New Ecommerce Trends You Need to Watch Out for in 2016

For the past few years, ecommerce business has been witnessing tremendous rise thanks to the popularity of mobile devices. In 2015, market research firm eMarketer had predicted that global ecommerce sales will increase up to $3.5 trillion within the next five years, and the web accounted for 7.3 percent of global retail sales in 2015, growing to 12.4 percent by 2019. Most website designing companies have adopted responsive design and material design language when it comes to building ecommerce websites that are mobile-friendly and ease-to-use. Here are some predictions made by industry experts that may or will change the ecommerce landscape in 2016 and beyond.

More Focus on Improving Mobile Shopping Experience

Mobile commerce, or otherwise widely known as m-commerce is seeing high growth due to rise

in the sales of smartphones and tablets. During the early years, there were many challenges associated with getting people to make purchases via mobile ecommerce sites. For instance, the checkout processes were difficult and lengthy to complete on time. But in later years, these issues were solved and now you can make purchases within fewest number of clicks or taps.

These days, few retailers like Amazon have taken things to the next level by offering live chat support. To increase loyal customer base for your retail brand, you can offer your customers good advice consistently via their mobile devices over the long term. Even brick-and-mortar retailers that have their own online stores can utilize this strategy to boost their brand value and customer rush to their retail store. In short, retail businesses need to streamline their mobile shopping experience as more and more users are using mobile devices for online shopping activities in 2016 and beyond.

Safe and Secured Mobile Payment Options

Even though retailers started to embrace mobile shopping, they need to implement safe and secure mobile payment method to boost mobile shopping experience of their customers. Nowadays, users not only look to browse products on mobile sites or apps and buy them on the main desktop-based online retail store. They want quick checkout option on their mobile. According to INC.com, m-commerce sector is evolving and it has already reached 35 percent share global. Still, there are many online retail stores that lack mobile payment options.

Partnering with Influencers for Product Promotions

Nowadays, brands are trying to partner with influencers to promote their products, or amplify their message. It is true that getting influencers’ attention for your product is difficult at first, but there ways you can find them for your promotional activities.

1)     You can ask them to review your product after sending them a free sample of your product.

2)    You can offer your products as prizes in a giveaway or contests that run on the influencers’ website.

3)    You can run a loyalty program where you can identify and reward those people who get customers for your product through their social media shares or product recommendations.

4)    You can also pay influencers to promote your product, and most people would happily take accept your monetary demands as they make money from sponsorship.  

Power of Video Marketing

We know that high-quality images are needed when it comes to optimizing product descriptions in ecommerce websites. To remain competitive, many ecommerce businesses are now taking things to next level, with branded and custom video content. Product videos that is both informative and entertaining can help you in building lot of trust with prospective customers. Depending on the type of product you sell, you can include behind-the-scene production videos, demonstration videos, 360-degree product rotations, and even live streaming can be include in your ecommerce website. Also, including videos in your site can boost SEO rankings, increase conversions, get more social shares, and help your prospects gain more information in less time. You can use video sharing sites like YouTube and Instagram to promote your products more efficiently.

Are You Planning to Build an Ecommerce Website

Are you planning to build an ecommerce website to get more customers and build your brand presence online? If you are a small or medium-sized retail business based in Middle East and you want your own online store, there are many reliable and established website designing companies in Oman you can approach and they will provide you client-specific and budget-friendly solutions within minimum turnaround. You can choose a package that consists of website design, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and mobile marketing that will completely fulfill your needs and requirements.  

Why Middle Eastern Hotel Businesses Need to Implement an Online Hotel Management System

These days, every business task is now becoming computerized, whether it is email archiving, document management, help desk management, or facility management. When it comes to hotel businesses, they need to embrace digital technology if they want to and streamline their routine business tasks and survive the competition. For small hotels that do not have many rooms, it is somewhat OK to use a pencil and paper system for their hotel management. But, if you are managing a hotel of more than hundred rooms, then you will be needing a web-based reliable, and custom-made hotel management system in Oman to streamline your routine business functions. Let’s think about it from your customer’s view, if they call in and want to book a room, you will be looking through your paper-based reservation system to check vacant rooms, but your customers won’t like to wait for five-to-fifteen minutes to book a room.

Required Features in an Online Hotel Management System

A reliable and customizable hotel management system must have reporting facility to see accounting information, sales, and active folios/reservations. This web-based software system not only allow you to boost your business, but it also allow you to efficiently manage your hotel enterprise. You really need to have a computerized management system that allows you to quickly view cost and profits at any point in time.

Another important feature that can be used to keep track of is the employee payroll. As the web-based hotel management software is very accurate than the paper-based system, you can efficiently keep track of the hours that the employees have worked. It can also help you keep track of this so that employees are not adding in more hours when they do not done their routine work.

Another important aspect of implementing hotel management software is that it enables you to find trends and patterns with your customers. For example, if you notice that August and September tend to be slow, then you can increase your marketing efforts to improve those months.

If you have a restaurant inside of your hotel, then make sure that you find a software system that allows you to run your restaurant as well. This would include the ability to improve your sales for your restaurant, which is separate from hotel sales. Also, you would want to make sure that the system would have the ability to establish room charges from customer’s restaurant purchase to their room.

Hotel Management Software that Fulfills Your Requirements

A web-based hotel management software helps Middle Eastern businesses to avoid all the hurdles faced by hotel owners and it helps them in keep track of everything that is going on their hotel. There are software developing firms that provides their clients with tailor-made and budget-friendly hotel management system that fulfills their business needs and requirements. When it comes to your hotel business, a hotel management system is an excellent way to invest, and of course, there would be an initial cost. However, your investment will surely pay off when the hotel management software you implemented saves you time and money in the long term.