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How Shoppers Browse and Buy Products Online & Offline

Tag: payment gateway

How Shoppers Browse and Buy Products Online & Offline
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

How Shoppers Browse and Buy Products Online & Offline

Whether you are an online business or an offline one, understanding how your customer browses and shops can help you bring in more traffic and boost sales. Making the shopping experience enjoyable and easy is the first step to building your brand reputation and getting loyal shoppers who keep coming back to you. So, here are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to crafting strategies based on shopper behavior.

Power of location

An offline shopper will usually go for a store that is near her home or on the way back from her workplace. Stores present in a shopping mall are also attractive. So, while picking a location for your physical store, make sure that it is close to your target audience and easy to find. But when it comes to an online shopper, location matters in a different way. This is because the shopper can buy products from anywhere in the world but they do prefer e-stores that have clearly mentioned shipping details. Those online stores that mention the location of the site, shipping rates, and where they ship, reel in more customers.

Shoppers want easy shopping

You need to make shopping easy for your customers, whether you are online or offline. Shoppers usually expect online stores to have a sensible layout, easy product categorization, simple checkout option, multiple payment modes and a safe payment gateway like PayTabs. The option of EMIs, the ability to shop round the clock and not having to carry purchased items home are other attractions of online shopping. In a physical store however, you need to have clearly defined aisles with properly grouped products for shoppers to like the experience. Express lanes and having more cashiers during rush hours can help too.

Everyone likes to have knowledge  

Buying any product without sufficient knowledge is something no one wants. Hence, in a physical store, the sales staff must be well-versed about all kinds of products. This is especially true in case of appliances, phones, laptops, baby furniture and so on. For an online store, shoppers find it easy if the products are well-described so that they can make an informed choice. Offering videos, blogs or guides are also great ideas to warm up to shoppers with information.

Looks matter!

Yes, it does, and for both offline and online stores. While offline shoppers like a store that is neat organized and has a stylish ambiance, online shoppers choose retail websites that have a smart layout and looks professional. If you have a physical store, introducing a particular theme that resonates with your products or using the right lights and right layout can help. For instance, a store selling beach wear can feature a storefront image that reminds you of a sunny beach vacation. Or a store selling kids’ items can be painted in bright and peppy colors to attract little ones. If you are an e-store, make sure your website uses elegant colors, a crisp font, a simple design and neat graphics. The customer should in no way be confused. Stay away from loud hues, different kinds of fonts, and too much information crammed onto one webpage.

Prices are vital too  

Make sure that your pricing strategy complements the kind and quality of products you sell as well as your marketing plan. Also, the prices you quote must justify the convenience of your store, its location, the kind of product knowledge it offers and how it looks. And this holds true for both online and offline stores.

Finally, though most businesses are going online these days to reach out to a wider audience, there are many brands that boast of physical as well as virtual stores. And by keeping the above points in mind, you can attract shoppers to all your stores!

6 years ago
5 Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions about Payment Gateways
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

5 Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions about Payment Gateways

If you are a business with an online presence, you surely know how payment gateways can make it easy for you to receive payments from customers based anywhere in the world. This is a merchant service that acts as a virtual equivalent of a Point of Sale in a physical store. In simple words, without a payment gateway, your business wouldn’t run at all as this service allows the payment processing of debit and credit cards in the online world!

Luckily, with a payment gateway like PayTabs which is easy to integrate with your website or mobile app, you can expect fast and secure payments without any glitch. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have questions about payment gateways. So, here are 5 most asked questions with their answers:

1) How does a payment gateway function?

When your customer purchases a product online, a payment gateway like PayTabs contacts your store’s acquiring bank. This bank is the one that will receive payments. The acquiring bank in turn contacts the bank which has issued the customer’s credit card or debit card. If there is enough money on the customer’s card to pay for the purchased item, the issuing bank will allow the transaction. The payment gateway will then be able to gather the money from the issuing bank of the customer, and all of this will happen in seconds!

2) How much does a payment gateway charge?

The kind of fees you have to pay will vary from one payment gateway to another. This will usually cover your setup fees, monthly fees and qualified rate that is charged per transaction. Support and reporting fees might also be included. So, go with a reliable and affordable gateway like PayTabs and avoid hidden charges.

3) What is a merchant account and why do I need it?

If you wish to receive payments from customer’s debit or credit card for every purchase made, you definitely need a merchant account. It is a specialized bank account that carries the fund you receive from customers for a specific time period, before sending it to your traditional account. You need it because without a merchant account, you cannot process payments. A merchant account will work with the payment gateway to facilitate easy transactions, so that the gateway deposits all payments into this account.

4) How to choose a payment gateway?

Though there are many payment gateways available these days, not all can be trusted equally. But with PayTabs, you will get all that your business needs with ease. This gateway is highly secure, and lets you accept payments in 168 currencies. Plus, merchants can use it even if they don’t have websites. PayTabs also provide regular financial reports and lets you maintain all customers and transactions from a single dashboard. This can help immensely when it comes to keeping a tab on the progress of your business.

5) Is the payment gateway secure enough?

A payment gateway must be very secure since it stores and transfers a lot of customer details and online frauds and identity thefts are very common these days. So, choosing a gateway that complies with PCI DSS requirements is ideal. It should feature advanced tools like intrusion detection, firewalls, and secure credit card data storage to avoid the risk of frauds. PCI DSS is also known as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, and it ensures that all businesses store, process and accept card information in a very secure manner. So, choose a gateway like PayTabs, and rest assured that you have minimized the risk of frauds almost completely.

Now that you know what a payment gateway is essentially all about, choose the right one and make your business a huge success!

6 years ago
The importance of knowing your customer
Mohab Customer Experience 0

The importance of knowing your customer

Whenever we are given a chance to describe our customer, the first thing we think of is demographic traits. 22 – 55, single, female living in a particular location. But is a statistical summation good enough to make business decisions? While this was true for the early days of eCommerce, things are different today.

Thanks to social networking sites, we are also privy to behavioral trails like their interests, hobbies and shopping patterns. That’s as far as the data available goes. But what about interpreting that data? How can we understand what is driving this person behind the computer to buy or not buy our products?

Several companies create an inside-out customer-first culture for their business. It’s a difficult trait but here are some points to help you get started:

  1. Map your customer’s journey

Your customer may visit your store and buy the product online or shop from your app. To do this, they may have either watched your TV commercial, heard about you on the radio, read about you in the papers or seen a social recommendation from a friend. In the era of omni-channel marketing, you’ll have to cross align channels with the phase your customer is in to see if each channel is working optimally.

The steps in the sales funnel for eCommerce include Discover, Explore, Gain Interest, Purchase intent, actual purchase and after sales support. When a customer reads about you on social media, they could be any one of the above phases. You’ll have to step back to see if your social messages are catering to customers in each segment equally.

  1. Listen to uncover insights

Survey tools have evolved over the years to go beyond the simple Google form. Instead, they now pop up at the right stage in a customer’s journey to gather valuable feedback. The only caveat is that you need to be able to ask the right questions.

If you ask your customer what they think of a new product line you’ve launched, you’ll probably get many answers that you want to hear depending on how you’ve framed the question. Instead, if you actually look for purchase patterns and interpret analytical data, you’ll get to know what your customers are actually doing. Listening to these patterns will allow you to tweak your product offering.

  1. Leave assumptions in the hallway

Even if your eCommerce business is successful, there is always room for improvement. There is always the issue of cart abandonment. You’ll still have to figure why only a fraction of your traffic goes on to become your customer and what happens to the rest.

The only real way to get your answers is to speak to the customer. You’ll have to zero in on a group, go in without fixed questions and let them do the talking while you walk away with insights that can be converted into action points.

  1. Go beyond heat maps

The analytics heat maps from your eCommerce website tends to show you a rough picture of where your customers are looking. But what does it tell you about their real time navigational choices? How are they examining products and charting their decision making journey. Which part of the cart is throwing people off? Are the taxes or shipping charges coming as a surprise? Are people unable to use their coupon code? Is your payment gateway (link) working as it promised?

To know answers to such questions observe how customers work in a focus group rather than just historic data.

Conclusion: After connecting data points with individual behaviour, the ongoing thing that you need to do is keep talking to your customers and check for feedback. The proactive approach to understanding your customer will be the difference between you and your nearest competitor.

6 years ago
Four Pillars of a Solid eCommerce Customer Experience
Mohab Customer Experience 0

Four Pillars of a Solid eCommerce Customer Experience

Is there a thing like loyalty when it comes to online shopping? In a world driven by discounts, sales, comparison shopping and endless scrolling, it is difficult to grab customer attention. The same sellers present their wares across multiple sites. So people move to check each site to see where the particular product is available at the best discount. In such a scenario, does customer experience really matter?

It matters more than you think. Imagine this – discount can’t be a competing factor because everyone is offering a lot of it. What matters then is customer experience. In fact, customer experience is considered to be a product in its own right.

In order to decipher what type of experience your customers are looking for, it is important to understand their journey and understand what they need at each touch point. Most companies try to concentrate on the customer life cycle which is a complex task, especially with omni-channel marketing. Instead, experts now suggest keeping focus on one customer journey at a time.

Here are the four pillars of a customer experience journey

  1. Make it simple to use

Buying from an eCommerce website should not feel like rocket science. You need to make it intuitive for customers to browse through your product range and get to a sale point. Most eCommerce shops follow a set pattern from discovery to the sales funnel to after sales service.

But a new app on the horizon – Elanic, is doing things differently. It has included an intuitive chat feature that allows buyers and sellers to interact before closing the sale. The chat is pre-programmed with common questions from the buyer like quality, size, condition of the product and more. This strategy is also followed by sites like OLX which sells seconds. In addition to the public comment feature, the site also allows customers to make an offer. The whole process is intuitive and automated which makes it easy to handle. Many sellers vouch that this feature has helped them close sales effectively.

  1. Make it personal

This strategy goes beyond knowing your customer’s name and saying ‘Hey xyz’ in your email. According to Campaign Monitor, 96% visitors to your website aren’t ready to buy. But they’ve shown some basic interest in what you have to offer and may probably come back if you communicate properly. Use retargeting to encourage users to pick up from where they left off. And don’t forget to inform them when the products they want are on sale.

  1. Stop them from abandoning cart

In 2016, as much as 69% of carts were abandoned! Can you imagine the billions lost because eCommerce portals did not work hard enough to push the sale? Constantly use A/B experiments to test what makes users stick or leave your website. In case they still abandon cart, make sure you send them a customized email reminder to pull them back

  1. Use the right payment gateway

Other than being secure, the right payment gateway will allow customers to pay in their own currency, using the wallet they prefer without making them work too hard. And of course, it should aid express checkout.

Conclusion: Don’t forget to constantly ask your customers for feedback and also incentivize them for providing it. There is no better way to enhance your customer experience than listening to them carefully – after all they are the heroes and champions for your brand.

6 years ago
The complete guide to launching your very first online store – tools and strategies inside
Mohab Ecommerce 0

The complete guide to launching your very first online store – tools and strategies inside

“If your business is not on the internet, your business will be out of business” – Bill Gates

Starting an online business isn’t a trend but a necessity. It is comparatively easier to set up than a brick-and-motor store, less resource intensive and allows you to experiment and iterate quickly as per your customer’s demands. There is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow… and here’s your guide to get started.

Find a problem to solve: From selling cars to buying accessories to finding dates, the digital world is uniquely finding ways to solve problems by making lives convenient, and   saving time and money. The key to create a successful business online is to not only find the right problem to solve but also have the expertise and skills to solve it. What is your core expertise? What problems do people face in that industry? Why are YOU the best entrepreneur to do this job? Once you have the answers, you’ll know what your online business will be.

Build your website: Your website is your store front. It’s key to determining how you’ll sell and how much time, effort and maintenance you are willing to put up. You may have a store with hundreds of products which will need back end management that you’ll have to think through like updating stocks, offering discounts and being search engine friendly. In this case, you’ll have to make your choice between options like Shopify, WooCommerce, Open Cart, Get Shop and other such services based on their terms and feature list.

Write copy that sells: This is one of the most important parts of your online business. Once people come to your website, they’ll give you a minute or less to make your pitch. Your content will have to be cutting edge, to the point and push people towards the sales funnel. Explainer videos and infographics are strongly recommended to deliver your punches in the shortest possible time.

Choose a payment gateway: A payment gateway is a very important feature for your store. Its functionality will ensure that you can get paid not only in your native currency but from anywhere in the world where people can pay in their own currency and you can receive the money in yours hassle free. The right payment gateway can ensure you can reach any corner of the earth with your products.

Choose a fulfillment partner: A fulfillment partner is as important as your payment gateway. If your products have the chance of getting damaged in transport, you’ll have to find someone who can deliver with care. Some countries have restrictions on the products you can ship and you may need to work with different fulfillment partners who know the local regulations and ensure you aren’t selling anything that can’t be delivered in that country.

Start with PPC and then jump in to SEO: Pay per click advertising on Facebook and Google will allow you to do a quick market validation. Start this as soon as your basic website is ready. You’ll know if customers are understanding your website and products and if they are willing to trust you and make the purchase.

Get social: Social is a great place to build your community. Get together people who have similar likes and you’ll eventually find customers there.

Use email marketing: Build your email list from day one and offer incentives for people to sign up. Email marketing will allow you to sell, up-sell and cross sell, automate your communication and be in your customer’s inbox.

Go on, try it for a few months until you have proof of market. Your online store, if done well, can fetch amazing returns.

6 years ago