We are moving!

Hello all,

Thank you for all your support over these three months. 3P Logistics have decided to move the blog under our website's domain, with link as followed:
http://www.3p-logistics.co.uk/news

From now on we will no longer update this site. Please visit our official website for further information.

Best Regards,
3P Logistics

Your ecommerce daily routine...

As we always say 'do what you do best, and outsource the rest!'. 
3P Logistics pride ourselves as the true 'one-stop shop' - from factory gate collection through to end delivery point we have it covered. We even offer e-commerce services such as inbound telesales, clearance outlet and marketing, etc. 

This makes some people question: if you are doing everything, what should I be doing? 
Well, there is SO MUCH that you can be doing! First of all you should constantly be looking for something new to grow your business. If you are busy picking and packing how can you research on ways to improve? Secondly, there are so many daily actions that you should be doing, just to name a few:
(source: )


1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)



It is a life time job to boost your ecommerce site's search engine rankings, unless Google is dead. Online retailers need to focus on the contents, and to build relationships with authority sites that will link back to yours. Each single page should be optimised separately. Do your homework - research keywords, ensure that the page structure includes H1 and H2 tags, and put in optimised titles and descriptions. Remember to link related content throughout the site and bold key phrases. It is all about keywords density. I know it is a lot of hard work (that's why my colleague is doing it instead of me, ha) but you would be over the moon when you appear on the first page of the Google search result. Oh, maybe you already are on the first page, then try to get to (or maintain) the first place! 

2. Sourcing



Our cheesy slogan: 'you source and sell, leave the rest to 3PL.' 
Sourcing is the key to your business. Keep your eyes peeled. Spend at least an hour a day reading trends and check what you competitors are doing. Is there any new products available? Is your price still competitive? Is there better alternative to what you are selling? Make sure you are targeting the right audience with the right product. 

According to Dale Traxler, '... it's likely that you sell consistently to a similar demographic. Check that for yourself. Ask your customers why they buy from you. Find out what other products they would like to see you sell'. You should understand your customers as much as you can! 


3. Marketing



Yes we can do the 'startup' marketing for you such as web photography, listing and website design, but you still have to do the maintenance bit. Have you tried promoting your business via social media? For example Twitter is a great platform for engaging with customers and Facebook is good for hosting competitions and promoting events. And have you done any email marketing? Send your customers thank you email, seasonal greetings, or promote new products that you would be selling in the near future. These are all low cost and low risk ways to advertise your business so why not give it a go? 

Remember, if you are doing multichannel marketing, you should always be consistent, to establish and maintain your brand image. Choose a tone of voice which will appeal to your target market. For example be fun and lighthearted if you sell gadgets. 


4. Business strategies and report

Every business should have detail and clear strategy report. This allows you to know if you are on the right track. Set objectives and see if you can achieve them. Address key performace indicators (KPI) and measure return on investment (ROI). As suggested by Dale Traxler, 'At a minimum, monitor sales, average order value, cost of goods sold, traffic, conversion rates, abandonments rates and your cash position'. With your report in hand you can plan your future actions and continue to grow your business in a logical manner. 

4 Key Ecommerce Metrics that Determine Success

Some boring but useful business knowledge...

There are four key ecommerce metrics that determine success. They are:

1. Understanding lifetime value of a customer;
2. Monitoring customer satisfaction;
3. Measuring your sales funnel;
4. Determining marketing ROI.

The most successful ecommerce brands incorporate these elements whether they realize it or not. If you’re an online retailer just starting or are trying to grow your business, implementing these four metrics will help your business thrive.

1. Understand the Lifetime Value of a Customer

Many companies calculate their return on investment on a single sale. Instead, the ROI should be focused on the lifetime value of the customer. It's the most accurate measurement of a customer’s economic worth for the company.

To determine a customer’s lifetime value — CLV, or CLTV — consider the following formula.

A customer's lifetime value is calculated using all interactions a customer has with your business.

To accurately determine the “profit” in the equation, it’s crucial that you measure your inventory and sales margins accurately. Without accurate measurements, it will be impossible to determine CLV, which allows you to determine your actual return on invested capital. To find the average acquisition cost, simply divide your acquisition spending by the number of customers acquired from your marketing campaign. When you plug these values into the CLV formula, you should have a fairly accurate assessment of a customer’s economic value to your company.

Customer lifetime value is significant because it’s more cost effective to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

To assess and predict your level of customer retention, consider adding an accurate customer experience metric such as a net promoter score — NPS. With this method, you can determine which consumers are "promoters," "passives," and "detractors." Higher customer satisfaction will usually result in promoters, though many satisfied customers are also “passive.” It’s important to remember that NPS is more than just about the numbers and rankings; it’s an opportunity for your brand to listen and respond to authentic customer feedback. When you understand the satisfaction of your customers, you will be better equipped to determine CLV and thus your return on invested capital.

2. Monitor Customer Satisfaction

Ecommerce offers many tools to understand customers. Whether it’s Google Analytics or your site’s internal software, you can track the demographics, psychographics, purchase history, and drivers behind your visitors. Furthermore, use this information and compare it to your target audience. Are these statistics lining up? How can you change strategy to improve performance?

Many ecommerce businesses that falter have outsourced customer service. It's best to perform customer service in house. After all, you know more about your business and products than anyone else. Doing it in house shows that you truly care about the customer experience, which is what drives repeat business.

When listening to customers, you can learn:

• What the experience is actually like from their perspective;
• Whether customer needs or desires are being met by your current offering;
• The truth behind the numbers.

Actually listening to a customer’s voice reveals more about the experience than numbers ever can. For instance, a customer might walk into your store, browse your shelves, and then purchase several items. From a numbers perspective, the purchase and transaction was a success.

However, communicating with the customer about the experience might have shown you that he walked into your store to purchase a brand new computer. Since he wasn’t able to find it, he purchased a few small items to prevent a wasted trip, and then went to one of your competitors to get what he needed. From this vantage point, the transaction was a failure. This is why knowing your customer is more important than simply knowing the numbers. The principles in this brick-and-mortar example also apply to ecommerce.

Now that you’ve gathered user information and have established a relationship with customers, it’s time to implement satisfaction metrics. Feedback requests and surveys are good ways to hear firsthand from the customer. Again, using the net promoter score system is a valuable tool to grow your brand. Since NPS measures customers' satisfaction and their likelihood to recommend your brand, you have a better barometer of measuring word of mouth sales. Use the information to improve performance.

3. Measure the Funnel

Online tools can track customer information. But they can also measure the sales funnel. Use Advanced Segments on Google Analytics to measure:

• Landing pages;
• Conversion rates;
• Types of visitors.

To ensure that your landing page is successful, make sure that the bulk of your important information is “above the fold.” The call-to-action and purpose should be apparent to the visitor without the need to navigate anywhere. By keeping navigation simple, your visitors are focused and will journey through the conversion path that you’ve created.

Practice A/B testing to determine helpful improvements. Perhaps resizing an image or repurposing a button is all that’s separating a dead page from incredible conversion rates. In short, clarity, headlines, large “red” buttons, and calls-to-action are all elements that will greatly enhance the effectiveness of your landing page.

Determining how people stumbled into your site in the first place can tell you a lot about your marketing efforts. Are you successful with search engine optimization? What keywords are people searching to find you? Are they "searchers," "comparers," "researchers," or "advice-seekers"?

4. Determine the Marketing ROI

Ecommerce sites typically rely on search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, and more to gain visibility and traffic. Calculate the margin per order and the customer’s lifetime value. Again, the mistake most ecommerce companies make is to calculate return on investment on one purchase instead of lifetime value. For repeat business, base the calculations using CLV for a more accurate prediction. Determining marketing ROI will let you know the status of your marketing efforts as well as how you can improve.

To calculate this, use the following formula.

Determining ROI helps you improve marketing efforts.

Dividing "Acquisition Spending" by the "Number of Customers Acquired" will give you your acquisition cost. By comparing this with the customer lifetime value, you can check whether your CLV is lower, the same as, or higher than your average acquisition cost. Once you know your marketing ROI, continue tweaking it for the results you desire.

Source: 

Checkout page optimisation

Following the success of the previous article 'product page optimisation', 3P Logistics are going to present you with 'checkout page optimisation'. Hopefully this can give you a few guidelines when modifying your website. Feel free to call us for professional


1. Provide guest checkout option
According to esurverypro, 23% of shopping cart abandonment are caused by site requiring registration before purchase. If you have been reading best practice articles, each and every one of them would tell you to eliminate your compulsory registration. Why are people are still doing it? Please, just make things simple and easy for your customers. ASOS remove any mention of creating an account (using New to ASOS? instead) and this has halved their abandonment rate. Impressive, huh?

I can only afford to buy one item, please let me checkout as a guest. Thank you, Apple. 

2. Only ask for necessary personal information
Customers feel their privacy is invaded when they have to submit seemingly unnecessary personal information. As suggested by Baymard, either make it optional, or provide a valid reason to ask for this information. For example, I don't want to give out my phone number unless I bought food and they have to call me before delivery or something.


3. Display delivery and payment information
We are talking about absolute transparency here. Make sure you have every single detail explained. Apple has a question and answer session at the bottom of the page, giving people a peace of mind. It can also save time for customer service team - less phone calls and emails.

Large, clear, and attention seeking checkout 'keywords' with Q&A session below (apple)

4. Remove distraction
It is like teaching your kid to learn something - you wouldn't put a toy right next to him, right? Same applies to your e-commerce site. If you take away other navigational elements, advertisement, external links, obvious voucher code box (people are likely to wander off to search for the code, and some may even forget the shopping), customers are more likely to focus purely on completing the purchase. Instead, make shipping and livery information and security logos etc., very prominent. As you can see from above, Apple makes their 'shipping', 'payment', 'account', extremely large and obvious to draw customers' attention to the main task.

5. Provide variety of payment methods
According to WorldPay via eConsultancy, alternative payments account for 22% of global e-commerce transactions. There is no reason limiting the way that customers pay. I have friends abroad who only has Paypal in GBP currency so she couldn't buy from a site which only accept credit card. Allowing people to pay in different ways can certainly expand your market.

Every single payment type you can think of. (asos)

6. Show the progress
People really do have no patience - they want to know when will things be done. Either you can show a progress bar, or make everything into one page like the Apple one, and just expand each session when they are on it. Make sure you let people go back to the previous step if they enter something wrong/ change their mind. Again, it is all about clarity and convenience.


7. Remind them to stay/ come back
Have you ever filled your baskets up and then realise - ah, you can't really afford this. And then you decided to delete your cart? Well, I have. You can consider hitting your customers with a notification (pop-up) when they click delete cart. This may give them second thought. You can also send a reminder style, autoresponder email, a while after they have abandoned their cart. According to a survey, a lot of merchants agree that abandonment autoresponder has excellent ROI.

Progress bar on top. Pop-up box appear when you click delete. (boots)

To conclude, do your own usability test. Be a customer yourself and try to understand how customers navigate through the page. And remember to compare it to other e-commerce site. Is yours simple and straightforward like the others? Have you missed out any information? Is it a pleasant checkout experience?

Infographics: Multichannel retail

Data from econsultancy.com

Product page optimisation

Product pages do make a difference - I would rather pay a bit more to buy from a well presented, informative website. Below summed up 10 points that you should pay attention to when creating the product page. Attention to details, folks...


1. Image
As I have said before, people cannot touch or feel the actual products so all they can rely on is the pictorial information you display. If you are having a DIY session, consider having a light box when taking pictures as it can make them look so much more professional. Images should be taken from different angles, and should be uploaded onto your product page in high resolution. Oh, and do offer zoom feature - people do not like sticking their face onto the screen to check the details.

Multiple pictures, with zoom, videos (asos)

2. Discounts!
When you have an offer, such as giving discounts or launching promotions, make sure they are seeking as much attention as possible. 62% of buyers consider 'special sales and discounts' as the most important features that influence their buying decision. Boost your conversion rate by highlighting your discount! 

Big, dead centre, sharp colours, sale message (asos)

3. Call to Action
Yes, even the call to action button has a best practice guide, available HERE. 

The most common one would be 'add to bag' (urban outfitters)

4. Easy navigation
This includes offering a well organised menu, site map, and product search function. No more Easter egg hunt - people simply do not have the patience to search around. Categorise your products in a clear manner and make things simple for your customers. If you have problem sorting your products into groups, type them into eBay search bar and see which groups your products belong.

Excellent filter feature to find the thing you want (asos)

5. Emotional Message
Your product page may be perfectly displayed but adding an emotional trigger can connect to customers' emotions. It can certainly affect buying decisions. Great article HERE. 

'Love the space you're in' (rose & grey)

6. Consumer Reviews
Believe it or not, 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site with user review. Product reviews best practice available HERE. 


7. Show Other Products
Personal experience - I put a dress into the shopping basket and then I saw the matching shoes. Well, lets put that in as well. Did you know that the cost you need to successfully recruit a customer is far much more than retaining one? Tempt your customers with other products (of course pick something that they are interested in) can result in cross-selling and boost your profit instantly. 

Cross selling (Amazon)

8. Social Media
Social media has the ability to reach so many potential customers, yet it can be free. Put social media buttons onto your product page so people can share your products with their social network. It is a free advertising opportunity so why not? You may as well throw in the 'email your friend' button as well.

Email and social media buttons, with clear display of delivery and return information (John Lewis)

9. Live chat/ free call back
I am sure you have had the experience of getting really frustrated because of bad customer services - either you get no response or you are put on hold for ages. Live chat is a convenient way to tackle this problem. If you do not want to invest in such technology you could consider offering a free call back. Do not charge customers for calling you - it will simply make them abandon their shopping cart. Customer service is the key, and it can really make you stand out from your competitors. 


10. Peace of mind
Must have feature! Make sure you display absolute transparency by showing your shipping, return, privacy, security policies, and all those bits and bobs. You may not care but your customers do. The more the know the merrier. 

Do you have to pay Royal Mail’s increased rates?

The short answer is no – there are other options!

(photo courtesy: neopost)

As Fulfilment Houses such as 3P Logistics operate on behalf of a large number of online retailers, this means that their collective buying power and expertise in negotiating with carriers can bring benefits, which can then be passed onto their clients.

The increases implemented this week by Royal Mail have led online retailers to take another look at their distribution costs and delivery timeframes offered to their customers.  Fulfilment companies can offer a real alternative; not only can distribution costs be lowered, but the overall proposition of an in-house v an outsourced solution can bring enormous benefits in terms of time saved and the refocusing onto vital areas such as sourcing and selling more effectively, through multiple channels.

John Scully, Business Development Manager at 3P Logistics, explains: 

'Clients often arrive at a crossroads, where, to expand their business further, they need to either take on additional resource and space, or outsource on a pay-as you-use basis'.

'The recent hike in Royal Mail’s prices especially affect the small to medium sized online retailer – there are alternatives out there that can not only bring savings but can take their businesses onto new levels.'

Price changes details HERE