As the Corona outbreak has forced consumers to rely on the services of online platforms to fulfil demands, there has been a steep slope of changing consumer behaviour towards purchasing goods right from their homes and this trend is sure to last as the world is now adapting to new practises of strong hygiene and social distancing. 

Due to these, eCommerce businesses can expect a huge surge in demands, customer queries and expectations of faster deliveries. However, restrictions imposed by the lockdown resulted in severe on ground disruptions for logistics services, along with the migration of many labourers back to their hometown forcing the e-commerce players to revisit their operations and reduce dependence on manual tasks. 

For all eCommerce sellers to be able to address these challenges, it is highly necessary to incorporate important tools and technologies that can enable automation of services to ensure no more delays in business operations

To be able to address these requirements, we have compiled the list of some of the most useful tools to help you focus on potential solutions to improve profitability, increase productivity and handle operations during this time enabling a better future for your eCommerce business.

Shopify

Shopify is a leading eCommerce platform with 1M+ brands and businesses across 175 countries running their eCommerce store-fronts on it.

Shopify enables retailers to move their business online to focus on their online growth. 

With plug-and-play themes to choose from, the platform enables businesses in developing store designs, management of products and collections, enablement of marketing campaigns, etc.

Businesses can easily automate manual tasks such as order processing, marketing campaigns, analytics and reporting, customer communication and launch any new feature or integration with third-parties as well. 

With Shopify, your business can incur low development and resource costs along with zero maintenance costs all of which can help scale up profits, proving for this platform to be a topmost technology to onboard in your business. 

Razorpay (Thirdwatch)

Razorpay Thirdwatch provides an in-depth AI/ML based solution for eCommerce companies to tackle Return to origin (RTO) orders and Cash on Delivery (COD) fraud, which allows businesses to increase their operational efficiency and reduce losses.

With surge in demands, cancellations or RTOs increase as well and for businesses to maintain a profitable flow, it becomes crucial to focus on restricting these returned/cancelled orders to cut back on any extra costs of shipping. 

Thirdwatch analyses over 200 parameters about each eCommerce order placed in near real-time to recognize various patterns like address issues, fraud behaviour, suspicious email IDs/phone numbers, impulse purchase behaviour etc 

These checks enable businesses to prioritize genuine orders for fulfilment, management of undeliverable orders, and to flag out suspicious/fraud orders making this platform a highly essential tool for your business.

Yellow Messenger

Yellow Messenger is a leading conversational AI platform that caters to over 250+ enterprises across the globe, handling over a billion conversations quarterly.

The platform allows businesses to directly reach out to their customers via their preferred channels, eliminating the need for aggregators. This is especially crucial in these unprecedented times where digital commerce is on the rise and consumers are looking for an exceptional brand experience.

Yellow Messenger enables enterprises to leverage WhatsApp Business accounts to drive end-to-end eCommerce and support. The advantage here is that with a channel like WhatsApp that has a pre-aggregated audience, you can easily start with a basic WhatsApp Business account with little backend requirements. This enables you to kickstart impactful conversations with your customers without having to wait for all the pieces of the selling ecosystem to fall into place, making it one of the fastest ways to interact with your customers.

In short, conversational AI in conjunction with a communication channel like WhatsApp opens up a low-investment, high-reward channel for direct commerce

ClickPost 

ClickPost is a logistics intelligence platform which helps eCommerce companies rapidly optimize their operations, logistics costs in order to improve customer experience.

With AI-based selection of courier partners and pre-integrations with 100+ courier services, the platform ensures lower logistics costs for businesses with the ability to onboard partners within a day making the entire process seamless. 

Clickpost allows real-time tracking of orders with constant updates via email, texts, etc. to reduce manual efforts and increase accuracy of deliveries all of which lower the rate of RTOs and hence an improved customer experience.

ClickPost helps companies automate their tracking & customer communication to allow better customer experience and enhanced satisfaction making it an extremely useful tool for your business.

Payoneer

Trusted by more than 4 million customers, this cross-border payments platform empowers small businesses, marketplaces and enterprises to grow their global commerce, serving around 200 countries and territories.

Payoneer’s technology, compliance, operations and banking infrastructure empowers businesses by delivering a suite of services that includes cross-border payments, tax solutions and risk management.  

Businesses get the option to instantly connect with customers around US, UK, EU, Japan, Canada, Australia and Mexico with accounts in multiple currencies having the freedom to receive payments in different formats including Credit Card, Debit card, etc, view payment history and receive notifications about key financial transactions, special offers, and other account activities.

Payoneer allows you to tap emerging opportunities and expand to new markets making it a necessary tool for your business.

Shadowfax

One of India’s highly reliable last-mile delivery platforms with a network of more than 25,000 delivery partners, more than 5000 vans active across 65 cities in India,  Shadowfax is a cross-category crowdsourced logistics platform offering tech-driven solutions towards optimizing partner efficiency and providing a cost-effective express logistics solution for eCommerce, restaurants, FMCG, pharma as well as online & offline retailers. 

Shadowfax ensures deliveries even to remote areas with an omnichannel offering specifically designed for essential businesses to help them service the complete city within 24 hours.

The logistics platform allows best-in-class rider serviceability, multi-modal delivery options via vans or bikes, and flexible delivery schedules like hyperlocal in the vicinity, next day in farther areas. Apart from this, Shadowfax has exclusive tie-ups with Indian Railways, airlines and leading trucking operators to maintain an uninterrupted intercity supply of goods

All of these features make the delivery provider a profoundly important technology for your business to have in order to increase business profitability. 

Shiprocket

Shiprocket is India’s leading eCommerce logistics aggregator, serving 40,000 active Direct to Consumer sellers with its lowest shipping costs, widest pin code reach and dedicated customer service. Providing bulk shipping rates with no minimum order requirements.

The company optimizes existing logistics infrastructure using data and AI to offer seamless shipping solutions for every online seller. Shiprocket is partnered with as many as 17 expert courier partners enabling sellers to ship products across 26,000+ pin codes in India and to over 220 countries globally.

With Shiprocket’s Logistics Aggregator Model, Courier Recommendation Engine (CORE), Shipping Rate Calculator and more such services sellers get to choose the right courier partners for each shipment, cost efficiency for the given pickup and delivery pin codes and transparency about the relevant shipping costs for their delivery areas.

Shiprocket provides better coordination with the buyers according to their shipping requirements and ensures a higher chance of delivery by optimizing cost per shipments making it a highly recommended tool for workflow automation for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). 

Unicommerce 

Unicommerce has been simplifying supply chain operations for 10,000+ eCommerce sellers, retailers, and brands by automating their operations across online & offline sales channels.

A one-stop solution for all eCommerce needs, the platform provides integration or has partnership across all domains of the eCommerce ecosystem. The solutions are designed to benefit eCommerce businesses by enabling sustainable operations that result in growth, cost efficiency, and an overall increase in productivity.

Unicommerce enables processes such as multichannel order, inventory and returns management, advanced warehouse management, dropship fulfilment solution, omnichannel selling across 40+ online marketplaces, website platforms, offline stores and much more.

With 30+ pre-integrated Logistics providers, and 10+ ERP & POS systems, Unicommerce provides a single source of various technologically backed solutions to increase productivity for all business operations making it a top requirement for your eCommerce business.

In Conclusion 

These tools and technologies can help you eliminate any more obstructions and lack of services that may put your business at risk.

The effects of Coronavirus have given way to new trends and practices indicating how technology will take over and a restricted approach to manual dependency on things is going to drive the way eCommerce operates henceforth and so it becomes necessary for your business to incorporate high-end services to quickly tackle losses and bring back your productivity and profitability that will ensure a better future for your business.

For queries, request a call back!!

The post eCommerce Essential Technologies & Tools: Increase Productivity of Supply Chain Operations Today appeared first on unicommerce.com.

The seller meet was organized in Hyderabad on 3rd September, 2016, which was another grand success for Unicommerce after its Pune event, earlier this year.

The main objective of the event was to discuss issues faced by sellers in online selling, and how Unicommerce is helping to solve those issues, especially through launch of some new features like Payment Reconciliation and collaboration with quality listing partners.

The Seller Meet took place at The Golkonda Hotel in Hyderabad, where a good mix of sellers including those starting just now and sellers already selling on multiple marketplaces took part. It was a 3 hour interactive session, where the audience discussed in depth about the challenges they are facing and were very happy with the solutions they got from the Unicommerce team conducting the event.

The event also featured some of the existing customers of Unicommerce who spoke very highly about the product and support provided by the entire Unicommerce team.

The session came to an end with high tea arrangements for the sellers, which served as a good networking opportunity for sellers.

The post Unicommerce Organized a Grand e-Commerce Seller Meet in Hyderabad appeared first on unicommerce.com.

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India, August 29, 2016: Lendingkart Group has announced a strategic partnership with Unicommerce, the Delhi-based multichannel order fulfillment platform. The partnership will enable Unicommerce’s consumer base to get access to collateral-free working capital loans through Lendingkart Group’s NBFC within 72 hours of application at a discounted rate. Both players make an ideal synergistic match as they have been closely involved with SME merchants and understand the immense potential that lies untapped in this segment due to inadequate financial support.

The tie-up between Lendingkart Group and Unicommerce is aimed to provide working capital loans to Unicommerce retailers. The technology-backed Lendingkart Group’s NBFC enables loan disbursement process that comprises minimal paperwork and offers collateral-free loans to online retailers within 72 hours. It assesses the creditworthiness of a candidate through API scrutiny and online data scraping to ensure credibility rather than conventional methods that promote red-tapism. The swift assessment process takes a few hours and NBFC ensures that loan amount reaches the borrower within 2-3 days of the loan application. Unicommerce retailers will be offered discounted working capital loans enabling them to increase their inventory, pay for their liabilities and scale up their businesses.

At the announcement, Harshvardhan Lunia, Co-Founder and CEO, Lendingkart Technologies, said, “There are massive growth prospects for Indian retailers within the rapidly changing retail scenario of the country. Businesses often register losses and face challenges related to cash flows owing to their capital deficits. The tie-up with Unicommerce will help the Group to eliminate such challenges for its customer base and will moreover, enable retailers to increase their efficiency, scalability, and profitability with quick and easy working capital loans.”

Ankit Pruthi, CEO, Unicommerce said, “We understand that working capital finance is one of the key needs of SMEs in growing their business, and we believe that this partnership with Lendingkart Group will further boost our customers’ business. We are already helping the SMEs to improve their online sales through our product, and with this partnership, we are hoping to provide more avenues for growth to our customers.”

Lendingkart has developed technology tools, to provide lending solutions to lenders, which utilizes a unique mix of Big Data analytics, decision science, and other proxies to derive credit comfort and assess the creditworthiness of small business owners. Most of the credit risk analysis at the Group’s NBFC, is done digitally so that loans can be disbursed within 72 hours from the time of application.

About Lendingkart Group
Lendingkart Technologies is a fin-tech startup in the working capital space. It has developed technology tools based on big data analytics that facilitates lenders to evaluate borrowers’ credit worthiness. Aadri Infin Limited, a Lendingkart Group Company, is a non-deposit taking NBFC, offering small business loans for SMEs in India. The NBFC aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for SMEs. The NBFC uses technology and analytics tools, analyzing thousands of data points from various data sources to assess the creditworthiness of small businesses rapidly and accurately. Lendingkart Group aims to make working capital finance available at the fingertips of entrepreneurs, so that they can focus on business instead of worrying about the gaps in their cash-flows. We are currently based in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Mumbai, but have a service reach across India. To know more, please visit http://lendingkart.com/

About Unicommerce
The SaaS based multichannel order fulfillment platform allows ecommerce merchants selling on multiple marketplaces like Snapdeal, Amazon, Jabong, Flipkart, eBay and so on, to manage their entire inventory and order fulfillment process through one single platform. In a short span of time, Unicommerce has built a strong customer base of 10,000+ sellers in more than 220 cities including big brands such as Monte Carlo, Swiss Military, Classic Polo, House of Anita Dongre, Reliance, Mahindra Retail, Carat Lane, Raymond etc. Ecommerce sellers love this product, as it helps them grow their sales, reduce costs and improve their seller ratings. For further information about the company or the product, please visit https://unicommerce.com/

Economic Times: Lendingkart Group Partners with Unicommerce to Facilitate Easy Loans to its SME Customers

Business Standard: Lendingkart Group Partners with Unicommerce to Facilitate Easy Loans to its SME Customers

The post Lendingkart Group Partners with Unicommerce to Facilitate Easy Loans to its SME Customers appeared first on unicommerce.com.

Hi everyone, I am Satya Singh from Satya Shoes. I am selling online from last two years. And it’s been one year I am doing with Unicommerce. And I would say that it’s a wonderful stuff to increase your business multiples.

I am a seller from Agra and I am doing footwear business from last 20 years. I used have a manufacturing house, but from last 3 years I am doing it online. And the best way to get online is through Unicommerce. You can start your business with no inventory.

Earlier I used to sell around 60-100 pairs of shoes on an average. But after Unicommerce, the best part is that of inventory management. I don’t have to block the inventories for different different channels.

So I can even sell a single pair of shoes across all two or three or four or five market places without blocking my money or inventory. So the best part is the inventory only that I can manage inventory without any hassle and also the order management of Unicommerce is perfect.

It’s been year now, and my business has been increased 5 times. My average selling been has reached to around 500 pairs. And I would say that it’s only due to Unicommerce due to which I am able to manage the orders and each and everything.

Thanks to Unicommerce. Specially, the team is very much dedicated. You can call the support team any time, they ready to help us out at any stage, at any issue. I got training to my staff and to me also, which was easy and hassle free.

The post Seller Success Story 2 #SellmorewithUnicommerce appeared first on unicommerce.com.

My name is Md. Adil. I am a shoe seller from Agra. I have been into online selling for past 3 years. And I am associated Unicommerce from last 1 year. We have family business of shoes and hence, I thought online selling would be better as we can see -these days, sellers are using online platform for their business. And also because Unicommerce is an excellent solution in online multichannel inventory management, better than the other available options in the market.

The advantage that I got from Unicommerce is their customer service, which I liked very much. Whenever, there is any issue whether technical or other, you can immediately reach them through email or call them directly for help.

Besides, through Unicommerce I am able to sell on multiple channels- as it got almost all the major channels integrated, like –Paytm, Flipkart, Amazon, eBay, obviously Snapdeal and so on. At least on the channels I am selling at are available in Unicommerce. That’s why Unicommerce is a better option for me to sell on multiple channels, for multi-management.

Another advantage of Unicommerce – it is very economic (cost effective). Spending 2-3 rupees per order, even if your product is low priced, range between of Rs.500 to Rs.600 then also it’s very economic, very much cost effective.

I don’t think, one should think twice to use Unicommerce.

The post Seller Success Story 1 #SellmorewithUnicommerce appeared first on unicommerce.com.

Dear Online Sellers,

E-commerce is one of the best things that has happened to us in recent times. And the party has just begun. We (your customers) are warming up to it, enjoying it. We recognize the important part that retailers play to make it happen.We no more have to go in a brick and mortar shop to buy the products. We get to see a large collection of products from different brands. But still, we feel you guys need to wake up and smell the coffee for the irritating things that you are unknowingly doing. Why ? Well..read on

We need opinions while shopping online.

We shop together not alone! 

For missing this obvious thing. Shopping is not a job to be done for me. It’s more of fun time with friends. While shopping offline in an actual market place, we never go alone. Asking for suggestions or opinion from friends and family is very common.

Similarly, while shopping online I would like to share the items to be bought with my friends and family members to ask for their views on them. Though it’s not necessary, yet it makes me feel great to buy something that everybody appreciates or likes.

‘Social media Share Buttons’ fulfills this need of the customers like me, and helps me to decide on the best from the rest by taking the views of my near and dear ones. As a matter of fact, it not only benefits us the customers but also the sellers. It promotes your business indirectly by giving your products some free publicity.

That’s why I find it so surprising when I come across e-shops without share buttons below product like in the image below.

Why treat us different from your Shop Customers?

Even we want to see the product inside out before buying it.

When deciding on buying online, images are the only way to have an idea of the product that I would like to buy but can’t practically touch and feel. Insufficient number of images unnecessarily stirs up doubt in our mind whether the product is of good quality or not. If you think, giving insufficient product images will create curiosity that will induce us to buy. Then I am extremely sorry to let you know that it’s extremely opposite.

It’s very annoying to any customer, who wants to buy the product but due to lack of product images he or she can’t take a decision and then drops the idea of buying it altogether.

Do you really think – anyone in her sane mind would actually buy this above purse just looking at 2 photos. 

I would like to know what it looks like from inside. What color, the arrangement and all. But I cannot. Believe me – two to three additional images will definitely give you better ROI on the money you are already paying to the photographer. By running an online business you are already saving up huge money which otherwise would be spent on rent, electricity, this and that. Why not invest that saved up money in such things which convert visitors into buyers.

Patience is not a virtue for online buyers

70% of Online buyers fall in age group 18-35

 Patience is not a virtue for this specific age group at all. For trying my patience. “We” are an impatient lot and hate it when someone asks us to wait. Now think of a situation where you have placed an order for some essential goods and not receiving on time.

As a seller, you are also aware that the young generation is your prime online buyers. Unlike our grandparents and parents who are known for their patience level, we are just the opposite to them. We want everything before time. Waiting to receive longer than the estimated time is extremely exhausting for us. It creates a negative impression about brand in our minds.

This is even more frustrating if we have to return something bought online. If I had bought it in real shops, I could just go to that shop the same day and return it if I am unhappy about it. But if shopped online, it’s nothing less than a nightmare.

Don’t create a false sense of urgency

We are impatient but not idiots- we ‘ll buy when we have to!

There are some e-commerce sites which will start the timer of say 15 mins or so, as soon as you add something to the cart. They expect you to purchase it before the timer expires. Such time limited shopping cart is really annoying. It’s like creating a false sense of urgency to the customers. Besides, it doesn’t allow me to choose many product items to keep in the same cart to buy together under one cart.

While shopping online, I go through a number of options given there to choose from. It takes a few minutes to do so. In this scenario, if my previously saved item gets deleted after a short span of time (once the timer expires), then you can imagine how irritating it would be for me. It restricts me from buying all my favorite items under one cart at one time.

Besides, I have to purchase every item individually providing my bank details against each purchase. This is not cool at all.

Deliver what we ordered. No Excuses !!

For sheer negligence. Many a times, I have received products that are of different colors or different size from what I had ordered. It is very frustrating for any customer when he or she gets something different from what they ordered. Particularly, when it happens on garments.

“I invest a lot more time than the usual customers to choose any product or item. In this case, when I receive a product that is different from what I am expecting, one can image what would be my reaction”

What’s worse, some e-commerce sites blatantly refuse to exchange it. They don’t even let you return it. What am I going to do with that garment or thing. It will just sit in my closet everyday reminding me what a bad experience I had with your site. And of course it will become a good conversation topic with my friends and family whom I will share what an ordeal I had to go through, when I did business with you. I am sure you don’t want that to happen. Do you?

I just hope that after these loud wake up calls you have woken up to some ground realities. If you improve on these, you will definitely receive tight hugs from all of us instead of rude wake up calls!

A suggestion I want to give, why don’t you guys look for some ecommerce management software, which will look after your entire ecommerce operations brilliantly.

Unicommerce is one of the pioneer in the supply chain management operations. It has recently been tied up with Chumbak, Ginesys, Forever New, and much more.

The post What Online Buyers Actually Want from Ecommerce Sellers ? appeared first on unicommerce.com.