform

No company can be expected to rip and replace their commerce systems overnight. Partnering companies have teams of integration specialists who can be brought to bear, but the templated and monolithic solutions on the market are hard to extend, and create technical debt in that they demand for these resources to be spent in hardwired integrations as opposed to designing and delivering compelling experiences.

Adopting a flexible API-based commerce platform to unite a variety of existing and future systems — point of sale, ordering, fulfillment, call centers, CRM on the backend and content management and experience solutions on any device on the front end — enables both brands and integrators to accelerate and future-proof rich, cutting edge customer journeys designed with a customer first point of view.

An API approach allows businesses to maintain current practices and foundational technologies while opening the door to innovation. From a personalization point of view, it can facilitate a single view of a customer with information collected from more than one source.

Front-end experience management systems can present campaigns based on accurate personal history. API-based integration frees marketers from patchwork solutions relying on convoluted direct integrations and customizations. This works both ways because organizations can also capitalize rapidly on new customer touchpoints and geographic opportunities as they arise.

The post 4 steps to create a unified ecommerce strategy appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/4-steps-to-create-a-unified-strategy

How to create product descriptions that boost conversions

Bundling matters: why telecom companies seek an API-based commerce solution

In September 2017, T-Mobile announced that it would include a free Netflix subscription for family plan members. “While on the surface this might seem to be just a promotion, it highlights how T-Mobile can layer on additional services into a bundle that customers actually want,” said BTIG research analyst Walter Piecyk.

Since 2013, T-Mobile has used bundling and pricing to attract more new subscribers than all of its rivals combined. Customers were drawn by the promise of simple, unlimited plans and then delighted by special offers. In May 2017, they gave a buy-one-get-one-free on Samsung Galaxy S8 if you activated another line. This past November, they offered a $300 discount off the iPhone X.

Bundling builds customer loyalty 

Bundling rewards customers for their purchases and makes them feel like they are getting a deal. It can also reduce customer churn. The paper “The Dynamic Effects of Triple Play Bundling in Telecommunications” (Time Warner Research Program on Digital Communications) says that for telecoms and other industries that sell recurring services, bundling can help create the irresistible combination of savings and convenience. They only need to pay one bill to take care of many needs – and the ultimate benefit is that they sign up now and don’t have to worry about it again. Any tempting price offer from the competition is weighed against the hassle of leaving. 

Bundling creates irresistible offers 

T-Mobile promotions and other types of product bundles—run on powerful commerce engines that configure offerings depending on a customer profile. Is it a valued customer who wants to upgrade? Is it an anonymous shopper responding to a Facebook ad or a partner website? Certain actions – coupon codes, special modes of payment, hitting a maximum price – can slash prices even further. Special bundle pages can even calculate savings, hooking in a casual browser into buying far more than she originally intended. 

Bundled or tangled in technology?

Unfortunately, many of the largest communications companies that attempt to offer bundles across business lines  hit a technical tangle. They’re stuck with multiple legacy business support systems (BSS) and operation support systems (OSS) to support multiple lines of business. These systems have been designed to support traditional services, contain a lot of customizations and are extremely complex. This leads to long time-to-market for new digital products and services (Applications, content, M2M/IoT), makes bundling extremely difficult and dynamic pricing virtually impossible. Siloed systems also make it harder to deliver consistent customer experience across existing and emerging touchpoints.

Customers feel the confusion, too. Because back-end systems aren’t integrated, neither are customer profiles. They get a disjointed experience that fails to recognize their purchase expectations, reward their loyalty, or provide offers in the context of their purchasing intent. If companies can’t offer them bundling or the kind of personalization they expect, nothing will stop them from going to one that can. 

Unbundle opportunities with API-based commerce 

In a typically fragmented telecom technology environment, the ability to assemble information from siloed systems is crucial. 

Accelerated time-to-market

API-based, headless commerce solutions can help telecommunications companies break down the silos. It creates an abstraction layer on top of legacy BSS/OSS systems to provide consistent unified customer experience across all touchpoints and business lines. This allows businesses to make any necessary changes without making changes to existing legacy systems which helps to accelerate time-to-market.

Flexible bundle offerings

Modern commerce systems support traditional and digital services including third party services. This enables business to openly combine products and services into static and dynamic product bundles. This allows to create added value for the customers and drive ARPU growth while creating superior customer experience.

Omnichannel journeys

Unified headless commerce solution allows business to sell bundled products and services across broad omnichannel ecosystem of traditional and digital channels. This allows to create unified view on customer interactions across touchpoints to provide consistent customer experience as well as to maintain continuous omnichannel journeys. Well-defined APIs enable quick onboarding of new touchpoints including connected-devices, chat-bots, AR/VR and changes to existing ones.

The clear winners, of course, are telecom customers. 

API solutions pave the way for them to get exactly what they need at the moment they need it and be recognized as individuals and rewarded for their loyalty. Their journey may change and become even more complex as new technology and touchpoints emerge, but the system will always be able to adapt. Marketers will be able to create not just bundles, but a dynamic and loyalty-building customer experience. 

The post Bundling matters: why telecom companies seek an API-based commerce solution appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/bundling-matters-why-telecom-companies-seek-an-api-based-commerce-solution

Ecommerce best practices [infographic]

There’s no mistaking what a major force ecommerce is in the business world today. Consumers and businesses alike appreciate the technology that allows them to find the products and services they need virtually anywhere and at any time. However, that convenience can be a double-edged sword. Although customers love how quick and convenient it is to shop and buy online, it also means they won’t have the patience to put up with a site that doesn’t perform to their expectations. 

Any business that uses a web portal to interact with its customers needs to make sure its site is firing on all cylinders. This means not only having a website that looks appealing to shoppers, but one that also features a lot of optimization under the hood. 

Making sure it works quickly, is simple to navigate and will protect users’ sensitive data is crucial. Today’s shoppers don’t want to waste their time being frustrated or confused. They certainly don’t want to put their faith in a company that doesn’t do all it can to protect their money. 

For tips in the ecommerce world, check out this infographic from Steadfast.

The post Ecommerce best practices [infographic] appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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https://www.getelastic.com/ecommerce-best-practices

Wicked Quick: cashier-less shopping

Content Curation Roundup Posts: How To Get Awesome Results

Want to create content curation roundup posts to get maximum results? Then let these 20+ tactics guide you to develop the best possible crowd pleaser content.

The post Content Curation Roundup Posts: How To Get Awesome Results appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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5 ways to improve enterprise security

At the heart of Internet connectivity is the Internet of Things (IoT). Every enterprise today that utilizes digital technology in its core processes or organizational infrastructure adopts some form of IoT.

While these connections can give businesses the dynamic they need to compete in an increasingly competitive market, they can also add to a company’s online vulnerability. The countless devices, applications, cloud platforms, sensors, systems, and modems that are connected all present a threat to an enterprise’s most core secure data and personnel profiles.

If at any given time any of these devices become vulnerable, the entire network — and all devices and platforms within it — becomes exposed. For this reason, companies must take multi-layered approaches to secure the devices and the data that travels between each device throughout every second of every day.

Here are five ways companies can improve enterprise security, both internally and externally throughout an IoT-driven network.

1. Assume that everything presents risks

The first rule of thumb in business security is to question the security of every current device and any additional device within the business network. Every device and component within a network is vulnerable in one way or another. Therefore, IT administrators must understand the risks involved with adding a device and then apply security protocols appropriate to the level of risk.

A simple example of this would be the addition of a router to the network. Since the router links other devices together to the outside world, it is highly exploitable. Rather than settling for the router default configurations, administrators can tighten security by adjusting the setting in the following ways:

• Avoid routers supplied by ISPs.
• Change the default admin password. Choose a complex Wi-Fi password
• Restrict which ISP addresses can manage the router.
• Turn on HTTPS access to the router interface.
• Change the router’s LAN IP address if possible.
• Update the router’s firmware as often as the updates are available.
  
  

2. Assess all IoT device security characteristics

IoT security methods vary depending on a wide range of variable both within the device and within the network. Unfortunately, most IoT manufacturers do not place a high priority on securing these devices. As a result, IT techs and administrators must do it upon installation. Similar to the above point, all IoT devices must be assessed for security characteristics.

What characteristics in each device do IT administrators look for?

• Security weaknesses in the device’s design
• Public key infrastructure (PKI) and digital certificates
• Application performance indicator (API) security
• Hardware security and tamper-proof construction
• Readily available device and software updates
  

3. Look to a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A VPN gives a company privacy and anonymity by creating a private network from a public internet connection. A VPN masks an internet protocol (IP) address so that no other entity can trace any online actions. By combining a VPN with the best browser for privacy, a company has a greater chance of optimizing security.

Regardless of how many IoT devices you have connected to your network or the activity that transpires between the devices, the VPN shields all activity from those trying to access or hack the data.

While you may consider other types of security to add to your network, a VPN is your greatest line of defence against business-related online criminal activity. A virtual private network can conceal enterprise activity such as:

• Browsing History
• The IP address and location
• Audio or video streaming location
• Data in transit from one IoT device to another
• All other web or network activity within a company
  

4. Expand existing security solutions

Every IoT device adds another connection endpoint. Eventually, enough devices can exhaust the security of an existing system. Therefore, users may need to expand the existing security solutions to mitigate IoT risks. 

Here are some ways to achieve this:

Start with the End User in Mind

Breaches occur when a company employee (end-user) doesn’t understand the security protocols, or they access a part of the network that they were not supposed to. Therefore, companies need to regulate and control which devices end-users connect to the network.

Shield the Network Perimeter

Design and implement a security policy for an IoT based network, paying special attention to items such as device authentication to the network, device network communication controls, and device logging. These devices lack hardened operating systems. They are vulnerable to hacks.

Multi-Layer Endpoint Protection

Hackers are always testing systems for weaknesses. The slightest opening in a network will allow a hacker to wreak havoc on a company. Companies can block criminals at every point through risk-based authentication. Another possible solution is utilizing encryption keys to hide the identity of an IoT device.

5. Be prepared for worst case scenarios

We’ve all seen the headlines over the past decade of what can happen when a seemingly impenetrable mega corporation experiences a security breach. In most cases, the breaches occurred because the company did not take the security of its data seriously enough.

Cybersecurity must be the top priority for today’s companies. Every new development ushers in countless hackers who are already ahead of the curve and waiting for companies to display some type of vulnerability with their network.

How can companies prepare for worst case scenarios?

• Develop an IoT Readiness Plan that includes a comprehensive risk assessment and discovery of all IoT devices that might present a catastrophe. An IoT risk assessment should include an audit of the network, the applications, and security protocols.
• Identify, catalog, and categorize all IoT devices. Make sure that IT has a comprehensive understanding and knowledge of each device. Replace or upgrade devices as necessary without fail.
• Optimize and upgrade all VPN services and providers. Have a complete understanding of what a VPN provider can offer and invest time and money in ensuring that the company has the absolute best VPN products on the market today.
  
• Backup all data in a secure cloud or on-site platform. While cloud platforms are convenient, they’re not always safe. Make sure that the company is utilizing a highly secure cloud platform that is managed by a reputable, experienced, and certified IT company.

By utilizing these five strategies, small, medium, and large companies can ensure that the devices and platforms within their network system are safe from hackers and criminal activity. The simple fact is, companies can no longer access the web and neglect enterprise security.

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Google Search Algorithm Updates: 2018 [Infographic]

Ranking on Google is getting more complex--and strategically important--every single year, and 2018 was no exception. Though we're well into 2019, a wide range of Google Search algorithm updates in the past year are still influencing our search results. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Blockchain Potential for Ecommerce

Blockchain distributed ledger technology, the tech behind Bitcoin, has the potential to improve ecommerce. These are early days, however. So early that many people don’t understand what a blockchain is and what it means for business. Let’s start with the basics, then look at some of the potential use-cases for ecommerce.  

What is a blockchain? 

A blockchain is a database “ledger” that cryptographically seals records of digital data or events in an immutable time-stamped chain. There are decentralized forms and centralized forms of blockchains.  

Decentralized blockchains work best when there are many copies of the chain. Keepers of the chain (the network of computers that holds copies) must agree that a transaction has taken place before the transaction is committed to a block of transactions, stored on the chain. Decentralized forms of blockchain tend to be permission-less, meaning anyone can participate anonymously. Bitcoin is the most recognized application of a decentralized blockchain.  

Centralized forms require knowledge of participants identity and a central organization stores the data. Ripple is an application of centralized blockchain technology. There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems.  

In either form, participants can access and inspect the data store on a blockchain. However, no one can alter or delete information sealed in blocks on the chain. The ability for all parties to “see” into all transactions transparently makes blockchains ideal for areas of business in which third-party trust systems operate today.  

Fundamentally, blockchains have the potential to make it easier and safer for enterprises to conduct business over the Internet. The inherent transparency that blockchains introduce can lead to: 

• Cost reductions in payments 
• Improved trust between customers and companies 
• Supply chain efficiencies
• Fraud reduction
• Inverted advertising models

Thousands of companies, organizations and consulting firms around the globe are working to leverage blockchains to make industries work more efficiently and effectively.  

Here are the top five areas to watch:  

Frictionless payments 

Traditional financial settlement systems that ensure the release of payments after goods or services delivery depend on time-consuming, expensive, manual processes prone to inaccuracy. While for consumers it appears that a credit card transaction is completed at the time of a sale, back office financial employees know that it can take weeks for final settlement before a merchant receives the money.  

Blockchain-based currencies like Bitcoin, do not require third-party validation to make a transaction. A customer can send bitcoin or other accepted crypto coin to a merchant directly. After receiving confirmation from the blockchain’s network nodes, the transaction is complete, and the merchant receives the payment. The time it takes to complete a transaction is in the minutes, not weeks because verification is automated and secured through multiple confirmations.  

Companies looking to reduce costs for back-end settlements and purchases using credit cards, PayPal or other third-parties can accept blockchain-based currency or credit.  

Automating contract enforcement 

Blockchains can also create “programmable” money, using a smart contract. A smart contract can be a simple agreement to pay for a good or service once certain conditions are met. They can facilitate the exchange of money, property, shares, or anything of value in a transparent, conflict-free way that circumvents the services of a middleman.  

Smart contracts not only define the rules and penalties around an agreement in the same way that a traditional contract does, but they can also automatically enforce those obligations. 

For example, suppose you buy a car direct from a manufacturer and that you can do this by paying a deposit through a blockchain based currency. You get a receipt from the manufacturer held in a virtual contract. The manufacturer sends you the car and a digital entry key by a specified date. If neither the key nor the car arrives by a specified time, then the blockchain releases a refund of the deposit you paid. If you do receive the car and unlock it by the specified time, then the blockchain releases full payment to the manufacturer.  

The system works on if-then-else statements observable by hundreds of observers so you can expect a faultless delivery. If the manufacturer gives you the key, they are sure to be paid. Both conditions must be met for the contract to go through. If you send a certain amount in bitcoins, you receive the key. The contract automatically cancels after its expiration date and the code in the chain cannot be interfered with by you or the manufacturer without the other knowing since all participants are simultaneously alerted.  

Fraud reduction

According to the October 2017 Global Fraud Index, account takeover replaced stolen financials as the fastest growing fraud threat for ecommerce websites in 2017. Companies in just eight industries lost more than $57.8 B through fraud. Fraudsters impersonate legitimate account holders, take over their accounts, and use them to make purchases because usernames and passwords are notoriously easy to obtain.  

To combat fraud, blockchain companies are using the idea of the distributed ledger to create trusted identities. In this system, multiple trusted parties must be able to verify another party. On an ecommerce site, verification could take place when a customer wants to use their account to purchase. Other start-ups are leveraging the cryptographic capabilities of blockchains to protect biometrics used for account access, making it extremely difficult for external parties to gain access to another’s account. Identity systems based on a blockchain would extend to all parties in an ecommerce ecosystem: suppliers, partners, distributors and any other players. Similarly, legitimate merchants will use blockchain technology to assure the authenticity of goods and guarantee their quality. 

Supply chain gains 

Tracking, reconciling and verifying inventory, purchases, invoices, bills of lading, shipments and receipts is a big problem in larger enterprises with sophisticated supply chains. Companies can eliminate all the paperwork (even if the paper is now all digital) using blockchain to create tamper-proof master ledgers between trading parties.  

Blockchain solutions offer a single system of record for all parties to all transactions related to products. In this scenario, there is single entry, no duplication and transparency along the entire chain. Every time a product changes hands, the transaction is documented in the blockchain, creating a complete and permanent history from manufacture to sale.  

Assuming companies are honest about their goods in the beginning, or there is some way to verify provenance as products enter the supply chain, then blockchains have the potential to reduce inaccuracy.  

Using smart contracts, blockchain can facilitate neutral supply chain contract enforcement as well.  

Disrupting advertising models and protecting personal information 

Traditional media aggregates people with like interests and companies pay the media outlets to target audiences with advertising. Even the newer social media platforms do the same thing. Companies spend vast amounts of money on Facebook, Google and YouTube ads. The model whereby a third-party aggregates targets and sells their attention to advertisers is set to change using blockchain technology.  

Imagine if an individual were paid to receive ads, but that they could not just sign up for any old ad? Companies exploring how to use blockchain technology have come up with some new strategies to do just that.  

One uses a new decentralized search engine. Consumers earn ad dollars by adding their personal data to a blockchain. When they perform searches through the search engine, businesses that want to reach them can pay directly for access to advertise to them. The record of the transaction is observable by all players, increasing transparency for advertisers and allowing them to understand better where to allocate their budgets.  

Another is using blockchain in conjunction with a browser that masks personal information from both advertisers and publishers, allowing consumers to remain anonymous. Consumers can opt-in to receive ads from specific sources. Publishers are rewarded with digital tokens from advertisers for attracting consumers with content. Consumers receive ads that are more relevant to them. The system increases transparency and efficiency in the digital advertising market. Publishers receive more revenue because middlemen and fraud are reduced. Users, who opt-in, receive fewer but more relevant ads. Advertisers earn higher ROI.  

Just a fad? 

Blockchain technology is not likely a passing fad.  

Serious players like IBM, Accenture, Amazon, Microsoft, central and private banks, as well as large corporations are investing time and money exploring hundreds of different blockchain-based use cases. Many of these result in API-based systems that can plug and play with other systems. Looking forward, we expect open, API-based ecommerce systems to more easily incorporate blockchain-based identity verification, payments, smart contracts and new forms of loyalty and advertising than closed commerce systems.  

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How To Get Useful Conference Results On The Cheap Without Being Physically There

Marketers use this Definitive Guide To Get Conference Results Without Being Physically There. Has tactics and examples to help you succeed.

The post How To Get Useful Conference Results On The Cheap Without Being Physically There appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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7 ways to combat chargebacks from “friendly” fraud

In recent months, we have seen “friendly” fraud take center stage as Facebook and Fortnite became victims to rampant friendly fraud. In fact, friendly fraud continues to be a problem for ecommerce merchants, not just the high-profile companies. A recent report from Juniper showed that 34 percent of merchants had experienced friendly fraud.

“Friendly fraud” refers to chargebacks that arise out of legitimate transactions. When a customer doesn’t recognize the charge on their bank statement, or when they later come to regret the transaction, they may contact their bank to have the charge reversed without going through the merchant first to inquire about the charge or ask for a refund. The “fraud” part may or may not be intentional, but the chargeback process is being misused by the consumer.

Chargebacks from friendly fraud is on the rise, and they present a growing problem that ecommerce merchants cannot ignore. Merchants and banks lost a combined total of $31 billion dollars due to chargebacks in 2017, and that only represents the actual transaction amounts. When factoring in the time, labor, and money spent in dealing with chargebacks, their actual cost is much higher. Some chargebacks have a legitimate basis and can’t be avoided, but friendly fraud chargebacks can—and should—be vigorously disputed.

Banks must shoulder some of the responsibility for friendly fraud growing to become such a problem over the last few years. In trying to keep their customers happy, they have eliminated fees and minimum required payments associated with chargeback requests, and do not critically investigate the reasons customers request them. By making it so easy to ask for a chargeback, banks have encouraged customers to use it as their go-to response to an unfamiliar or regretted purchase.

How to Prevent Friendly Fraud

Friendly fraud can be difficult to prevent because any valid transaction can potentially lead to it. Typical security measures, like AVS and CVV matching, won’t prevent it at all. Even a longtime, faithful customer can perpetrate friendly fraud. 

However, there are concrete steps to reduce the likelihood of it occurring. Here are seven tips found to be effective at combatting friendly fraud.

1. Make sure descriptors are easy for customers to identify. Many chargebacks occur because customers don’t recognize the charge on their bank statement. Make sure the business or store name is part of the descriptor so that customers can easily identify the origin of the charge.

1. Set realistic expectations about products and/or services. A deeply dissatisfied customer who feels misled or deceived may feel like it’s pointless to go back to the merchant to resolve their issue. Don’t make promises that products can’t keep.

1. Maintain honest and ethical business practices. Fraud is a two-way street—businesses can’t expect customers to treat them ethically if they’re trying to take advantage of them.

1. Offer friendly, 24/7 customer service. A customer who can’t get ahold of a merchant to deal with a problem they’re having is likely to lose patience and turn to their bank instead. If customer service staff is easy to reach and trained to provide comprehensive, friendly assistance in resolving customer complaints, these problems are less likely to turn into chargebacks.

1. Blacklist customers who file chargebacks. It is estimated that customers who file a dispute are known to take advantage of the merchant again at least 2 – 3 times if merchants do not take any preventive measures. Blacklisting the negative customers will prohibit the abusers from taking advantage of the business again. Merchants have to weigh the cost of losing future sales from customers like these against the risk of getting more chargebacks from them.

1. Fulfill orders on time and track return shipments. Shipping delays happen, but customers who think their order is never going to arrive have a high likelihood of requesting a chargeback. Ship promptly, track all packages coming and going, and issue refunds immediately upon receipt of a return.

1. Notify customers when their order is processed, and before and after processing recurring payments. Any time there’s a delay between an order being placed and a card being charged, it’s a good idea to send reminders to the customer about what they’re being charged for. This is especially true with recurring payments for subscriptions and the like—customers have a tendency to develop amnesia about signing up for these billings.

When Outsourcing Makes Sense

When friendly fraud chargebacks make it through the best prevention efforts, businesses should fight them through the chargeback re-presentment process.

Outsourcing the chargeback management to a company that specializes in such things can be a worthwhile, cost-effective approach for many businesses. These companies can not only help optimize the tools and practices that will prevent friendly fraud, they can also provide immediate responses to incoming chargebacks, write compelling rebuttal letters, and compile the right kind of evidence that will increase the odds of successfully disputing fraudulent chargebacks.

Friendly fraud is not going away, so it is imperative that merchants use the best methods at their disposal to stop these chargebacks from costing them their hard-earned revenue.

The post 7 ways to combat chargebacks from “friendly” fraud appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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4 ecommerce marketing takeaways [infographic]

Transactions to interactions: how Carnival is disrupting the travel industry [video]

The Get Elastic team was recently down in Miami at The Carnival Experience Center and caught up with John Padgett, Chief Experience and Innovation Officer of Carnival Corporation and Sal Visca, Chief Technology Officer of Elastic Path.

During the visit, we were able to capture a captivating conversation with Padgett and Visca where they discussed how Carnival is transforming cruise vacationing into seamless interactions to create an experience unlike any other. Rivaling the checkout experiences of Amazon Go, Carnival guests no longer need to wait in lines – as a typical commerce transaction has now become a memorable interaction onboard. They also discussed the role API-first commerce is having in this digital transformation at sea.

Ultimately, Carnival has created a smart city – “it just so happens to be floating.”

The post Transactions to interactions: how Carnival is disrupting the travel industry [video] appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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Marketing Career Advice: Women Tell You How To Triumph

Considering a job in marketing? Get marketing career advice from 20+ women. Includes charts.

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Digital Transformation with Rachel Mushahwar [video]

IRCE @ RetailX – are you going?

The well-known ecommerce event, Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE), returns to Chicago’s McCormick Place on June 25th – along with two other shows in the mix, GlobalShop and RFID Journal LIVE! Retail, this trifecta creates RetailX.

For three days in June, IRCE @ RetailX will give attendees compelling programming, business solution offerings and most importantly networking.

The keynote line-up for this year’s IRCE @ RetailX is looking to be promising, as it was announced that author and internationally renowned consumer futurist Doug Stephens will be delivering his session on the future of retail in a post-digital world. We all know shopping is being redefined, but what does that look like for retailers in the (near) future? Stephens and his futuristic lens will highlight the future of shopping in terms of virtual technology, 3D printing and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Another exciting session on the docket is with Andy Dunn, Senior Vice President of Digital Consumer Brands at Walmart. Walmart is already a main player in the world of retail and has one of the better advantages to take on Amazon in terms of ecommerce and even grocery. Dunn, former CEO of Bonobos, will address why digital brands are growing 3x the rate of ecommerce overall; and the way to unlock digital brands’ full potential requires physical stores. Alas, brick-and-mortar isn’t dead!

Lastly, what is peeking interest here at Get Elastic is the B2B focus being woven into the lineup. Mark Brohan, B2BecNews Research Director covering B2B ecommerce trends will lead a session on how to merge CRM and personalization to boost B2B ecommerce sales. This session will give attendees a better understanding of how to leverage their CRM to give B2B buyers an online experience geared to their unique requirements and therefore increasing sales.

If you’re interested in providing recaps of IRCE @RetailX 2019, Get Elastic would love to hear from you. Please email editor@elasticpath.com.    

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Social Media Definition: The Ultimate Guide That Will Make You Smarter

What is social media and how does it relate to marketing? 60+ marketing experts give their social media definition. Also includes data.

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Ignore Blogging Blarney: How To Get Awesome Blog Results

Want awesome blog results despite content saturation? But you keep finding blogging blarney?  We smash 17 pieces of blogging blarney and replace them with solid marketing tactics for success.

The post Ignore Blogging Blarney: How To Get Awesome Blog Results appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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Marketing Circle of Trust: How to Improve Relationships for Social Good [Research]

To succeed enter marketing circle of trust. Includes trust definitions, research, data and tips to increase customer trust and support social good.

The post Marketing Circle of Trust: How to Improve Relationships for Social Good [Research] appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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What specifies a web application as a Progressive Web App (PWA)

Progressive Web Apps’ (PWAs) biggest draw is in their ability to adapt and provide the best overall mobile web experience regardless of what screen they’re being viewed on or what browser they’re being run on. PWAs drive performance and load similar to a regular web page, but offer additional native device functionality such as working offline, serving notifications, launching a camera, etc. For more background and further explanation on what PWAs truly are, check out the previously published article, What’s all the hype with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).  

This second installment in the PWA series will explore the browser technologies that make PWAs possible, including what specifies a web application as a PWA. 

PWA Capabilities and Specifications

PWAs themselves have various capabilities. This includes (but is not limited to) geolocation, sensor access (magnetometer, accelerometers, gyroscope), camera access, audio output, on-device payment, web-based notifications, background synchronization, and more. These APIsand services are exposed through the particular browser that are supported (more on that later).

It’s important to note that making use of the previously mentioned capabilities in a web app doesn’t immediately make it a PWA. Various automation tools will provide auditing capabilities for PWAs, which provides somewhat of a standardized expectation for what rules/practices PWAs should really adhere to. The metrics evaluated by these tools are set by a baseline of influencers in these technologies. Google’s development documentation describes the various technologies sought after in the industry to declare a web application as a PWA.

For PWA classification, a web application must:

• Originate from a Secure Origin. Served over TLS and green padlock displays (no active mixed content).
• Load while offline (even if only a custom offline page). By implication, this means that PWAs require Service Workers.Service Workers being the current technology of implementation as there is no current alternative to the approach.
• Reference a Web Application Manifest with at least the following properties: name short_name start_url display with a value of standalone or fullscreen An icon at least 144×144 large in png format.

In addition to the feature set PWA’s possess, there is also far greater simplicity in their distribution/consumption model. As PWAs are distributed as static files, they are easy to serve by means of a light-weight webserver which clients can download the necessary assets for through their browser. Another means of distribution is through a standard CMS/CDN- simply to host the built static assets required for the PWA. Therefore, having a PWA doesn’t necessarily mean the CMS you’re using is now obsolete, but it opens up opportunities to new capabilities that a CDN may provide such as content caching, security features, and more. 

When thinking about the means of distribution for PWAs, its ease doesn’t come to surface until the actual use cases are applied. From the ecommerce perspective, how many times have you ventured into a store outside your home country to be presented with an appealing banner to download an app to aid you with all your enhanced in-store shopping experience? You happily search for this app in your phone’s App Store, only to find out that it’s not available for download because you have an account dedicated to a country which doesn’t distribute this app. You’re left displeased, and you get the feeling that you’re now left out of this opportunity to try out a wonderful shopping experience simply because the content you want to download has been region locked by your platform. 

Now imagine if this application was available as a PWA. You’ll simply be able to open up your web browser on your mobile device, navigate to the store’s website, and be presented with the same rich experience that you would expect from the native application. You’re now able to continue that incredible shopping experience that you were hoping for from the start.
Browser FeaturesCertain browsers offer more support and capabilities for PWAs compared to others. This is most evident in the current mobile web application world between iOS Safari and Android Chrome mobile browsers.  iOS does not possess the richer capabilities of PWAs such as web-based push notifications, bluetooth access, background synchronization, geofencing, and more. 

However, as of the time of writing this article, Apple has released iOS 12.2 beta, which adds additional capabilities such as native support for gesture navigation, state management between apps, level 1 web share features, external link handling (useful for OAuth flows), and plenty more. This doesn’t put iOS on par with Android yet in term’s of PWA support. However, it does bring truth to the fact that PWAs are becoming the way of the future for web applications and are continuing further adoption to platforms.

As continued adoption of PWAs increase, we should see more native features of platform operating systems become exposed through web browser APIs. 

If curious on what capabilities a browser may have, it’s encouraged to visit https://whatwebcando.today/, and run a scan on a current browser in use. It may be surprising to see some features limited to native applications have made their way to the web.  

These modern practices encourage growth in the mobile industry and demonstrate how both consumer and developer requirements have shaped mobile application development practices into adoptable front-end models.

The post What specifies a web application as a Progressive Web App (PWA) appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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Pop-up Shop-up with Mare Weiss

Security & Android apps: why automated testing matters

Closing the mobile conversion gap with PWAs

According to Mobify’s 2018 Q4 Mobile Commerce Insights Report, mobile overall, showed continued growth with purchases made between Black Friday and Christmas. Somewhat surprising from Mobify’s findings was that the most frequent traffic source for mobile was email. According to Forbes, “retailers sent 3.5 billion emails on Black Friday, and another 4.1 billion on Cyber Monday – significant increases over the 3 billion and 3.3 billion, respectively, sent in 2017.” 

Closing the gap

Although mobile is edging out other devices in terms of traffic and use, it is still possessing a challenge for retailers in terms of lower conversion rates when compared to desktop. As Mobify reports, before an ecommerce retailer can fully close the conversion rate gap, businesses need to investigate this compound metric further by looking at traffic AND transactions.

Even though transactions are increasing, if they are not increasing as quickly as traffic, the conversion rate goes down. [Transactions / Traffic = Conversion] This can be a bit misleading in terms of mobile commerce success. For this reason, Mobify notes that “the conversion rate on its own is not a good metric to evaluate your overall performance. Because it’s a compound metric, interpreting conversion rate requires taking the extra step of understanding the movement of the variables (traffic and transactions) that comprise it.”

A step towards fully closing this gap means looking at the customer-facing experience offered and the potential to improve. With the adoption of Progressive Web Apps (PWA), retailers can offer better, if not the best way to deliver improved, faster customer experiences. PWAs load similar to a regular web page, but offer additional native device functionality such as working offline, serving notifications, launching a camera, etc. The number one benefit of PWAs vs. non-PWA sites (like on desktop), is speed – as they significantly reduce the time it takes for a consumer to complete crucial tasks such as finding an item or completing the path to purchase. The faster a shopper is able to complete a purchase, the more likely they are to buy. Google research found that as page load time increases from one second to ten, the probability of bouncing increases 123%. PWAs offer an expedited experience over native apps, while offering all the same features. 

Debenhams, a British department store ventured into the world of PWAs and saw double-digit percentage point growth in mobile conversions. And, their “commuter browsing” turned into “commuter shopping.” 

Mobify notes the three approaches to delivering commerce PWAs: commerce-led, experience-led and API-led. However, when looking to implement a customer-first strategy, an API-led approach is really the way to go. 

The API-driven approach to PWAs 

To define the API-driven approach to delivering commerce PWAs, these are in fact when ecommerce features/services are exposed through APIs and consumed through a front-end which has the ability to invoke those APIs to retrieve and interact with whatever data is required for the ecommerce flows exposed by that API. 

There are many benefits to implementing this methodology. Control of the ecommerce back-end through an API creates a number of services that are no longer limited by the front-end consuming them. The same API which drives a front-end touchpoint for a PWA storefront can be used for additional touchpoints such as IoT touchpoints, POS machines and customer interactive chatbots. This additionally becomes a great benefit to the PWA storefront as this PWA may live independently of the ecommerce back-end services and be built around consuming these back-end services without any concerns of impacting behavior as additional APIs are exposed. It becomes the sole decision of the front-end PWA implementation to consume additional services which have been exposed by the API in the future case, and thus simplifies adoption of those services. 

Best practices to accomplishing this may vary by organization and business case. Some general cases include usages of REST or Graph QL APIs to expose ecommerce business logic in a meaningful representation, while some continue to make use of legacy technologies such as SOAP.

The post Closing the mobile conversion gap with PWAs appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.

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Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) enough for ecommerce fraud management?

Fighting fraud isn’t easy. It’s time-consuming, it’s challenging, and it’s expensive. Taking an artificial intelligence (AI) approach seems like a better strategy.

After all, AI can quickly analyze extensive amounts of customer data to identify emerging fraud patterns. By incorporating this insight into fraud risk scoring algorithms in near real-time, businesses can lower their risk of falling victim to fraud.

AI Advantages 

Where AI excels is its ability to quickly review incoming transactions. The algorithms can calculate fraud risk scores far faster than manual reviewers ever could, which means for businesses that must deal with a high volume of incoming orders, AI can be the difference between speedy approvals and disgruntled customers.

There’s a cost aspect to this as well. Because this initial review of incoming orders can be automated, businesses don’t need to spend valuable (read: expensive) man-hours reviewing each individual order. This can tremendously cut down operating costs, and it enables organizations to focus their analysts’ attention only on those specific orders that require further investigation.

And finally, AI can be very helpful at spotting obscure patterns in fraud that might not be readily apparent to the average reviewer. This is particularly true if businesses have a good amount of high-quality, validated information on past orders.

However, for all the benefits AI-based fraud solutions can offer, the technology does have some limitations when it comes to evaluating credit card transactions.

AI-Based Shortcomings 

That said, there are several circumstances where AI alone will not be sufficient to manage ecommerce fraud and may even prevent businesses from maximizing sales.

1. Auto-Declining Orders

AI does a great job of auto-approving good orders and flagging potentially fraudulent orders. But AI should never be trusted on its own to auto-decline orders. Statistics show false declines – that is, accidentally declining orders that are actually legitimate – is a very high, very real risk for ecommerce merchants.

By all means, AI should be used to flag orders that might be fraudulent; but they always need an additional review before declining them. False declines cost businesses 13 times more than credit card fraud. Organziaitons need to validate every decline decision, to be confident they’re not inadvertently ruining a relationship with a perfectly good customer simply because they’re trying to ship a gift to a different address (which is a common reason for false declines).

2. Lack of High-Quality Data

AI is only as good as the data it receives. If product is brand new or highly unique, AI-based fraud solution may not have the data it needs to make accurate approval decisions. In these cases, an AI solution may end up declining orders that are good – and the AI algorithm may inadvertently become more conservative as time goes one and decline more and more future orders.

For these types of products, flexibility will be key to ensuring merchants are maximizing sales without also increasing chargebacks. This may require turning off (or loosening the standards) for the AI solution while they closely monitor actual sales and fraud trends. Businesses should study their potential risk, and modify their fraud strategy based on their learnings.

3. Troubles with Fraud Filters

At the core of many AI solutions lies the ubiquitous fraud filter. Fraud filters use rules to evaluate incoming transactions; if a transaction meets certain criteria, the transaction will be either flagged for review or auto-declined.

The problem, therefore, is whether the fraud filters are set up properly. It’s tempting to think that if one fraud filter catches some fraud, more fraud filters will catch even more fraud. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Layering filters incorrectly can result in some rules canceling others out, leaving you as vulnerable as if you had no fraud protection.

Moreover, smart fraudsters know how to “play” the fraud filter game. For example, it’s not terribly difficult for a fraudster to test a system with a series of orders and eventually learn that orders under $1,000 are typically approved, whereas orders over $1,000 are typically reviewed. Once they learn this, they’ll flood the system with batches of orders of $999 that enable them to fly under the fraud filters’ radar, completely undetected.

A Winning Approach = AI + Human

Perhaps the smartest approach is to combine the best of both worlds: Businesses should implement a comprehensive fraud management solution that combines AI technology with expert fraud analysis.

This multilayered approach enables organziations to harness all the efficiency benefits of AI, so they don’t have to slow down the order approval process – and it also safeguards businesses against the risk of accidentally auto-declining orders from their best customers. In this type of approach, AI might be used to auto-approve good orders and flag orders that are suspicious, while a human analyst that understands the nuances of fraud can manually review and either validate the order or confirm the decline decision.

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