E-commerce challenges: in the fight for conversion :: Dienas Bizness

At the end of the working day, every entrepreneur wants to see if and how much he has earned. If we talk about e-commerce, then there is nothing more important than conversion, because if the visitor does not become a buyer, is it even worth continuing?

At a time when the cost of attracting one buyer is constantly increasing, all businessmen are fighting to increase conversion in fierce competition. About how an entrepreneur can take the first steps in the digital environment and choose cooperation partners who will ensure effective conversion with the same enthusiasm as the entrepreneur himself.

What’s happening in Latvia: the first purchase on the Internet and a wide selection of e-commerce platforms

Currently, e-commerce is growing more slowly than during the pandemic, but it still accounts for an increasing share of total retail sales worldwide. Experts estimate that by the end of 2023, one out of every 5 retail transactions will be conducted online. During Covid-19, the number of people who shopped online for the first time increased.

A 45-year-old man has never shopped in e-stores and has never used a paycheck. The pandemic actually forced such people to develop digital skills, which certainly made people more educated. Then people realized the advantages of online and now they cannot imagine their daily life, for example, without the delivery of food and other daily items from e-shops. It was during Covid-19 that we saw the highest number of new, unique users and new card connections. According to Eurostat data, 61.98% of all Internet users in Latvia have shopped on the Internet in the last 12 months – this indicator shows that e-commerce in Latvia has great capacity and potential.

It is clear that the Covid-19 pandemic forced not only consumers to review their shopping habits, but also entrepreneurs to consider new trade channels – e-commerce platforms. Open Source platforms such as Magento, PrestaShop, Opencart, WooCommerce and others are a good first step towards e-commerce or starting a business.

If an entrepreneur does not have a lot of funds and wants to study the market and demand, then this is a good option to start. If you do everything yourself – create a website template, download images and product descriptions, connect payment modules – a few hundred euros will be enough. However, as the business grows, so do the demands on the website and its functionality. At this stage of development, entrepreneurs begin to turn to specialists, think about effective integration – how to optimally connect the e-commerce platform with all other existing systems, so that there is no need to manage and maintain several systems from several service providers, which require additional resources.

If the company’s development strategy extends beyond the markets of the Baltic countries, it is worth looking more broadly and considering the use of international e-commerce platforms. When entering new markets, an entrepreneur has to consider adapting his products and services not only in terms of language, but also in terms of cultural characteristics, currencies, etc. Additional resources will also be required for localization. A greater number of solutions suitable for the local market could contribute to a greater use of e-commerce technologies in companies.

This means that homegrown website development platforms like Mozello can gain some advantage by providing solutions that are adapted directly to the local market: for example, integration with delivery companies is provided, as well as multiple languages ​​​​are immediately embedded in the website templates (for most foreign website development platforms, this is not an option by default, but a paid service) .The pandemic activated not only e-commerce in general, but gave impetus to private entrepreneurs to start business online.

We see that the proportion of small entrepreneurs who want to take the first steps in the field of digital commerce has increased in Europe. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the pool of entrepreneurs was supplemented by those professionals who were able to create digital products in a short time and sell them online. For example, fitness trainers created and marketed digital workouts, nutritionists offered meal planning services, etc. Some continue or even increase their online presence, but there are also those who do not use e-commerce to promote sales and have completely returned to the physical environment. According to our statistics, we see that about 10% of companies disabled the ability to accept payment on their e-platforms after the relaxation of the Covid-19 restrictions.

Experience and experience again

Implementation of e-commerce requires a lot of time, resources, money, knowledge. Therefore, when creating a company’s strategy, it is necessary to decide in which field the company will use the DIY (Do It Yourself) method and where it will look for experienced cooperation partners and service providers. One of the areas where intermediaries cannot be dispensed with is the acceptance of payments, and here banks and other financial institutions come to the fore.

Most customers try to find banks or financial intermediaries where they can get the most necessary services in one place on the principle of a one-stop shop. That is why we not only provide classic e-commerce services, but also develop them FinTech direction, or BaaS – Banking as a Service. This means that we can provide FinTech companies or startups with solutions that will allow them to create their own branded products for their end users in a short period of time. LPB Bank The BaaS solution provides everything necessary for payment systems (PI, EMI, PSP) to be able to sell their product and start serving customers. For this purpose, the bank provides such services as, for example, segregated accounts, Accepting Visa, Mastercard and Apple Pay paymentsproviding SEPA addressable BIC connection, SEPA Instant, TARGET2, virtual IBAN and soon BIN sponsorship.

The key to success is not only the ability to make strategically correct decisions, but also to understand what factors significantly affect the user experience and constantly work on improving them.

In the fight for conversion, you have to think about everything that might seem insignificant. Imagine you want to buy something on a Chinese online retail platform, but all the prices there are listed in Chinese Yuan. As a buyer, you need to convert yuan to euro to understand the price of the item, but after the purchase, a completely different amount is removed from the bank account with currency conversion fees. This causes great discomfort and, most likely, you will not buy anything from this site again; and vice versa – paying in your own currency increases your level of convenience, you become a loyal customer, and the company’s conversion increases. That is why an entrepreneur, thinking about his markets and looking for an e-commerce solution supplier, should choose a partner that can ensure the acceptance of payments in several currencies. The bigger the geography, the more currencies. LPB Bank provides its customers with a very wide range of currencies, which will certainly help an ambitious company to conquer new markets and offer end consumers the best user experience.

You can only optimize what can be measured by monitoring many, many parameters, and technologies here can significantly improve the internal processes and work efficiency of companies. Of course, statistics or data analysis cannot impress anyone today, in a data-oriented business environment, it has turned from Wow to Must Have. But it’s one thing to do it manually, for example, putting data together in Excel files and manually creating graphs, and quite another to be able to visualize key indicators in one understandable and beautiful dashboard, automating everything possible. This is our global goal – to provide services that make the client’s everyday work as easy and more efficient as possible. For example, if the customer sees in the control panel not only the information that the payment was refused, but also why, it is possible to analyze what happened, contact cooperation partners in time and quickly eliminate errors. Maybe this path seems long, but in the end it gives every entrepreneur the desired result – improvement in conversion and, therefore, an increase in profits.

It should be noted that the last few years were not easy for anyone. I don’t want to say loud words about the fact that difficulties tempered us all and made us stronger. There are companies that were able to smoothly reorient their business when certain markets became unavailable, but there are also those that did not survive, because in the jungle, it is the survival of the fittest. However, the challenges gave us an unprecedented experience. This means that for many years we have cooperated with all kinds of clients from Europe, we have encountered various problems and found solutions for them. And this, in turn, gives new customers added value in terms of efficiency, because they are really able to learn from the mistakes of others using LPB Bank’s experience. Due to the fact that we work with sanctions lists, AML, GDPR and other strict requirements on a daily basis, we can provide our clients with meaningful advice that helps them reduce risks, improve conversion rates and grow their business.