'Net Features : hubspot

The Top 15 Apps E-Commerce Websites Can’t Do Without

Administrator — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:50:00 GMT

:: By Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani,Co-founders and Co-CEOs, Bigcommerce ::

Statistics show that online shopping is growing rapidly — a trend that presents both opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurs selling via websites.

First, some numbers. According to Forrester Research, online shoppers in the United States will spend $327 billion in 2016, up 62 percent from $202 billion in 2011. By 2016, Forrester adds, e-retail will account for 9 percent of total retail sales. Growth in the number of online consumers will climb 15 percent, up to 192 million in the U.S. from 167 million last year. And each buyer will spend more on average — up 44 percent to $1,738 from $1,207 in 2012.

Good news and Bad News

On one hand, this rapid growth presents a lucrative market of potential prospects. On the other hand, the proliferation of online shopping outlets means that small- and medium-sized businesses have more competition than ever before. A good inventory and well-built website will only get you halfway to success in this competitive market — if that.

Online retailers have several obstacles to overcome on their way to success. Among those is conversion — that is, converting visitors to customers. By some estimates, the average conversion rate in Internet retail is only 3 percent.

Another obstacle is shopping cart abandonment — when prospects add products to a cart but leave without checking out. Baymard Institute compared 18 separate studies on shopping cart abandonment, concluding that 67 percent of e-commerce transactions are abandoned on average.

Internet retail success demands that entrepreneurs learn how to keep their sites “sticky” — offering expert customer service, a robust shopping cart experience, customer-written product reviews, and any other means at their disposal to keep a prospective customer on their site hitting the “buy now” button (instead of wavering or going elsewhere for more information and a better deal).

Fortunately, there is now a wide array of applications designed specifically to overcome obstacles to Internet retail success for small- and medium-sized businesses. Software for email marketing, lead generation, customer service and support (including live chat), and streamlining accounts payable/receivable are all available — as are applications for revenue monitoring and inventory management, drop-shipping, order processing, retargeting and even buyer incentive and referral programs.

The Must-Have Applications for Internet Success

Let’s take a quick look at the software and services no fledgling Internet entrepreneur can live without.

HubSpot. When it comes to automated customer segmentation, this is the app. Users can sync their store data to one of the world’s leading marketing automation platforms, making email marketing and lead nurturing much easier.

MailChimp. Customer data seamlessly syncs with MailChimp for easy email marketing, newsletters, list management and measurement.

Zendesk. The leading cloud-based customer service software can pull in relevant customer data and display it right on the support tickets a company uses to track issues — leading to quicker support resolution and happier customers.

Webgility eCC. A powerful solution for connecting a store to any version of QuickBooks, as well as shipping processors and payment gateways — all streamlined and automated to save time and prevent errors.

Ordoro. This comprehensive shipping platform improves shipping times, reduces labor, decreases costs and gives them access to powerful drop-shipping capabilities.

Stitch Labs. Merchants today sell in a wide variety of ways, and StitchLabs pulls all those together into one order management tool. Whether orders are taken online, via phone or fax, or at events and trade shows, inventory is automatically synced across channels.

ShipStation. Merchants can integrate their stores with ShipStation’s sophisticated, easy to use solution to save time and money on shipping through automated order processing and batch shipping label creation.

Lexity Retargeting. Retargeting — once a weapon in the arsenal of only major companies— comes to small businesses with this Lexity app. By retargeting shoppers with professional, personalized display ads on other sites, this dynamic piece of software helps bring back some of the 98 percent of shoppers who don’t buy on their first visit.

Olark. Live chat and support have long been the linchpins for success among major players like Zappos and Apple. Olark gives merchants of almost any size the benefits of talking directly to their customers, including the ability to view cart contents for each visitor and offer upsells and special offers based on what they’re buying.

71lbs. Late UPS and FedEx shipments account for nearly 6 percent of all shipments. And what most merchants don’t know is that they are owed a full refund on orders that arrive late. When a merchant uses 71lbs, all their shipments are monitored for late orders, and refunds are automatically claimed and credited back to them.

SumAll. This is an incredibly powerful analytics tool that retailers can use to monitor all their revenue data in real time, including sales and discounts, allowing them to see which products and marketing efforts are worth investing in.

Yotpo. Internet retailers who install Yotpo on their stores get access to an easy-to-use, fully customizable review platform that allows customers to review products and share those reviews on social media, driving traffic and engagement.

RetailTower. With RetailTower, businesses can automatically submit their products into 15 shopping comparison engines, including Google Shopping, Amazon, Bing, SortPrice and more. Submission to these popular channels increases reach and drives sales.

Lexity Live. This app lets merchants track visitors on their site in real time, seeing which pages they view, which products they add to cart, and where they drop off. Lexity Live users can also chat with shoppers to close sales and get actionable marketing insights.

ReferralCandy. By using ReferralCandy, merchants can incentivize buyers to refer friends to their store by emailing them a shareable coupon after purchase.

As Internet sales continue to boom, it will take sophisticated tools and analytics to rise above the noise. Even the newest Internet entrepreneurs can enhance their websites — and their revenue figures — by taking advantage of applications and analytical capabilities previously reserved for only the largest, most popular online brands.

About the Authors

Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Bigcommerce, the world's fastest-growing SaaS e-commerce platform that helps power over 30,000 small businesses online. Contact Mitchell mitchell.harper@bigcommerce.com, Twitter handle @mitchellharper. Contact Eddie at eddie.machaalani@bigcommerce.com, Twitter handle @eddiemachaalani.

Real-time Landing Page Optimization with Unbounce

Linc Wonham — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Landing page optimization firm Unbounce and marketing software company HubSpot have announced an integration they say will provide a powerful publishing platform that enhances landing page performance.

Unbounce is a self-serve hosted service that provides Web marketers involved with paid search, banner ads, email or social media a simplified way to create, publish and test promotion-specific landing pages without the need for IT or developers. The company’s solutions are designed to give marketers the power to create, publish and optimize their landing pages on the fly.

“Integrating with HubSpot gives our customers the ability to capture lead information directly from their landing pages for real-time optimization,” says Unbounce CEO Rick Perreault. “HubSpot is well-known in the industry as providing a full-featured marketing platform for lead capture and management. We are pleased to be working with them to create a seamless experience for our customers.”

Features of the newly integrated Unbounce publishing platform include the following:

Build Pages Quickly – Templates and tools are provided to create and publish custom landing pages without IT support.

One-Click A/B Framework – Allows marketers to test their campaigns and learn about customers by testing different content, offers and calls to action.

Real-Time Analytics – Easily view reports on conversion rates and number of new leads with live, actionable data.

Focus on Your Strengths – Unbounce creates a turn-key solution so that marketers can focus on what they do best, creating engaging and creative campaigns without the headache of webpage coding.

“Unbounce provides the tools for companies to easily create and publish landing pages, ideal for A/B testing,” says Arjun Moorthy, VP of business development at HubSpot. “This integration gives their customers the ability to easily optimize landing page performance and transfer this data into their existing HubSpot accounts.”

Faster Response Times from HubSpot and Ifbyphone

Allison Howen — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:20:00 GMT

For marketers, shorter lead response times are a huge factor when it comes to boosting sales and closing more qualified inbound marketing leads.

However, shortening lead response times can be difficult. That is why HubSpot has partnered up with Ifbyphone to provide users with the LeadResponder app, which enables HubSpot users to quickly connect with and convert qualified inbound marketing leads through voice-based marketing automation.

This app solves the problem that arises after a prospect completes a Web form and then waits for a follow-up response. During this time, sales are often lost, either to competitors or because of a prospect's loss of interest.

But with this new app in the HubSpot App Marketplace, HubSpot users are quickly connected with marketing leads because software automatically notifies an available sales rep after a qualified prospect fills out a Web form. Then the sales rep is given basic information about the prospect and the two are immediately connected.

"This latest addition to the App Marketplace offers HubSpot customers the ultimate marketing automation package by combining a leading inbound lead generation tool with voice-based marketing automation technology," says Irv Shapiro, CEO and Founder of Ifbyphone. "Voice interactions are often a missing link that marketers fail to consider as part of their overall marketing strategy. With Ifbyphone's LeadResponder for HubSpot, sales representatives close the gap in their lead response time, helping them to more quickly convert qualified leads into sales."

State of the Twittersphere

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:59:00 GMT

Hubspot released its third State of the Twittersphere report this week and found a significant slowing of the growth of Twitter, but that the average Twitter user is more engaged.

Twitter's growth slowed from its peak of 13% in March 2009 to 3.5% in October 2009. That would actually be pretty respectable growth if it weren't for the fact that the platform's international traffic continues to flatten as reported by Comscore, Quantcast.com and Compete.com. Of course, it's smart to factor in the use of tools like TweetDeck which don't require anyone to actually visit the site itself. A better metric might be to look at the total number of tweets posted or perhaps a rolling statistic which addressed how many accounts were updated on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

It's not all bad news for the micro-blogging service. Those using the services continue to be engaged with it:

- the average Twitter account has 300 followers. In July the average was 170
- the average account now follows 173 accounts. In July the average was only 47
- the average account today has posted 420 updates. In July that number was 119

This might just be regular growth but participation is yielding some measurable results - including for us. Twitter represents a small but significant source of WebsiteMagazine.com traffic, though so far we have only 6,400 followers.