Shopify – Dutch Uncles

Local Grocery Stores Moving Online

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 03:35:03 +0000

Past one year, Google witnessed a 300 percent and 550 percent spike in searches like ‘ration dukaan near me’ and ‘grocery delivery near me’ respectively. From these two searches, it is evident that retail and grocery sale in India has undergone a paradigm shift and with the pandemic, the change has accelerated. With smartphones becoming ubiquitous in every hand, consumers are now a part of the exploration cycle that is greatly defined by the ‘always-on search’ habit aided by an abundance of information. With the rapid spread of infections in covid’s second wave, people are cautious to step out from their homes. In pre-covid times, people generally shopped at their neighbourhood grocery store or vendors, with lockdowns-imposed people’s dependence on online shopping has increased manifold. According to a report by JM Financial the online grocery delivery market witnessed a 30 percent month-on-month growth in monthly traffic in March 2021. E-grocery majors like Big Basket are seeing a twofold increase in daily orders currently as compared to pre-Covid times. In the future online retailing is set to pick up pace in India as social distancing becomes the new normal, which is where traditional retail and grocery stores are losing ground to e-grocery aggregators, further fuelling the battle of online vs offline retail. A crisis for the local grocery stores lurks in the corner since according to a joint study by Accenture and TRRAIN, at least 90,000 small provisions are likely to close by 2022 and 600 new modern stores will open. There will be 60000 new jobs created but nearly 3,00,00 jobs will be whitewashed. Grocery in India accounts for 66% of the total retail spend in India. Sensing the grocery sector to be an opportunity for food delivery apps Zomato and Swiggy partnered with local Kirana stores or neighbourhood stores and supermarkets to offer hyperlocal delivery of groceries, and essentials where they were already staring at the losses due to closed restaurants and hotels. Social e-commerce start-up Meesho, Paytm Mall, Snapdeal, Shopclues, and Bengaluru-based real estate operator No Broker too plunged into the online grocery space to sustain themselves. Jio Mart, Flipkart and Amazon are elbowing to occupy a larger section in retail’s profit pie by digitising India’s local retailers. Although the local retailers are digitising themselves through these platforms it has its shortcomings. With more players in the online grocery market, the players are offering deep discounts as a point of differentiation to attract more users but in the process, the local Kirana stores end up paying huge price commission, which is not profitable. In this highly digitally connected world, local retail stores now should ramp up their businesses online to become discoverable in Google searches.

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Google witnessed a 300 percent and 550 percent spike in searches like ‘ration dukaan near me’ and ‘grocery delivery near me’ respectively.

Trends to emerge in the online local retailers’ space

Going vocal for local

The government’s support schemes for the local shopkeepers and locally produced brands and products have made ‘vocal for local’ gain steam that is encouraging consumers to purchase from them. Besides these, procuring the local produce is emphasised since the lockdown-led restrictions have disrupted the supply chains causing a shortage of essentials from consumer brands.

A Phy-gital Kirana Store

Heightened concerns of contracting the virus are forcing shop owners to create touchless shopping experiences. Websites, WhatsApp groups, and digital payments are being adopted at a rapid pace by retail business owners. Increased usage of UPI and digital wallets has contributed to quicker digital adoption.

Buy Online Pickup in Store or Curbside Pickup

Buying things online and collecting the ready cart from the store is a trend that is expected to grow as people would like to avoid standing in long queues. A local retail store in digital avatar will have an easy way to catalogue products, conveniently order via WhatsApp, pay quickly digitally, and a digital discovery on Google. People will shift their grocery purchases from large e-commerce companies to hyperlocal stores if they succeed in giving convenience while shopping and will put up a tough fight against the e-commerce majors, who struggle with a large inventory, warehousing, logistics, marketing overheads, cold chain, and customer loyalty.

Personalised Grocery Shopping

Offering personalised grocery shopping means creating customised baskets so that the shopper does not need to go back and forth between different categories to add one product to their cart. These pre-loaded baskets make the product selections more efficient and ensure customers do not forget any essentials they need. With a ready basket, a customer only needs to add any additional products from a set of personalized recommendations or category pages and remove products they do not need at the moment.

How Shopify Can Help Build your Online Retail Store

The first step to create your online store with Shopify is to login with your email id to Shopify’s homepage and begin with the 90-day free trial. The store name will become the URL that will be used by the customers when they want to order from the store.

Before we begin selling online few things retail store owners should keep ready:

Product names, available inventory quantity, and price
Credit/Debit card to link with the store
Payment gateway account to accept online payments. Shopify has tied up with Paytm and registering with it will get your account activated in no time.

Setting up the online store

We can design our online retail store using themes from Shopify. The themes from Shopify can be further customised by adding an announcement bar, banners, and category tiles images on the home page. For enabling customers to start shopping immediately, include a button with a call to action. For that click on the ‘All Products’ as the button link.

Setting up the menu navigation

While we are setting up the online store, we should think about how we navigate our customers to find their products and information about the business. To make the online store look systematic and less confusing, similarly to an offline store with well-stacked goods, we need the product categories and sub-categories in the menu bar so that customers can find products with ease and navigate the website.

Adding the products in the online store

Products can be added to the online store either manually or by directly uploading products from an excel sheet. We need to head on to ‘Product’ and click ‘All Products’. After clicking we add the product title, description, and photo. If your products have more than one option in terms of different sizes and colours then make sure to edit variants. For shops offering pick-up at the store, they should not select the shipping option and not forget to select the ‘Track Inventory’. The online store should be kept simple by adding those products or essentials that are high in demand.

Creating the product categories

The products uploaded can be grouped into collections to make it easier to find them by category. Here are few examples of collections that we can create:

Citrus Fruits
Organic Vegetables
Dairy Food products
Meat and Poultry products

After we create a collection, it will be shown on the online store as a webpage with a gallery of the products. The customers can then click a product image on the collection page to visit a specific product page. In this way, we can navigate the customer to find and view products through proper sorting. We can also organise the products on the website by using the ‘Smart Collections’ feature which groups products basis the conditions that we provide for example: to create a smart collection of mangoes which are Rs 120 per kg and above it will automatically gather all the mangoes belonging to this price range to create the ‘Summer Mango Mania’ collection.

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Grocery in India accounts for 66% of the total retail spend in India.

Setting up the local delivery for online orders

We can set up the option for local customers to have their orders delivered. For local deliveries, we can enable the local delivery option for each location that retailers will offer delivery from. If a customer’s address is within the delivery area, then the customer will get to click local delivery as an option at checkout. To choose a delivery radius, we can include several local regions by enabling neighbouring regions.

Fulfilling the local delivery orders

Local delivery orders of online retail businesses can be managed by Shopify tools:

Shopify Admin and Shopify for Mobile: From Shopify, we get the information of the local delivery workflows and processes of unfulfilled to delivered orders, filter and print orders, check delivery instructions and locations, and update order statuses.
Shopify POS: From Shopify POS, retail owners can view and filter local delivery orders, print delivery slips, and update order statuses.

Shopify Local Delivery App: Shopify’s local delivery app helps to create delivery order lists, map delivery locations, and optimise delivery routes. Once an order is delivered, through the app the order status can be updated.

What Is in it for the local retailers?

The retail vertical is undergoing a digital evolution. Hyperlocal retail shops having an online presence will help customers discover the closest retail shops to their homes and enable convenient ordering. Digitisation in small-medium-sized retail businesses will empower them to survive the lockdown menace and serve the customers well. Even though conglomerates and several e-commerce majors are acting as a mediator to onboard local retailers to their platforms, a significant chunk of commission is paid to them leaving them with less revenue, therefore it is advisable to own your website with Shopify for hyperlocal deliveries and build better loyalty with customers.

The post Local Grocery Stores Moving Online appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How Moving Online can revive Fashion and Apparel Business

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 06:05:04 +0000

The fashion and apparel business is no stranger to the ravages caused by the pandemic. In addition to the losses due to low footfalls in limited shop timings, the store expansion plans have taken a backseat with the second covid wave.

ICRA (Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency) estimates that the complete revival of the Indian fashion and apparel business is now delayed to 2022-2023 due to the unprecedented rise in infections since March 2021. Albeit to start from a lower base, it is expected that in 2022 the fashion and apparel businesses might be on double-digit growth, achieving 85-95 percent of the pre-COVID turnover levels. This growth can be attributed to vaccination rollout, eventually increasing the out-of -home consumption. Since the vaccination activities in India are happening at a turtle’s pace, the full-fledged opening of malls and stores might be subjected to prolonged delays.

The industry is also facing headwinds due to mounting rental costs and enormous inventory pile-up of Spring-summer collection resulting in being spread out for a longer period and therefore, pausing the production of the autumn-winter collection.

Fashion and apparel owners by now must digest the fact that in the new normal, trends like online shopping, a virtual workforce, small gatherings in weddings and festivals, and small home parties are here to stay. The preventive measures to contain the virus have brought a host of new changes in consumer lifestyle and shopping behaviour that brands need to unlock and align accordingly.

This leaves the fashion and apparel industry to seek refuge in online channels to insulate itself from losses and inch closer to consumers. Pivoting to online channels will also aid the fashion and the apparel industry to discern new target groups from rural India as internet users are ballooning more than two times that of urban dwellers on a year-on-year basis as per the IAMAI-Kantar Cube report. The growth of mobile internet led by rural India will give impetus to online shopping.

High Street Fashion and Apparel Brands Hopping on to ‘Online’ Bandwagon

The pandemic has not spared the international and national high street fashion brands. They are introducing a clutch of initiatives to enable customers to purchase apparel within the comfort of a click. Shoppers Stop has recently launched more than 100 exclusive brands on its online channel, the range introduced there will not be available with fashion aggregator apps or offline stores. Forever New has introduced its range of relaxed and casual outfits for consumers working from home and has kept steep discounts and slab-based offers on its online stores to entice consumers to shop more. It has witnessed a spike of 15-20 percent sales since its pre-pandemic levels. Similarly, United Colors of Benetton plans to launch its online storefront by July-August 2021.

The pandemic created a lesser headroom of demand in the wedding wear and formal wear category, which became a matter of concern for Raymond. Raymond quickly sensed the urgency of online presence for revival and launched its digital shop myraymond.com. It is also planning to bring onboard many brick and mortar fashion stores and bolster its digital store.

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ICRA estimates that the complete revival of the Indian fashion and apparel business is now delayed to 2022-2023.

Why Should Fashion and Apparel Move Online?

The fashion and apparel business predominantly thrived on a ‘touch and feel’ experience but now to swim against the tide it needs to rethink its functioning from its conventional channel. For fashion and apparel businesses there are two methods by which one can grow their online business – through fashion aggregators such as Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, or owning an independent website or app. Owing to its extensive reach, the former one dominates the online sales but a significant revenue is sacrificed to commission resulting in low margins. Besides low margins the apparel sellers are left with no autonomy in pricing as they force brands to display slashed prices and take up accountability for returns. Fashion and apparel businesses foraying into launching independent e-commerce sites will increase profitability, gain consumer insights from data accession, aid in targeted marketing and act as an efficient marketing tool.

Journey of an online shopper buying fashion and apparel

This is how a typical online shopper’s journey would look in the digital era for purchasing fashion and apparels:

Customers will identify and find the apparels they want to purchase and pay online.
To maintain minimal contact, the customer prefers the no-touch delivery option or store pick-up.
Once the owners receive the order, they begin with the process of dispatching.
If the customer chooses store pick-up after placing an order on your fashion and apparel online store, they will arrive at the store and pick up the order at the date mentioned.
If the customer selects no-touch doorstep delivery, the delivery partner will pick up the order from the store and make the delivery.

Starting an Online fashion and apparel store with Shopify

Signing up with Shopify

Business owners should sign up on Shopify with an email address that will be used for the overall management of admin tasks related to the store. Pick a domain name for your online store which is of the same name as the offline store. For example – if the name of the offline store is ‘ ABC’ the online store name will follow as: www. ABC. myshopify.com. The domain can be personalised further.

Designing the store

Choose a theme or design template for the online store that is suitable with the apparel type we are selling and should be reflecting the brand. For selecting themes, go to the Shopify dashboard to click on ‘ online store’ to explore all the themes free and paid. For an online fashion and apparel store themes names like – Minimal, Brooklyn and Modular are most apt.

Navigation for the website

The store website needs to have navigations as it ensures that the website is accessible and user-friendly. Organised and transparent navigation enables a customer to explore products on the website with ease and gives them complete information about the store and what products they can receive.

To customise navigation, users can go to the Shopify dashboard to click on ‘Online store’ to select ‘navigation’ from the dropdown. By clicking on the ‘main menu’ we can customise the top menu bar by adding pages -about us, products, accessories, etc. by clicking on ‘add menu item’. Add a short name for the menu item and paste the relevant link. Once all the relevant links have been added to the menu navigation, click on ‘Save Menu’.

Adding Website pages

Online businesses of any vertical must establish transparency in communication with their visitors and instill belief in the brand. It is a must for an online store website to have pages like – About Us, Contact page, Shipping and returns policy, and hygiene standards maintained. To add pages in your Shopify store, one needs to click on ‘Pages’ under ‘Online Store’ to click on Add Page. After adding the page, we can name it as per what we want to show and edit the searching engine preview including the page URL. After the editing, click on ‘Save’ to create the page.

Adding the images of Apparel

In Shopify, images of apparel can be uploaded manually as well as using a product spreadsheet. For manual addition, go to the store admin and click on ‘Products’ from the left-hand side menu bar and click on the ‘add products’ button present at the top right of the dashboard to begin uploading images by including the product description. category/collection, pricing, inventory, etc. In the case of large inventory, we can add products from the spreadsheet by clicking ‘import’ on the product page and then click on ‘ Add file’ to upload the spreadsheet. Lastly, one should revisit all the images to ensure that the product page URLs are SEO optimised, short and crisp that have no spelling errors.

Creating the ‘Phygital Experience’

The confusion that we fall into by staring at the screen to find out the appropriate apparel size fits is one of the main reasons for cart abandonment. To deliver a unique and seamless shopping experience resembling an offline store, we need to offer assistance to online shoppers. The online apparel store must have a measurement chart, live chat customer grievances, product videos, virtual try-on, Text on product videos, video calls, etc. Using apps such as Tidio for live chat, Typito for text on product videos, and Virtuooal for virtual try-on from Shopify’s apps store will help owners implement these assistance tools on the store’s website with ease. For videos, Shopify has a default feature to add product videos to the pages.

Customising the cart

Business owners should know this, the checkout page of an e-commerce website must be devoid of distractions and should contain a clear call to action – Pay Now. The cart page should list down the products and the pricing the customer has selected. To choose cart type owners can select either drawer or page by clicking on ‘Cart’ from theme settings. We can also add order notes to allow shoppers to add special instructions such as -gift wrapping needed or greeting card to be added, etc.

Adding Payment Methods

Contactless payments are becoming ubiquitous. In Shopify, we can set up multiple payment options to allow shoppers to select the payment type of convenience. This makes it easier for them to complete the purchases online. For adding payment methods to the online store, click on ‘Settings’ and select ‘Payment Providers’.

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Owning independent websites helps business gain autonomy over margins and increase savings.

What is in it for the offline fashion and apparel business?

Fashion sales through online shopping are promising in India since we have a young, tech-savvy population, believers of convenience, and aspire to own the latest fashion styles. The increasing number of internet users from smaller cities and towns and the recent pandemic will catalyse more online fashion shopping. Therefore, it is imperative for fashion and apparel brands that primarily began offline, to create a phygital experience where the lines of offline and online buying are blurred and offer myriad fashion options to a consumer to purchase conveniently.

So, without much ado, lets open up the online store with Shopify.

The post How Moving Online can revive Fashion and Apparel Business appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Why and How Restaurants and Food Business should Move Online

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 06:05:04 +0000

It was after the infection rate began plateauing in the first covid wave, the restaurants and hotels reopened their doors only to be attacked by the second wave of covid that became a double whammy to the just recovery of losses. The lockdown and curfews have forced the restaurants and food businesses to wear a deserted look again, which is a big dent on India’s service sector, as the restaurant and food industry contributes approximately 3 percent to India’s GDP and is a direct employer to 7.3 million people as per NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India). The restaurant and food business in India is currently grappling with mounting rental costs, limited operating hours, reduced manpower, irregularities in food supplies, and growing apprehensions amongst people regarding the hygiene factor in ordered food and low sales. CRISIL Research has found that the restaurant footfall has plummeted to 90 percent and the recovery of the sector worth 1.5 trillion is estimated to take a year after restrictions are lifted.

The helplessness of the restaurant and food business has been exacerbated due to little or no help from the central government for emergency funds, also worse the insurance companies could not be of any help as it does not cover lockdowns.

To survive amidst adversities and varying consumer behaviour, the delivery model seems to be a viable option for the restaurant and food businesses.

Are Food Aggregators – Swiggy, Zomato – helping the business?

NRAI in its virtual meeting with restaurant owners has urged them to bolster their self-reliance on digital channels to sell more, sell directly, and minimise dependence on tech aggregators. Several restaurants are therefore pivoting to tech support for building their ordering links and enabling discovery on Google and various social media platforms. There is no denial of the fact that food aggregator platforms have a deeper reach but the ROI is not adequate to cover the costs. Having independent ordering platforms will save the commission charges paid to the aggregators that sometimes go upto 30 percent of the order value. Besides the commission, the delivery executives of food aggregators will do deliveries spanning a certain distance of 7-10 km.

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The restaurant and food industry contributes approximately 3 percent to India's GDP and is a direct employer to 7.3 million people as per NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India)

The emergence of Cloud Kitchens and Independent Food Delivery Apps

Eating in is now the new dine-out. With dining out taking the backseat for a while, several cloud kitchens are expected to mushroom and several restaurants which were primarily physical will pivot to the cloud kitchen model. According to RedSeer Management Consulting, cloud kitchens are estimated to become a $2 billion industry in India by 2024 from $400 million in 2019. Trends such as DIY food kits, customised diets and shorter menus will gradually be adopted by restaurants and food businesses for a stronger hold.

Cloud kitchens will help the restaurants and food business to survive the crisis with minimised operating costs, work with fewer employees, lower rental costs, accept online orders from social media or calls while focussing on designing better meal plans and food dishes. Another advantage of cloud kitchens is that the owner can run multiple food brands from the same kitchen serving various target groups at the same time. Cloud kitchens will operate their independent digital restaurants to collect orders which will help them save a significant amount of revenue than listing on aggregators.

Five-Star Hotels Going the ‘online’ way

The pandemic heat is not only faced by small- medium-sized restaurants and food businesses. The renowned five-star hotel chains whose operating costs are higher are plagued by lower footfalls of tourists, are shifting to online food delivery of its gourmet dishes through its app. For instance, Taj Hotels will launch its online gourmet food delivery platform called Qmin. Through it, consumers can order food from the brand’s five-star restaurants, including Golden Dragon and Souk from Taj Mahal Palace, Thai Pavilion and Trattoria from President, and Ming Yang from Taj Lands End, among others. Similarly, Oberoi Hotels across India has established a home delivery system in place. The food can be ordered online or on-call by a customer and is delivered at their doorstep by the hotel’s service professionals.

Why Should I have my app or website for my online restaurant?

Save more

Listing on aggregator food delivery apps results in small net profit. When customers order through a restaurant’s app or website the business owner has to pay a meagre transactional fee.

Understand customers better

While selling from an aggregator platform, restaurants and food businesses are unable to receive direct feedback from customers. Whereas through an app or website, when backed by AI, can quickly identify the customer purchasing pattern, preferred payment method, food dishes one chooses and offer an optimised buying experience.

Increase loyalty

It will be convenient for customers to place orders, customise them and opt for contactless delivery. The more we offer multiple options of payment and convenience at the fingertips they will engage more with the business food app. The restaurants can also reward the customers with points or coupons.

An efficient marketing tool

The online presence will give customers a unique experience of ordering food. For instance, we can always provide food information to the customer which they want to order for example- food content about any gluten presence, vegan, spicy, calorie count, fat content, etc.

It gives more autonomy over messaging. Any new dish the business wants to launch or offer discounts, offers, promotional campaigns and rewards they can convey through the app thus, making the app an efficient marketing tool.

Restaurants and Food Business – From Offline to Online. How Shopify Helps?

For any online eatery outlet or cloud kitchen, the online presence is the new physical presence.

Hence, to all the restaurateurs, are you perplexed with the idea of online restaurants? Don’t be. Creating an online restaurant for your food business is easy with Shopify. Here are how restaurateurs can set their business online on Shopify :

Creating the account

Within a few clicks, restaurant owners can create an account on Shopify by entering email, password, and business name that is also the store’s default URL. After enrolling, Shopify offers a 14-day free trial, after the trial they can purchase or connect an existing URL for your default URL.

Selection of Theme

The ambiance and look of a restaurant or hotel play a major role in attracting customers. The website themes add a personality to the online restaurant businesses and are similar to creating ambience. Shopify Theme Store has an array of themes to select from but for food businesses themes like Express, Avenue and Vantage are more apt. The themes are easily customisable that can be modified as per needs.

Adding images of dishes

The images of delectable food dishes with complete information entice the customer to click on the ‘ Order Now’ button. Ensure that images of food dishes are of high quality and well plated. The photos of the image can be styled differently and showcase it as a full meal such as next to pancakes we can put milkshake or a waffle. Customers, albeit buying pancakes might order waffles looking at the image, therefore increasing sales. Apart from a well-shot image, we can include nutritional facts, ingredients, allergen information, and even reviews from other customers.

Adding videos of dishes

People would love to see how their favourite dishes are made, this entrusts belief among customers that the food is prepared with hygiene concerns in mind. Adding a video to the landing page boosts the conversion rate. Shopify’s app store has video maker apps that can integrate the product footage with text, background music, and effects. Such apps simplify video creation and in no time videos can be published on the restaurant’s website.

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Independent ordering platforms will save the commission charges paid to the aggregators that sometimes go upto 30 percent of the order value.

Adding gluten and vegan labels

Customers while browsing through your app or website will not know if the food has any allergen, gluten, or vegan content. Therefore, putting labels on the dishes such as ‘ Gluten’, ‘Contains Peanuts’, ‘Artificial Sweeteners or Vegan’ helps to establish transparency in information to the customers. The Shopify app store has apps such as ModeMagic that allow you to add product labels for specific food items in the menu without requiring customising the food images. Adding food labels also boots conversion.

Build your app from Shopify

With smartphones found in every pocket, most customers will pick out their mobile to find or read about something. Restaurateurs can transform their website into an app that works on Apple and Android Play Stores. With an app, we can boost customer loyalty, enhance brand awareness and bring repeat business. Shopify app store has apps that transform the website into a native app. We have the liberty to customise the look, feel of the business app and set up personalised experiences like loyalty programmes and food coupons.

Creating the online menu

To build your restaurant’s menu online, one needs to add product images and prices to the online store. The menu items require descriptive titles and accurate descriptions. After the images are added it needs to be structured under certain labels enabling easy navigation for customers. Here we are trying to replicate the dine-in experience of asking for a menu card online, doing this will bring consistency in offline and online dine-in. Therefore, the food images can be clubbed into collections like – Non-veg, Desserts, Thai dishes or can be classified based on discount codes. The ‘Collection’ feature in Shopify helps to highlight certain products on different pages of your website, apply discount codes to specific groups of products or showcase the bestselling dishes on your webpage.

Information about your restaurant

An online presence is incomplete without the information of your business regarding who you are, what do you sell, and how you function. Restaurateurs must not forget to include these four crucial pages – company’s story, Hygiene standards followed, charity or cause that the business supports, refund policy, and contact page. Including such pages ensures customers have all the details they require about your food business before ordering.

Tipping and Pop-up feature

We can include the tipping feature into the website by going to checkout customization from the Settings page on your Shopify dashboard and adding tipping options. When customers abandon the site without ordering we can add a pop-up feature to let customers know what they might miss, this at times pulls customers to place orders. Shopify has apps like Privy that add the pop-up feature to your site.

Live Chat Support

To address customer grievances or FAQs, integrating a live chat app from the Shopify app store with the online website or app helps. Live chat helps Customers with responses to queries regarding delivery time, how much it will serve, gluten and allergen information, etc. The live chat feature improves customer service and increases retention.

Shopify POS

Shopify POS enables visibility to the restaurateur by providing a consolidated platform displaying all orders, monitoring analytics, revenue generation, order management and managing loyalty.

App for Store Pick-up or delivery

Shopify app store has apps for store pick-up or delivery. The integration of such apps with the online store will add options to the site or app and will aid customers to choose an order method whether a store pick-up or home delivery.

Customise meals

Apps like Bold Product Options found in Shopify apps will allow customers to customise their food orders by selecting desserts, sauce, dips, toppings, and combo meals. Apps that help in customising meals to smoothen the ordering process for the customer.

What is in it for the restaurants and food business?

The phenomenon of eating inside began in India with the emergence of food aggregator apps Swiggy and Zomato, much before the industry was covid struck. In those times, owning an independent app or website for food ordering felt unimportant since a significant chunk of its revenues came from customer walk-ins. However, in the face of adversity, and changing customer behaviour, it is imperative for restaurant and food businesses to align themselves with the change and strengthen their online presence.

Therefore, without much ado, set up your restaurant on Shopify and start taking orders.

The post Why and How Restaurants and Food Business should Move Online appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Overcoming the Challenges in Selling Health and Beauty Products Online

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 01:35:04 +0000

With a high penetration in affordable smartphones, cheaper data plans, rise in disposable incomes and the emergence of make-up influencers it is no surprise that online health and beauty stores are enjoying rapid growth. Health and beauty sector that was walled by behemoths such as Lakme, Loreal, VLCC, etc. is witnessing an influx of new vegan and ayurvedic health and beauty brands. Another reason for the rise in online purchase of health and beauty products is Gen Z entering the workforce who are tech-savvy, heavy users of social media and short-form video apps and believe that using make-up products boosts their confidence and self-esteem. As per a joint report by Assocham and MRSS (Majestic Research Services and Solutions Ltd) India, the Indian cosmetics and grooming industry market size is expected to expand up to $35 Billion by 2035.

In the health and beauty industry sales are primarily dependent on touch and feel throws challenges while purchasing the same online. Before, entrepreneurs set their foot to begin selling health and beauty products online, below are some challenges they are likely to face:

Building loyalty

Since, health and beauty products are not bought on a monthly or weekly basis, the online brands are on their toes to attract conversions and give customers a reason to remain loyal to the brand considering the fierce competition from offline and online health and beauty brands.

How to buy without testing

Replicating the offline experience of having testers, and sample kits might seem difficult online. Sales happen based on the product’s suitability on customers skin or hair tone. The presence of assistants in the stores helps customers help give makeovers and product demonstrations, which further strengthens the purchasing decision of customers.

Product ingredients

‘I do not know if I am allergic to hyaluronic acid or glycerine in creams.’

Respecting the fact that every individual’s skin type is different, the product ingredient might or might not be suitable for a particular skin type. Offline, it is possible to try the product and confirm if it can cause side effects.

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As per a joint report by Assocham and MRSS (Majestic Research Services and Solutions Ltd) India, the Indian cosmetics and grooming industry market size is expected to expand up to $35 Billion by 2035.

How technology is solving this for health and beauty online stores

Implementation of technology by the health and beauty segment is gradually being adopted by D2C brands in India, here are some companies who are successfully leveraging it:

Offering customized products through AI

Generic product solutions focused on the mass market might be ineffective in or using it further could worsen the existing problems. Vedix is India’s first customized Ayurvedic hair care solution that uses artificial intelligence to offer personalized haircare solutions to its customers. Once the customer visits the website, they introduce them with a questionnaire where they are required to fill in with details about any major illness, allergies, past treatment, current medications, climatic conditions, etc. AI takes all these responses into account and analyses user’s Doshas based on their answers in the questionnaire and suggests shampoo and hair oil whose ingredients are balanced accordingly. According to Ayurveda, balancing Doshas helps improve the quality of health which in turn improves hair health.

Virtual Make-up

The challenge of not being able to try the makeup or get an in-store makeover can be overcome by the use of AR. Entrepreneurs can stimulate the demand of purchasing online health and beauty products. It works based on facial recognition technology where it measures the location of lips and eyes in real-time and tracks those facial feature points to understand where to put the cosmetics. With virtual makeovers, the customers can select any product from the catalogue at the comfort of a click and instantly find how they look. Right from trying different make-up looks, hairstyles, and accessories, it removes the time-consuming task of removing and applying different make-up products. The app can help you in giving a virtual makeover which is nothing less than an offline experience. The Virtual makeup software can be of two types:

1.AR beauty camera: The people can click their selfies and try different makeovers with various face modification features, photo, and video editing features.

2. Virtual Make-Up Tryons: The virtual makeup system acts like a mirror, where the products as AR filters are applied to find their suitability to the face or look.

Smart Skincare Tools

The smart skincare tools offer personalised tips and product recommendations based on a skin score that scans the pores, wrinkles, acne, pimples, fine lines, etc. Olay through its app ‘Future You Simulation’ enables users to visualize skin quality and anticipate skin health in the future using AR, by giving a score.

Ingredient information

The knowledge about the chemical composition or formulations in the cosmetic products is of paramount concern to the customers. Consumers like to purchase from brands that show transparency in showing what an ingredient does. The information provided by the brands helps customers to make more informed decisions based on health, lifestyle, or ethical concerns. To decode the terminology used by the brands and help customers understand its toxicity many brands are enabling a system where customers can scan the product barcode and receive information on the product and its ingredients.

What Shopify has to give?

Virtual Make-up Apps from Shopify

Shopify Apps have a plethora of Virtual Make-up Apps to select for your store. The most commonly used beauty app from Shopify is YouCam Makeup. This app allows people to virtually try on makeup using a live camera or an image of a model who resembles them or uploading photos of themselves. It can support various types of products such as eyeliner, eye shadow, blush, and lipstick, etc. YouCam Makeup is easily installable and is compatible with mobile devices. It ‘before and after’ comparison feature helps customers to anticipate the effects of using the makeup product.

Creating subscription

Since health and beauty products are not bought weekly or fortnightly, entrepreneurs should consider a beauty subscription box. Shopify App Store has many tools which can help entrepreneurs to create a beauty subscription box. Bold Subscriptions on the Shopify app store is a convenient tool for creating recurring orders and consistent payments. With this app, we can seamlessly integrate recurring payments with the products, store, cart, accounts, and checkout. Bold Subscription also has a feature that lets customers decide what to add in subscription, pause or manage orders. The subscription model in the health and beauty sector increases sales.

Indicate allergens in the products

To educate or increase transparency about the ingredients in beauty products Shopify has plugins to add icons to the product pages to indicate paraben-free, cruelty-free, vegan, or organic products.

Adding colour variant

The Swatches App found in the Shopify App store allows entrepreneurs to display products in various colours. Instead of displaying a regular drop-down menu of colour variants, it showcases the colours into elegant swatches. The app installs instantly and does not require any coding or programming language. It works seamlessly with all website themes.

The above apps and plugins provided by Shopify for selling health and beauty products online can overcome the challenges earlier faced, ultimately improving customers’ buying decisions. With this, let us get started selling health and beauty products online.

The post Overcoming the Challenges in Selling Health and Beauty Products Online appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Tech Trends for Fashion Ecommerce to Rule in 2021

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 01:30:08 +0000

‘It is difficult to determine size while shopping clothes online.’

-The plight of an online shopper

An online shopper in India goes through ambiguity while selecting the right size of apparel. The fashion and apparel category though being one of the most revenue-generating category is recognized to have the highest return rate, with colour, size, and textile being the major reasons. Findings of a RedSeer report of 2019 say that about 20-30 percent of the products bought from fashion e-commerce stores are returned that accounts for about $6 billion of the total $32 billion gross merchandise value of online retail in India. Sometimes, when a customer returns a product, he has to incur the charges for reverse shipping. Reverse shipping becomes expensive for the company since the logistics firm has to go to that location to pick up that one parcel. Also, since the ordered apparel is worn and tried by multiple people, the same is repacked and sold to the next customer, by which the apparel neither gets washed nor ironed. To resolve this problem of high returns, the fashion e-commerce sector needs to implement technology solutions such as AR, VR and virtual assistants, etc. by which the customer can purchase the right apparel.

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About 20-30 percent of all fashion products bought online are returned that accounts for about $6 billion of the total $32 billion gross merchandise value of online retail in India.

- RedSeer Report, 2019

Phygital = Physical + Digital

The pandemic has restricted movement and people are comfortable buying online. With an increase in online shopping, its good times for offline stores. Shops that initially began as an offline store can transit into an online one offering a phygital experience. A phygital experience shopping experience is an amalgamation of technology such as Blockchain, virtual reality and augmented reality infused with the experience of physical shopping. Implementation of such technologies can be used for geo-targeting consumers and help fashion retail companies create specific offers and rewards. It will also aid the fashion e-commerce companies to gather insights on consumer shopping habits and patterns, footfall, efficiency, etc. It also helps to improve brand positioning, promotion, product, pricing and shopping experience.

New Tech trends that will enhance the fashion e-commerce shopping

The virtual shopping assistants

Consumer preferences and trends especially in the fashion industry are highly volatile, making it imperative for fashion e-commerce companies to go for a personalized shopping approach and customer-centric merchandising. Mimicking the sales assistants in a physical store, the fashion e-commerce companies can implement AI-based chatbots as the new virtual sales representatives. These AI chatbots or virtual representatives are computer programs that simulate a human conversation through chatting and messaging. When a customer arrives at the website, the AI chatbots engage with the site visitor in a conversation, first introducing themselves as a chatbot and shooting an array of questions that determines what the customer is searching for. After, knowing the preferences, the AI chatbots can directly take the customer to browse collections in the catalogue. The virtual assistants can provide suggestions of styling, selection of outfits, customer service, and product discovery. The conversational tone of finding products on the website makes the filter feature an obsolete one.

Virtual Trial Rooms

The fashion e-commerce industry is plagued by high returns that can be blamed on the inability to detect the right size of apparel bought. The long queue before trial room can be tackled by leveraging AR (augmented reality) technology that enables a virtual fitting room. In a virtual fitting room, the shoppers can click a picture of themselves and drag the chosen outfits that are AR filters, and create a unique style. Multiple collages of every outfit, style and fitting can be created for comparison and understand what works best.

An alternate virtual fitting room can also be created by including 3D models. Virtually a 3D model can be created by mimicking a shopper’s exact body measurements. Once the 3D model is made, it is a replica of the shopper itself, from where we can drag various outfits to the 3D model created.

A virtual fitting room allows shoppers to experiment with various looks and apparel combinations, which in offline trial room is limited to a few apparels.

Self-Checkout Kiosks

Online businesses are adopting omnichannel strategies to fully leverage the supply chain and better utilization of inventory. Unlike online shopping, billing of items in an offline store consumed a significant amount of time, leaving the shoppers annoyed. In times when customers are seeking instant gratification, the time taken for billing can be reduced by keeping self-checkout kiosks. Self-checkout kiosks enable quicker checkout by allowing the customer to complete billing in simpler steps and without any intervention of humans.

Blockchain Technology

Besides finance and digital currencies, blockchain technology is gaining ground in the fashion ecommerce industry as well. Customers often vent their resentment on social media of not receiving genuine products that eventually erodes the brand image. To counter fake products or products of substandard quality, blockchain technology in combination with physical RFID chips or QR codes, companies can track the multiple stages involved in sourcing the raw materials to distribution of finished products to the end consumer. It ensures that the entire process right from manufacturing to a finished product is performed in an ethical and secured manner by monitoring in between processes. It induces transparency since blockchain’s characteristic of distributed ledger can be accessed by manufacturers, suppliers, and vendors. The ledger contains a detailed history of the product’s origin to where it is presently.

How Shopify Helps Fashion E-commerce

Shopify AR

Fashion online stores website is the showroom, and the better the display of vibrant colours and detailing of a fabric or apparel, the more it entices the customer. Shopify AR is a web-powered augmented reality service that gives an immersive shopping experience to the customers driving more sales. It brings the product alive and allows shoppers to have a realistic idea of the size, scale, and detail of the products. Just like images, we can add 3D models to product pages. As per Shopify’s study, the conversion rate of products increases by 94 percent if it has AR content. It has an accessible toolkit to create a 3D model of the product that can be stored in the 3D Warehouse App that is integrated with Shopify AR, making it easy to add any models to the product pages. Shopify has an AR-powered-product customizer that can determine how potential buyers, window, shoppers, and loyal customers and explore products online. Its ‘size-up feature’ and 360-degree viewer allows customer to get an enlarged view of the product. The file size of the 3D-model should be of a minimum of 6MB and a maximum of 15 MB and file type to be in GLB. GLB is the binary version of the gITF (Graphics Language Transmission Format) 3D file format.

AI Chatbots

Artificial intelligence is shaping the online customer experiences by addressing their queries, grievances, providing suggestions, thus reducing the barrier of interaction between a brand and customer, personalizes the experience. The Shopify app store has a plethora of AI Chatbots apps to install for your fashion e-commerce site. The AI chatbots also connect with social media platforms. In case we want an in-built chatbot for the store, we can have some customized chatbot designs for an A/B test. The top five AI chatbots for Shopify are Tidio, Gobot, Tobi, Kit, and Intelliticks.

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As per Shopify's study, the conversion rate of products increases by 94 percent if it has AR content.

A blockchain plugin

The counterfeit products put business owners’ years of hard work in vain. The influx of counterfeit products in fashion e-commerce can be blamed on the lack of monitoring and control on the journey of raw materials to a finished product. However, Shopify is tackling this menace by blockchain integrated plugins, to ensure that the items sold on the site are authentic. The plugin is a combination of blockchain technology and a cloud-based application ‘TAM’ that allows companies to create non-fungible tokens (NFT) with which the physical assets can be secured. NFTs are cryptographic tokens that are unique and cannot be mutually interchanged. Products consisting of an NFT can be scanned by the customer to check if it is genuine.

The minimum contact to pay

To revolutionize the in-store retail experience for brands with an omnichannel presence, Shopify has launched a point-of-sale (POS) hardware Shopify Tap & Chip Reader. Shopify’s Tap and Chip reader allows customers to complete transactions by scanning the contactless mobile payment apps or by inserting credit/debit cards. The reader also connects with Shopify POS that provides a host of facilities like inventory management, secured payments, and a consolidated backend that links directly to the merchant’s online store.

With the above-mentioned technology advantages that Shopify offers, it is time for the fashion business owners to kickstart their own private fashion label.

The post Tech Trends for Fashion Ecommerce to Rule in 2021 appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Inventory Management for Your Online Store

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 01:35:04 +0000

Rita does an online business of quirky t-shirts for the college-goers is facing certain hurdles in managing her inventory and cashflows. Rita’s t-shirt prints are based on the popular memes that float on social media, DC and Marvel superheroes, and college lingos. The t-shirts get sold as long as the fashion is not obsolete. Recently, the Bernie Sanders meme did multiple rounds on social media, eventually driving more demand from college-goers for t-shirts bearing the same meme print. But the recently released movie of DC Comics Wonder Woman 1984 failed to create magic, which led to a lesser demand for wonder woman t-shirts. Going through the notion that the DC character movies are usually a hit, she stocked more Wonder Woman print t-shirts and less of Bernie Sander’s meme t-shirt. Her inventory planning backfired her when she started to lose customers since meme print t-shirts were out of stock. Now Rita cannot buy new stocks since a lot of money is tied up because of the overstocked inventory of the DC print t-shirts.

The inventory management problems faced by a D2C fashion owner like Rita are not very uncommon. Good inventory management is crucial for the growth of a company. Demand for a product is highly dependent on the volatile nature of trends, consumer choices, and seasonality. A business owner needs to understand to create a balance between having too much or too little. Similar to cash flow, it can make or break a business.

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Inventory management can make or break a business.

What is inventory management?

Inventory management is tracking the company’s stocked goods by monitoring their weight, dimensions, amount, and location. Inventory management aims to minimize the cost of holding inventory by helping business owners know when to restock products or buy more materials to manufacture them.

What will happen if inventory management is sloppy?

As said, that a balance needs to be maintained, we shall bifurcate the disadvantages arising from both understocked and overstocked inventory.

Problems due to understocked inventory

Missed Sales

Be it a start-up or a Fortune 500 company, the only means of revenue generation for a company is through sales. It is sales, that the company can set aside a separate budget for marketing and promotional activities, giving salaries to employees, and buying stocks. Missing sales due to understocking on a peak season truly hurts a business, knowing that the company could have made profits. Understocked inventory results in customers migrating to your competitors. The damage caused due to lost sales depends on the price of the item and order quantity. New businesses that run out of stock frequently will have trouble reaching the break-even.

Lose customers

Online businesses have become highly competitive. For a single product, there are many shops to buy from online. Customers will not come back to your store if they find someone else who can promptly fulfill their demands at a competitive price. As per a study from Harvard Business Review, 31 per cent of customers will buy from a different online store if the product is not found in your store due to understocking, and 26 percent will substitute a similar product with some other brand.

Understocked inventory results in losing a repeat business. Every customer that turns away is a lost source of recurring profit for your business.

Problems Due to Overstocked inventory

Held up money

Overstocked inventory holds up money that could be utilized for better use. The same tied up money can be used to pay salaries, pay off debts, purchase more understocked inventory, and other miscellaneous expenditure. Inventory has a limited shelf life because of spoilage, obsolescence, material degradation, or changing consumer trends. If the inventory expires, the tied-up money in the inventory is lost that becomes detrimental to the company’s cash flow. Businesses need to determine with accuracy the inventory requirement without understocking or overstocking it.

Excessive spending on warehouse

Warehouse storing charges depends on how much inventory is stored. Inventory that does not sell fast, is bound to increase your storage costs.

A proper Inventory Management improves cash flow

Good inventory management makes your business more cost-efficient, as it helps manage cash flow. A poor understanding of inventory management leads to a miscalculation of supply. An inventory is a finished product that we have purchased with cash and will be sold in exchange for cash, but if the demand is low, we will not be able to liquidate it, eventually increasing our storage costs. Higher unsold inventory means more cash outflow, and running out of stock means missing on sales revenue. With more cash inflow a company gets extra resources to expand the business.

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Higher unsold inventory means more cash outflow, and running out of stock means missing on sales revenue.

Effectively managing inventory from Shopify

D2C stores or small online stores are now not only about giving discounts to entice customers but also aim to provide convenience, wider product availability, and experience. Online businesses are adopting an omnichannel approach to ensure that customers can receive the product faster. This is why businesses need to have superior tracking over inventory on both offline and online channels. An organized multi-channel inventory management helps to evade losses from misplaced items, returns and spoilage reduces inventory costs and paves the way for better customer service.

Small businesses usually manage inventory manually by creating large spreadsheets. Now imagine this, say you are dealing with multiple product lines, you will need to develop spreadsheets for each product type. And every time to track and update inventory you would refer to multiple documents, unnecessarily consuming time and creating confusion. And to make things worse, if your colleague fails to update the sheet with the latest number in inventory, it will be a doomsday for your business.

Now, here lies an advantage for businesses that are operating on Shopify. Shopify comes with in-built inventory management features at the backend for its customers. Also, it has a plethora of inventory management apps that helps you to make inventory decisions effectively. So, let us begin managing the inventory from Shopify.

Benefits from Shopify Inventory Management

Tracking and updating inventory easily

From Shopify, we can customize the Stock Keeping Units (SKU) and inventory number for each product based on category, type, season, etc. Each product in the inventory app consists of an inventory field that can be adjusted manually. You can view the number of each product you have on your Inventory page. You can also use filters to sort through product information by availability, quantity, product vendor, tags, and product type. We can also change inventory quantities in bulk through the bulk editor option for multiple product variants and locations appearing on your Shopify store. Inventory adjustments made for bulk inventory are displayed in rows and columns similar to a spreadsheet.

Inventory history

Shopify can provide you the inventory history of up to 90 days of any product or variant. Inventory history is viewable that includes the date of inventory adjustments made, the changes made by the individual, and the updated quantities of the inventory.

Inventory transfers

We can log, track and receive transfers between various warehouse locations and suppliers.

While the above features will be helpful for small to mid-sized online businesses, but they might not be sufficient for businesses who are scaling and are selling on multiple e-commerce platforms like – Flipkart, Amazon, and other social media pages, etc. Thus, managing inventory using the in-built inventory management from Shopify can be a daunting task. Shopify has various inventory management apps that will give access to greater functionality.

What Shopify Inventory management apps can offer?

Below are a host of benefits that Shopify inventory management apps can offer the businesses:

Multi-channel functionality

The inventory management apps can enable tracking of stock levels across multiple sales channels such as Shopify, Flipkart, Amazon, Etsy and Facebook Shops. It reduces the risk of stock counting errors and helps to keep a watch on sales across channels.

Automatic order generation and replenishment

Based on sales velocity, lead time, delivery date, and inventory availability across warehouses the apps can automatically generate purchase orders whenever stock is low. When a business handles more product lines, its inventory replenishment becomes more complicated. The apps can recommend order quantities that will streamline replenishment, thus minimizing errors.

Sales analytics

It provides a detailed in-depth report of stock level across all the channels and warehouses, from which we can determine product sales, profitability, sales margin, etc.

Demand forecasting

From the past sales data and business trends, the apps can suggest which products are worth reordering and to be kept on the shelves.

Things to consider while selecting an inventory management app

Any app we choose to manage inventory should have:

It should be able to integrate with other existing apps that you use.
If you have a physical store, then select apps that can integrate with the Point of Sales (POS) billing system. This will allow you to automatically sync online and in-store orders and stock levels, ensuring no discrepancies between stock levels in your online and offline sales channels.
The app should have sales forecasting capabilities offering an approximate projection of market trends and growth rates.
Should generate a variety of real-time actionable reports on inventory analysis.

Popular inventory management apps on Shopify

Stocky
Trade
Skubana
Stock Sync
Trade Gecko

A good inventory management app will help you streamline and automate inventory management, save on and reallocate resources, and help you forecast trends, which is crucial for running a successful e-commerce business. With the above knowledge, find out the right app for your store, so that you can keep inventory under control and sales graph on an increasing mode. Download the app now to get started.

The post Inventory Management for Your Online Store appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Beginning with the Dropshipping Business

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 01:35:03 +0000

An Inventory - less business model for the Newbie Entrepreneurs

Is it possible to operate a full-fledged online business without having to think about warehouse rentals, inventory storage, and logistics? Yes, you read it right. Now, anybody can open an online business without needing to store the inventory or holding stocks. But what is more intriguing is the business model that eliminates the need of storing an inventory. It is called Dropshipping. Dropshipping is an inventory-less business model, where one does not need to keep stocks of the product. The customer selects and orders products from the online store. The online product catalogue showcases the product line from the suppliers. Once an order is generated, it is informed to the dropship supplier. After the supplier receives the order, it takes all the efforts of shipping the product to the customer.

The increasing love for online shopping in India and the tendency to try out unique products has brought newer avenues of private online labels in India. The pandemic has accelerated the growth of online shopping in India and saturation is a far horizon.

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Dropshipping is a streamlined form of retail business wherein the seller accepts customer orders but does not keep goods sold in stock.

How does the retailer earn in dropshipping business?

A retailer in the dropshipping model has the freedom to set the resale prices for the products and earns profit from the difference between retail price and wholesale price. Also, in some cases, a retailer earns when a wholesaler pays commission with every sale made.

Why is dropshipping popular?

Buying, stocking, and storing inventory increases the operating expenses of your business. Dropshipping business is risk-free from a financial standpoint as one has to bear only the cost of website hosting and other digital marketing initiatives. In dropshipping business, an entrepreneur does not begin with an enormously big budget or a high capital. Also, if stocks don’t sell, the entrepreneur or retailer does not have to buy the stocks or watch them devalue if they fail to sell. You only pay for that product to the supplier if the customer has purchased it. This mode of inventory-less business model is gradually gaining momentum in India among the budding and wannabe entrepreneurs.

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Dropshipping business is risk-free from a financial standpoint as one has to bear only the cost of website hosting and other digital marketing initiatives.

Benefits of Having an Inventory-less Business Model

Low overhead costs

Since dropshipping eliminates the need for a warehouse to stock inventory, you can operate your business at your comfort from home using a laptop.

Sell new products without fear

Retailers need not hesitate to add or experiment with selling new products to the store product catalogue. Since for unsold products, one does not need to pay for it. We can add new products to sell in our online store.

Offer a wide range of products

In dropshipping, the owner can offer a plethora of products without worrying about different colours, sizes, or variants, since it is the supplier who will deal with the rest. In business models other than dropshipping, we can sell and advertise only when we know all the stock has been shipped, but this model of business lets us decide when we want to showcase a product on our website and can start advertising immediately for instant selling.

Save on logistics cost

An entrepreneur can save a lot of money from logistics. In a conventional online business, a retailer would incur the cost of ocean freight, air freight, and other transportation charges while delivering the product, which would increase the operational expenses.

Reach new markets

Selling products overseas can be expensive and challenging. By partnering with strategically located suppliers we can expand our store reach to our customers and ship them quickly. This allows us to understand the market and validate if a product is worth importing.

Reasons why dropshipping can fail

No business is fail-proof. However, apart from the benefits, a dropshipping business brings to the table, there are a few challenges to know why a dropshipping business might fail:

Poorly designed website

You would never step into a brick- and- mortar store if you find the products are improperly arranged if asked for a product nobody is there to assist, unhygienic floors, etc. The rules are no different for your online store as well. In dropshipping, the winning strategy is to know how to present the products. As the barrier of doing online business is low, there are many online stores for a single product. If you are thinking that just by predatory pricing you can ace the dropshipping business, then the misconception here needs to be clarified. Dropshipping products are generic and are available at every online store, so you cannot sell them for less than your competitors as your profit margins will become thin. To win, business entrepreneurs should use a combination of great product copy and alluring images of high quality.

Selecting the wrong niche

Selecting what will sell on your platform makes or breaks your business. People generally decide to open a dropshipping business on industry verticals that are trending, which is good. But, operating business on too trending products has high competition and sets a barrier for any other newbie entrepreneur to set business firmly in that vertical.

Hence, the selection of niches should be decided based on what problems the product can solve, and develop the need around it by developing meaningful marketing content. For instance, think of reasons why people buy a roti maker, then move to create a niche store around the need and target audience, for example working mothers or bachelors with no time to make Rotis on Tawa and for a quick way to get circular rotis.

Poor customer support

The responsibility of a dropship entrepreneur does not end with the dispatch of customer orders. Keep in mind that the supplier is not in direct contact with your customer. One needs to have robust customer support to solve the queries until they are satisfied with the products. Generally, dropship business in the fashion vertical has a high rate of return. Sometimes, the sizes of the ordered apparel might not fit the customer, they would like to return the order and ask for a refund. Thus, it is a pain point of customers that needs to be addressed by offering smooth reverse logistics.

From Shopify, we can operate dropshipping business

From Shopify as well, one can run a dropshipping business. Shopify has multiple Apps that will connect you directly with the most reputed dropshippers. Interesting isn’t it? Half of your hassle is gone if you have created a shop on Shopify. So, without much ado begin with your dropshipping business now.

Below are the top five industry verticals where dropshipping in India is popular:

Fashion and Apparel
Beauty and Wellness
Food and Beverage
Consumer Electronics

The reason behind these industry verticals being so popular is India’s population that majorly consists of youngsters who are tech-savvy and find online shopping convenient, resulting in a healthy e-commerce way of life. Dropshipping business requires hard work and patience. An individual cannot earn money within a fortnight. Initially, the margins might be low, since dropshipping operates in a highly competitive market. Strategizing innovative ideas on digital marketing, our job as entrepreneurs or business owners is to maximize the reach of the online store and remain undeterred to make it big in the e-commerce world. Hence, stop thinking and kickstart your dropshipping business now.

The post Beginning with the Dropshipping Business appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How To Set an Online Store Easily

Shalmoli Sarkar — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 01:35:02 +0000

It is the year 2007 when the idea of opening a start-up was welcomed with apprehensions of its survival. But, two individuals took the plunge, leaving their high salaried jobs, thought of disrupting the way Indian customers shopped by opening an online store.

We are talking here about India’s first e-commerce start-up Flipkart, which went to become the most preferred online shopping destination in India. Flipkart, India’s first online store, laid the foundation of e-commerce, which ushered in a renaissance of online shopping in India.

Cheaper 4G internet rates and affordable smartphones, and Government’s encouragement for digital payments are driving the growth of online stores or e-commerce in India. The pandemic driven year has further given birth to new online shoppers in India. As per Kantar, rural India is driving the digital revolution with 45 percent growth in internet penetration in 2019 compared to urban India that stood at 11 percent. Rural shoppers belong to the psychographic group of ‘Experiencers’ who are eager to experience what is most trending and have a heightened sense of visual stimulation. Hence, this makes online business in India a lucrative one.

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According to a report from KPMG and Retailers Association of India, online private labels are expected to grow 1.3 to 1.6 times faster than the growth of e-commerce platforms between 2019-2022.

Can I Open My Online Store?

‘If I want to sell my Lucknow Chikankari Kurtis online, is it possible’? Yes, it is.

Till date, the e-commerce industry in India was walled by big online shop giants like Amazon and Flipkart. The online shoppers might not find the desired price range or product variants from the mainstream online stores. Eventually, this becomes an opportunity for small and local businesses to open their online stores and present their plethora of offerings at the best price. According to a report from KPMG and Retailers Association of India, online private labels are expected to grow 1.3 to 1.6 times faster than the growth of e-commerce platforms between 2019-2022.

Benefits of opening an online store on Shopify

Let us delve deeper into what benefits Shopify has to offer to your online store:

User friendly

There is a perception that having an online store requires prerequisites of web coding. Setting your online shop in Shopify eliminates the need for technical expertise. It has a friendly user-interface and has an intuitive admin interface.

Creates mobile-friendly stores

To get first-hand information on anything, people will first use their mobile. In such cases, if your store is not mobile-friendly, it is a bummer for the customers and your store is unlikely to be searched again. In Shopify, ensure that the theme picked for the store is mobile optimized. It should be regularly updated to give customers an enjoyable shopping experience. Store owners can also manage their Shopify store through its mobile app.

Sell from multiple channels

Sales from Shopify stores can happen through various channels. Its seamless integration with social media platforms such as Facebook messenger, Facebook Shops and Instagram helps to showcase and brand your products. If you are a good blogger with a considerable reach, it can be made into an online store with Shopify’s ‘Buy Button’ feature. The feature allows business owners to generate an embeddable product card with checkout that can be placed on any type of website.

Online Store Security

One of the core benefits of opening your store on Shopify is the security and reliability of personal and financial data. Every store comes with SSL certificates that strengthen security and trust in your store.

Availability of functional Apps

Shopify houses a myriad of functional apps. These apps will handle essential business functions such as marketing, SEO, order fulfillment, inventory management, and customer support, etc. Some apps are free or paid. The paid apps need monthly subscriptions. The apps provide flexibility to various business functions that can be managed on the go.

The beginning with Shopify

Let’s now begin with setting your online store on Shopify.

Register for a Shopify account

The first step is to register with Shopify to create an account. That is easier than setting your mail account on Gmail. We need to put our email id and click the ‘Start Free Trial’ button to get started with Shopify. It will first offer a 14-day trial period, which is absolutely free.

Designing your online store

The old saying ‘Don’t Judge a Book By its Cover’ does not go well with online business. When we are doing business online, the store website is the first moment of truth where searchers come to know about your business offerings. It is the first salesman that has an online customer counter. In Shopify, online stores are designed using themes. A theme is a template that determines how your store will look and function. Whether the store is of fashion, wearable gadgets, or food, the choice of the store theme will depend on the industry. There are three kinds of pre-existing themes available in Shopify- Free, Premium and Third-party. Free themes are suitable for businesses that are beginning with a shoestring budget and want to set up an online store in a short time. A free theme has limited functions, but as business expands, you can upgrade to advanced themes.

If you are not satisfied with Shopify’s pre-existing themes, you can build your online store from scratch using Shopify’s self-developed language- Liquid. But, to work with Liquid a background in computer programming languages is needed. Shopify’s Liquid is a language template. It has a syntax resembling the traditional programming languages including concepts such as output, logic and it interacts with variables (data), similar to a web-centric language such as PHP. It is also available as an open-source in GitHub.

Things to keep in mind for the selection of themes

A good landing page: Internet users will abandon staying on your website if the loading time is longer than 3-4 seconds. A good and faster landing page forms an inseparable part of creating a good impression. Therefore, choose a theme that is not bulky.
Easy navigation: The theme should be user friendly. The theme selection should be in alignment with your business needs, for instance if you are an online apparel seller, features like product image zoom, related products to go with the outfit, size chart are a must. All themes may not have all the features. Also, consider the layout suitable for your business, and decide the number of products to be displayed on the site page. Call to Action buttons in key buying decision areas on the site are a must. The use of colours, scale, and contrast also sets the tone of branding for your site.
So, let’s get started to design your store.

Creating the product catalogue

In Indian salons or beauty parlours, you will come across various product catalogues of renowned cosmetic brands Oriflame and Loreal in vibrant colours of red, pink, and purple. Due to limited seats at the salon, the customers waited and to kill time the salon owners persuaded them to look at the product catalogues. The bold colours and gloss coated pages of the catalogue made it hard to resist buying. The rules are the same for an online product catalogue.

With an abundance of information available, customers’ buying decision is influenced by an online search. An online catalogue can increase the number of visitors coming to your site. When every product image on the catalogue is added with product keyword tags it becomes search engine optimized, which increases the store’s product visibility when searched. For each product, multiple product tags must be added for its visibility even for a broad search. For instance – a pair of Crocs sandals might be searched as ‘Rain Shoes’, or ‘Waterproof sandals’ etc. In Shopify, for each product, a total of 250 tags can be applied.

We can also group the products into collections to make it easier for customers to find them by category. For example- Watches for men, women, or children or Bomber jackets of a particular size or colour or Laptop on Sale, etc.

We can create a collection of products in two ways:

Manual Collection: In a manual collection, a collection of products is created by including products that we choose individually. Such collections are suitable for business owners who like to personally curate it. These collections can be such as- premium selections for a niche audience or a discount collection for a few products. In this, one can add or remove products.
Automatic Collection: It uses selection conditions to automatically include products to create a collection. The selection conditions can be based on product, variant, price, weight, vendor, etc. For instance, if we want to create an automated collection of wedding sarees with selection conditions be ‘Kanjeevaram’ and a price range between Rs 10,000 – Rs. 15,000. After the conditions have been set, all the sarees bearing the product tag ‘Kanjeevaram’ and the said price bracket will be clubbed into the wedding sarees collection. Automated collections are convenient, as after you set up the conditions, future products get added automatically which saves time. We can add up to 60 selection conditions.

Payments

Shopify supports all popular payment methods. Right from Credit and debit cards to net banking, UPI, and COD. It also supports the major payment gateways like Razorpay, CC Avenue, Cashfree, Paytm, PayU, and PayPal. Indian shoppers were primarily skeptical about making digital payments, but heightened concerns of hygiene in the pandemic have become the main reasons for adopting new payment methods. Factors like convenience, increase in trust, and cashbacks are gradually giving impetus to this adoption. But still, a smaller section of the country believes in payment after delivery. For Cash on Delivery (COD) select a price range and a list of pin codes up to which it is applicable. One also needs to create a city checker on its store site to allow customers to search pin codes for COD eligibility.

Logistics

In social media handles of online stores, people generally express their resentment about the shipments not delivered on time or not giving any proper status about their orders. Logistics is so critical for online businesses, that it might make or break your brand. Shopify has a logistics app that allows businesses to manage order shipments, upload packages to logistics service provider’s panel, bulk print invoices and shipping labels and the most essential printing GST invoices all from a single app. The app also has a feature of return request module with which customers can easily request for return easily. The app has integrations with other Indian and international logistics companies: Delhivery, Bluedart, Ecom Express, Pickrr and FedEx. The logistics functional app reduces the time of preparing shipments and is easy to download.

Shopify is the right platform, as long as one is planning to do any online business. Be that be a business of physical products or digital goods like online courses and E-books, Shopify has you covered. The interesting part is you can build and run a professional online shop without having the need to learn any computer programming languages. So, now what is stopping you? Kickstart your online store now.

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