Small business

The eCommerce industry is one of the profoundly growing industry. The eCommerce giants will have their teams to handle all different aspects of the store. On the other hand, small business owners get sidelined due to their financial constraints. If small business owners are aware of a few things, then their journey gets easier. Here we have given the list of small business eCommerce solutions. Implementing them in your store will benefit you a lot.    

• The platform that you select for your eCommerce store development should be easy to manage and cost-effective at the same time. By looking at the current market conditions, Shopify should be the ideal choice of small as well as big eCommerce owners.  
• Your store should be unique, more attractive, and refined than your competitors. Even though Shopify has tons of free themes and apps to make the store even more appalling & feature reach. But you should better hire a developer to perform such additional improvements.  
• The website developed by you should also be SEO friendly. As a small business owner, the search engine presence is very important. Start optimizing the website for SEO now.  
• During the peak season of your business, you should invest in the paid marketing of your business too. The paid marketing will help you drive more quality traffic and conversion for your store.  
• For marketing of the website, social media has proven to be the best platform. Start putting more effort into your social presence. For the maximum benefits, create the most engaging content for your users.    

Above were some of the most effective small scale eCommerce solution. One should always keep them in mind for the optimum results. And if you find difficulty with any one of them, do not hesitate to contact us. We are the celebrated eCommerce website development company. It would be a pleasure for us to solve your doubts!!

Today, social signals have become an important part of search engine optimization. When a business enters into the online arena, it needs to socialize, generate product awareness, create a prospect base, and notify the customers about the new products and changes in policies and procedures in their store. A well-planned social media strategy works best in this regard. It holds the capacity to either make or take down a brand. Whether your business size is small or large, social media provides a great opportunity and advantage for every brand, business, or enterprise.

Social media technologies turn communication into an interactive dialogue between communities, individuals, and organizations. The web-based applications supported by social channels help business owners to promote their companies all over the world.

When a business owner maintains a website in the form of a landing page and a blog associated to it, it gets the direct benefits of using social media sites, such as:

1. Social media posts drive targeted traffic. As per the Pew Research Center study, 68% of American adults are Facebook users.

2. Social media strategy for your business boosts your website’s SEO.

3. It can increase your reach through quoted experts.

4. Social media marketing helps you understand your audience.

5. Your business’s active social media presence builds relationships with your audience.

6. Social media advertisements allow targeting and retargeting.

7. Social media sites can get your website noticed at events and earn media coverage.

8. Social media is the key to customer service.

9. A strong social media presence builds brand loyalty.

10. It is the perfect addition to your PR strategy.

11. Your competition is already social. More than 91% of retail brands use at least two social media platforms.

12. The social media market is a reasonably level playing field for the majority of enterprises.

13. Social media is a king when we are talking about ‘newsjacking.’

14. Social media marketing will bring you more sales.

15. It will help you find potential customers who do not already know your brand.

16. It establishes you as an authority in the industry.

17. It can yield you an unbeatable ROI.

Now, check out the best social media management and marketing software that can genuinely help your business get flourished and move ahead in the competition in the long run.

1. HootSuite

2. Buffer

3. Sprout Social

4. Agorapulse

5. PromoRepublic

6. Sendible

7. Loomly

8. Juicer

9. Spredfast

10. Oktopost

No marketing tool or technique is as much capable as social media to influence your brand perception in the market. If you are regularly interacting with your followers, thought-leaders, journalists, and taste-makers can really boost your profile, give sales to your brand, and improve your public image.

The most important thing we should keep in mind before designing a logo is the creativity. Basically, your logo should present what your entity exactly do. For example, if you are thinking of designing a logo for real estate, ideally, buildings or towers should be a part of logo. However, latest trends are keeping the logo very simple and flexible which should be independent of background color. Also, logos today are including alphabets or name of the business itself as a logo. P.S client's requirment here is a crucial part and should be considered and understood before designing. All the best.

A hashtag is an excellent way for individuals and brands to make their social posts more visible and increase engagement. By using hashtag cleverly with keywords, a brand can quickly generate leads. 

What is a hashtag and how it works 

A “hashtag” is a phrase or words with a hash (#) sign in front of it. It is widely used on social media networks to find the content of particular interest searched by users. 

Hashtags to social media networks are what keywords to Google. Whenever a user includes a hashtag to their post, it’s able to be indexed by the social network and easily discovered by other users. Hashtags are used to promote business, events, products, and a myriad of other things.

Hashtags can double your brand engagement and increase the clickthrough rate. 

( Image source: Twitter Unified Infotech) 

However, the phrase or word of your hashtags depends on what is the purpose of your hashtag marketing. 

(image source:boostnet.in) 

Usually, it is categorized as below:  

• Branded hashtag- Brand awareness and promotion 
• Specific hashtag- Particular product promotion or contest 
• Community hashtag- Industry related to your content 
• Trending hashtag- News or trending topics people are interested in
    

Here is the example of community hashtag and specific hashtag. The company targets the community concerned about #healthylifestyle as well as people interested in #fitnessapp. 

(image source: Unified Infotech twitter handler) 

Number of hashtags recommended for various Social Media Platforms 

There is no specific standard for hashtag usage, but the number of hashtag words generally used for social media marketing are:  

• Twitter: Use only 1-2 hashtags in your tweet 
• Instagram: Use between 7-10 hashtags in your post 
• LinkedIn: Use only 3-4 hashtags per post 
• Facebook: Use only 2 hashtags for facebook post 
• Youtube: Use around 15 hashtags 
• Pinterest: There is no limit, but ideally 20 is recommended 
• Google+: Use 1-3 hashtags for Google+ 
• Tumbler: It allows 30 but only first 20 has more chance to list out  

How to use hashtags for your business? 

• Go through the Guidelines: Before using hashtags on any platform, go through their guidelines for a proper way to use them, and get better results. The hashtags on Instagram works differently than on Twitter or Facebook or any other platform. 
• Hashtag easy to remember: Create a hashtag phrase that is easy to remember and prone to less typo error. 
• Longer hashtags: For longer hashtags use capitals so that they are easier to read. Also, try using the most trending hashtags in your industry 
• Consistency: Keep consistent and unique hashtag throughout all your social sites. Check there is no other hashtag like yours. 
• Hold a contest: Use a catchy hashtag to encourage people to enter your contest. For example, Lays created a contest with a hashtag #DoUsAFlavor. 
• Add a hashtag to profile: Add hashtags link into your social media profile. For Instagram, you can add hashtags to stories. 
• Promote content with hashtag: If there is an article that promotes your business, then do not forget to hashtag that article in your social media post. 
• Relevant and Unique hashtag: Be selective on using keywords for hashtags; others might be using the same keywords. In that case, try to make your generic hashtags more specific by adding keywords that relate to your company, product, or service. For example, one can write #shoes as #mencasualshoes. There are tools available to research industry-related and popular hashtags like RiteTag, ExportTweet, Trendsmap, and Keyhole. 
• Hashtag Placement: For example, if you are using YouTube for promotion, then put the most popular tags at the start of description and title to allow YouTube algorithms to locate quickly and categorize your videos. 
• Tag the Influencer: Influencer plays a significant role in promoting business on social media. Follow them on social media, and take note of the hashtags they’re frequently using. Try to create a hashtag around the same and tag them if possible. You can use Hashtagify.me tool for this purpose. 
• Promote Actively: Usually, people forget to promote hashtags once they have created. Posting hashtag frequently ( not overdoing) is equally important. 
• Add hashtags to the previous post: Audit your post at a regular interval, see if you can add hashtags to any previous post you think could make a difference 
• Hashtags with emojis: Use emojis with hashtags. Companies like Coca-Cola, Dominos, and Samsung have successfully used emojis with hashtags for its brand campaign 
• Hashtags offline: Do not keep your hashtags limited to online. Make sure your hashtag is seen offline as well, for instance, near the point of sale, on your promotional flyers, print ads, and every receipt.  

What NOT to do while using Hashtags  

• Do not add spaces, special characters or punctuation in a hashtag otherwise, it won’t work 
• Do not add series of a hashtag in your post or it may look cluttered 
• Do not use banned hashtags particularly for Instagram 
• Do not hijack popular hashtags unless you add value to it or start any positive discussion 
• Do not use the same hashtags repetitively 
• If you are using a hashtag for Youtube, remember a video having more than 15 hashtags may have no use as it would be ignored. Unless you are on an Instagram which allows 30 hashtags/posts. 
• Do not use any offensive terms in your hashtags out of aggression to take down your rivals 
• Do not post any hashtags with profile private; make sure it is Public; otherwise, it would be useless.
    

Promoting business through social media marketing demands consistency. To achieve marketing goals in the set timeline, both small and large businesses rely on a digital marketing agency. 

Here is the list of the top popular digital marketing agency:  

• SmartSites 
• Mayple 
• Lounge Lizard 
• Moburst 
• Dot Com Infoway 
• PageTraffic Inc 
• WebFX 
• Cyber Infrastructure Inc 
• SEOTonic Web Solutions PVT. LTD 
• WEB CHOICE
    

Final thought: Hashtag definitely enhances your online presence, but using the right strategy is the key to its success.

The inventory storage in your warehouse is one of the many necessary expenses that you should consider while creating a business plan. It helps in determining the amount of money you would need to start a business.  

How to Estimate a Start-up Inventory Cost?  

Inventory cost estimation is, of course, a difficult thing for the new retailers.  

On your request, vendors and suppliers will send you the catalogs with the dealer price list for establishing your business. Hence, getting an accurate estimate is essential so that you can show it to the bank or finance companies if you are looking for a loan.  

You have to know some basic facts to estimate your inventory cost:  

· What product lines you are going to stock with your business?  

· How many items would you need to stock to start the store?  

· What will be MSRP Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price?  

You should also know that the typical retail mark-up price for a product run between 30% and 40% of the actual cost of the product, depending upon the industry segment. Remember, higher mark-ups are possible with the hand-crafted and luxury merchandise.  

Let us take an example:  

So, you want to stock 20 sweatshirts from popular brands in your inventory.  

If regular selling price of a sweatshirt is $60, the mark-up price will be = $60 x .40 = $24 (as per 40% retail mark-up percentage)  

Wholesale price of the sweatshirt = $60 - $24 = $36  

Wholesale cost of 20 sweatshirts = $36 x 24 = $864  

So, your inventory may cost up to $864 for 20 sweatshirts.  

Now, pay attention to these two points:  

· Be consistent with the above research process and estimates for all the products you are planning to sell.  

· Also, consider factors like shipping, handling, and other relevant expenses to obtain the merchandise.  

Doing industry research and checking out reports from trade associations can help you get an insight into what mark-up price your retail segment uses.  

Always remember that the plan may have differences from actual revenues and expenditures. So, always keep a marginal capital for risk coverage.  

Now, when you are ready with your retail business, I will always suggest you to use inventory management software. It will help you to manage your orders, inventory, bills, accounts, reports, and everything that accounts important and needs security in your business. Here are a few of them that will help you to manage your stocks well, along with providing many other benefits.  

1. TradeGecko  

2. Orderhive  

3. Zoho Inventory  

4. NetSuite ERP  

5. Vend  

You can try any of these according to your business needs and get to the successful management of your inventory, warehouses, and customers.

A decade ago, automation was an unknown term in the recruitment world. The hiring manager relied more on their cognitive skills over the computer brain to pull out the right resume from the listed profiles.     

But, in the last few years, things have changed. The computer errors are minimized, and their intellectual capabilities are enhanced. The candidates’ profiles are matched accurately, and the whole process of parsing resumes has been improved. For all this, the credit goes to Automation tools or ATS (Applicant Tracking Software).     

Today by simply entering a keyword with particular skill sets, ATS fetches a long list of employees that matches the employer’s criteria. ATS helps to improve the overall hiring quality for the firms.     

( Image Source: Jobscan)  

The recruitment vendors reckon this opportunity and reap the benefits just like their other counterparts, for instance, software for Account Management, Inventory Management, Customer Management (CRM), Marketing & Sales Management.     

Job Tracking Software is used for,          

• Job posting     
• E-mail marketing     
• Resume importing     
• Resume parsing     
• Candidate tracking     
• Chatbots to interact with candidates     
• Background Screening     
• Reporting and analytics
     

There are dozens of Application Tracking System available in the market, and it is estimated to grow at the rate of 14.6% from 2016 to 2021. More than 90% of Fortune 500 Companies are currently using an applicant tracking system. Here we compare two of the popular Application Tracking System Vultus Recruit vs. Zenefits.     

Vultus Recruit Vs. Zenefits 

Do I need ATS or CRM?  

First, let us understand what CRM and ATS are.  

CRM stands for customer relationship management. Your CRM system should provide an instant understanding of what's happening with every customer (job seekers) and prompt you with actions for that person. In short, it is used to strengthen the relationship between candidates and recruiters. The goal of a recruitment CRM is to help recruiters to stay in touch with passive candidates and contact them whenever a position to their experience is out.     

ATS is a compliance tool for candidate management, while CRM is a pool of all passive and active candidates, as well as all previous applicants in your system.     

ATS is generally used by in-house recruiters who are hiring for their own small company, while CRM is used by recruitment agencies who are hiring for multiple external clients.     

Recruiters who maintain their talent pools with CRM systems can make better, data-driven hiring decisions. Because with CRM they can,          

• Record prospect and acquired customer information     
• Record and track customer interactions     
• Record and track customer meetings, demonstrations and presentations     
• Customer marketing activity     
• Reporting and data analysis
     

ATS or Recruitment Software Alternatives   

• BambooHR     
• Zoho Recruit     
• Oracle PeopleSoft     
• ApplicantStack     
• Bullhorn ATS & CRM     
• ADP Workforce Now     
• Paylocity     
• UltiPro     
• Paychex Flex     
• Workday HCM
     

Now, circling back to the question: ATS or CRM?  

Some believe that you don’t need CRM when you have ATS software, which is true if your purpose is only to filter the potential candidates for a given role. CRM has a broader purpose than simply hiring candidates. It is designed to build long term relationships with job seekers or applicants. It means all kinds of candidates, active as well as passive.     

Wrapping Up: It goes a long way to board talent for an employer; picking up the right tool that is cost-effective as well as productive in recruitment could save hours and, more importantly, make the entire recruitment process smooth.

Majority of small businesses are affected by operational challenges such as sales decline, high client attrition, and misalignment between corporate revenue targets and sales person’s commission policies. Hence, using a client tracking and management tool becomes essential to streamline the entire business process. Top players in this niche offer affordable and effective all-in-one CRM systems that give small businesses operational superiority in all key areas. Let us review some of the most powerful and reasonable CRM software solutions that are in huge demand among small businesses and start-ups.

1. ActiveCampaign

You can get started with ActiveCampaign for a little investment of $9 per month. The best thing about ActiveCampaign is that its price increases gradually with the growth of your business and contact list of customers. It can be called as the most popular and feasible CRM software that offers a comprehensive set of email marketing, marketing automation, and sales CRM features.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is hard to beat as a leading CRM app. The best thing is you can use this CRM for free. It can create an impressive contact list and company profiles. It effectively tracks your deals, offers a single detailed dashboard, and controls the performance of your agents with keeping track of the company’s activities. Additionally, HubSpot CRM is one of the best integrated CRM platforms. It integrates with Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Zapier, Shopify, and many other popular apps.

3. SuiteCRM

SuiteCRM is an open source CRM platform. It offers an extensive collection of robust and highly customized processes and features. Here, you can create your own templates and pipeline models that too, for free. Only certain complex customization options are chargeable. The open source feature lets you explore endless opportunities to modify the software source code according to your preferences.

4. Zoho CRM

Zoho offers both free and paid versions of its CRM platform, and the paid version is also very cost-effective i.e. $12 per month. The platform provides you with a robust set of email marketing, customer feedback, user tracking, and social media features. Automation features are available in the upgraded Professional ($20/month) and Enterprise ($35/month) versions. Zoho CRM Plus is another higher version that charges $50 per month for more complex features.

5. Insightly

Insightly takes care of its customers from the first ‘hello’ to delivery and beyond. It is a modern customer relationship platform. It offers powerful CRM features and reporting procedure at very reasonable prices and so, it has been a favourite choice of small businesses. The paid version of the software start from $29 per month that is a bit higher than other similar options. Insightly’s Professional and Enterprise versions are available at $49 per month and $99 per month respectively.

6. Agile CRM

Agile CRM is an all-in-one, affordable and next-generation CRM that is trusted by more than 15,000+ customers. It is free up to 10 users and 1,000 contacts. Thus, you get plenty of opportunities to explore the platform and see how it suits your business. In terms of features, this version is quite limited. You will have to opt for the enterprise version of the software to acquire the automation features. The latest version: 63.3 of the software were released in June 13, 2019.

7. MailChimp

You can get very basic CRM functionality for free with MailChimp. GDPR compliant MailChimp CRM comes with built-in security tools. This platform gives more emphasis on email marketing process and connects you to 300+ integrations. The paid version of the software can be obtained at $10 per month, but for automation and segmentation features, you need to opt for a higher version charging $299 per month.

8. OnePageCRM

OnePageCRM works with a different approach to manage your customers. It reduces the complexity of the job providing a to-do-list. The company offers no free version of the software, but its entire pricing structure is as simple as paying $12 per month per user. Here you can add and manage an unlimited number of contacts and set up deals faster and smarter. It just takes 30 seconds to build and email quotes to the customers and prospects.

9. CapsuleCRM

For small businesses, CapsuleCRM helps in making their customer relations simple. This CRM software is available in both free and paid versions. The free version is available up to 2 users and 250 contacts. The paid version of the software costs you $18 per month per user for up to 50,000 contacts. Contact management, task & calendar management, sales pipeline, and tracking users are some of the functional features of the software.

10. Apptivo

Apptivo is categorized among the most basic CRM software solutions, but it also offers some features that you get while using HubSpot and ActiveCampaign software programs. The basic version of the software is free up to three users. Though the software comes up with restrictions in its free version, the paid version is available at just $8 per month per user with pretty reasonable features of the software. Apptivo CRM is trusted by more than 200,000 organizations and has been gaining popularity for the power of its integrated software.

There are many more CRM software solutions available on the Internet that are most suitable for the start-ups and small businesses and are in huge market demand as well. But, you have to wisely choose one for the benefit of your business. 

Whenever we hear the word “FREE” our mind goes crazy. BUT! If you are a business owner then you must be pretty well aware of the concept of offering freebies to attract more consumers. However, these freebies are good until it doesn’t affect your business.
  

Likewise, it goes with inventory management software or systems (IMS). Free inventory management tools are also among the top reasons why small businesses fail. Here are some of those reasons why “Free IMS” is not healthy for your small business:       

• NO Automation

Automating all the aspects of the inventory process is one of those features of inventory management software that doesn’t come for free. Although automation is an essential thing that any small or medium-size business requires if they are implementing an inventory management system. Affordable inventory management automation would not only save your time but will also pay off in the long run as your small business grows.

• High risks of Frauds   

Inventory fraud involves the theft of physical inventory items or the misstatement of inventory records on a business's financial statements. To tackle this type of predicament – inventory management system stores product data and keeps track of every transaction occurring, and for further compatibility, you may even have an eye on your products on-the-go via cloud access. And you can’t have all these features in a free IMS.

• Less or No Integrations   

Free inventory tools often come with basic features, and integrations with well-known online marketplaces are just MYTHS! Every IMS charges you some amounts for integrating your inventory with other platforms. Also, in our tech era world, it is recommended that before choosing any SaaS product for your business - make sure it does offer multiple integrations with all the platforms that a business is linked to.

• Manages only a few Orders per month   

During the initial phase of any product-based small business, the numbers of orders are less. But once that business starts scaling you can’t rely on your ‘free’ inventory management system. Because the free IMS manages only limited and fewer numbers of orders. And after you realize that you need to transfer all your product information from that free IMS to other (the more professional one) – it will be too late!

Investing in a comprehensive, multichannel inventory management solution can help eCommerce retailers or product-based business with all aspects of inventory.

Professional IMS provides a fully integrated system for stock listing and management across all outlets, including online marketplaces, warehouses, and brick-and-mortar stores. It also provides prediction (based on forecasting algorithms), stock synchronization and data analytics tools to help streamline your small business and make it more efficient and effective.