e-Commerce world analyzed
Ideas
Great ideas!
Open source enterprise level solution missing? here is a proposed solution
Jun 25th
I was reading this article about “Open-Source Making Significant Traction in the Enterprise“, and I started to analyze this from the E-commerce point of view. I’m not sure if I’m missing something but I can’t find an enterprise level open source solution that really makes me say “wow”. The most advanced and only enterprise level solution is Magento but the Enterprise Edition starts at $12,990 USD/year!
On the other side, usually the regular and even good solutions are not that good when talking about backoffice, stock management, deposits, I mean, the whole accounting, logistic and CRM every big e-commerce site needs. That’s why some time ago I started a reasearch in my company (Openpower) approaching to this from the other side, looking for a good ERP free open source solutions that can be expanded to create a full package. In this path I found solutions like Compiere and all its spin-off, ADempiere, OpenXpertya, and the great pre-configured Argentine OpenXpertya spin-off called Libertya -of which I’m certified dealer- and now the challenge is to create the web site front-end based on a world class ERP like Libertya. Are you interested? contact me and we can start a Source Forge project. I can get all the needed support from the Libertya Latin American community.
Using barcode scanning in cell phones for e-Commerce
Mar 19th
Today I was looking at the new feature cell phones have for barcodes scanning. Then I thought, that being so boring to browse supermarket web sites, why not to scan the products you have at home with your phone and then to send the list to the supermarket!?. Then I thought… even better!, why not to scan the code, send it to a web service of the shop and to get availability and price!, so then you can add it to your cart and check-out on the phone or with the credit card on file? I think the new phones are so powerful and most of them are online, so they become a great way to interact with barcoded products, outside or inside the supermarket. For example, you can be in the supermarket and you like a product but you want ot add it in a wishlist for future purchases, then you just open the shop application, scan the barcode and add it to a shopping list. So the market have good information, and you have a good service. Now there are some iPhone apps that search for the best price scanning the barcode. Look at this video:
Good, right? I believe there are many things to do as services with this new features, even with 2D codes (QR codes) and scanlife that are becoming very common. Many ideas comes to my mind. Maybe I will publish some in future posts. A good example follows:
Google has mailed out window stickers with two-dimensional bar codes (aka, QR codes
) to the most-searched for or clicked-on businesses in its local business directory
Online lead, offline purchase
Mar 15th
We all know that many web sites have a conversion rate that is a small percentage of its unique visitors. Well, let’s be honest, most e-Commerce sites have proportionally low rates. This means that many visitors use the web site as catalogs and finally pick up the phone or walk to purchase in the local store. Online marketers have huge problem with this because in terms of conversion (if we are talking about a corporate e-Commerce site like instance hp.com) the visitor finally purchased an HP server based on the online information but do it offline without being noticed. In fact, I did it several times! then for the brand it was a sucessfull conversion, for the online marketer it was a dead end. The big difficulty here is how to join both ends: online lead with offline purchase.
Here are 5 ideas:
- Create a banner inviting to register the product after the offline purchase, giving some services, updates, gifts, subscription, or whatever you can give without a significant cost but good enough to attract the offline buyer.
- Connect the shopping cart with your dealers list, so if the visitor finally want to buy offline you make the connection between both, and you can follow it up (don’t forget to advise that offline prices may be higher than online)
- Give the chance to review the dealer after the offline purchase, so if you rate it high the dealer get points for a ranking, , improve reputation, or something like that.
- If possible include Buy Offline as a possibility for visitors, then provide a form that let you get useful information to follow the lead and its conversion.
- Give “pay & pick up offline” as an option, provide a CRM interface for dealers to confirm the order, so when the purchase is picked up the dealer change the order status letting you know about the success conversion.
More ideas comming… have some to share? comment here.
