Retail Systems Awards

We had some more great news this week, when we found out we’d been shortlisted for the Retail Systems Awards taking place in London this November.

We have been nominated for the Startup Company of the Year which is quite a title. So, fingers crossed!

This is the eleventh year that the awards have been held celebrating excellence and innovation in the retail sector. The shortlist is made up of retailers and technology suppliers who are leading the way in areas such as mobile, online, payments, loyalty and personalisation.

As always, it’s incredibly flattering to be included amongst some great companies also doing their bit to change the face of retail. We will be sure to keep you all updated with the result. You can follow us on Twitter @smartzer for daily updates, and check out @RetailSAwards for updates on the night.

How to reduce shopping cart abandonment

We thought we’d give a little shout out to our friends at Styla this week after reading their article on Actionable Tips to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment. This is a very real and current problem for fashion retail ecommerce, in fact as stated in the article “Shopping cart abandonment rate is as high as 68.63%". It’s a case of people almost becoming customers, but then not actually becoming customers.

Illustrated by a graph, the article clearly displays reasons why people leave a retailer’s website with “hidden and unexpected costs” appearing to be the key factor.

As well as advising numerous helpful ways to encourage buying; always show costs, offer free shipping and use more images, to name a few, another suggestion is to make content shoppable.

“...if your content is directly shoppable, i.e. if people can buy products directly from it, people can add items to their shopping carts right away - and as a result, buy more.”

Something that we noted and found really interesting is that by making your content interactive, you can also tick off other points made by Styla such as improve speed and be smart about CTA’s.

Overall, this is a really great article with some seriously useful tips that have been proven to work for some companies. With the abandonment rate being at almost 70%, it’s really important that all companies read this and take note. Don’t just settle for people browsing your product, adding it to basket and then changing their mind. Find the route of the problem, address it, and resolve it.

You can read the article for yourself HERE.

Keeping your brand relevant

We’re often asked about what our tech product does, or is doing, for brands and companies.

Why should they use us?

What is the need for this technology?

What can you offer them?

The answer is simple. The digital landscape is fast changing and as online consumers begin to want more from their e-commerce experience, brands need to ensure that they are delivering more engaging and inspiring content to keep consumers interested.

If companies are going to invest time and money on digital marketing campaigns that include video, surely they want to see the impact it is having and any sales it is making as a direct result. Of course, when video content first started being incorporated into marketing strategies, it was going to be at a very basic level and simply be a tool to advertise product or share information. But now, in 2016, with an abundance of video content being made by all kinds of companies it’s not enough to just display product. We believe, it needs to entertain and encourage interaction.

The key to making video content go further for your brand, is to have the relevant technologies in place to capture the generated interest through immediate call to action. Furthermore, with our technology, brands can then use available data to understand exactly how their consumers engaged and interacted with said content. This helps to keep the e-commerce experience in line with how each brand’s consumers are behaving.

If companies want to be a part of exciting digital innovations and keep up with the “millennial” shoppers, they need to make sure that their advertising efforts are strong and powerful enough to keep consumers coming back and secure new ones.

With video playing an increasingly large part in this, we are continuously evolving our platform to help brands stay ahead and keep their consumers happy when it comes to their video strategies.