The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), a wing of the nation’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, told Flipkart, which competes with Amazon India, that its proposed plan to enter the food retail business violates regulatory guidelines.
Flipkart’s proposed food retail business, called Flipkart FarmerMart, cannot be structured on a 100% foreign direct investment, the Indian agency said. Rajneesh Kumar, chief corporate affairs officer at Flipkart, told TechCrunch that the company was evaluating the agency’s response and intended to re-apply.
“At Flipkart, we believe that technology and innovation driven marketplace can add significant value to our country’s farmers and food processing sector by bringing value chain efficiency and transparency. This will further aid boosting farmers’ income & transform Indian agriculture,” he added.
While announcing the plan to enter the nation’s growing food retail market, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart Group CEO, said in October last year that the company planned to invest $258 million in the new venture.
Flipkart planned to invest deeply in the local agriculture-ecosystem, supply chain, and work with tens of thousands of small farmers, their associations, and the nation’s food processing industry, Krishnamurthy said. The food retail unit would help “multiply farmers’ income and bring affordable, quality food for millions of customers across the country.”
Several e-commerce and grocery firms in India, including Amazon, Zomato, and Grofers, have previously secured approval from New Delhi, which earlier permitted 100% foreign direct investment in food and a handful of other sectors, for entering the food retail business.
The Indian government has since revisited the guidelines to clarify that food retail, like any other e-commerce sector, can only operate as a marketplace that allows third-party sellers to engage with buyers — and not offer their own inventories, nor have equity in any of the players who sell on the platform.
Food and grocery are compelling categories for e-commerce businesses in India as it enables them to engage with their customers more frequently. According to research firm Forrester, India’s online food and grocery market remain significantly tiny, accounting for just 1% of the overall sales.
In the most recent quarterly earnings call, Walmart said limited operations at Flipkart had negatively affected the group’s overall growth. New Delhi announced one of the world’s stringent lockdowns across the nation in late March that restricted Amazon and Flipkart from delivering in many states and only sell “essential items” such as grocery and hygienic products.
Without these 6 things, you’re going to have a hard time growing your eCommerce business. Trust me, I’ve been there.
Understand the Difference Between Strategies & Tactics
Often times, people who run an eCommerce business get obsessed over tactics. I personally like obsessing over strategies.
What’s the difference?
Strategies are goals
Tactics are actions to achieve goals
I’m a big fan of strategies because they’re long-term and can be measured.
I mean, why re-invent the wheel when you can easily apply strategies that have worked for other successful eCommerce brands in the past?
Tactics on the other hand are always changing but many of them will help you achieve your goals.
People get overwhelmed with tactics.
So when looking at ways of increasing online sales, you need to focus on strategies so you don’t get overwhelmed.
How to Increase eCommerce Sales
If you build an online store, it doesn’t necessarily mean customers will immediately come and buy your products.
You need marketing so you can generate awareness, build engagement, drive traffic and convert shoppers into loyal customers so they keep buying from you as as rave about your brand.
You need to grab the attention of your target audience. You need to generate interest. You need to make them desire what you have to offer and then eventually have them take action (buy your product). This is called AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action).
There are only 3 ways you can increase eCommerce sales with marketing:
Organic Marketing
Paid Marketing
Earned Marketing
Keep in mind, you need a mix of all 3 to see significant results.
1. Use Organic Marketing to Increase eCommerce Sales
Organic marketing is the act of naturally attracting your target audience to your brand. This is usually accomplished through content creation that is distributed across multiple channels including your online store.
Organic marketing is usually not paid for but it doesn’t mean it’s free. You will need to invest time and money in creating the content. Content may include text, audio, video as well as all sorts of visuals such as photos and illustrations. Unlike paid marketing, you do not spend any money on promoting this content.
5 steps to building your organic marketing strategy
Organic marketing is cost-effective, gives you control and lives on forever.
2. Paid Marketing to Increase eCommerce Sales
Having a set budget for paid marketing initiatives is critical if you want to increase online sales.
You pay to promote your content, product & brand.
Paid campaigns will help you see results in both short and long term. When you combine it with organic campaigns, you will see a better return on your overall marketing efforts if done right.
You can pay your way to promote your products on many different channels.
These include:
Paid search ads
Social media ads
Display media
Influencers
Retargeting
Audio (podcasts, streaming radio)
Traditional TV, radio, newspaper, billboards, magazines
Paid marketing provides immediate results, allows you to get in front of your audience fast and boosts website traffic so you can start generating revenue.
3. Use Earned Marketing to Increase eCommerce Sales
Whether you do organic or paid, you will end up benefiting from earned marketing. Earned marketing is user-generated content where your customers become the channel.
It’s usually characterized as word-of-mouth. People voice their love or dissatisfaction towards your brand or product.
It can include product reviews on your website, mentions on social media, video reviews, testimonials, blog posts and more.
This type of marketing can help boost your credibility & trust. It may help consumers decide whether or not they should your products. Unfortunately, you don’t have much control and sometimes, the user generated content is negative.
It also may take time to have consumers generate this type of content. In the end, it’s all worth it!
Without these 6 things, you’re going to have a hard time growing your eCommerce business. Trust me, I’ve been there.
Understand the Difference Between Strategies & Tactics
Often times, people who run an eCommerce business get obsessed over tactics. I personally like obsessing over strategies.
What’s the difference?
Strategies are goals
Tactics are actions to achieve goals
I’m a big fan of strategies because they’re long-term and can be measured.
I mean, why re-invent the wheel when you can easily apply strategies that have worked for other successful eCommerce brands in the past?
Tactics on the other hand are always changing but many of them will help you achieve your goals.
People get overwhelmed with tactics.
So when looking at ways of increasing online sales, you need to focus on strategies so you don’t get overwhelmed.
How to Increase eCommerce Sales
If you build an online store, it doesn’t necessarily mean customers will immediately come and buy your products.
You need marketing so you can generate awareness, build engagement, drive traffic and convert shoppers into loyal customers so they keep buying from you as as rave about your brand.
You need to grab the attention of your target audience. You need to generate interest. You need to make them desire what you have to offer and then eventually have them take action (buy your product). This is called AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action).
There are only 3 ways you can increase eCommerce sales with marketing:
Organic Marketing
Paid Marketing
Earned Marketing
Keep in mind, you need a mix of all 3 to see significant results.
1. Use Organic Marketing to Increase eCommerce Sales
Organic marketing is the act of naturally attracting your target audience to your brand. This is usually accomplished through content creation that is distributed across multiple channels including your online store.
Organic marketing is usually not paid for but it doesn’t mean it’s free. You will need to invest time and money in creating the content. Content may include text, audio, video as well as all sorts of visuals such as photos and illustrations. Unlike paid marketing, you do not spend any money on promoting this content.
5 steps to building your organic marketing strategy
Organic marketing is cost-effective, gives you control and lives on forever.
2. Paid Marketing to Increase eCommerce Sales
Having a set budget for paid marketing initiatives is critical if you want to increase online sales.
You pay to promote your content, product & brand.
Paid campaigns will help you see results in both short and long term. When you combine it with organic campaigns, you will see a better return on your overall marketing efforts if done right.
You can pay your way to promote your products on many different channels.
These include:
Paid search ads
Social media ads
Display media
Influencers
Retargeting
Audio (podcasts, streaming radio)
Traditional TV, radio, newspaper, billboards, magazines
Paid marketing provides immediate results, allows you to get in front of your audience fast and boosts website traffic so you can start generating revenue.
3. Use Earned Marketing to Increase eCommerce Sales
Whether you do organic or paid, you will end up benefiting from earned marketing. Earned marketing is user-generated content where your customers become the channel.
It’s usually characterized as word-of-mouth. People voice their love or dissatisfaction towards your brand or product.
It can include product reviews on your website, mentions on social media, video reviews, testimonials, blog posts and more.
This type of marketing can help boost your credibility & trust. It may help consumers decide whether or not they should your products. Unfortunately, you don’t have much control and sometimes, the user generated content is negative.
It also may take time to have consumers generate this type of content. In the end, it’s all worth it!
The global spread of COVID-19 and resulting orders to shelter in place have hit retailers hard.
As the pandemic drags on, temporary halts are becoming permanent closures, whether it’s the coffee shop next door, a historic bar or a well-known lifestyle brand.
But while the present is largely bleak, preparing for the future has retailers adopting technologies faster than ever. Their resilience and innovation means retail will look and fee different when the world reopens.
We gathered four views on the future of retail from the TechCrunch team:
Natasha Mascarenhas says retailers will need to find new ways to sell aspirational products — and what was once cringe-worthy might now be considered innovative.
Devin Coldewey sees businesses adopting a slew of creative digital services to prepare for the future and empower them without Amazon’s platform.
Greg Kumparak thinks the delivery and curbside pickup trends will move from pandemic-essentials to everyday occurrences. He thinks that retailers will need to find new ways to appeal to consumers in a “shopping-by-proxy” world.
Lucas Matney views a revitalized interest in technology around the checkout process, as retailers look for ways to make the purchasing experience more seamless (and less high-touch).
Alexa, how do I look?
Natasha Mascarenhas
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Build a strong brand so you can take your business to the next level. This article will teach you how to build a strong brand for your ecommerce business.
Steve Tan is a Singapore-based serial entrepreneur and full-stack digital marketer with over 14 years of hands-on experience who is also the CEO and founder of Super Tan Brothers Pte. Ltd, which operates e-commerce, software, logistics, marketing, educational and investment companies around the globe.
Intuitively, stores that sell online should be making a killing during the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, everyone is stuck at home — and understandably more willing to shop online instead of at a traditional retailer to avoid putting themselves and others at medical risk. But the truth is, most smaller online stores have seen better days.
The primary challenge is that smaller shops often don’t have the logistics networks that companies like Amazon do. Consequently, they’re seeing substantially delayed delivery timelines, especially if they ship internationally. Customers obviously aren’t thrilled about that reality. And in many cases, they’re requesting refunds at a staggering rate.
I saw this play out firsthand in April. At that point, my stores were down 20% or in some cases even 30% in revenue. Needless to say, my team was freaking out. But there’s one thing we did that helped us increase our revenue over 200% since the pandemic, decrease refund requests and even strengthen our existing customer relationships.
We implemented a 24-hour live chat in all of our stores. Here’s why it worked for us and why every digital brand should be doing it too.
Avoid the common ‘unreachability’ frustration
When I started my first online store in 2006, challenges that bogged my team down often meant that my team’s first priority became resolving those challenges so that we could serve our customers faster. But admittedly, when these challenges came up, it became more difficult to balance communicating with our customers and resolving the issues that prevented us from fulfilling their orders quickly.
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Have you ever wondered what your customers think about your business, products, or services? Gaining this valuable information isn’t as simple as asking every customer one-by-one what they thought of your business – especially if you’re running a larger eCommerce operation. Not to mention, manually collecting customer feedback can result in a plethora of unorganized text and numbers that can be impossible to sift through and gain meaningful insight from. That’s where customer feedback tools come in: these tools are automated, organized ways to collect quantifiable feedback that your entire team can use.
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Growing an eCommerce business requires a lot of work and effort. But what exactly do you need to make it happen? In this video, I will share 6 things I needed to grow www.LinenChest.com to 8 figure level ($10+ million a year).
Growing an eCommerce business requires a lot of work and effort. But what exactly do you need to make it happen? In this video, I will share 6 things I needed to grow www.LinenChest.com to 8 figure level ($10+ million a year).
Two thirds of online merchants in Europe have needed extra finance in the past two years. Loans carried out after the outbreak of the corona virus aren’t included in this statistic. Online merchants need a loan the most for buying equipment.
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The necessity of having an online presence is out of question in 2020. People communicate, study, work, and of course, shop online — and they do it a lot. Over 2.14 billion customers worldwide are expected to buy products and services online in 2021. It’s much easier to find customers and build trust in your business if you have your own place on the internet — your website.
Creating an e-commerce website might sound like an overwhelming task, especially if you can’t tell the difference between site builders and CMSs. The good news is, you don’t need to! Whether you’re tech-savvy or not, you can create an e-commerce website yourself. Let’s find out how.
An e-commerce website is a site that allows you to sell your products or services by means of the transfer of information and funds over the Internet. Often connected to online payment providers, so that you can accept payments online. You can choose to get paid offline too, for example, in cash when the product is delivered to a customer.
You can make it yourself from scratch using a CMS (content management system) platform or a popular site builder. CMS is a software that lets you create, manage, and modify digital content. A website builder allows you to put together a site using pre-built components.
You can use special e-commerce platforms. They can be open source — platforms where the source code is available for developers, allowing to modify and adapt the software for different purposes. Open source platforms require some degree of technical skills. There are also SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms, where e-commerce providers build, host and maintain the software, so users don’t have to maintain it themselves.
If you’re not tech-savvy, finding an e-commerce site with a SaaS platform like Ecwid is the easiest option. This way, to sell online with your own website you don’t have to seek help from web developers or designers.
When you sign up with Ecwid E-Commerce, you get an easy-to-use website with a built-in online store right away. No coding needed — just add products, your business information, and you’re ready to go.
If you have a website already and just need to add a shopping cart, you can use Ecwid to embed an online store to your website. You can add an Ecwid store to any website, including:
Or a site built with any other site builder, CMS, or website platform of your choice.
How Much Does an E-Commerce Website Cost?
To code an e-commerce website from scratch, you’ll need to hire a developer who may charge $70-$250 per hour to build an online store. This option works for bigger businesses that need a complex, deeply customizable website (for example, a large marketplace).
If you run a small business and don’t have tech skills or a big budget, we recommend e-commerce platforms. Their entry plans are about $12-29 per month.
When you sign up with Ecwid, you can create an e-commerce website at no charge. That’s right — you get a free site no matter what pricing plan you choose, a free or a paid one.
After you sign up, you get your own site that is fully hosted, secure, and maintained by Ecwid — an Instant Site.
What Is Ecwid Instant Site?
Instant Site is a free customizable one-page website with a built-in online store that allows you to start selling right away. It looks great on any device, including mobile, and has everything you need to build a successful online presence:
Customizable content blocks and design themes let you create a unique website.
Edit and update your site content as often as you like, no coding required.
Professional and responsive design makes your site look great on any device.
Instant Site is your place on the net to create a professional look and demonstrate all the strong points of your business. Our goal is to help you make a great first impression with your customers from the moment they land on your site.
An example of Instant Site
Who is Instant Site for?
Instant Site is perfect for you if:
You’ve just opened your business and you want to start selling online as fast as possible
You need a website for your business but you don’t have tech skills.
In a new window, you’ll see Instant Site content that you can edit:
In "Address Settings," you can link the website to your own domain name. If you don’t have your own domain, you can use a free address in the form of "mystore.company.site".
Then you can click "Themes" to choose a look for your store from our collection of 75+ predefined design themes (and we’re constantly adding more.) They are grouped by niches, so you’ll find a theme that fits your business no matter what you sell: food, apparel, art, digital goods, furniture, toys, electronics, and so on. Each theme is customizable: you can change texts, fonts, button CTA, images, colors, and layouts. Check out this blog post to learn how you can design your Instant Site.
Use a predefined design theme or customize it to add a personal touch
In "Site sections", you can edit the content of your website and change the order of their appearance. These sections are:
Headline & Cover Image
Store
Company’s Mission
Customer Testimonials
About
Location
Contact Information.
You can use all of the sections provided, or choose the ones that work for you and hide the rest.
The first one is the "Headline & Cover Image" section. You can choose from six cover layouts for your store. All of them have a space for your store’s name and a short description of what your business is about. To set a background for your cover, you can upload a photo of your team, your product, an eye-catching picture that represents what you do. You can even add a video here! This cover can be changed anytime to keep your site fresh, promote sales and events or showcase new products.
The "Store" section contains the products you sell. Here, you can customize your storefront’s appearance.
You can change the look and feel of both a product list and a product page. Change thumbnail sizes, product page layout, category name position, and more. If your products don’t have images, you can turn off their display.
Instant Site allows you to lay out the information in a way that convinces customers to make a purchase. Even a one-page checkout focused on getting more sales. It’s transparent, easy to fill out, and collects customer emails right away. This way you can send a follow-up email to those who abandoned their orders.
The "Company’s Mission" section is a place to share what makes your business and products stand out among competitors.
The "Customer Testimonials" section allows you to add up to four testimonials to show some social proof and increase customers’ trust. Learn more about using testimonials in your Instant Site.
The "About" section is there to help you share your business story and create a connection with your site visitors.
The "Location" section allows you to share your brick-and-mortar details if you have a physical location. When you type in your store’s address, it will be automatically tagged on Google Maps.
The "Contact Information" section is there to help customers get in touch. You can provide your phone number, email, and social links for quick communication.
You can hide any section whenever you like — for example, if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar store, you may not need to display "Location" on your site.
If you need help with setting up your website, check out our Help Center for detailed instructions on configuring design and editing content of your Instant Site.
Create an E-commerce Website Today
Ecwid Instant Site is a fast and feature-rich solution to find a home on the web for your business — fully hosted, secure, and maintained by Ecwid. You can get your website in less than five minutes, and its full setup won’t take more than a couple of hours. Did we mention that it’s all for free and no coding required?
Start your e-commerce journey today! With Ecwid’s tools and your dedication, your store is destined for success.
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Derek Dodds is the CEO of WaveTribe.com, a business on a mission to create an important relationship between sport and planet. Today Derek joins the show to discuss how he has managed to combine his passion – which is surfing – as well as his work, something that doesn’t always go over well. Derek is an inspiring person, someone who has a lot of knowledge to give on the subject on standing by your values. If you have been wanting to structure your weeks so you have a more balanced lifestyle between work and play, this is the episode for you.
You’ll learn:
How Wave Tribe came to be
How Derek structures his life to combine business and surfing
Why he is ruthless about setting value and assigning dollar amounts to different tasks
Vue Storefront is the future of global e-Commerce. It’s also a great place to grow and develop a career. We’re going to take a look at the solution, some of the integrations, and the people behind the success of what is now the world’s fastest-growing eCommerce frontend project, with nearly 7,000 stars on GitHub and a Slack developers community that had hit 3,000 members and is still increasing.
In this article:
The story of Vue Storefront’s dynamic growth and some of the key team members
How mobile-first commerce now is driving the need for PWA solutions
The COVID-19 crisis has changed the way we shop forever
Why Vue Storefront is a place to build your eCommerce or to build your career
Behind every great product, stand great people. I already told you the story of Filip Rakowski and his technical work with Vue Storefront, but the person largely responsible for growth in VSF is Patrick Friday. He joined Divante and Vue Storefront in mid-2018 after time spent previously in the development of businesses and applications, working with companies that based their model on native mobile apps.
Patrick could see the huge potential of PWA (Progressive Web Apps) technology but could not develop his career in this direction in his previous company. Once he saw Divante and their Vue Storefront proof of concept, it was a breakthrough moment which, in time, resulted in a huge career step forward.
Krzysztof Podeszwa (left) and Patrick Friday (right) in Divante’s office in Berlin
Today, as CEO and co-founder, Patryk cooperates with Krzysztof Podeszwa, who has been in Divante for five years as B2B and B2C eCommerce Consultant. During that time, Krzysztof has dealt with many implementations in Divante covering complicated eCommerce implementations, custom solutions, and the painful process of introducing PIMs platforms across entire organizations. With time, he noticed that one of the biggest issues in eCommerce is the frontend, and that the future is strongly connected with the mobile-first approach. He realized that Vue Storefront might be the answer to market needs and had an impact on the development of its core features.
Tracking the Asian markets is one of his hobbies, as he believes that US dominance on the Internet is currently waning in favor of the Asian global powers. Mobile is one of the key differentiators. He saw that, in a few years, the real boom on PWA would begin, making this technology a standard. The demand for such services is already growing. With his extended knowledge from previous eCommerce projects, he provided real support for Patrick and for the Vue Storefront project. They formed a strong sales team and were able to start really pushing the boundaries.
As a result, global brands like Marc O’Polo, Tally Weijl, and Lampenwelt have decided to base their eCommerce on Vue Storefront. VSF is growing very fast but this is just the beginning.
Vue Storefront is the open-source frontend for any eCommerce
Built with a PWA and headless approach, using a modern JS stack, Vue Storefront provides shopping experiences like native apps and boosts site performance and customization possibilities. VSF is the fastest-growing frontend project in the world, supported by an active community of open-source enthusiasts. It works straight out of the box and connects to any backend.
Zadig & Voltaire PWA Features
There are integrations with Magento, commercetools, and Shopware, and total coverage is just a matter of time. The API approach also allows you to merge VSF with any third-party tool like CMS, payment gateways, or analytics. With no license and vendor lock-in, the sky is the limit: build what you like and you’ll always own your site. Vue Storefront turns months of making your eCommerce into weeks. It transforms lagging load times into fractions of a second. And clunky end-user experiences become seamless online or offline interactions with your brand.
#meetPWA event in Berlin
Vue Storefront originated in Divante but it is now a standalone brand cooperating with many agencies and merchants around the world. Divante is still the leading partner for VSF and is clearly the best implementation agency as the people have the know-how and understand the topic from the inside out.
Closing the mobile gap. Vue Storefront meets the market needs
The percentage of mobile traffic over desktops has been growing for years. Most brands that want to sell online—especially in beauty, fashion, and fitness—already have more than 70 or even 80 percent mobile traffic. The problem is that the conversion on mobile is, on average, half as low as on the desktop. Therefore, if the number of site visitors is stable, but the breakdown of the devices they use is skewed towards mobile, then income will be lower. The challenge is to change the paradigm in which people browse on mobile devices but still buy on desktop.
For brands, this is a growing problem. PWA technology and a mobile-first approach are solutions to this problem.
We want to help merchants to increase conversion to mobile by implementing PWA with a modern frontend. PWA is a responsive web on steroids. Soon PWA will be a new standard. Today, nobody can imagine a modern website that is not responsive. In two to three years, no one will imagine a website that is not written in PWA technology – Patrick Friday
Many companies are looking for a headless approach. Vue Storefront combines it with PWA.
Until now, if someone used Magento in his e-commerce, it had a backend and frontend combined with business logic behind. This meant slower growth and constant problems with performance. Each connection to third-party services was difficult and time-consuming. With Vue Storefront on Magento, we let it go smoothly. For customers like Lampenwelt and Tally Weijl, this is ‘added value’ which lets their users purchase goods on a mobile funnel more easily and faster than before. We shouldn’t forget about significant improvements in UX which have a direct impact on conversion rates and, most often, are also under discussion during the implementation phase of Vue Storefront
Krzysztof Podeszwa
Another argument was the possibility of huge savings. These companies did not have to spend huge budgets on separate iOS and Android applications. For them, PWA was the best solution. With time they can check if the investment in the native mobile app will still make sense and if it will pay off in time. This is not so obvious. At this point, PWA can offer 85-90 percent of the features that a dedicated eCommerce mobile application has. An increasing number of companies understand that there is no point in investing in the development of several channels at once instead of only one.
As you can see, Vue Storefront is the real answer to many companies’ needs.
#meetPWA event in Berlin
Why is it worth joining Vue Storefront?
The technology I spoke about above is one reason to join Vue Storefront. It is a future-proof choice for eCommerce builders and for developers looking for a stable career. However, there are many more reasons.
The fastest-growing frontend project in the world
Vue Storefront is growing rapidly. Currently, it’s the fastest-growing frontend eCommerce project in the world and the number one open-source PWA for eCommerce. With over 100 implementations, Vue Storefront outgrows even the Magento PWA Studio, which is the official Magento eCommerce with only a few implementations.
Growth revenue +400% year on year
With growing popularity, comes higher revenue. Vue Storefront revenue in Q1 2020 is 400% higher than Q1 2019. Vue Storefront is currently one of the leading budget lines in Divante. Divante has implemented Pimcore for five years and Magento for eight years. VSF is only 1.5 years old, and everything indicates that it will achieve a similar result this year to those technologies. And this is just the beginning. Both eCommerce and PWA are growing fast.
Agnostic frontend
Vue Storefront is a headless, agnostic frontend. Merchants can first choose the frontend (VSF) and then link it to any backend like Magento, Pimcore or Shopware. No matter which one of these the merchant chooses, Vue Storefront will always work, which makes it a quite unique solution.
Global Brands
Marco Polo, Tally Weijl, Lights.ie, Dickies, Staples, and Kubota are just a few from the long list of big brands that chose Vue Storefront. These are all global companies with very high culture and standards. Cooperating with them enables the VSF to develop skills and helps to attract other big brands.
The COVID-19 crisis has changed commerce forever
The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the way people shop and their buying habits. When countries first entered lockdown, there was a slight downturn as people were cautious about what comes next, but then they turned to the only available option with physical stores closed and started to buy online. The shift was significant as many people who had never tried eCommerce were forced to try online purchasing. eCommerce penetration rates in most countries doubled within a month and, as people received good service, survey results showed that a significant proportion of new eCommerce users said they would continue to buy online after the crisis passed.
Food delivery during the COVID-19 crisis is one example of how our habits have changed.
Vue Storefront and PWA answer the needs of modern stores
The crisis has also accelerated the development and adaptation of PWA. More and more people realize that mobile traffic is a problem. Companies are starting to think about what they can do to give the customer an even better online experience.
“When you enter a physical store and encounter a mess of scattered products, poor range, and sub-par service, you quickly get annoyed and usually leave. It’s similar in an online store. Customer experience has to be at the highest level; everything has to be arranged well or the customer will leave quickly. Customer experience is the showcase of the store. PWA can deliver it. Providing similar quality customer experience with classic methods is very expensive. Sometimes it’s even impossible.”
Patrick Friday
PWA and Vue Storefront are also strong technologies for companies which have been affected by the crisis and need to enter the online commerce world at speed to offset losses from physical store closures and activate new revenues streams. For example, the new Shopware PWA enables the launch of a new online shop in around four weeks.
“Vue Storefront is an open-source project. It is free and you do not have to pay for the license. This is a great great option for businesses, especially in a time of crisis, when they can get up and running for minimal budget and start negotiations with potential clients.”
Krzysztof Podeszwa
Vue Storefront is a great place to grow and develop career
Krzysztof Podeszwa (right) in a friendly conversation during #meetPWA event in Berlin
Divante and Vue Storefront are known for the great atmosphere in the workplace, which results from the company’s unique culture. It is a place where one can develop quickly in many ways.
In our team, you get a lot of support from experienced people. If someone is not afraid to ask, has natural curiosity, knows how to listen, and wants to absorb knowledge about e-commerce and the mobile market, Vue Storefront is a great place to develop
Patrick Friday
Vue Storefront operates on the global market. Therefore, you can count on the opportunity to participate in many meetings, conferences, and workshops around the world. Traveling is an essential part of working at Vue Storefront. It gives unique opportunities to broaden interpersonal skills and build a network of contacts.
And you get to influence the future of eCommerce…
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Vue Storefront is the future of global e-Commerce. It’s also a great place to grow and develop a career. We’re going to take a look at the solution, some of the integrations, and the people behind the success of what is now the world’s fastest-growing eCommerce frontend project, with nearly 7,000 stars on GitHub and a Slack developers community that had hit 3,000 members and is still increasing.
In this article:
The story of Vue Storefront’s dynamic growth and some of the key team members
How mobile-first commerce now is driving the need for PWA solutions
The COVID-19 crisis has changed the way we shop forever
Why Vue Storefront is a place to build your eCommerce or to build your career
Behind every great product, stand great people. I already told you the story of Filip Rakowski and his technical work with Vue Storefront, but the person largely responsible for growth in VSF is Patrick Friday. He joined Divante and Vue Storefront in mid-2018 after time spent previously in the development of businesses and applications, working with companies that based their model on native mobile apps.
Patrick could see the huge potential of PWA (Progressive Web Apps) technology but could not develop his career in this direction in his previous company. Once he saw Divante and their Vue Storefront proof of concept, it was a breakthrough moment which, in time, resulted in a huge career step forward.
Krzysztof Podeszwa (left) and Patrick Friday (right) in Divante’s office in Berlin
Today, as CEO and co-founder, Patryk cooperates with Krzysztof Podeszwa, who has been in Divante for five years as B2B and B2C eCommerce Consultant. During that time, Krzysztof has dealt with many implementations in Divante covering complicated eCommerce implementations, custom solutions, and the painful process of introducing PIMs platforms across entire organizations. With time, he noticed that one of the biggest issues in eCommerce is the frontend, and that the future is strongly connected with the mobile-first approach. He realized that Vue Storefront might be the answer to market needs and had an impact on the development of its core features.
Tracking the Asian markets is one of his hobbies, as he believes that US dominance on the Internet is currently waning in favor of the Asian global powers. Mobile is one of the key differentiators. He saw that, in a few years, the real boom on PWA would begin, making this technology a standard. The demand for such services is already growing. With his extended knowledge from previous eCommerce projects, he provided real support for Patrick and for the Vue Storefront project. They formed a strong sales team and were able to start really pushing the boundaries.
As a result, global brands like Marc O’Polo, Tally Weijl, and Lampenwelt have decided to base their eCommerce on Vue Storefront. VSF is growing very fast but this is just the beginning.
Vue Storefront is the open-source frontend for any eCommerce
Built with a PWA and headless approach, using a modern JS stack, Vue Storefront provides shopping experiences like native apps and boosts site performance and customization possibilities. VSF is the fastest-growing frontend project in the world, supported by an active community of open-source enthusiasts. It works straight out of the box and connects to any backend.
Zadig & Voltaire PWA Features
There are integrations with Magento, commercetools, and Shopware, and total coverage is just a matter of time. The API approach also allows you to merge VSF with any third-party tool like CMS, payment gateways, or analytics. With no license and vendor lock-in, the sky is the limit: build what you like and you’ll always own your site. Vue Storefront turns months of making your eCommerce into weeks. It transforms lagging load times into fractions of a second. And clunky end-user experiences become seamless online or offline interactions with your brand.
#meetPWA event in Berlin
Vue Storefront originated in Divante but it is now a standalone brand cooperating with many agencies and merchants around the world. Divante is still the leading partner for VSF and is clearly the best implementation agency as the people have the know-how and understand the topic from the inside out.
Closing the mobile gap. Vue Storefront meets the market needs
The percentage of mobile traffic over desktops has been growing for years. Most brands that want to sell online—especially in beauty, fashion, and fitness—already have more than 70 or even 80 percent mobile traffic. The problem is that the conversion on mobile is, on average, half as low as on the desktop. Therefore, if the number of site visitors is stable, but the breakdown of the devices they use is skewed towards mobile, then income will be lower. The challenge is to change the paradigm in which people browse on mobile devices but still buy on desktop.
For brands, this is a growing problem. PWA technology and a mobile-first approach are solutions to this problem.
We want to help merchants to increase conversion to mobile by implementing PWA with a modern frontend. PWA is a responsive web on steroids. Soon PWA will be a new standard. Today, nobody can imagine a modern website that is not responsive. In two to three years, no one will imagine a website that is not written in PWA technology – Patrick Friday
Many companies are looking for a headless approach. Vue Storefront combines it with PWA.
Until now, if someone used Magento in his e-commerce, it had a backend and frontend combined with business logic behind. This meant slower growth and constant problems with performance. Each connection to third-party services was difficult and time-consuming. With Vue Storefront on Magento, we let it go smoothly. For customers like Lampenwelt and Tally Weijl, this is ‘added value’ which lets their users purchase goods on a mobile funnel more easily and faster than before. We shouldn’t forget about significant improvements in UX which have a direct impact on conversion rates and, most often, are also under discussion during the implementation phase of Vue Storefront
Krzysztof Podeszwa
Another argument was the possibility of huge savings. These companies did not have to spend huge budgets on separate iOS and Android applications. For them, PWA was the best solution. With time they can check if the investment in the native mobile app will still make sense and if it will pay off in time. This is not so obvious. At this point, PWA can offer 85-90 percent of the features that a dedicated eCommerce mobile application has. An increasing number of companies understand that there is no point in investing in the development of several channels at once instead of only one.
As you can see, Vue Storefront is the real answer to many companies’ needs.
#meetPWA event in Berlin
Why is it worth joining Vue Storefront?
The technology I spoke about above is one reason to join Vue Storefront. It is a future-proof choice for eCommerce builders and for developers looking for a stable career. However, there are many more reasons.
The fastest-growing frontend project in the world
Vue Storefront is growing rapidly. Currently, it’s the fastest-growing frontend eCommerce project in the world and the number one open-source PWA for eCommerce. With over 100 implementations, Vue Storefront outgrows even the Magento PWA Studio, which is the official Magento eCommerce with only a few implementations.
Growth revenue +400% year on year
With growing popularity, comes higher revenue. Vue Storefront revenue in Q1 2020 is 400% higher than Q1 2019. Vue Storefront is currently one of the leading budget lines in Divante. Divante has implemented Pimcore for five years and Magento for eight years. VSF is only 1.5 years old, and everything indicates that it will achieve a similar result this year to those technologies. And this is just the beginning. Both eCommerce and PWA are growing fast.
Agnostic frontend
Vue Storefront is a headless, agnostic frontend. Merchants can first choose the frontend (VSF) and then link it to any backend like Magento, Pimcore or Shopware. No matter which one of these the merchant chooses, Vue Storefront will always work, which makes it a quite unique solution.
Global Brands
Marco Polo, Tally Weijl, Lights.ie, Dickies, Staples, and Kubota are just a few from the long list of big brands that chose Vue Storefront. These are all global companies with very high culture and standards. Cooperating with them enables the VSF to develop skills and helps to attract other big brands.
The COVID-19 crisis has changed commerce forever
The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally changed the way people shop and their buying habits. When countries first entered lockdown, there was a slight downturn as people were cautious about what comes next, but then they turned to the only available option with physical stores closed and started to buy online. The shift was significant as many people who had never tried eCommerce were forced to try online purchasing. eCommerce penetration rates in most countries doubled within a month and, as people received good service, survey results showed that a significant proportion of new eCommerce users said they would continue to buy online after the crisis passed.
Food delivery during the COVID-19 crisis is one example of how our habits have changed.
Vue Storefront and PWA answer the needs of modern stores
The crisis has also accelerated the development and adaptation of PWA. More and more people realize that mobile traffic is a problem. Companies are starting to think about what they can do to give the customer an even better online experience.
“When you enter a physical store and encounter a mess of scattered products, poor range, and sub-par service, you quickly get annoyed and usually leave. It’s similar in an online store. Customer experience has to be at the highest level; everything has to be arranged well or the customer will leave quickly. Customer experience is the showcase of the store. PWA can deliver it. Providing similar quality customer experience with classic methods is very expensive. Sometimes it’s even impossible.”
Patrick Friday
PWA and Vue Storefront are also strong technologies for companies which have been affected by the crisis and need to enter the online commerce world at speed to offset losses from physical store closures and activate new revenues streams. For example, the new Shopware PWA enables the launch of a new online shop in around four weeks.
“Vue Storefront is an open-source project. It is free and you do not have to pay for the license. This is a great great option for businesses, especially in a time of crisis, when they can get up and running for minimal budget and start negotiations with potential clients.”
Krzysztof Podeszwa
Vue Storefront is a great place to grow and develop career
Krzysztof Podeszwa (right) in a friendly conversation during #meetPWA event in Berlin
Divante and Vue Storefront are known for the great atmosphere in the workplace, which results from the company’s unique culture. It is a place where one can develop quickly in many ways.
In our team, you get a lot of support from experienced people. If someone is not afraid to ask, has natural curiosity, knows how to listen, and wants to absorb knowledge about e-commerce and the mobile market, Vue Storefront is a great place to develop
Patrick Friday
Vue Storefront operates on the global market. Therefore, you can count on the opportunity to participate in many meetings, conferences, and workshops around the world. Traveling is an essential part of working at Vue Storefront. It gives unique opportunities to broaden interpersonal skills and build a network of contacts.
And you get to influence the future of eCommerce…
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