The   COVID-19 pandemic situation has led to many consumers coming online and/or increasing their online activities. “U.S. online sales for September increased 43% year over year, reaching $60.4 billion, according to Adobe Analytics. This growth was just above August’s online sales growth, which increased 42% year over year.”   This has been a boon for many companies that have existing e-commerce platforms but this has led to many new e-commerce businesses and traditional companies who do not have e-commerce platforms to jump onboard and expedite their online presence. This is evident by the increase in traffic but drop in conversion rates . What are the innovative ways in which some companies have stood out from the crowd? E-commerce retailers have turned to data analytics to track metrics to see what tactic worked and hasn’t worked in the short run. Some e-commerce busines

Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is defined as the gross sales revenue generated over a period of time by an e-commerce platform before any deduction for fees or commission . It is used to track the growth rate of an e-commerce business since it measures the value of the total merchandise that has been sold through the site for a specific time period, quarterly, bi-annually, or annually. Gross Merchandise Value = Number of Goods sold x Price of goods sold This metric is useful for e-commerce businesses that buy and store the merchandise from suppliers and delivers to customers when purchases are made. However, it cannot be used as a standalone metric for all online retail platforms. For e-commerce sites that operate as a Customer-to-Customer (C2C) business, they do not physically manage the goods. The total commissions generated and accrued expenses, such as delivery fees, advertising, return expenses incurred are more important to track for this business model. This is also known as Gro

Borders are literally non-existent in today’s world where buying and selling between countries has been made so much easy through e-commerce. Technology has transformed and blurred the line that existed earlier in cross border transactions and continuous investment is being made by many e-commerce majors to ensure customer satisfaction and high reach of various products and services. Global e-commerce sales is projected to reach US  $6.5 trillion by 2023 , which will be approximately 22% of total global retail sales. A  study on western Europe , found that cross-border e-commerce accounted for 95 billion of the total e-commerce revenue in 2018 and that cross-border trade made up 22.8% of the total online sales in Europe. More than 2.1 billion shoppers are expected to purchase goods and services online by 2021. E-commerce as a whole has already shifted away from the West and will continue to do so despite the slowdown in the global economy. While most companies who sell online have a

SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) is a code tied to a particular product for internal use. Believe me, correct SKU is the very foundation of your store, you cannot mess with this one. These codes allow us to track our stocks and supplies and it helps a lot for listing in e-commerce marketplaces. So, we must make an SKU that can be easily understood and used for faster listing in many kinds of marketplaces. Don't trouble yourself later because you have underestimated this. To get a correct SKU, you only need to apply these 4 simple rules:   1. Only use dot ' . ' or dash ' - ' symbols This way you won't confuse yourself, the audience, or the spreadsheet. Symbols like ' / ' will sometimes cause format problems in your excel. While special symbols like ' @ ' or ' # ' become irrelevant when you use them in making SKU. And of course, don't use space.   2. Use both letter and number  Combine but don't mix when representing the informati

It was not the typical back-to-school this year for Anna, an 8th grade student at a private school. Topping her list of academic essentials was a laptop. Her school, like most, switched classes to online using Microsoft Teams to deliver content. Her parents had their dedicated work laptops and considering buying one just for Anna so that she could attend her classes. This is a conundrum that is being faced by many families globally during COVID-19 times. Recently, DigiTimes Research reported that global shipments of laptops and tablets would surge in the second quarter after falling in Q1 due to COVID-19. Notebooks are expected to surge by 40% and tablets by 45% due to remote work and student demands. Gartner, a global IT research and consulting company, surveyed 317 CFO's and business finance leaders and results revealed 74% of respondents expect atleast 5% of their workforce who previously worked in company offices will become permanent work-from-home employees after the pan

You have probably heard this, ‘Cold Calling is dead.’ And most likely from a new age salespeople and/or the marketing departments of social professional networking platforms. And when quoted with statistics below, one can even conclude that cold calling is futile. Cold calling results in about a 1-3% success rate for getting an initial appointment and it’s generally abusive to both parties. When that same call is made with a referral, the rate jumps up to 40% and even much higher when that referral comes from within the company. - Mahan Khalsa, co-author of  Let’s Get Real of Let’s Not Play   "Don't SELL on your first warm call" But cold calling has always got a bad rap, since the time of landline telephones supported with the yellow pages. With a huge number of customers in many countries having the option of DNC (Do-Not-Call) registry,it can seem even more for the case of cold calling. But the truth is that this is still an effective way to reach

‘It feels like the end of the world!’ ‘What should we do now?’ No doubt these questions crept into our minds at one point in time since the beginning of this year. The Covid-19 pandemic is unprecedented, and the entire economy is floating (or sinking) into uncharted territories as lock-downs are being extended and social distancing has slowly become the strict rule for safety and rightly so. Daily reports of infected cases and deaths fluctuate and information is inconsistent and irregular but one common thread is that the momentum of rise in the number of infected cases has not slowed. As of 5 th  May, China has recorded the maximum deaths of 4643 , followed closely by India at 1568 , Indonesia, Philippines and Japan among the other APAC countries according to a survey done by  Statista.   And this means that the lock-down could very well continue, affecting people and businesses.  No doubt, businesses have had to rethink how they can continue to engage with their cust