As the countries around the world are planning to unlock, there are infinite anticipated questions about the business landscape ahead that remains a riddle. The changes in consumer behaviour will persist for quite some time. Businesses will have to understand the depth of these changes and re-strategise their market approach. During such uncertain times, companies and businesses need to be on their foot to gather and analyse data quickly and accurately. This will help them to be agile, take response measures, and make informed decisions to whatever twists and turns the pandemic throws their way.

While there are deeper learnings about consumer behaviour, three trends are emerging across the sectors and domains – contact-less experience, social distancing, and digitization. Irrespective of the location, industry, or sector, the one strategy that will address these trends is of e-commerce. In the recent few weeks, the world has observed a new wave in the usage of e-commerce platforms. The industry has become more dense and intense than ever for millions of businesses who may have not thought about selling online before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let us look at how businesses can use e-commerce technology to scale during and post this pandemic:

Convenience:

Convenience has always topped the list while strategizing the e-commerce plan. People are getting used to online shopping mainly because of this major factor. One thing that companies must understand that consumer habits and preferences keep changing and they need to adapt to it. To be at par with ever-changing dynamics of what is convenient shopping, the business will have to do real-time research and take necessary actions accordingly. Currently, people are looking to shop for essential products such as groceries, medicines, dairy products, etc at their convenience. Many e-commerce apps and companies have understood this and tried to deliver in-demand items conveniently to consumers. For example, Swiggy and Zomato had started delivering groceries through their food-delivery mobile application.

Social distancing and contact-less experience: 

As the countries have started to unlock, there has been a major concern about a pandemic blowback. The increased focus on personal hygiene and the new normal social distancing has lead to the emergence of ‘contact-less experience’. This will encourage continued online shopping and reiterate the behavioural change in the long run.

Elderly Consumers to come online: 

For a long time, the elderly population is expected to be in self-imposed quarantine as they are most vulnerable to the COVID-19 infection. Hence, they are likely to use online mediums for their regular shopping and delivery. With them signing-up as customers of the e-commerce platform, the existing customer behavioural trend will be altered and accelerated. The population of 65+ aged is huge in many countries, therefore this will make up a massive customer segment for the companies to serve digitally.

Intensified Competition: 

Convenient, safe, and agile practice of shopping and delivery is what the customers today are looking for. If you lack behind in any of these key practices, or if your competition is doing it in a better fashion, then you are bound to lose customers until you adopt a new approach. For example, when the food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato started delivering groceries, they were strongly competing with bigbasket, Grofers, Amazon, Godrej Natures Basket, etc. Even while they did have tough competition, the approach was well accepted in the market. Therefore, when businesses disrupt and emerge, they become a better and strong competition.

Many online customers are changing their behaviour and purchase patterns as they are opting for a more convenient, safer, and time-saving experience. This will add some strain on e-commerce platforms and online retailers today. How they analyse, gather insights, and react to these changes will define the future of the e-commerce industry in the world. Even post the removal of lockdown restrictions, the consumer behavioural changes will remain the same for some time. This change will transform the retailing and e-commerce landscape for the years to come. If you are looking to set-up an e-commerce platform or a mobile application, then reach out to us at +91- 9863077000 or contact@goodworklabs.com.

Coronavirus 2019 is surely a sour pain for all of us. Little did we know that it would take an epidemic to change our lifestyle upside-down. People locked up, offices shut, roads empty, and socialising became a nightmare. These tough times have not only affected individuals but also the companies and government, as all countries in the world have had a major hit in their economy. It would not be wrong to say that in future, the world will never be the same as it used to be. Many businesses are likely to be shut if they do not evolve and adapt during the pandemic, and many new opportunities will emerge.

Who knew that the words like social-distancing and contact-less experience would disrupt our lifestyle and be a norm someday. Well, it is now, and we can not deny that. No matter what businesses you are in, you will have to adapt to this change, sooner the better. This is the time when you need to pay closer attention to consumer demands than ever and adapt accordingly. For instance: Zomato – an online food delivery app started delivering groceries as that is the need of the hour.

Talking about the mobile application, today, many governments are using this technology to track the movement of COVID-19 infection amongst the community. Thereby enabling them to take necessary actions in respective regions. Likewise, a mobile application that will solve the current problems faced by consumers will grow and evolve. Consumers are looking for contact-less experiences and the app development domain offers the same seamlessly. Therefore, mobile application development will strengthen the new norms and trends furthermore.

Let us take a closer look at the industries that can take advantage of mobile application development during this new normal:

Education Technology 

With no clear picture on when the schools and institutes are going to be open, the demand for online and digital learning will boom the sector of education technology. Children have already started learning online – from attending a virtual lecture to submitting their assignments. What was once started as a value add for kids to upskill has today become an integral part of learning. There are quite a few education apps available, and there is a lot more scope for the new ones to make their way and gain the maximum of the situation.

E-commerce 

Even if the malls and shopping complexes open, there is going to be a fear-factor in the consumer’s mind to physically go and shop. From safely packed food/goods to contact-less delivery, many e-commerce companies are following the new norm. A ‘contact-less’ or ‘zero-contact’ delivery limits the chances of contamination. Therefore, the e-commerce mobile applications are here to stay and rule the retail sector across the globe.

Teleworking 

Working from home is no more a taboo, organisations have seen an increase in productivity during this phase and it is defiantly going to be an accepted norm. This could be possible because of few teleworking applications as they help the teams to stay connected as they were during the regular days. From online meetings to sharing the tasks, teleworking mobile applications provide it with all for end-to-end communication with your teams.

Health and Fitness 

The pandemic has taught us the importance of a healthy lifestyle more than anything else. People now are more focused to enhance their physical and mental well-being. Hence, many consumers are now investing a lot more time on their health and giving it utmost importance. Mobile applications that provide a holistic health solution for mind, body, and soul is well accepted by the consumers. In a nutshell, it cost us a pandemic to understand how important our health is. This is one of the foremost reasons for the growth of mobile applications in the health and fitness industry.

App Payments 

No cash, no cards. They can be contaminated! Consumers along businesses have become very mindful about the contact-less experience and are motivated to pay using mobile applications. Once marketed for its convenient, fast, and effortless transactions, mobile app payments today advocate safety and health factors. So much said and done about the digital transactions, it has only been possible by a pandemic to make people understand that it is ‘safe’ and ‘reliable’.

OTT

Being home locked all day, people are exploring more and more options for entertainment as they have all the time in the world. Televisions are airing old and dated content, whereas OTT platforms are bringing new-age content from their stocked library. Despite watching some dated series, audiences are more interested in consuming new and fresh content each day. Seeing the growing demand for OTT platforms, many film producers are now considering to release their movies online at OTT mobile applications. For some time consumers will avoid visiting theatres and multiplexes. Therefore, this will further spurt the OTT industry.

In the days to come consumers will choose interactive mediums and applications that are safe, reliable, and disruptive. From eduction to payments, the pandemic is truly making India digital. Should you be planning to develop a disruptive mobile application in conjunction with the latest trends, then contact us at contact@goodworklabs.com or  +91- 9863077000.

 

From visiting a Kirana store and waiting in lines to ordering groceries on mobile applications with just one click, all of us have come a long way. The advancement in consumer behaviour and practices have changed over the last decade and the growth in the number of online consumers is something which we have not witnessed in history. This growth and development can be credited to the e-commerce industry. But what have entrepreneurs and enterprises been using to develop these e-commerce stores?

Magento is one such reliable platform on which ecommerce businesses are built. It’s a platform designed to help small, midsize and enterprise level businesses make it big in the e-commerce industries. The Adobe owned platform powers close to 250,000 online businesses and is preferred by many entrepreneurs and businesses worldwide.

Magento is specifically designed and developed to help e-commerce platforms grow by providing useful analytics, scalable technology and optimal solutions to manage a heavy backend while fulfilling consumer needs. If you’re a dreamer who’s reading this article to build your e-commerce store, we’re here to help you and tell you why Magento is one of the best things that can happen to your business.

 

Giants using Magento

Magento is used worldwide and there is no doubt that it’s one of the best tools to build your e-commerce. Many of the biggest players of the industry like cocacola, Ford, Nike, Nestle Nespresso etc have relied upon magento to build their ecommerce platforms. With Magento store hosting, businesses can create a tailored shopping experience that meets their unique needs, making it an excellent choice for growing e-commerce stores.

 

Why use Magento?

There are many reasons why Magento is used at this scale and is the choice for every e-commerce store owner. Some of the reasons are listed below.

1) Open Source

“Good things are never free.” Well, this is not the case here. The Magento community edition is open source i.e. free to download and use. This renders the development cost of the website to a bare minimum and the owner can think of better ways to use his/her money. The free edition can be downloaded from here.

 

2) Scalable Tech

One of the reasons why writing code for e-commerce websites is an onerous task is that the code written should be scalable and should be optimised to handle large chunks of online traffic. Magento is designed to be scalable and hence websites deliver efficient and fast services to its users. It’s no wonder why even big companies with complex operations and high amount of traffic deploy a Magento website to sell products and services.

 

3) Community

Being open source is one of the strengths of Magento. People all around the globe use it and help other developers to grow in the field by developing free and cool extensions to integrate with your Magento e-commerce store.

 

4) e-Commerce friendly

Though WordPress might be the best content management system being offered out there, it is no Magento. Magento is specifically designed for building e-commerce platforms and hence has inbuilt features and actions that a developer can use to provide business solutions. This is why Magento is now preferred over ‘WordPress + WOO Commerce’ and ‘Drupal + Drupal Commerce’ combos. This is one of the major reasons why the number of Magento websites worldwide have doubled from 2017 and 2018.

 

5) Performance

A fraction of a second might be the difference between an interested lead and a converted customer. Hence, if you want to convert that doubtful lead into a happy customer, using Magento is probably a good idea. Magento with its highly optimized and scalable tech renders web pages on your device within an eye blink. This is one of the reasons for a higher conversion rates of websites developed in Magento.

 

6) SEO Friendly

Search engine optimization is one of the aspects of an e-commerce business that cannot be neglected while making a choice of a platform for your e-commerce store. Magento comes with inbuilt features to develop SEO friendly URL structure, sitemaps, positioning layer, URL rewrites, tags, descriptions, etc. Also, there are a multiple set of extensions to optimize your website’s rank on a search result page on Google and other search engines. We advise you to use these functionalities to the best of your capabilities to increase sales.

 

7) Ease of integration

Managing an e-commerce store is not an easy task and entrepreneurs depend on different specialised systems for keeping an eagle view of their website and its performance. However, Magento doesn’t fail here too and provides all specialised systems integrated on one single dashboard. Magento is compatible with a plethora of third-party services including payment gateways, transportation, database applications, shipping, order tracking etc. Also, keeping an eye on the websites performance is imperative and hence Magento offers Google tools such as Google Analytics, Google Checkout, and Google Base built into its system.

 

8) Billing in Multiple Currencies

Technological advancements have made the world a smaller place and businesses can now sell their products to anyone. Hence, consumers should be able to get billed in varied currencies without any hassle. Magento provides developers to integrate payment gateways which can be used to bill in multiple currencies.

 

9) Multi store millionaire

If you have a pipeline of ideas and products in varied fields and want to set up separate e-commerce stores, Magento is here to facilitate your dreams. With Magento’s content management system you can set up multiple stores for yourself with just one backend. This helps companies to perform enterprise level operations on different stores with utmost ease and pleasantness.

 

10) Size doesn’t matter

Magento websites are responsive to screen sizes and don’t lose any functionality or efficiency if your consumer operates through a desktop, laptop, tablet or even a mobile device. Also, inbuilt features help you track your consumers’ preferred devices and in turn help you optimise design and layout of your website specific to your consumer needs.

 

Summing it up

Magento is an Adobe owned platform that powers about 250,000 web stores worldwide. The inbuilt features along with the ease of integration provided by the platform results in a lethal combination for building a successful online store. All this being open source too, help entrepreneurs in cutting development costs and generating sales with higher conversion rates. 

If you’re a dreamer and wish to accomplish success with an e-commerce store, this is the last day of your hustle! We at GoodWorkLabs help dreamers like you to reach at the top of your e-commerce game by developing Magento websites. The team of experienced Magento professionals is equipped with decades of experience in this space helping different websites stand out in the huge crowd. So let’s build your dream with Magento!

How to create a MarketPlace for your business

Probably you have a novel business idea that is keeping awake until late night, or you are just excited at the sudden success and trend of collaborative economies such as Air Bnb, Uber and want to try your hand at building a similar business model, then we can safely assume that you are interested in setting up your own marketplace.

Starting up today has become more easier than before and as the trend sees it, Startups are soon the way of the future. Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator emphasizes that for any Startup to excel, there are 4 areas that need a concrete vision:

1. Idea
2. Product
3. Team
4. Execution

(Read more about this in Sam Altman’s lecture here..)

Image source: Art of Education

 

Whatever you are building, be it a multi-national business or a non-profit organisation, it all begins with the idea.

So, before you build your marketplace, we want to ensure that you have these five things sorted out to help you sail easily through your business.

 

Five things to keep in mind while building a MarketPlace

 

1. Solve a real-life problem

Most entrepreneurs are always very excited about their Startup idea. But do you have a vision that can translate this idea into a real-life product?

When creating a marketplace, you need to be 100% convinced of solving a real problem – for both the user and the service provider. That is how collaborative economies work – it is all about bring buyers and sellers on a unified platform and transacting business (something similar to e-commerce)

For example: Air BnB has disrupted the hospitality and travel industry because it solved one simple but important problem – finding cheap and nice places to stay. Hotels are not always an economic option especially for those who travel on budget trips. At the same time, Air BnB has shown that even the real estate market can be open to the hospitality industry with the right strategy. 

The only way to test your idea is by developing a minimum viable product and launch it. In this way you can be sure of the market and demand for your product / service.

2. Think as a Collaborator

If you are looking to tap into the collaborative economy, then you need to start looking at unused or idle assets that you can unlock. Whether it is creating a marketplace to make aviation parts easily available or creating an online metal trading portal, you need to think of your marketplace as a key that unlocks resources that would have otherwise not been easily available to consumers.

The benefit of creating a marketplace is that you can start one for almost anything – renting bikes, teaching classes, food or even gardening. As per the collaborative economy Honeycomb study by Jeremiah Owyang, the hottest startups are in transportation, goods and services and money.

Innovation is not always about creating something new, it is about doing the same thing in different ways. It is time that you put your thinking hat on and look at the resources around you in a different way. Think of opportunities of how you can acquire the maximum potential and that is when you will have a great marketplace idea.

Image source: Juggernaut

3. Look for fragmented markets

One of the key ingredients to the success of a marketplace is when you reduce the gap between customers and service providers. Think of the small players and the inaccessible products that are of great value but lack an organised business structure.

For example: A big challenge in the freelance market has been to find qualified and dependable freelancers who can work your projects. With marketplaces like UpWork, it has just become so easy to filter out the right freelance workers for your business – be it video, content writing, design etc. Thus, both buyers and service providers can easily communicate and transact business at ease.

Thus, think if your marketplace as a one-stop shop to satisfy all your customer requirements – right from finding the product / service, evaluating it, reading reviews and buying it. As a service provider, your platform will be his door to a larger target audience. Hence it is a win-win for both parties, solving both problems – thus re-iterating point number one – solving a real problem.

4. Enable a layer of trust

Trust forms the basis for any business and the same rule applies to online marketplaces as well. One of the biggest reasons for users to shy away from transacting online has been the quality of products and trust in sellers.

Transacting second-hand goods (such as OLX) has become more acceptable these days only because the portal allows buyers to directly interact with sellers, check product reviews, thus enabling a layer of trust between the two parties.

Your marketplace is not a directory to just list products and services. It is about creating an environment where buyers and sellers collaborate and communicate before transacting business.

For example: Skill Share is one such trusted platform for education where users who want to learn new and diverse skills can reach out to industry experts and sign up for their classes. Skill Share has a policy which checks and establishes the credentials of the teacher.

Marketing gurus such as Seth Gordan have their courses listed on Skill Share and this creates a brand trust at a subconscious level, thus enabling easy on-boarding of users.

Thus, it is very essential that your marketplace is able to create this initial level of trust with users.

 

5. Narrow your market focus

While it is nice to spread your wings wide and fly, when it comes to creating a marketplace, it is best when you cater to a particular segment of products / services and users.

Don’t think of yourself as Amazon or eBay with a hundred million products. Just focus on solving just that ONE single problem that your marketplace has been designed for.

The only reason Air BnB and Uber have been successful in disrupting the market is because the former focused on providing temporary accommodation while the latter focused on creating an on-demand transport service for users. Both of them has a clear and narrow focus on the problem they wanted to address and solve for users.

Also, when you narrow down your focus you will be able to identify your true competition. There could be a particular niche that has not been tapped into and you could create a marketplace for that particular product.

Trying to be the next Air BnB or Uber with your market place is not the best strategy to move forward. Instead, trying to create a seasonal renting space or creating a taxi service specially for women / kids could be the kind of marketplace innovation that you must think of.

To sum it all up….

All we can say is, you can create a marketplace for practically any product under the sun, but these five points will help you stay focused on what matters.

Also, at GoodWorkLabs we have a fool-proof solution that can help you build a marketplace solution that can help you promote your business to millions of users across the world.

Read about our marketplace solution here.

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Going by the present trends in the ecommerce arena, there’s no denying the significance and effects of mobility across the business landscape. Increasing penetration of mobile devices and ever-evolving consumer preferences has led to the rise, growth, and popularity of mobility solutions.

Especially, when it comes to online shopping or ecommerce arena, mobility solutions have completely revolutionized functions and operations. Gone are the days when online shopping was thought to be risky, unsafe, and insecure. The number of digital buyers globally was at 1.46 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow to 2.07 billion by 2019. This speaks volumes of the immense confidence internet users have on online shopping.

Of late, the ecommerce industry seems to take mobility quite seriously. Reports say that in the US, almost 1/3^rd of all e-commerce in 2015 was mobile e-commerce. Can this remarkable rise in the number of mobile users, and mobile e-commerce remain sustainable in the near future? Let’s look at a few key factors behind this question

Identifying crucial challenges

With rapid developments in the business arena, there have been some major shifts in customer preferences. Enterprises today are striving hard towards offering unsurpassed User Experience to their target consumers, and mobility is playing a key role here.

Let’s find out how.

        I.            Demand for on-the-go operations

Every individual, who is also a potential consumer wishes to perform tasks on the go! From paying utility bills to ordering food or apparels, every task can be conducted online.

With Smartphones and other handheld devices ruling the tech world, ecommerce owners are finding it quite profitable to embrace mobility. Simply put, mobility is steadily growing to be a highly significant aspect of ecommerce.

      II.            Process automation

Mobility trends can lead to effective automation of numerous processes. Players in the ecommerce arena can offer automated payment options, billing, and notifications to their customers. Highly attractive and stunning apps are also of paramount significance, as they promote and facilitate on-the-go operations like never before!

    III.            Be app-ready

If your business is not app-ready, you are surely missing out on great opportunities of client retention and revenue generation. High-end applications happen to be integral segments of mobility. From simple tasks to complex functions, users will have the golden chance to perform every task on the move.

It is for this reason that most of the ecommerce owners create attractive, scalable, and easily navigable apps for customers. Irrespective of their location, consumers can now make purchases thus adding to the revenues of their chosen ecommerce partners.

Statistical references worth considering

Let’s take a look at what market statistics have to say about the importance of mobility in the ecommerce arena.

When it comes to searching for store locations, almost 67% of individuals use their Smartphones. On the other end, nearly 51% of customers look for product information on their phones.

Again, you will find close to 46% and 45% individuals checking product availability and reading product reviews with the help of their Smartphones or mobile devices.

Final word

With these statistical references, it’s quite clear that mobility in ecommerce is not just a fad. Rather, it is a crucial requisite capable of determining the future of ecommerce in a significant way.

 

The current market is saturated with ecommerce businesses. In the year 2012, ecommerce businesses were growing at the rate of 21.1%and for the first time crossed the $1 trillion mark. However, this is just the start and it is estimated that by 2016, more than 15 million people would be hopping online. The growth of online businesses has also led to a parallel growth in the ecommerce OS product line. Today, with so many ecommerce OS platforms available, coming up with the best choice can be an overwhelming task. However, the choice you make with be the Reason for the success or failure of your business. Here’s the top 5 pick when it comes to Ecommerce OS:

1.     Magento

The unquestionable leader, Magento is currently the core of more than 150,000 businesses globally. The platform is highly powerful cost effective and flexible to address the varying needs of several types of industries and product lines. Magento was officially launched on 31^st March, 2008 and within a year; it was adopted by more than 30,000 businesses. Some of the top brands using Magento at their backend processes include Nike, Olympus, Samsung, Nespresso, Stussy, The North Face and Office Max.

2.     OSCommerce

Among the oldest ecommerce platform, OSCommerce was launched in 2000 and had been the leader of the pack until Magento came into being. By August 2008 (Magento still in the developing stage), OSCommerce accounted from more than 14,000 ‘live’ websites. Today, OSCommerce has a huge community of developers that make it a flexible, secure and highly supportive ecommerce platform. OSCommerce, being open source, is free to download and avails premium quality templates, plugins and add-ons to make website and web application development a breeze.

3.     OpenCart

OpenCart is incomparable to other sin its own way. A highly secure ecommerce solution, OpenCart allows businesses to start their online business with ease and also link it up with ecommerce functionalities. OpenCart can be used with any web server that supports MySQL and PHP. Further, OpenCart is available as free software and in several cases, have proved to be the best choice for ecommerce startups. The platform allows merchants to create unlimited categories, sell unlimited products, support several currencies, read various languages and establish an effective means of payment and shipping.

4.     Zencart

Similar to OpenCart, Zencart is another easy online store management system that specializes in a more user friendly interface and a variety of options for customer management. If you are looking to regularly campaign with coupon codes, discounts, newsletters, email orders, etc, Zencart makes it a very easy process. Zencart is extremely easy to understand, use, install, modify and customize. Entrepreneurs with limited technical knowledge too can hope to create a successful ecommerce platform using Zencart.

5.     WordPress

Launched as a blogging platform, WordPress today has curved to become a tremendously powerful CMS system. With a huge range of plugins, templates and ad-ons, WordPress boasts the same standards in CMS as Magento does in retailing. If you are looking to establish a easy, attractive and highly functional website, WordPress should be the first choice.