'Net Features : zoovy

Should Merchants Shift Their Focus to Marketplaces?

Allison Howen — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:00:00 GMT

As the e-commerce world continues to expand through channels like mobile and tablets, one e-commerce software provider predicts that the next big thing for online retailers is marketplaces.

“Consumers are flocking to marketplaces for good reason,” says Brian Horakh, founder and CEO of Zoovy. “These sites provide a superior user experience with a unified purchase history, large selection of products, sense of familiarity and ease of use. Likewise, online merchants are transitioning their business to marketplaces to take advantage of this trend and view marketplaces as strategic to the success of their growing business.”

Some of the biggest names in the marketplace space include Amazon, eBay and Buy.com, and although many consumers rely on search engines like Google to search for products from a vendor-specific retail store, Horakh predicts that soon, consumers’ first choice for shopping searches will be within a trusted marketplace.

“Marketplaces direct shoppers to the most reliable seller and give consumers the confidence to make a purchase by providing critical buyer information like user feedback, rankings and price comparisons – while search engines do little to help consumers make an informed decision about where to purchase their products,” says Horakh. “Regardless of how optimized a website may be for particular keywords, search engine optimization (SEO) does not ensure the customer’s purchase will be accurate or arrive on time.”

If this assessment holds true, and marketplaces are the future of e-commerce, the obvious first step for merchants is to create a marketplace presence. But the next step is where things get complicated – merchants must increase their marketplace visibility in order to increase sales, and this is done by becoming the marketplace’s most reliable seller.

E-commerce services and tools provider Zoovy has coined the term “marketplace optimization,” which describes the method in which retailers convince the marketplace that they are the most reliable seller. Zoovy will announce its marketplace optimization practice in January 2012.

According to Marketplaceoptimization.com, the five essentials of marketplace optimization include minimizing order cancellations, increasing inventory availability, performing dynamic repricing, improving customer experience and optimizing logistics.

“Much the same way that SEO improves the visibility of Web sites while searching for terms on a search engine, marketplace optimization will provide sellers with insight into the ranking algorithms or signals used by marketplaces to select preferred vendors,” says Horakh.

Four Strategies for E-commerce Success

Allison Howen — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Maintaining a successful e-commerce site is a vital part of a thriving retail business model these days. However, with the ever-changing technologies available on the Web, deciding on an e-commerce strategy can be difficult.

Brian Horakh, the founder and CEO of e-commerce software provider Zoovy, has identified the following four strategies as paramount for midsize retailers who want to increase sales, enhance customer relations and build a more profitable business.

Shipping Promotions

According to a Comscore report from May 2011, 61 percent of consumers will abandon a purchase if free shipping isn’t offered. This is why it’s important for retailers to provide the best shipping rates possible, as well as work with vendors for incentives. Additionally, providing an effective return management system can improve customer satisfaction and retention, reduce costs, increase operational efficiency, maximize the value of goods sold and minimize the impact of returns on profits.

"Return management can make or break midsize retailers who are trying to grow their business," says Horakh. "Yet many retailers have not seriously evaluated their return policies and processes. With product returns costing U.S. retailers nearly $14 billion per year, it's imperative to have a clear returns plan in place as part of an overall shipping strategy."

Multiple Storefront Expansion

By expanding to multiple storefronts, retailers can increase their business by tailoring different sites to different consumers. It is imperative to determine the best set up for multiple storefronts by considering SEO, navigation, usability and shopping carts. Storefronts may have entirely separate products, brands, customer databases, checkout, payment methods and shipping options. However, one back-end system should handle the logistics of each site in order for more efficient management.

Competitive Repricing Options

In order to stay competitive, retailers should have the ability to reprice items by using an automated tool. This will allow retailers to alter the price of an item in a marketplace without guesswork, integration hassles or manual data import/export, as well as provide retailers with an advantage and an increase in sales velocity.

Valuable Reporting

By having an effective reporting tool, important information is readily available to merchants and guesswork is taken out. A good reporting tool should be comprised of four components: dashboards that show performance trends, statistics and graphs; reports that provide summarized lines of a period of time; structured raw data that provides the ability to remove verifiable and actionable data; and business intelligence, which provides data about relationships and trends. An effective reporting tool will help retailers get the most out of their data and allow more intelligent business decisions to be made.

"Many retailers confuse Google Analytics with business intelligence," says Horakh. "While Google Analytics provides reports with some data, it does not provide the ability for retailers to interrogate that data. True business intelligence provides a mechanism for retails to develop consistent, data-based business decisions with operational capabilities so they can quickly take action, thus eliminating wasted spending and ultimately increasing sales."

Beat Competitors with an Amazon Repricing Engine

Linc Wonham — Thu, 05 May 2011 18:00:00 GMT

E-commerce software provider Zoovy has announced a pilot of its Amazon Repricing Engine, which is designed to automatically adjust product pricing on Amazon to match or beat similar products offered by competitors.

The new Amazon Repricing Engine will monitor competitors’ stock-keeping units (SKUs) to maximize time for Zoovy’s customers’ products in the Amazon Buy Box. The Buy Box is a coveted place for sellers’ products to appear, as sales are typically much higher for a product in the box versus products that aren’t.

For example, one Zoovy retailer has experienced a six-fold increase when his products are in the Buy Box. As more entities begin selling on Amazon, the more competitive the Buy Box becomes. While many factors figure into which product is featured in the Buy Box, one of the most important factors is price.

Zoovy’s new repricing engine aims to remove the guesswork from this process with no integration hassles or manual data import/export.

“Currently, sellers must either use a third-party repricing tool to keep their data synchronized between Zoovy and the third-party tool – or they must manually reprice their items periodically through the day, which is an incredibly laborious process,” says Brian Horakh, founder and CEO of Zoovy. “With our Amazon Repricing Engine, we’ve created a highly function-based tool that will offer greater efficiency and success in manipulating pricing in the Amazon Buy Box.”

Because the Amazon Repricing Engine is designed to integrate with each seller’s existing store, merchants can configure repricing settings via the same interface they already use to manage their products. Additionally, sellers can alter pricing strategies while simultaneously performing other tasks that commonly affect how repricing is handled – such as managing inventory and monitoring supplier availability – thus leading to better decision-making.

Zoovy says that its sellers who take advantage of Amazon Repricing Engine can expect to see anywhere from a 300- to 900-percent increase in sales velocity for items that were previously repriced by hand. Sellers can expect to see a modest increase in sales velocity for items that were already being repriced with another tool, but will realize an even greater savings in time and management overhead.

The Amazon Repricing Engine is currently available at no cost as a pilot to existing Zoovy customers. Once user feedback is obtained and testing is complete, Zoovy will take the feature into general release.

Zoovy Adds Two New E-commerce Marketplaces

Linc Wonham — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 01:00:00 GMT

To support two of the hottest marketplaces for online retailers, e-commerce platform Zoovy has announced new integrations with Buy.com and Sears.com.

Buy.com reported a 146-percent year-over-year sales growth for its marketplace in 2010, and Sears.com features millions of products suited for merchants seeking to sell clothing and shoes, bags and luggage, electronics, health and beauty products and more.

Merchants can create accounts and upload their products directly onto Buy.com and Sears.com and configure them through Zoovy’s platform. Product information can be exported directly from the platform and Zoovy automatically updates inventory, imports orders, sends tracking information and fulfills orders for the marketplace.