New Austin, TX Office & VP of Client Services for Redstage

New Austin, TX Office & VP of Client Services for Redstage

by | Nov 25, 2019 | Press

Austin, TX – 9/22/19 – Redstage, the award-winning eCommerce development agency, welcomes Jason Crickmer as VP of Client Services and Solutions. The new member of the executive team will manage client-facing delivery and project management from the newly opened U.S. office in Austin, Texas.

The Austin office complements Crickmer’s appointment to jumpstart and lead growth in the southwest USA. “I am honored and excited to be leading Redstage’s growth in this market, knitting even tighter connections to our partners and clients in this region,” said Crickmer.

Previously, Crickmer served as the CEO of Praxis Information Science and Vice President of Customer Success at Alegion. His 25 years of experience in software engineering, strategy, client services, customer success, product, and team development serves to strengthen team organization and provide superior customer experiences to clients.

“Texas and the southwest are a major hub for eCommerce and Austin in particular, is the nexus of it all. Several of our closest partners like BigCommerce, PayPal, and Adobe are either headquartered there or have a strong technical presence in Austin,” said Crickmer.

As part of the Fulcrum Digital family of companies, Redstage is supported by more than 1,000 employees around the world, with offices in the US, UK, Brazil, Argentina, India, and Australia. The Austin office represents Redstage’s 9th location. The agency’s B2B portfolio that currently includes Church & Dwight, Olam International, Reckitt Benckizer and more.

For more information regarding Redstage’s B2B eCommerce services, click here.

About Redstage
Redstage modernizes and supports digital systems for B2B companies through end-to-end eCommerce services to drive stable, long-term growth. The agency specializes in the latest technology, with a reputation for bringing storied B2B companies into the digital age and teaching them to scale further, faster. Driven by experience. Guided by innovation is the Redstage code. Redstage’s goal is to accelerate eCommerce development, inspire confidence, and empower digital retailers.

 

Ghosts of Black Fridays Past: 3 Crucial Warnings for Retailers

Ghosts of Black Fridays Past: 3 Crucial Warnings for Retailers

by | Sep 21, 2019 | Commerce Strategy, System Integrations

Congratulations! You survived the Back to School retail surge. While the true test of eCommerce performance is yet to come, any hurdles you encountered during Back to School should be taken care of well before then. Consider these your warning shots. To help, here are 3 precautionary measures you can take to digitally strengthen your store for the holidays.

 

1. Stress Test to Avoid Lost Revenue

A wave of more than 6.2 billion shoppers will descend on digital retailers during Cyber Week. Unfortunately, not all businesses are prepared for success…

For example, J. Crew’s site crashed on Black Friday in 2018 and issues persisted throughout the afternoon. Analysts predict the outage cost the company around $780,000 in just five hours. Shoppers flocked to Twitter to complain en masse, causing a firestorm of anger to erupt across the web. This is where the real damage was done.  Like a ghost story from holidays past, this is a warning for retailers everywhere to change for the better.

 

Adam Morris, Redstage CEO

Redstage’s CEO Adam Morris identified the top “holiday rush” issues we’ve helped clients through in years past. Here’s what to watch out for:

1. Slow Site Speed

2. Price Caching

3. Broken or Buggy Checkout

4. Server Overload or Timeout

5. Add to Cart Features Failing

 

“The holidays are a time of increased profits, but that comes with a huge load on websites,” Morris says, “So if you haven’t done proper stress testing to account for higher demand, you won’t know how your online store is going to react.”Adam Morris, CEO at Redstage

 

Preparing for the worst now can save you money and your reputation later with one simple step— testing. Skipping this step could spell disaster that leaves the specter of poor service hanging over your reputation for years to come.

 

black friday, cyber week

2. Your Back-End Checklist at Present

From Thanksgiving to Black Friday through the end of Cyber Week, retailers have a few critical days to rake in as many sales as possible. During this shopping frenzy customers both in-store and online. Regardless of how they buy, your online store (or your app) will more than likely be their first stop. We developed a checklist of what you can do today to ensure your eCommerce site survives Cyber Week.

  1. Optimize your site’s user experience with A/B testing.
  2. Check your indexing to avoid price caching.
  3. Review all error codes to avoid a broken checkout.
  4. Avoid overload and crashes by scaling your server.
  5. Double-check key functions to avoid important features failing.
  6. Complete load testing to prepare for an increase in traffic.
  7. Utilize an automated monitoring system for real-time updates on 404s and checkout errors.
  8. Upgrade your payments and security platforms to prevent payment fraud.
  9. Lastly, be prepared to scale up your support team on the fly. If something goes wrong, even for a few minutes, you’ll need a sizable support team to manage angry customers and correct the issues.

 

“If you’re not using visitor data to identify the friction points in your checkout, you risk focusing your budget in the wrong places. A data-driven approach to optimization means trusting your analytics even when the message is counter-intuitive.”Oliver Sosinsky, Sr. Solutions Engineer at Redstage

 

Learn a valuable lesson from LuLu Lemon. Last year, the athleisure brand’s site went down the morning of Thanksgiving Day. Shopper outrage hit Twitter at 8am EST with a “Site is down. Ugh!”

In the first minutes of the shopping event of the year, the brand was stuck, entangled in crisis. Once the site got back online, more errors appeared, causing sales prices for in-cart items reset to regular prices or prevent customers from checking out.

With proper bug monitoring and back-end preparations, this fiasco could have been avoided. Take a page out of our book and start monitoring now. You’ve done the legwork to bring customers to your site, now protect it.

 

black friday, cyber week

3. Capitalize on the Future

A single visitor doesn’t guarantee a transaction and a single transaction doesn’t guarantee a loyal customer. Flawless mobile experiences will do both, but takes some serious testing.

Conversion rate optimization turns your visitors into customers while ensuring they receive an immaculate customer experience. While no two customers are the same, simple tests can lead to enhancements that remove friction from the checkout and dramatically reduce abandoned carts.

Merchants like LawnmowerTirestore.com took advantage of testing their site before the holiday season and the results were a game changer. By making their checkout button stick to the site’s header and follow users while they scrolled, sales soared with a 29.5% increase in revenue per visitor (RPV) for desktop customers. For mobile, the test yielded a 7% increase in RPV, after only 4 weeks of testing. Now, Lawnmower Tirestore plans to roll-out the feature site-wide to capitalize on their new-found data-driven advantage.

As part of the Mobile Optimization Initiative, retailers can receive checkout tests 100% free. The goal of the initiative is to create a set of best practices for mobile optimization and share our insight with the world. Read more about the initiative here.

 

black friday, cyber week, cyber monday

Final Thoughts

According to Internet Retailer, 60% of consumers plan to spend 50% or more of their holiday shopping online; spending over $21.6 billion during Cyber week.

It is not too late to prepare. If you start early enough and cover all the bases, you can sit back, relax and watch your revenue grow with measurably less stress. Remember, this is your holiday too. While there’s still time, monitor your site for bugs, load test, A/B test, utilize the data, capitalize on those results, and enjoy some eggnog.

Cheers!

Can Shopify Fulfilment Beat Amazon?

Can Shopify Fulfilment Beat Amazon?

by | Sep 2, 2019 | eCommerce Platforms

Scooch over Amazon! Shopify may be stealing the crown…

It’s not about who did it first, but who did it right, and inclusivity wins every time. Undoubtedly, Amazon is the king of eCommerce. However, small businesses pack a powerful punch, and they want their recognition.

The workforce is changing as technology advances are leading to growth in small businesses. According to the US Small Businesses Administration, there are almost 30 million small businesses in the United States, employing nearly 47.8 percent of U.S workers. In 2014, Forbes reported that 50 percent of the workforce may be freelancers by 2020; with just four months left until the new year, it seems as those analysts knew what the heck they were talking about.

 

Introducing Shopify’s Fulfillment Center

Details of the fulfillment network were first revealed at Shopify Unite 2019. The network looks promising to merchants of all sizes. However, those who own and operate under a small business will benefit. The responsibilities are endless for a business that has under 50 employees; Shopify is ready to clean up shop. Getting inventory out of a cluttered office or space and into a fulfillment center sounds like a huge relief. Doesn’t it? Merchants no longer have to worry about logistics or fulfillment and can finally focus on building their business.

More power is going to the platforms that facilitate relationships between third-party logistics providers (3PL) and end-users. We saw it in 1998 with Fulfillment by Amazon and now with Shopify. While Amazon and Shopify are no direct competitors. Shopify is diversifying and acquiring consumers through indirect interfacing a.k.a, merchants and 3PL providers. As a result, this formula has over 820,000 third-party merchants doing all the talking for Shopify; bringing in the big buck.

Shopify will win with Inclusivity.

There is no business too small or big. The Fulfillment Network is set to support merchants who ship from 10 to 10,000 packages per day, with hopes of expanding from 3 to 30,000. Craig Miller, the Chief Product Officer at Shopify stated, “the services will be offered to small and medium-sized business owners whose fulfillment processes are not typical or ideal and those whose needs are not being met by their third-party logistics provider.”

“If Shopify can bring an amazon class logistics and fulfillment to small and medium businesses, Shopify could change the world as we know it. Wal-Mart famously changed the retail world with logistics and pushed out many other retail businesses. Amazon re-invented this model for the web, and similarly pushed out many other eCommerce retailers.  If Shopify is able to democratize the logistics model, we will enter a whole new realm of competition in retail, dramatically benefiting the consumer, and providing a wealth of opportunity to businesses of all sizes.”

-Adam Morris, Redstage, CEO

With a $1 Billion budget to own and operate fulfillment networks, there are already seven centers. These centers are located in some of the larger states that house major metro cities with the most small businesses such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, California, and Texas. There are also centers located in Ohio, Nevada and New Jersey.

Shopify’s solution is a merchant’s dream come true.

Early last year, Shopify published an article that told us everything we needed to know about 3PL’s and how the market was booming.

The market for 3PLs providers exploded following the birth and exponential growth of eCommerce. Most Fortune 500 (86%) companies and 96% of the Fortune 100 use services like these.

A year later, Shopify found a solution for its’ end users by introducing this network that will also give merchants an opportunity to differentiate themselves.

Artificial Intelligence is at the forefront of the Fulfillment Network. Merchants will find this opportunity hard to pass up with all the features the network includes.

“I don’t want to make life easier,” said no one, ever.

The Shopify Fulfillment network includes the following features:

Custom Packaging and Branding

  • The customer experience is now controlled as merchants will have the ability to customize their packaging that compliments their brands’ aesthetics. This is the extra touch merchants need to ensure consistency in their brand even during delivery

Returns and Exchanges

  • Merchants have less hassle to worry about returns and exchanges as the fulfillment centers will work to handle all logistics.

Order Fulfillment

  • With a 99.5 percent accuracy rate, Shopify is promising merchants that their orders will be picked, packed, processed and shipped within 2 days.

Inventory and Back Office Management

  • Through intelligent machine learning the back office keeps track of inventory and provides restock alerts. Customer data syncs across warehouses and sales channels to reduce errors, and lastly, Customers will have access to fast and low-cost delivery.

Final Thoughts:

Everyone wants the underdog to win. While Amazon is focusing on serving only larger businesses. Shopify will focus on ensuring merchants have the opportunity to operate on Amazon’s level delivering the best experience on all levels. There is an application process for those interested in joining the network which requires an assessment based on product types and fulfillment needs. No worries. If you are not accepted, Shopify has provided 3PL checklist just for you.

Your fulfillment network is just one piece of the enterprise puzzle. Dive into our eCommerce platform analysis kit to find out which tech is best for your store! Take the quiz now!

Update: Data reveals that Shopify has recently overtook Ebay, making them the second biggest shopping site after Amazon. Shopify is showing no signs of slowing down. They be stealing the crown quicker rhan we predicted.

What Prime Day Can Teach Us About Holiday Sales

What Prime Day Can Teach Us About Holiday Sales

by | Jul 25, 2019 | Commerce Strategy

Prime Day is Over, but Holiday Sales Have Only Begun

If January is the finish line for holiday sales, Amazon’s Prime Day is the starting gun. This year brands came out in force to compete and capitalize on the sales event. Flexing omnichannel marketing muscle, both digital natives and big-box stores sought to grab their share of winnings. Most importantly, the performance-enhancing tools both Amazon and others used on Prime Day can be repurposed for the holiday race ahead. Let’s review.

 

Quick Recap: Prime Day Milestones

This Prime Day, the eCommerce ecosystem got more than it bargained for. Brands broke through the clutter with new strategies to piggy-back off the holiday, while others launched their own sales events. Amazon’s reported sales for the two-day event beat last year’s totals for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. According to Internet Retailer, “The eCommerce giant sold more than 175 million items across its platform. Plus, sales by third-party marketplace sellers ‘far exceeded’ $2 billion.” However, Amazon wasn’t the only winner.

Last week, Adobe Digital Insights discovered a massive industry shift. Data shows that average daily revenues for retailers with revenues over $1 billion saw lifts of 54% and 72% Monday and Tuesday, respectively. The report concludes that mid-sized retailers shared the gains, witnessing an average revenue bump of 28%.

The two-days of sales also mark a notable shift in the industry at large, pushing the entire category to new highs. Thanks to this month’s 1.7%  increase in sales across the online retail industry, non-store retailers (including Amazon and digital-only stores) now only trail Auto dealers in the U.S. retail market. As Bloomberg notes, “Online shopping has become the second-biggest chunk of the $520 billion U.S. retail market, after overtaking grocery stores and restaurants in June.”

 

How Amazon Became a Crowd Favorite

From free shipping to premium content, Amazon Prime members get an awful lot of added value. For an annual price of $119 (or $59 for students), users get unlimited music and photo storage, audiobooks, Kindle books, discounts at Whole Foods, and Prime Video where they can watch their favorite movies and shows.

The loyalty program also gives special deals to users, including early access to lightning deals 30 minutes before non-members. Additionally, Prime members can even share their benefits with other members of their household (or anyone for that matter). One of the newest features, Prime Wardrobe, allows loyal members to ship up to 8 clothing items from Amazon sent right to their door, and they can return any and all items for free.

The result of this massive loyalty program? Membership now exceeds 100 million subscribers. At the end of 2018, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CRIP), determined the average Prime member spent $1,400.00 on Amazon goods for the year, more than double the $600.00 that non-prime customers spent on average. 

 

Building Your Fanbase Through Loyalty Programs

Users expect more from brands and online vendors. They want value beyond the products they’re buying and an interface that makes for swift shopping. Most, if not all DTC companies acquire the bulk of their new customers for the year during the holidays. The problem is engaging these customers and retaining them once the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. A loyalty program built specifically for your audience can help you keep the sales flowing and boost retention year-round.

The question is, how does your current loyalty program achieve this, and can it be optimized? Are there additional “freebies” you can provide outside of the occasional blog post, up-sell, or discount? In eCommerce, brand loyalty can be a massive differentiator between you and your competition. While Amazon’s loyalty program is difficult to match, exclusive deals, early releases, customer perks, and unlockable rewards are great ways to keep customers engaged and coming back.

If your rewards program was based on a subscription payment, how much could it cost to provide free shipping for customers? Perhaps rolling revenue would allow you to create new content for members like style guides, product videos, or pop-up events like Amazon’s Treasure Truck. Rewards programs like Swell even reward customers for creating content like product reviews, videos, Instagram photos and more, which in-turn drive additional revenue. For the holiday’s it’s time to think seriously about the value of customer loyalty.

 

Using Amazon To Your Advantage

Amazon offers benefits to sellers who use the platform, including specific advantages for Prime Day. Omnichannel merchants can submit for a lighting deal, which if approved, puts the platform’s marketing engine to work for you. Sellers who are selected for the option typically see a big boost in sales, though significantly lower prices are recommended to get approved (at least 20% off the current Amazon listed price and at least 5% lower than the lowest listed price for the same product in the past 28 days). 

Amazon coupons are another example of some of the benefits sellers can use to get some extra juice out of the Prime Day frenzy. The coupons show up in search results, on the Amazon Coupons page, in the shopping cart, in your brand store, and in sponsored products listings. This year, many merchants combined these strategies with an increase in marketing budget to get their products seen and to the top of specific categories, but only with product that were performing well already. 

Companies that sell consumable products have a massive advantage. Amazon’s subscription feature lets customers sign up for automatic rolling purchases that will keep sales going long after Prime Day. Using this option in combination with those mentioned above will likely prove powerful for merchants who sell on Amazon, and makes a compelling case to add subscription functionality to your eCommerce site. Our developers recommend using this extension here for Magento 2.

 

The Sales Race Ahead

Vendor beware, Amazon is currently taking steps to build it’s own collection of private-label brands. While the deal may seem outrageous, the “Amazon Accelerator” program offers free marketing support, preferred listings, and more perks for vendors. The catch? Amazon reserves the right to purchase brands that sign up for as little as $10,000 flat (WSJ). Most brands would agree this is a ludicrously unfair price for an entire product line. However, it’s likely one or two tiny companies in each category will part with a brand for the fast cash-grab before they’re bought.

While we don’t advise tossing your hat in the ring, this is a gentle reminder that competition for selling on Amazon will only increase, and you can bet the brands Amazon plans to snatch up will receive preferential treatment. Then again, if you’re a retailer or reseller with the ability to create a new brand quickly, it might not be a bad idea to sign up.

 

Final Thoughts

This Prime Day, brands proved a decisive ability to compete against Amazon. While some profited by selling on Amazon, others kept customers close by hosing their own sales events, focusing on mobile optimization, or pumping up their marketing budget. The road to beating Amazon isn’t easy, but these successes point to new ways to match the giant’s might (or at least profit from it).

Customer loyalty is just one area where merchants can improve their overall experience and prepare the holidays ahead. Whether you manage a B2B or B2C operation, there are likely tools and strategies available you haven’t thought about. Grab our free Power Index for insights on how to improve even the strongest tech stack and keep customers coming back long after the holiday season.  

 

Top 5 Trends in B2B Personalization & Social Selling

Top 5 Trends in B2B Personalization & Social Selling

by | May 2, 2019 | Commerce Strategy, System Integrations

Despite changing customer habits across the commerce industry, sales strategies have largely remained static. That is, until now. With a noticeable rise in account based marketing adoption and “hyper-personalization” software that utilizes machine learning, today’s sales teams are better equipped than ever to engage prospects across digital platforms; new territory for B2B companies. Here are the top 5 ways sales teams are taking advantage of new tech.

 

5. Stepping Up the Mobile Game

In a recent article, Genius eCommerce notes “91 percent of B2B buyers complete searches using mobile devices and one in four buyers makes a purchase using a mobile device.” With millennials making up more than 35% of the US workforce, there’s an industry-wide push to create simple, elegant, and frictionless online experiences that cater to the generation’s habits and expectations. To do this, sales teams must begin thinking like millennials and driving engagement through smartphones, their device of choice.

For millennials, a downloadable product list doesn’t go a long way, especially on a phone. It’s too time consuming, and millennials know there’s a high probability another company (i.e. your competitor) will have a simpler online experience that shortens their workday and makes their lives easier.

 

4. Increasing Repeat Purchases

Redstage CEO Adam Morris notes, “Modern B2B sales teams have begun tracking online customer behavior to predict when customers will need to reorder. These teams can use the same tech to order on behalf of customers and even set up automatic subscription reordering.”

These options remove strain from the customer’s decision to buy and encourage repeat purchases. Send a simple reminder to customers recommending they buy again or to buy a related product and watch AOV increase along with order frequency. Imagine what this does for sales commissions.

 

3. New Ways To Interact & Engage

With all these new modes of selling, teams need to broaden their reach to maximize sales opportunities. Tackling this challenge is easy with the right toolset. Chatbots act as an extension of the sales person, becoming the first-line of defense for customer assistance. Through chatbots, sales reps can help users find a product they might’ve missed, share in-depth details to make a sale, and further engage prospects in real time.

Like chatbots, social media is another tool that extends the sales team’s skillset and enhances reach. DemandGen’s 2018 B2B Buyer’s Survey reports that 34% of B2B buyers are spending more time on social media to research vendors. 52% say they use social media to drive purchasing decisions, and 82% of B2B buyers say the winning vendor’s social media content has a significant impact on their decision to buy. Using social media is much friendlier than cold-calling and helps create a community around your products. Sharing is caring!

 

2. The Power of Feedback

Customer reviews drive sales. End of story. In G2 Crowd’s 2018 B2B Sales & Marketing Report, 92.4% of consumers said they were more likely to buy a product or service if they were able to read reviews (5.5% were unsure, and only 2.1% said no). The reason? There’s a ceiling on how much buyers trust brands, which makes them trust customers more than the vendors themselves. According to Mashable, “Millennials, in particular, trust user-generated content 50% more than other media.”

Reviews also help sales teams identify specific product attributes consumers love. These attributes can then be highlighted, promoted, and shared with prospects who may be interested in the same products to facilitate additional orders. Positive reviews typically decrease cart abandonment, increase time spent viewing products, and of course, increase sales by helping buyers get honest, trustworthy feedback.

 

1. Becoming a Customer Experience Expert

A 2017 Walker study concluded that “Customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by the year 2020,” beating out the traditional “4 P’s” of the marketing mix. As a result, it’s now up to sales teams to lock-on to customer preferences to maximize reach and engagement. Personalization platforms like Bronto help sales and marketing teams understand the preferred devices and channels each customer uses. When it’s time for a customized message, you’ll know how to get their attention.

If you ran a shoe store and a customer came to the register, only to cancel or return their order, you would want to learn why. In the digital world, if customers put an item in their cart but later remove it, it only follows that sales teams should investigate. Maybe a confusing or lackluster product description made them hesitate, perhaps it was a question of quality, source, or price. For B2B’s, fitment is a big factor, and finding replacement parts should be easy for customers. This is the time to send targeted messaging to help narrow down customer “unknowns” and increase the likelihood of a sale.

 

Final Thoughts

Using customer, cart, and product data, sales teams can now identify trends faster and easier than ever, pinpoint bottlenecks in the purchasing process, and refine experiences to increase sales and customer satisfaction. For more tips and tricks B2B sales teams can use, find our free Digital Sales Engagement Handbook here, and let us know if you’re interested in enhancing your sales team with Bronto.