The recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday period once again highlighted the growing trend of shoppers shifting towards online e-commerce sites rather than in-store shopping.
According to Amazon, 2018 represented their biggest Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend to date, with over 180 million items sold on the ecommerce platform. With the popular discount weekend now out of the way, the focus for retailers will turn to December Christmas shopping, and then the post-Christmas/January sales.
Many customers enjoy the convenience of shopping online, with a multitude of options available anytime, anywhere, at their fingertips. This represents a massive opportunity for retailers, but one they must be fully prepared for as the modern-day digital customer expects a seamless experience from which they receive instant gratification, no matter where they are buying from.
Picture a traditional online shopping experience; having spent time scouring online stores for the perfect product, a customer finally finds it on your site. Delighted to have found what they are looking for, they hit “Add to Basket” only to be met with an “Out of Stock” error message.
To the customer, this is irritating and an inconvenience; however, a quick search on Google and the chances are they can source a similar product with ease elsewhere. With the multitude of other options available to customers online, they may simply leave your site dissatisfied and look elsewhere rather than follow up their product interest. They may also be put off returning to your site in future. To a business, these sorts of interactions are damaging both financially and reputationally.
This issue is common among retailers who rely on manual methods of data transfer, where aspects such as stock levels are monitored by a member of staff who then updates figures manually as orders come in, placing reorders when they notice an item running low. In addition, these orders then need to be manually entered into their financial systems which is both time-consuming and can lead to human error.
During the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, retailers’ ecommerce systems’ resilience and performance were strenuously tested by a high volume of traffic and this will continue in the run up to Christmas and in the sales period afterwards. In these periods, manual methods of data transfer can prove extremely problematic with human capability unable to keep up with online demand.
In order to win excellent reviews, and recurring business, online retailers need to offer more than simply low prices; they need to deliver a seamless, engaging customer experience from start to finish. For many, the added ecommerce demand seen during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush, will have highlighted that their current system may not be fully-equipped to deliver this experience.
Cloud Data Exchange, a cloud-based data integration solution created by Eureka Solutions, is the perfect tool to help ensure your customers are receiving an excellent ecommerce experience that will safeguard sales’ conversions, enhance your company’s reputation and leave customers satisfied and willing to come back.
Using Cloud Data Exchange, your business can set up connections between platforms such as your ecommerce store and stock management system, generating automatic alerts when levels fall below a certain threshold. This in turn triggers a reorder of the stock item to ensure the “Out of Stock” message is never displayed to your customers.
Data can be transferred continually or at customisable intervals meaning you are given accurate, real-time insight into your customers’ behaviour. With the facility to set up multiple integrations, you can easily monitor orders from multiple sources such as eBay and Amazon as well as Shopify and Magento storefronts and your own site, from one centralised module, accessed from any browser-enabled device.
Not only does this increase your efficiency and increase your ability to meet and exceed your customers’ expectations, it provides huge internal benefits. With a variety of out-the-box connectors preconfigured and ready to go, you can get up and running in no time, eliminating costly development and implementation fees, in time for the December/January consumer rush. Cloud Data Exchange also allows you to connect your ecommerce platforms to your financial systems, eliminating the need for this process to be done manually which will help you to increase efficiency and data accuracy.
To find out more about what Cloud Data Exchange can do for you, and to discover more about the benefits of integrating your business systems contact us for more information.