Ecommerce – Page 5

09 Oct20:41pm

Stop Displaying Out of Stock Items in Your Yahoo Store

If there is one thing that is driving shoppers crazy it is displaying products in your store that you don’t have available. Whether it says, Sold Out, Not in Stock or Out of Stock – they don’t want to see it.

If you display a product on your Category or Section page, and the shopper clicks through to the item description only to find it’s not available, they will soon move on to another website for a more satisfying shopping experience.

Even if you show products on your Category and Section pages as Out of Stock, or Sold Out, it soon looks as though you don’t have anything that is available. We all know how hard it is to keep up with updating your website with fast moving, in demand products at the holidays, but to a shopper it might even look as though you are going out of business!

xocbox has the answer for Yahoo merchants who don’t have the time or resources to keep up with the time consuming process of marking products in and out of stock. With xocbox, once your item count goes to zero, the product changes to not orderable in your Yahoo catalog manager.

No manual changes for each item!

Contact xocbox to learn more about this feature.

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24 Sep03:31am

Keep the ecommerce Platform – Change the Backend

Recently we have been talking to several ecommerce merchants who have been considering switching their online store to a platform that offers more services, and is less expensive.

The big question they ask is, “how difficult would that be?”.

The simple answer is that migrating products to a new platform is something that can be done.

However, changing platforms is not something that should be taken lightly. Most people considering this have had their store for several years or longer, and it is easy to believe that by changing your platform you will receive immediate benefit, that is, sell more products.

Selling more products is definitely not guaranteed, and if you don’t pay special attention to the many details involved (such as, SEO, marketing, 301 redirects to name just a few), you could find yourself selling less.

If you are a mid to large-scale online retailer, you have probably found that as your business has expanded, so too has the complexity of managing all your backend functions.

Many of the functions that are needed to keep your products up to date, and to track orders often evolve into manual processes that take an extraordinary amount of time for you and your staff.

xocbox can work with you to take a look at your store backend processes and find solutions to problems that are taking you away from spending time with your customers.

We specialize in working with Yahoo merchants, and Woocommerce stores, but can offer advice on all types of integration problems regardless of the ecommerce platform.

Please call us for a free consultation at 858-752-3803, or contact us via our Contact Form.

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16 Sep04:57am

Managing Inventory in Your Online Store

It’s that time of year again, new shipments are arriving daily, storage space is getting smaller, and there’s a buzz in the air anticipating the arrival of the holiday shopping season which has already started with the Back to School products.

eMarketer forecasts that holiday sales in the US will grow by 5.7% in 2015, the biggest increase since 2011, and while this is great news for retailers both on and offline, it does present some challenges.

How do you manage inventory so that you have enough of the popular products that are flying off the shelves, and don’t order more products that include those that have sold only a few items?

xocbox can help you. Our inventory monitoring and out of stock widget in your online store mean that you always know when products are running low or sold out, helping you to decide when to place orders to replenish your stock.

We will work with you to provide the level of automation that is right for your store. Whether you want supplier feeds to your store, or want to automate the whole process right through to sending orders to your drop ship suppliers, xocbox systems will save you and your staff time during the busy shopping season.

If you have more than one store, no problem – let xocbox track sales in all your stores.

For more information on how to take control of the inventory in your Yahoo or Woocommerce store before the holiday season, call us at 858-752-3803, or click the contact button below.

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13 Sep20:45pm

Quickly Update Prices in Your Yahoo Store

As the holiday season approaches, many stores find it difficult to keep up with the changes needed to keep product prices up-to-date, especially across multiple stores.

The xocbox Price Manager enables you to quickly mark down merchandise, or change prices for a brand or manufacturer, always keeping your holiday merchandise priced where you want it to be.

If you have more than one Yahoo store, and sell some of the same merchandise on several stores, xocbox can cut down the time it takes to change prices across all of your stores.

The xocbox price manager allows you to edit prices from one screen, and publish the changes to your Yahoo store(s) without the need to log into multiple sites and systems. This can save you and your staff hours of time and eliminates the need to repeat a single process across all of your stores.

The Price Manager is just one of the ways xocbox can help Yahoo merchants manage their product data.

If you would like more information about the xocbox Price Manager and integration with your Yahoo store, contact us for more details.

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30 Jan20:02pm

Is Lowest Price the Right Price?

Many e-retailers use price-monitoring services to check prices of their competitors, and then adjust their own prices accordingly.

Often a product’s price will change more than 10 times in a single 24-hour period, according to data from the price monitoring firm, Profitero Inc, but does that mean that you have to change your prices 10 times as well?

There is no doubt that retailers are well aware of the price cutting strategies employed by Amazon, and other large retailers such as Sears, and Walmart, but is price cutting the best strategy for your business?

Being informed is essential, however, many retailers believe that they need to find the right price for their business model, and rather than simply slashing prices, prefer to find ways to offer their unique services and quality to win a customer’s business.

If you have researched similar products to those you are offering, emphasize the superior quality of your products, excel in customer service, and offer a fair price (though not necessarily the lowest). Anything that sets your product apart can win you the sale – custom-made, free alterations, personal shopping advice.

Building up your email list and tailoring offers to each buyer’s personal taste is a great way for you to personalize your shopper’s experience.

Once a shopper has built a relationship with your store and loves to shop there because of service, quality and personal recommendations just for them, paying more for an item will be worth every extra penny!

Research has shown that retailers who can figure out how to price their products using some of these strategies are still able to sell plenty of products, and make a profit.

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08 Jan21:19pm

Many Small Businesses Still Not Online

The results of holiday sales 2014 indicate that online retailers had a good year.

The web tracking company, comScore, released data this week showing an increase of 15% in November and December, better than their original estimates. These figures do not include sales made on mobile devices.

The figure is expected to increase to over 17% when mobile sales are taken into account, and this falls into line with many other reports and research that shows shoppers are now very comfortable making purchases on their mobile and tablet devices.

Big box stores and large enterprises have certainly embraced this, but smaller businesses appear to be having a more difficult time keeping up with technology trends, as noted in research from the nonprofit group, SCORE, which is supported by the Small Business Administration.

Their research showed that only 51% of small businesses have a website, yet 97% of consumers begin their product search online.

They also found that the small businesses that do have a website often lacked a call to action, did not engage in social media, and were not mobile and tablet friendly. There were even some that didn’t have a phone number, so contact by customers was difficult, if not impossible.

When you look at the volume of sales being made online and on mobile devices, it is clear that if your company does not have a website, you need to get one. Also, if your site is not yet mobile friendly, that is something you should have on your 2015 To Do List.

If it is that simple, why don’t more small businesses have a website?

The main reasons cited for not having a web presence were:

Lack of time – they are working round the clock to run their business, so don’t have time to devote to new technology and / or skills.
They don’t feel web savvy enough to delve into ecommerce, and stick to what they know.
The task is just too big. They don’t take credit cards in their store, so the jump to internet retailer is too daunting.

At xocbox, we try to make getting your business online an easier process, and one that doesn’t give you nightmares.

We can help your business, if:

You do not have an ecommerce site, and do not know where to begin because the large number of products you carry makes it overwhelming. We can help you get products online, and use xocbox tools to add and edit products.
You need to integrate your online store with bricks and mortar, and point of sale system. Manage inventory and work with suppliers / drop ship vendors to ensure that products sold online are actually available.
You have an ecommerce site, but find it difficult to keep on top of the volume of work involved keeping products up-to-date. xocbox tools reduce the data entry required in most ecommerce platforms.
You don’t already have a catalog and SKUs set up.
You have products with many colors and sizes, and need to quickly create professional looking listings with multi-views and swatches.

Contact xocbox today, and learn how we can help your online business.

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