This month on the cleverbridge Ecommerce Blog, we taught you about the current state of SEO and the future of fraud prevention. We dug into the importance value perception, and the value of customer acquisition versus retention. We also examined the first steps of localizing your offering for global markets, and drilled down a bit into the Indian ecommerce scene.
For our Ecommerce Digest, we’re going to discuss:
- Using customer service as a marketing channel
- How to properly expand your global business
- The success of cloud products and subscription billing models
- Why brands fail at ecommerce and what they can do to fix it
Customer Service
Customer Service is the New Marketing | Michael Hyatt
To remind us of something we all know and to inspire us to look at our own efforts in this area, best selling author Michael Hyatt points out that a great product coupled with poor customer service is a recipe for failure. He tells a story of a superior customer service experience that resulted in his promoting that businesses to his massive online audience. He also noted that he’s done the reverse as well: offering negative reviews of businesses that gave poor service. Obviously, negative reviews like this affect a brand’s reputation as well as their pocket.
Global Ecommerce
Four Questions Aspiring Global Ecommerce Brands Ask Of Technology Partners | Forrester
According to a recent Forrester report, “International expansion is top of mind for many eBusiness executives.” While that report analyzes various global ecommerce markets and lists the many internal issues companies must consider, this blog post continues along a similar path by examining those issues that relate to how your partners, from whom you outsource technology, can assist your expansion efforts in terms of speed, cost, and localization.
Cloud and Subscriptions
Adobe: The SaaS Company That Grew From Zero To 4 Million Subscribers In 2.5 Years | Nasdaq
Since writing about Adobe’s shift to SaaS, the subscription market has only expanded with more and more companies vying for their share of recurring revenue and long lasting customer relationships. This article from SeekingAlpha by way of Nasdaq trumpets Adobe’s success in disrupting their own business model. One note of caution is found at the end of this article: Adobe’s subscriptions may be way up, but their revenue hasn’t quite gotten to the same place. Dovetailing with the Adobe article is this one about Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicting the oncoming mass of B2B SaaS products.
Sales
Why Most Brands Fail At Ecommerce | Marketingland
This post uses the author’s experience to frame the way we operate our ecommerce sites in terms of passive waiters versus proactive salespeople, while offering concrete first steps to overcoming specific challenges. The most impressive advice relates to digital marketing. The author astutely notes that most ecommerce ventures treat their websites like brick-and-mortar stores without using the digital tools at their disposal to compensate for the lack of a physical showroom and staff to guide the visitor to successful purchases.
