Ecommerce is a tough world. As an e-merchant you will probably never meet a single customer in person and barely speak to a few of them (only true if your quality of service is good enough). On the other side, Ecommerce is an exponentially growing sector, there is just a few that offer such a sustainable growth rate year after year at a global scale.

UK is the 1st e-commerce market with 96€ billion above Germany (50b€) and France (45b€). And some emerging countries like Ukraine, Greece or Turkey have astonishing market growth rates, generally over 40% per year.

However, last year the average basket amount decreased (again) in Western Europe countries. As an example, the average transaction in France went down by 3.5% versus 2012, at 84,5€ per transaction. On average, european shoppers spend a little more than £1.000 online. But shopping cart abandonment rate stays very high, around 80 to 90% in Europe.

What makes people quit transactions when they already committed to your site by adding a product to the basket? What are the quickest alternatives?

Expensive shipping ?

Shipping fees are never a good surprise, never. Unless there are free of charge. When visitors consider shipping costs too expensive, they tend to reject the whole transaction including, the product and your website. Usually they will leave rapidly and never come back. In all countries across Europe, expensive shipping cost tend to reduce conversion rates. The solution : You can either absorb a small part of the shipping costs to stay competitive or work on the clarity of the information. What visitors hate most is the feeling of being fooled. If the same shipping amount is announced in advance, people will be more aware of it and not feeling like they felt in a trap. Ideally, you’ll want to do both. (Lire la suite…)

2013 has been a very busy year for European teams at Lengow. Well, 2014 will be even more intense. In March, Lengow’s team members will be available to meet you in half a dozen countries including Spain, England, Germany, Monaco and even Brazil !

Here is the list of the shows we will attend and next month so that you can plan a visit to our stands over there :

12-13 March : e-Show Barcelona

e-Show Barcelona in one of the major events dedicated to online strategy and e-commerce performance in Spain. Lengow Spain employees will be available to answer any question you may have in Barcelona, regarding any of Lengow’s products including Feed Management and Campaign Tracking.

 

 

13-14 March : Lengow Day Brazil

Lengow organized its own Ecommerce Day in Paris during Q2 of 2013. Considering the success of the event in Paris, Lengow decided to take the event to other countries in 2014 and this will start with Sao Paulo in March for the first Lengow Day Brazil.

(Lire la suite…)

Valentine’s day is one of the most important moments of the year for an e-merchant after the Christmas holidays. That is why you have to plan this event carefully, and make sure that your offer will be well targeted. However, remember that customer experience will be a key element to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Here are five tips that could help you rock your sales on Valentine’s day.

 

1. Valentine’s Day email campaign

First of all, remember to send a Valentine’s Day email to your customers a few weeks before February 14th. This will be useful to a lot of people, for example those who do not have enough time to look for a gift, for those who actually have a short memory and even those who are in lack of inspiration. In this case your added value will be to suggest gift ideas to them.

As an e-tailer, it is crucial to promote your best products through regular email marketing campaigns with a custom design, adapted to Valentine’s Day color code. Moreover, remember to create a dynamic page setting in order to attract the attention of your customers and remind them that February 14th is coming soon.

2. Wish lists on social networks

Wish lists on social networks are also a good way for the customer to have an idea of gifts that his/her significant other would like to have. It reduces the risk for the customer to offer a gift that will not please. At Lengow, we have designed a quick yet easy way to create a « F-store » on your Facebook fan page through the Lengow solution that allows your fans to create wish lists on Facebook. With the wish list from Lengow, Facebook members can select gifts they would like to have for their Valentine’s Day. Moreover, Facebook members could then share this list with their Facebook friends.

3. Delivery

Some people tend to order at the last minute. To differentiate yourself from competitors, you could guarantee the delivery before Valentine’s Day on your website and mention it clearly in your email campaign. It will reassure your customer base and help develop customer loyalty over time.

4. Offer gift wrapping

A lot of e-shoppers will order their valentine’s gift online and get it sent to their valentine. Thus, do not hesitate to offer free gift-wrapping and mention it clearly on your website as it will probably save a lot of time for your visitors.

5. Provide outstanding Customer experience

Customer experience has to be your main strategy if you are a pure player since it is one of the best ways to create a long-term relationship with your customers online. That is why periods like Valentine’s Day are good ways to materialize it through personalized hand-written notes on behalf of the sender or any particular attention that creates a WoW effect to the recipient. In the end, this will make the sender shine even more, hopefully he will thank you twice later…

All the Lengow UK team members are delighted to announce that Lengow will be exhibiting in Birmingham at the end of March to meet with british e-tailers at the NEC center.

Every year, Internet Retailing Expo, also called « IRX » hosts 5000+ international visitors from across the retail sector, who commute to Birmingham to connect with over 200 of the leading partners and suppliers to work on how they can implement the latest developments in technology to immediately drive their sales up. Lengow is precisely about that : Lengow aims to increase dramatically e-tailers visibility and profitability across all e-commerce channels, including price shopping comparison sites, marketplaces, affiliates programs, retargeting platforms and sponsored links, blogs and even social networks.

Lengow has developed an entire SaaS solution dedicated to marketing performance, including a all-in-one tag container called TagCapsule (to centralize all tags into a single one and make product pages load faster), PriceWatch (to monitor and watch the evolution of competitors’ pricing strategies) as well as a powerful analytics tool allowing e-tailers to monitor the performance of any kind of marketing actions and track cart abandonment in the conversion funnel of e-commerce websites.

Our presence at IRX makes a lot of sense as Internet Retailing Expo has been designed to uncover the latest in multichannel e-commerce and allows retailers the opportunity to future-proof their digital and multi-channel strategy by comparing it against top brands taking part in the show. At Lengow, we operate more than 2.600 websites internationally (among whom Quicksilver, LaFnac, Office Depot, LaRedoute, etc.) thanks to 1.200+ partnerships with e-commerce channels around the world allowing their clients to sell abroad virtually anywhere.

So at IRX, every single e-tailer will have a chance to learn about the innovations available to him (and we have a bunch of it to unveil to you). Visitors will also be able to hear about the latest developments in different areas dedicated to specific topics such as :

- the Innovation Studio,

- the Knowledge Lounge,

- the Ask the Experts Clinic, where e-tailers can book an appointment to speak to retail experts,

If you are looking for ways to increase your sales by selling through more channels or even sell abroad, we suggest that you pay us a visit at the NEC in Birmingham on 26th and 27th March 2014, we’ll be on the F12 stand.

We all look forward meeting you in person on March 26th and 27th

PS : In October 2013, Lengow received the Award of ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2013′ from by EY and L’Express in France and an Ecommerce Award for its International Development, the year before.