3 Shipping Scams That Are Killing Your eCommerce Profits

3 Shipping Scams That Are Killing Your eCommerce Profits

by | Nov 23, 2022 | System Integrations

Many merchants have been gearing up for the holidays for months, and the time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday rushes is upon us. These merchants have to deal with many roadblocks and headaches along the way, like return scams and the like. Unfortunately, the abuse doesn’t stop at your return policy… With the holiday season in full effect, killer customers are on high alert and merchants should be too, considering record numbers for online shopping are expected this year, 166.3 million shoppers are expected to buy online just this Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. We teamed up with our fraud prevention partner Signifyd and the team at ShipStation to help online merchants stand clear of the 3 most common shipping scams killing eCommerce business profits this year.

 

1. Package Rerouting

 

Fedex truck on street with smoke on the side

 

Package rerouting commonly occurs when a customer commits payment fraud and uses a stolen credit card to make an online purchase. In most cases, the transaction is cleared because the legitimate cardholder’s address is used without being flagged. However, once the customer receives shipping confirmation and the package is en route, the original address is changed.

In another case, the customer purposely provides a false shipping address and monitors the package through the online tracking information given upon confirmation. Once they’re notified that the package is undeliverable, the customer contacts the shipping company to provide a new delivery address. Unfortunately for merchants, additional fees may occur when the package is successfully rerouted.

Lastly, a customer can make an online order and after confirmation, call the merchant to ask if their preferred shipping service can be used. Most likely, these customers have an established relationship with outside shipping services and are confident about receiving shipped items unflagged, making it harder to track and prove the package was ever delivered.

In all three cases, by the time the legitimate cardholder notices the unauthorized purchase, the scammer’s already enjoying their products free of charge. These types of fraud leave the online business with losses up to $10,000 in shipping fees, lost product, and lost profit… so now what?

 

Preventing Package Rerouting

Solving this issue requires a multi-step approach. First, it’s important to note not all customers have malicious agendas. In fact, many may have good reason to reroute a package. To avoid upsetting or offending legitimate customers, merchants should start with a clear shipping policy stating there’s a zero-tolerance for package rerouting on their website, social media profiles, and email confirmation.

Creating detailed shipping terms and conditions that address various errors that arise during shipping is important when dealing with customer claims. One major way to gain clarity into issues is to offer tracking. Tracking lets you know that an item has been delivered.

                                                            -Jennifer Ruben, Partner Marketing Manager, ShipSation.

 

In addition to providing these details, make sure a customer’s zip code and address are validated before shipping. Lastly, be sure to ship only to the original address provided in the confirmation details, especially for a large order.

 

2. Item Not Received 

by Mike Cassidy at Signifyd

 

4 Wrapped gifts on doorstep

 

One of the most insidious shipping scams occurs when the item marked ‘not received’ actually was received. False INR claims cost retailers millions every year, but they also cost merchants their reputation. Once word’s out that a retailer tends to give in to INR claims, be it via social media, dark web forums, or even a legitimate publisher, similar claims will flood in.

The scam is popular because it’s easy. No need to commit online identity theft by stealing someone’s personal information, or hack into a customer’s retail account. All abusive customers need is the will to cheat the system without care.

To put it simply, scammers accomplish this by ordering a product, bringing the product into their homes, and then telling their credit card companies their orders never arrived. Such claims create one of the thorniest situations in the retailer/customer relationship.

If the retailer challenges an item-not-received claim and it’s legitimate, chances are the retailer just lost a customer for good. Signifyd’s consumer survey, conducted by market research firm Survata, found that nearly half of consumers will endure no more than one bad experience before abandoning a retailer for good. Let’s agree that being called a thief by a retailer counts as a bad experience.

On the other hand, if a retailer accepts the INR claim and it’s not true, the merchant is out of the goods and the revenue it would have received. You can up your fraud protection game, by adding a few things to your to-do list.

 

Preventing INR Claims

The first step is to make sure your return policy is clear, and that your return process is easy. You also want to be clear in your descriptions and presentations of the products you’re selling. Not only does this provide your customers with a better shopping experience, but it also reduces the possibility they’ll be unpleasantly surprised when their order arrives.

Some consumers become frustrated with the work required to return a product and decide to get a refund by claiming the product never came. Being clear about returns and the products you’re selling helps reduce the incidence of unhappy customers who suddenly feel entitled to game the system.

There are also ways to challenge an INR claim, of course. Finding photos on social media of a customer with a product they claimed they never received, for instance, is fairly strong evidence that the item was received — as is a customer’s signature accepting the order. (It happens.)

Dealing with INR claims will never be pleasant, but with some forethought, it can become much less of a chore.

 

3. Hijacked Shipping Accounts

 

Shipping railroad tracks with multiple trains during sunset to represent hijacked shipping accounts

 

Nothing’s off-limits when it comes to fraudsters, not even shipping accounts. If your company’s shipping account is online or accessible to the public, you should keep reading.

Hijacking shipping accounts is a free and undetectable way to use a stolen shipping account number to make large shipments. Once these account numbers can be accessed, they are often used in the same manner as stolen credit cards and become can punch your profits in the gut.

In less severe cases, employees use their company’s account number to ship personal packages from time to time. In the worst case, these stolen accounts are used to ship drugs, stolen goods, or fake checks long distances, sometimes across the country.

Take Montana State University for example, in 2010 the school had a $180,000 pile-up in fraudulent shipping costs after more than 9,000 consumers received fake checks. Fake checks are normally used to trick recipients into wiring money for a small fee.

Businesses of all sizes are easy targets, as their shipping bills typically aren’t monitored close enough. However, with little knowledge of who’s accessing your account, it becomes harder to track down the culprit.

 

Preventing Hijacked Shipping Accounts

In order to properly prevent hijacked shipping account numbers, there must be a central management system that includes these features:

  1. Make account numbers accessible only to specific and trustworthy employees. Remember, less is more.
  2. Implement a reporting system that allows these users to be able to regularly schedule pickups and track packages, without constant authorization needed.
  3. Monitor frequently. With a tracking system in place, data can be used to track users’ activity for cross-reference purposes.

 

Final Thoughts

Tracking down evidence of fraud (be it wire fraud or shipping) takes time and not many merchants want to get into the business of becoming Sherlock Holmes. However, without proper detective work, shipping scams can be a legitimate threat to merchants, their customers, their reputation, and their profits. Luckily, there are fraud-protecting and chargeback-management solutions that highly automate the INR dispute process and some also eliminate the merchant’s risk. Ask us more about INR Protection here. 

 

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How to Avoid the Toughest B2B eCommerce Challenges

How to Avoid the Toughest B2B eCommerce Challenges

by | Oct 26, 2022 | System Integrations

Effective change management for B2B companies demands close attention to operational requirements, capabilities, and challenges.  

 

Continuing our investigative approach to eCommerce, the Redstage team regularly meets with B2B executives to discuss the challenges inherent in driving change on a massive scale. For this piece, we spoke with several marketing specialists responsible for guiding B2B companies through the eCommerce transformation process, and we’ve curated some of the most pertinent conversations. 

 

We explore learnings from the cultural, technological, and organizational hurdles they’ve faced to help others understand the procedures that drive successful transformations. They all agree – leading digital change is no easy feat. As you will learn, the outcome is entirely dependent on forming a united front within your organization.

 

Q1: What have been your biggest digital transformation challenges in the past year?

 

 

“It’s tough to find the right partners that can communicate what you’re planning and bring your vision to reality.”

 

 

A: That depends on your perspective. Mindset and process change are the biggest part, because going digital is very different if your company hasn’t adopted digital already. Internally, trying to take people-oriented processes and digitize them for an eCommerce experience means creating new roles and departments; making people at all levels take on new responsibilities, and combating a lot of kicking and screaming on whether or not this is a good direction for the company.

Externally, it’s tough to find the right partners that can articulate what you’re planning and bring your vision to reality. It’s usually hard getting them to understand your business and how to get you to where you want to go.

 

Q2: What has been your biggest challenge with regard to eCommerce?

 

 

“If the data isn’t already in your ERP, you have to change the way you do business in order to make it all fit.”

 

 

A: eCommerce is such a big universe. There are so many moving parts involved in making a B2B eCommerce experience a reality. With many SKUs, our focus was putting a PIM (product information management system) in place to create a more robust, data-driven experience for the end user. If your company is not data-driven already, restructuring your company for eCommerce is a tremendous undertaking. All of your info needs to be there. If the data isn’t already in your ERP, you have to change the way you do business in order to make it all fit… and if you don’t, you end up attempting all kinds of customizations that will ultimately lead to failure.

 

Q3: What are some solutions you would recommend that allowed you to solve past challenges?

 

“More or less, the eCommerce initiative needs to be driven from the top down.”

 

 

A: More or less, an eCommerce initiative needs to be driven from the top down. If you don’t have the backing of the executive group and the resources and patience to do this — that’s the challenge.

 

Q4: What are your biggest fears and challenges about digital transformation in the year ahead and why?

 

 

“Executive management needs patience.”

 

 

A: There are so many obstacles along the way and pressures to quickly launch – but do not launch a site until it’s ready. Set the right expectations with executive management and allow yourself extra time on your roll-out plan for unforeseen circumstances. eCommerce implementations can fail if you don’t have everything working in sync, but I’d also recommend you get the entire roadmap planned out and not just pieces of it.

 

 

“Some system integrators we’ve worked with, the big guns come into the office, they’re very knowledgeable, and then you don’t see them again…”

 

 

I had yet to come across a partner that says “Okay, you’re looking at Magento and here’s the 10 things you should worry about…” No questions about the quality of data you have, where you’re going to house product images, your plans internationally, or how you’re going to implement tokenization to meet privacy laws.

Some system integrators we’ve worked with, the big guns come into the office, they’re very knowledgeable, and then you don’t see them again… or the people hired for your initiative start working on another project, and you need to reach them but can’t. Delay, delay, delay, delay.

 

Q5:  If you could give one piece of advice to B2B business owners, what would it be?

 

 

“You’re going to need to solve an awful lot of problems along the way, and you need to make sure you have the right people.”

 

 

A: Be a problem solver. You’re going to need to solve an awful lot of problems along the way, and you need to make sure you have the right people involved in your project. Lastly, don’t announce to the world what you’re doing until you’re ready, so there are no expectations. When the expectations are set, make sure you’ve given all parties involved an accurate and well-informed scope of what’s coming, and be investigative with your partners.

 

Final Thoughts:

At Redstage, our engineers are dedicated to helping B2B companies understand the full extent of their needs, challenges and obstacles. Download our B2B Power Index for Manufacturing, Wholesale & Distribution for a better understanding of your current tech stack, and the technologies that can help you become a true digital leader.

B2B eCommerce – 4 Priorities when Diving into Digital Transformation

B2B eCommerce – 4 Priorities when Diving into Digital Transformation

by | May 10, 2022 | Commerce Strategy, eCommerce Platforms

If you’re a B2B merchant still relying on email, spreadsheets, faxes, pen and paper, and other legacy technologies to run your business, you’re leaving a ton of revenue on the table for your competition to snatch up. The single biggest way to expand your business and scale is by diving into digital transformation or adding an online selling channel. 

 

An online selling channel can go by many names, an eCommerce store, an online buying portal, a customer marketplace, or a self-service digital selling platform. They all have one thing in common, giving customers access to buy products digitally, at their own discretion. 

 

Keep this number in mind: 

When compared to the highest revenue-driving sales models, eCommerce beats out email, online chat, video conferences, and phone calls by a wide margin, according to McKinsey and Company’s research. 

 

ECommerce is driving more revenue, and buyers prefer merchants who sell online through eCommerce.  

In the same report, McKinsey found eCommerce was also the single most effective sales channel, beating out even in-person meetings, for the first time ever. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.  

 

With more merchants selling via digital channels this year than any other year in history, the sprint to eCommerce has never been more important or more saturated. 

 

So, what do you do? 

 

As a merchant jumping into eCommerce and online sales channels for the first time, or if the first time didn’t go as planned, there are a couple of things you need to lock down before you dive straight into eCommerce platforms, integrations, feature sets, and all that other good stuff. 

 

Before picking an eCommerce platform on which to build and hire developers, here are 4 things you need to think about on this journey to set yourself up for success:

1. Data Clean up and Consolidation

 

 

We’ve been there… and it’s not pretty 

 

A problem plaguing many merchants, and even more out in the B2B ecosystem, is a seemingly impossible amount of data living in many separate sources, unconnected to each other. Some product data in this sheet, some customer data over here, with no way for these data points to talk to each other besides manual analysis.  

 

This lack of organization/consolidation is the first hurdle you must overcome before you dive into the deep end of eCommerce. 

 

This may seem more daunting than it really is, and one of the fastest ways to alleviate the pressure of organizing and consolidating all your own data is by looking into an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Solution. A software solution like NetSuite ERP can often really help with data clean-up and analysis. ERPs are an all-in-one business management solution that help businesses run more efficiently using technology. There are also more niche solutions, like BTS-it, an ERP solution specifically for the metal manufacturing industry. Sunshine Metals integrated BTS-it into their eCommerce solution BigCommerce, you can see how they managed it here. 

 

Specifically for product information, a PIM (Product Information Management) solution can help by digitizing and organizing your product data all in one place. There are many ways you can do this, but in our experience, PIMs tend to be the most user-friendly and easy to set up, with a trusted team to help along the way. 

 

If you plan to introduce commerce on your website, these solutions will be paramount in setting yourself up for success down the road. The only way to analyze these data points is to have them all live in the same place, and analyzing data is the best way to decide what your next steps are without guesswork and trial and error.  

 

If your data is clean and able to be analyzed, you are already closer to being the next success story in B2B eCommerce, able to be agile and make data-driven decisions when the time comes. That said, legacy data is RARELY (if ever) “clean,” so it would be prudent to begin data cleanup and standardization as an ongoing practice. 

 

Our friend Amy did a further deep dive into how to clean up your data and get the most out of it in her article, Turn Data Into Dollars with these 6 Tips on Product Data Governance.

 

 

2. Streamlining and Digitizing Admin Processes

 

 

Once your data lives in one platform, allowing us to pull reports and analyses easily, it is time to streamline and digitize the rest of your processes.  

 

But what exactly does this mean? 

 

Well, there are many processes that go into running a business on the back end, from your fulfillment and logistical workflows to payroll, taxes, sales, and many more. 

 

After identifying your data stack, organizing, and digitizing it, your next step is to do the same for all the business processes that take up many hours on a day-to-day basis. No more manually inputting hours and calculating payroll and taxes, gone are the days of spreadsheets and written order forms going to the warehouse for fulfillment.  

 

These legacy processes are stealing hours and hours of your workweek, hours that could be opened for business development and scaling if they were streamlined, digitized, and automated. 

 

A couple of key things to identify when moving to automation and digitization are: 

  • Identifying repetitive tasks done every day, or on a weekly basis, that can be automated by software 

  • Creating standard operating procedures and inputting these standards into software that will keep this standard up. This may include how reports are structured, the correct workflow for getting an order into fulfillment, the process when a new customer is received and onboarded, etc. 

  • Finding the right software and partners that can connect to your website, so all these processes and workflows live in one place, making it easier to maintain and optimize than if they all lived in various spreadsheets and other areas. 

 

With these 3 things in mind, Guy Harvey (an Intradeco company) digitized and automated many of their business processes, like their inventory management, fulfillment, and sales processes. Almost immediately, they saw improvements in productivity, fulfillment efficiency, and overall employee morale. Finding a partner agency to help with the best practices of automation and digitization may be something for you to think about.  

 

For now, let us continue to our next priority.

 

 

3. Security

 

 

Now, let’s talk about security. 

 

At the end of 2020 and into 2021, more than 2,000 websites running Magento 1 post-End of Life were hacked. These breaches gave the hackers access to customer data, like payment information, and brought many of these businesses to their knees. 

 

One of the most important things to think about at this stage of the game is the security of your website. Before moving into eCommerce, you must prioritize security now that your data and business workflows are digitized. One of the biggest mistakes eCommerce merchants make is leaving their security as a “minor priority” or something to worry about in the future. Security is a proactive priority, not a reactive one, and you need to have strong security features in place before your customer’s data gets breached, which can cause major headaches in the future. 

 

The biggest thing to keep in mind when it comes to security is whether you have the resources to deal with it in-house, or if you should look for a security partner, like our friends over at Webscale. If you do not have the capabilities to stay on top of web security with your team, looking externally for help will ensure there is always someone around to deal with site breaches, outages, slowdowns, and more.

 

4. Understand Your Buyers’ Wants and Needs

 

 

The last step before building out your self-service buying portal, selling marketplace, or eCommerce website is knowing what your customers’ wants and needs are. 

 

Of course, this is important for any business, digital or non. However, here are some key things for you to think about pre-eCommerce: 

 

  • How do your customers typically purchase? Credit? Purchase orders?  

  • Do your customers browse your entire catalog, or do they usually utilize search to find specific products or parameters? 

  • Do your customers need advanced shipping options, due to having multiple warehouses, brick-and-mortar locations, or other needs? 

  • Do buyers need to be verified or have a log-in to access your catalog? 

  • Do certain customer segments or profiles get special pricing?  

 

If you are asking yourself these questions, you’re on the right track.  

 

But why do we need to know how our buyers think and interact with the site? Well, this will allow us to plan for what premium B2B features your website is going to need to provide your customers with the buying experience they desire from you. 

 

The Binding Source, a B2B distribution company, took these things and more into consideration before they chose an eCommerce platform for their site to live on. They needed custom product filtering for the search functionality, purchase order acceptance and auto-tax exemptions, advanced shipping options with ShipperHQ, a gated buyer portal requiring log-in verification, and more. 

 

After evaluating what their needs were and what types of site functionalities and features they would need, they chose BigCommerce to build their site on. While BigCommerce is not a one-size-fits-all platform, it fits TBS’s needs perfectly and helped the distribution company improve its conversion rate by 170% post-launch, with a 33% boost in transaction volume.

 

 

Next Steps

 

 

Now, We know it is a lot to process, but these are the 4 most important things for B2B’s to be thinking about before they jump into implementing eCommerce into their online presence.  

 

At this point, we have all our data organized and structured, our business processes digitized and automated, our site security at the forefront of our minds, and our customers’ needs and wants fleshed out. 

 

To take that leap off the diving board and dive in, it’s time to decide whether you have the resources to build out a fully-fledged eCommerce website in-house, or if it’s time to call an eCommerce agency, like Redstage.  

 

The difference between calling an agency and simply dedicating a developer for this is the experience, the expertise and the dedicated time to ensuring your eCommerce implementation is successful.  

 

If you have any questions or want to know the next steps in implementing online selling for your business, you can get a hold of us here.

 

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7 Ways to Boost B2B and Wholesale eCommerce Revenue

7 Ways to Boost B2B and Wholesale eCommerce Revenue

by | Apr 13, 2022 | Commerce Strategy, UX/UI Design

For B2B retailers, it’s no longer enough to simply have a functioning eCommerce website. Instead, you must be able to replicate the same B2C website experiences with which shoppers are familiar in their personal lives.

Shoppers want robust product information. They want advanced search capabilities, so they can quickly find the specific products they’re looking for. And of course, they want to do it all from their mobile devices.

As much as 80% of B2B buying decisions are based on a buyer’s direct or indirect customer experience, with only 20% based on the price or the actual offering. Part of this change in expectations can be attributed to the growing millennial numbers in the workforce. For instance, in 2020, close to half of B2B buyers were millennials — nearly double the amount from 2012. Not only are they in the workplace, but millennials are also much more involved in making business decisions. A recent report found that 44% of millennials are making purchasing decisions while 33% say they are key influencers or recommenders in the purchasing process.

 

So, what can you do to capture their needs and create compelling customer experiences?

 

 

1. Enrich your product catalog

 

 

In the beginning, all search engines were “the same,” they relied on keywords and manual inputs. Merchandisers were left to scour Analytics to find out the search terms that are resulting in zero results. At that point, they would update their catalog. But as that kept happening, they would find they were unable to accommodate the number of words necessary in product titles and descriptions. Then, systems opened the back end and enabled merchandisers to add synonyms there, so they didn’t need to keep adding keywords to the front end. Sounds good, right?

 

The problem with this approach, however, is a customer had to be shown a ‘no results’ page first in order for the retailer to know synonyms needed to be added, resulting in a poor experience. By the time the synonym was added to the system, the real customer was gone, possibly never to return. Enter Klevu.

 

Klevu AI helps retailers automatically add relevant synonyms to their product catalog without any manual work. It takes a product feed, considers the context of a store, and injects synonyms so whatever way a shopper is searching, they will find relevant products. For example, if they type in “jeans,” denim will appear. If they search for “beige,” neutral will also appear. And no customers are hit with unnecessary “no results” pages.

 

Klevu’s product catalog enrichment is a huge time saver for B2B and wholesale businesses who may have large catalogs that update frequently, as well as customers who come back to the website over and over again, searching for items their own unique way.

 

 

2. Make your search look sensational

 

 

Once your products are findable by any query, it’s essential to make search the most magnetic journey on your website. It’s a fact that traffic through site search converts 3-5x better than non-search journeys.

 

First, build a search overlay that immediately displays recommendations right when the shopper clicks into the search bar. Second, exposing the search bar in your main navigation encourages the use of search in the first place. When you expose the entire search bar in your website header, you’re not only encouraging the use of search, you can even make search more appealing. Typically, this really benefits mobile journeys. Brands that use Klevu have seen a 44% increase in orders from mobile search when exposing the search bar.

 

As you can see here on GF Smith, a paper manufacturer and supplier, the search bar is not only exposed, it is highlighted with moving text that describes what the shopper can do.

 

an example of strong on site search for b2b

 

 

For a B2B or wholesale brand, you might explain to your shoppers that you can search using complex descriptions like patterns, price range, or brand. A good eCommerce search engine will be able to support natural language queries such as these.

 

 

3. Eliminate dead ends

 

 

Shoppers will abandon the website if they are faced with a dead end like a zero results page, instead of trying a new search or considering maybe the product is there, but it just didn’t surface.

 

B2B retailers often have to factor in a wide range of search terms. Customers may search by SKU, a part or model number, a trade name, or any number of other identifiers. With this in mind, it’s vital to ensure your eCommerce store’s product discovery solution has the most advanced capacity for interpreting shopper intent.

 

Natural Language Processing

 

Natural Language Processing (NLP) based search focuses, not on the keywords, used but on their actual meaning. For example, a customer may search for “spotty socks” and be served with a range of polka dot socks, even if the term “spotty” does not appear in any of the associated product information.

 

This sidesteps the issues that arise from users inputting a wide range of search terms as they try to second-guess what the store they’re browsing will recognize. By bringing up products that are likely to meet the criteria of the customer, but which do not feature any of the words of their search query within their listing, businesses can ensure higher customer satisfaction and better conversion rates.

 

The bottom line – using an eCommerce search engine with NLP processing can boost eCommerce conversion from search by 12%.

 

 

4. Merchandise, but with the help of AI

 

 

AI isn’t creepy, it’s customer-centric. Merchandisers can waste hours over-merchandising their stores only to realize that shoppers are digging for products a different way, using filters and re-ordering. Klevu allows retailers to balance AI and control by merchandising just enough and letting the AI do the rest, based on real trending data.

 

A great example of this expertise in action is in relation to seasonality, which can be incredibly important in the B2B space. Retailers need a way to be able to promote certain products at specific times. Knowledge that certain seasonal shifts are about to kick in means that the right products can be boosted even before AI picks up on the demand and promotes the trend.

 

Additionally, at different times of the year, retailers may wish to prioritize or promote stock within a small window of time that is about to fall out of favor, or that commands higher profit margins. Again, this is all reflective of a deep and personal understanding of your own B2B vertical that should be integrated into your on-site search.

 

A product like Klevu gives you the opportunity to override the algorithms and merchandise in advance. This means that B2B customers have complete control when it comes to fine-tuning their SRLPs and Category pages.

 

In addition, Klevu offers an eCommerce personalization engine that creates eCommerce experiences that align with an individual shopper’s motivation.

 

 

5. Search-powered product recommendations

 

 

Another way to avoid dead ends on your website is to constantly refresh your product recommendations, and include them on multiple page types including homepage, product listing pages including search and categories, product detail pages, and in the basket. Product recommendations featuring complimentary suggestions or recommendations based on recent browsing history can have a real impact on average order values, at least a 7% increase.

 

Making sure you can keep them fresh without too much resource overhead is really important, though. It’s impossible to do this at scale manually, but an AI solution like Klevu Smart Recommendations uses insights from search to constantly refresh product recommendations to be in line with shopper intent.

 

Eurokangas, a Finnish fabric supplier, has a large product catalog, with some merchandising categories containing hundreds or even thousands of products. Eurokangas saw rapid improvements across a range of KPIs after implementing the full Klevu Discovery Suite: Smart Search, Smart Category Merchandising, and Smart Recommendations.

 

Within just 2-weeks, and with minimal manual effort, click-through rates on category pages more than doubled, and conversion rate across mobile and tablet, which make up more than 60% of visits to the site, increased by 20%.

 

 

6. Curate Content With On-Site Search

 

olam spices b2b marketplace on-site search

By integrating high-quality content such as buying guides into B2B and wholesale eCommerce websites, retailers can give trade customers a reason to keep coming back to buy from them.

 

Some on-site search solutions allow store owners to enable content-based results such as blog posts or targeted buying guides that appear in-line with search results. This is fantastic for B2B retailers as it enables them to serve highly-focused and specialized content to customers who are already displaying a strong indication of intent to purchase.

 

An excellent example of this tactic in action comes from Olam Spices. When a search term is entered into its B2B site, products are recalled, but so too are market reports and articles giving a broad range of relevant and interesting industry content. By displaying this content, Olam helps inform and educate customers, while ensuring they find the right product for them. At the same time, the merchant cements its reputation as a leader and expert in its field.

 

7. Get Smart with Filtering & Facets

 

One of the key issues B2B retailers face regarding the product discoverability of their online stores is the tendency towards large and highly technical product catalogs. If customers can’t find what they need on your website, they know chances are good they can find it quickly on a competitor’s site.

 

Give your customers the ability to narrow down search results and help them hone in on the exact product they need as quickly as possible.

 

b2b search in automotive industry

 

Klevu developed an advanced search function for B2B and B2C retailers in the automotive sector that allows shoppers that know exactly what they are looking for, to choose the make/model/year within search. How it works: Within the product data, associations are made between products suitable for different car makes and models and/or years of a car. So, a shopper can drill down to their specific make/model/year and see products compatible with their choice at the top of the product list. As you can see here with Morris 4x4 Center, the chosen make/model/year persists for the whole session, including subsequent searches, until cleared or changed by the shopper.

 

 

So, what’s next?

 

At Klevu, we believe that great customer experience isn’t reserved for B2C retailers and that technology and innovation aren’t the privileges of a chosen few. B2B buyers are digitally savvy, potentially even digital natives.

Klevu has helped retailers power their on-site search, category merchandising, and product recommendations. Typically, the uplift for most eCommerce brands is:

 

  • Conversion from search increases by 6x
  • Average order values increase by 6%
  • Site-wide eCommerce conversion increases by 15%

 

Klevu helps B2B and wholesale brands create magically personal and relevant product discovery journeys that appear effortless, and build brand equity by delighting shoppers at every click, swipe, or search. Get a free product discovery audit at klevu.com/audit

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Turn Data into Dollars with these 6 Tips on Product Data Governance

Turn Data into Dollars with these 6 Tips on Product Data Governance

by | Feb 5, 2022 | Commerce Strategy, eCommerce Platforms

I’ve been there. You’re staring at a seemingly impossible amount of data in Excel with no idea how to eat the proverbial elephant. You know that you need structure; you know that data is everything to grow your eCommerce channel and maybe you aren’t entirely sure why. You hear experts talk about “data quality” and “data governance” and quite honestly, you just want to sell more of your product and ensure your site is following best practices for your customers. 

Amy Buchanan

Amy Buchanan

Business Analyst

Hi, my name is Amy Buchanan, and I am a product data geek. I have served in various roles in a data steward capacity, and I love to help companies solve the puzzle of their product data. Salsify Certified and experienced in other product data solutions, I am one of many team members at Redstage that can help your company increase revenue, increase conversion, and optimize your systems for success.

It can be challenging to sell process and back-end systems improvements to senior leadership. The systems are not customer facing and they aren’t bringing anything new and shiny to your website to draw in a customer. Yet as everyone knows, if your house foundation is damaged or faulty, you are likely facing some serious (and costly) issues. Maybe not today but in the future, as your business grows, suddenly you find yourself with a huge mountain of data and no way to consistently manage or gain valuable insights. It’s also common that your company has gone through a merger or acquisition and now you’re faced with multiple sources of data with no strategy to consolidate it into a unified experience for your customers.

We’ll get started with a few tips, to at least make your research efforts more targeted. Need more help? Feel free to reach out to our team and we can get you connected to our Redstage experts.

1. Fix the Foundation – Invest in Structuring Your Data

data structure is the foundation of your business

Depending on the current state of your product data and what system capabilities you have today, you may be able to start applying some structure and getting immediate results.

Question:

Do you have product data attributes that you could clean up and make into a drop-down list?

Each industry is different, but here’s an example applied in the clothing industry:

Clothing is often bucketed in size ranges on websites to help customers browse to the section that applies to them. You may see values like:

  • Men’s
  • Women’s
  • Boys’
  • Girls’
  • Unisex

Or values such as:

  • Adults’
  • Youth
  • Kids’

That seems straightforward. However, if your data is not normalized, perhaps from different sources, you may also see values like:

  • Men’s
  • Mens
  • Men

While to a human reading this list, we will interpret these values as the same thing, your systems cannot.  This will lead to miscategorization of the products due to the redundant filter/attribute values.  The customer may be confused, and they may even abandon their session if this lack of organization occurs as a less effective user experience…and that turns into lost revenue for your organization.

2. Call the Experts – Implement a PIM Solution

pim experts

You’ve tried MS Excel; you’ve tried outdated data warehouse tools. Maybe you even tried to build an MS Access database to add structure to your data, and it just isn’t enough. You have too much volume or even too much complexity to your data and you need help and fast. 

There is good news! There are a variety of PIM (Product Information Management) or MDM (Master Data Management) tools out there that will suit your business. The organizations that support these systems have done all the heavy lifting of providing you with a tool to help your business, and all your team needs to do is work with an implementation team to configure and stand one up. Depending on the size of your product assortment and organization, a typical PIM implementation can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months, and it is well worth the investment.

As you stand back and look at the structured data, workflows to review and approve data, various channels you can create to customize data for different sources, you will see how your team will be able to move faster and reach those company sales goals easier.

3. Does Your Data Speak SEO? – Optimizing Your Data for Search

is your product data SEO friendly?

Your website data may be pristine, but if search engines like Google cannot find it, then you will always be chasing how to get more traffic on your website. If you aren’t sure where to start, Redstage can make some suggestions on SEO partners that can help put together a strategy and plan to get your website where it needs to be.

You can also leverage resources on schema.org to ensure that your website is using the correct markup – that’s the language the SEO Crawler likes best. You can also use the work you put in step one to increase the SEO value of your website. By giving your products the titles that your customers are searching for, you are more likely to increase your ranking in Google Search Results, which means an increase in organic traffic to your website. More customers very naturally lead to an increase in sales!

4. Cross-Selling and Upselling – What does that have to do with Product Data?

selling related products based on customer preferences

While you can manually associate products to one another using your CMS (Content Management System) tool, this can be a time-consuming manual effort. If you have taken the step to implement a PIM solution, many products out on the market will also allow you to create relationships between products.

These relationships can often be created manually or dynamically leveraging how the products are categorized in your PIM. You may have a product that has some accessories you want to suggest to your customers for an upsell opportunity. Or there may be related products (like similar brands or items in the same category) that you want to make available to your customers. Many eCommerce platforms also automatically assist you with this step by offering widgets to display popular products (based on website sales) or even feature new products (based on when products are added to your store) right on your home page, without any additional effort.

5. Use Analytics to Understand Customer Behavior

use analytics to make sure you're servicing customer wants

You probably already have Google Analytics set up on your website, and if you do not, go do that after you read this post!

Question:

How are your customers searching for products?

Make sure you use their words in your website content. Another thing you can do for a quick win is identify which attributes your customers use to shop for your products, and make sure they show up in the filters on your website and are included in your website’s search criteria.

Attributes such as:

  • Size
  • Color
  • Flavor
  • Battery Type
  • Frequency
  • Power
  • Height
  • Width
  • Length

…or whatever attributes suits your products and customer expectations.

Perform some competitive analysis using a tool like Google Trends (for example) or see how your competitors are structuring their data. This type of data can usually be identified from an existing data set if you have written a description of your product on your website’s product detail page. Once you have these attributes separated out, you can also use them to create a more personalized experience for your customer and get them to the content they want, quickly, so they can click “Add to Cart” and make their purchase.

6. Data Ownership – Accountability Ensures Your Business Stays on Track

entrust product data ownership to one person to ensure it gets the care it needs

So, let’s say you perform step 1-5 and you are really proud with all the work your team has put in to get your website product data in good shape. Does that mean you’re done? Unfortunately, not yet.  We would suggesting having someone in your organization to continually monitor your data quality and data completeness, so everything is continuously optimized.

By assigning data owners to different aspects of your product data, you will ensure that someone is continually monitoring and ensuring that your product data meets your company guidelines and fulfills your business goals.

For example, if you have compliance needs, it’s a common best practice to ensure you have a team member that can validate data from a safety and hazardous materials perspective. This may be within your legal department or even an outside agency. Establishing processes to validate new products going to the website can be facilitated by a PIM solution, and periodic review can also be performed to ensure that you catch any compliance concerns before they turn into costly legal issues.

Phew! I know this can seem like a lot and whether you just need some guidance or if you are looking to create a partnership with a team that will be your Sherpa up Mount Product Data, please let us know how we can help you!

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