Archive for the ‘Help’ Category

Promoting Your Facebook Store

March 30th, 2012

Facebook Store

Getting the word out about your Facebook store, or offers and specials you’re having is pretty easy! We promise that once you read through this, you’ll know what we mean by EASY!

Link to Your Facebook Store

Once you’ve added the store to Facebook, and positioned the store tab well for fans to see, you can link to your Facebook store from anywhere. This can be a post in Facebook to announce it, or even a newsletter or email you’re sending out. Your Facebook store URL would be as follows: https://www.facebook.com/Wazala/app_147605761926866 – Just replace the page name Wazala, with your own page name as it appears in your own Facebook URL.

Facebook Specific Offers

So let’s say you want to offer your Facebook fans a coupon code to entice them to buy. The Wazala’s social promoter engine, can help you get the word out. Whenever you add something newsworthy to your store, like a coupon code or place a product on sale, Wazala reminds you to post this on Facebook and/or Twitter. It will provide you with suggestions for your post that you can edit to your liking, and with a single click, this post can be posted to your Facebook page without you ever logging into Facebook! Go ahead try it, we know you’d love it and your fans would appreciate the love.

Happy Facebook Selling!

Promoting Your New Product

March 14th, 2012

Got a new product in your online store? Hooray! New things are always exciting, but the tough part is getting your customers excited as you are. There are many steps you can take to ensure that your product launch is a successful one, and we hope these would help.

Have a Goal in Mind
What are you trying to accomplish? Coming up with a promotional directive is a great way to lay the foundation for your promotional campaign. Do you have a set inventory and wish to reach a certain amount of sales? Maybe your new product open doors to attract a new customer base? Or are you trying to up-sell, or get previous customers to  come back for more. Setting an ambitious but realistic goal will help you to hone your promotional tactics and measure the campaign’s success more efficiently. If your goals are usually similar from launch to launch, the results of these campaign can be A/B tested against one another to hopefully give insight on which tactics work best for your products.

Get a Good Mix
Every product launch should involve a familiar mix of tools, such as newsletters, press releases, social media marketing, and even paid advertisements. Making sure to utilize all these venues can help increase your sales. In addition to using your go-to means of communication, you should also try to add something new into the marketing mix, be it a guest blog, a YouTube video, or even a Pinterest post. Try as many new avenues as you can. It can’t hurt, and might prove to be extremely rewarding if utilized effectively.

A Fresh Product Description
No one wants to buy something that sounds boring. So make sure to add some spice to your descriptions, and add cool images that really make the product pop. Checkout our earlier posts on writing killer product descriptions, and showcasing your product pictures well.

Facebook Contests
Facebook contests are a great way to get people involved and excited about a new product. Have people upload photos, videos, or post on your wall. Get creative! The prize doesn’t have to be huge; maybe the winner will get your new product for free. In order to enter the contest, each person should have to like your page, which will gain you fans and raise awareness about your brand and the contest. Offer everyone who enters the contest a discount on your new product, which will in turn give them more incentive to buy.

Feature It
A simple tweak to your website home page to feature your new product can definitely help. Place it on top and make sure to state that it is available for sale. You can also create a new category in your store as “NEW ARRIVALS” and add it there. New and returning customers like to see that you’re constantly adding new goods for sale. This tweak can also help in attracting a new audience, especially if you’re product is unlike anything you usually sell.

These are just a few of the many options available to you when promoting a new product.  Just find out what works for you, and run with it!

Happy Selling!

Monitoring Your Ecommerce Business

March 7th, 2012

In order to have a successful business, one must constantly reflect and measure certain key factors. Here are 3 components worth evaluating on a consistent basis.

The Budget
If you don’t keep track of your cash flow, your business will likely fail. Keep your finances in order. You need to be aware of how much money you have coming in, and how much you’re allocating for different aspects of your business. Spending with abandon, and without keeping accurate records is a recipe for disaster.Asses your budget, and see which purchases and investments you can make now, and which ones you should hold off on until you have more free cash. Keep this up and you will increase profit.

Online Presence
Keeping track of online store web traffic is pivotal to any ecommerce business success. To do this, you need to have a way to monitor and analyze how many people are visiting your site. Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you in this respect. It also paints a detailed picture of your customers behaviors and inclinations as they browse your page, and gives you detailed reports on conversion rates that will allow you to make informed decisions about what is working and what is not. Wazala integrates with Google Analytics, and if you’re new to this, Google provides a good starting guide here.

Customer Satisfaction
This one is obvious, customers satisfaction is paramount to a healthy business, so keep tabs. Are you using a support desk to communicate? Many email solutions like Zendesk offer the ability to engage and ask customers for a satisfaction rating this will  help automate your communication as well as report satisfaction. Engaging customers via social media is another effective way to keep a finger on the pulse of their contentment. This will allow you to address any complaints or concerns your customers might have before they evolve into a bigger issue. Also you may consider sending out a brief survey after each purchase is delivered. Knowing your positive and negative attributes will help you build a better service.

Just like you have to continually exercise to keep in shape, you must regularly monitor these elements in order to keep your business in tip-top condition. It’s an ongoing process, but if you follow through, you will find yourself reaping the rewards that accompany knowing where your business stands.

Tips on Packaging Your Order

February 29th, 2012

You’ve made a sale, congrats! Somebody wants your product and has paid good money for it. Now the only thing left to do is get it to them.  Though this seems like a simple task, there are a things you should consider when packaging your product to get it to your customer safe and on time.

What to Protect?
Think about how the package is going to be sent and what elements you should prepare it for. Postal and carrier workers have a nasty habit of throwing light packages during the sorting process (sometimes even heavy ones). Packages go through a lot in the process of being shipped, be it shoots, conveyor belts, or a fall of a truck. Therefore,  as a rule of thumb you should pack your parcel so that it can withstand about a 3 foot/1 meter drop onto hard concrete. You should also take precautions against elements such as weather and friction.

What to Use?
 There are variety of materials that you can use to package your product. You need to find the one that best suits what you are shipping. Different materials suit different products better, and doing your research on available boxes and shipping envelopes helps. How the product needs to be presented may also have an effect on the material.  For instance, you could use a clear plastic material if the customer needed to be able to clearly see the product, the magazine industry does it, and it helps spread the word about you as it’s making its’ way to your customer.

Is It Fragile?
We’ve all had fragile items break on us. It’s tragic, but inevitable. But what causes fragile items  to break, and how can you decrease the chances of this happening to your product en-route to your customer? Fragile items can break by hitting the ground too hard, or by getting twisted or crushed. To combat this, your package should not only cushion against impact, but should also have a rigid structure. Make sure that nothing can move within the package. This is especially true with glass items, where even if you have an extremely strong outer package, if it is loosely packed, it will most certainly break.

Hope these tips help and have a wonderful day!

 

What’s Your Plan B?

February 14th, 2012

It can happen to any business at any time. It will more than likely happen to your business at some point. Something will go wrong.  It could be your servers crashing, your power going out, or your even your supplier’s fault. In any case, it pays (literally) to be prepared.  Here are a few tips on making sure your business is ready for whatever storm may come its way.

Keep A Key Under The Rug
Backup everything important, including customer lists, employee data, and inventory. Keep it someplace safe that is not your primary location. You may also want to take a look at backing up your data online for a reasonable fee.

Make Sure Your Covered
If you don’t have insurance for your property, it would probably be a good idea to look into what policies would suit your business. Property insurance reimburses you for the cost of any damages to your equipment or buildings.  You should also check out business interruption insurance, which will help you in case your business has to shut down temporarily due to unforeseen events.

Have More Sources
What if one of your main vendors shuts down? Do you have a plan to keep your business up and running in that event? Look into other possible places to get the supplies you need in case of a shortage. Make sure they can also deliver on time and set up your action plan.

A good source is the US Small Business Administration, they have a few tools that may assist you in creating a disaster plan that is right for you.

New Orders Are Now Simpler To Deal With!

February 6th, 2012

Our team has been working on a new Order tab design, that not only allows you to sift through your orders with ease, but helps making your order fulfillment faster. It’s out, it’s colorful and we hope you like it as much as we do.

The latest release of the Order Page allows you to clearly mark orders that require your attention with different statuses and colors. The hover-over preview allows you to take a quick look at the order without loading a new page, and of course, searching for a specific order is now even easier!

An added bonus we’re sure you would love to know about is the ability to print out an order receipt (with the order total) or a packing slip (with no mention of payment total). This is found in every order view page, click on Print to preview and proceed.

And last, for those orders you wish to remove from your daily view, a newly added Archive status allows you to store this order away and come back to it at anytime if you need to.

Hope these features improve your fulfillment of orders! And stay tuned for a lot more to come!

 

Some Tips For Showing Customers You Care

January 15th, 2012

As we move forward into the new year, it is important to not only focus on attracting new customers, but to focus on keeping those customers once they bite. Here are a few tips on providing an incentive for customers to stick with you for the long haul.

1. The first time a customer orders from you, throw in a little something extra. This will give the customer the impression that you value their business, and that you are all about loyalty. In addition, if they order from you a lot, reward them with a similar gift. Show some love to your customers and they are bound to show some back.

2. Make sure that your stocked up on your products, and that once a purchase is made facilitate the order fullfilment right away and update your customer with an email that the shipment is on its way. People don’t like to wait, so the less they have to wait the happier and more impressed they will be with your business.

3. Give them a money back guarantee. Customers want to know that if they aren’t satisfied with a product, even if its not your fault, they should be able to return it at no cost. This will help instill confidence in the buyer, and establish a trust relationship between you and the customer, which is a necessary  component for repeat business.

4. Offer special discounts spontaneously. This will keep people checking your site and inject some excitement into the buying process. With Wazala, configuring a discount is extremely easy. Make sure to advertise your discounts on all your social media pages to get a buzz going.

Happy Selling!

Promoting Your Store With Love

January 15th, 2012