The Future of Retail

In the last few decades, retailers had used internet to launch their online stores and the fad emerged so strong that it affected traditional physical store model of retailing. US Census Bureau states that eCommerce sales in the last 10 years increased to 300%. Additionally, there are no ups and downs in the last 18 consecutive quarters. Customers are choosing online shopping over in-store purchases. There are various factors that are attributed to this phenomenon:

 Mobile commerce: The incessant availability of mobile and internet technology has changed the overall retail business operations. People are not just using them for socializing; they are using them as channel for shopping. The surge in the smartphone usage has completely changed the way how the retail industry is operating. More and more businesses are adopting online channel with a multi-channel platform by integrating it with a mobile platform. Last year, mobile eCommerce sales recorded $4.7 billion. Some retail stores are resorting to mobile based POS systems to offer a unique shopping experience.

- Cross channel connection: 71% of the online customers who use social media are likely to buy from a brand that they follow. Retailers, nowadays, know that they should have a solid presence in the online vertical and integrate various channels so that they can be approached through any of them. In the online vertical, advertisements are clickable and they redirect customers to the online store. An important thing in the whole process is the simplicity which online customers are able to complete their purchases without wasting time and money. The multi-channel approach resorted by online retailers helped visitors to approach retailers and search products as per their need. To compete with online segment, physical retail store owners are now using in-store QR Codes and in-store pick-up facility so that can convert their physical stores into a hybrid.

- Ever increasing online vertical: it's not just the sale that is increasing in the online vertical, it's the amount of people are spending has also increased. The eCommerce sales figure of 2013 was $1.5 trillion and it is going to be increased to $3.2 trillion in 2017. This type of growth in the eCommerce vertical has changed the market for physical retail sales. The retailers need to be creative in order to attract the customers to purchase through them. It is becoming more difficult for retailers to compete with them with regard to the prices and the range of products that online retailers can offer.

To compete with online retailers, physical store owners can offer impeccable customer service and immediate delivery of products. Various new trends are going to emerge in the eCommerce vertical and it is going to change the overall milieu. Retail industry is going to see a vast change and the traditional retailers have to change their strategy in order to compete with online retailers.

Author's Url - http://www.24sevencommerce.com/pos-ecommerce-integration.html

Stylehub Australia expands online operation with the help of 24Seven Commerce RMS POS eCommerce Integration

Headquartered in Sydney Australia, Stylehub a leading fashion retailer, re-launched its eCommerce website, deploying an Omni Channel integration solution from 24Seven Commerce. The integration streamlines the management of product content and web orders, removing redundant and costly manual data entry. The deployment of 24Seven Channel Manager enables bi-directional data exchange between physical stores and Stylehub’s new website. Product information, inventory, orders and shoppers’ data is exchanged and synced between in-store and online channels automatically.

Prior to the POS to e-commerce integration, Stylehub struggled with keeping inventory synchronized with its online operations. Store management was searching for a way to automate data entry and reduce manual processes. www.stylehub.com.au was re-launched with a fresh design on the WooCommerce platform. With 24Seven’s integration between WooCommerce and Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS POS), Stylehub gained a fully integrated e-commerce and stock control system that allows the apparel retailer to run their online and in-store business more efficiently, automatically synchronizing in-store inventory availability with their website.

24Seven’s Channel Manager application is a cloud-based connector, enabling bi-directional data exchange between physical stores and e-commerce platforms, including online channels like Amazon, eBay and Jet.com. Using 24Seven Channel as an aggregator, Stylehub connected online and offline operations, leveraging their Microsoft POS system for managing web products and orders.

“24Seven Commerce not only understands e-commerce but also understands brick-and-mortar retailing and Point of Sale systems. Integrating my RMS POS system with our Woo Commerce website has streamlined our business operation. Our online store now syncs inventory and web orders automatically with our multi store operation. 24Seven Channel Manager interface is intuitive and enables our company to easily integrate with other online channels in the future. Quite frankly, it’s refreshing to see a company truly dedicated to the specialty retailer,” said Carla Efstratiou, Founder and Director of Stylehub Australia.  

24Seven Commerce has developed ready-to-use integrations between the world’s top POS systems and e-commerce platforms including - Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, NopCommerce, Open Cart and 24Seven Cart. The company has also developed and launched two-way POS integrations with leading marketplaces Amazon and eBay, and niche marketplaces such as fancy.com, Farfetch and Smart e-Tailing.

“Our integrations extend a retailer’s POS system, unifying both physical and online operations, this includes online market places like Amazon,” said Anil Jindal, 24Seven Commerce founder and CEO. “To succeed online retailers have to have a POS system that’s integrated with their e-commerce system. Our mission is to make integrated e-commerce accessible to every brick-and-mortar retailer. We deliver integration on an easy to use platform, in the cloud and it only takes a couple of days to set-up the integration for the retailer,” said Jindal.

About Stylehub:

Stylehub is an omni-channel women’s wear boutique based in Sydney Australia, incorporating the very latest in technology to service their customers.  The company caters to young trendy women, influenced by what their favorite models, media personalities, celebrities and stylish friends are wearing. Stylehub leverages cross platform marketing, particularly social media to ensure their customers are connected with the Stylehub brands and up to date with every aspect of the retailers business and products. Visit them online at www.stylehub.com.au.

About 24Seven Commerce:

24Seven Commerce is a global provider of cloud based solutions that automate retail store operations with e-commerce platforms and online channels. Companies in over 20 countries rely on 24Seven’s integration services to enable selling on global marketplaces. 24Seven supports systems from the leading POS and e-commerce platforms, including applications from Microsoft, Amazon and eBay. 24Seven Commerce is headquartered in San Jose, CA with an office in Asia. For more details, please visit www.24sevencommerce.com, or call 408-329-6551.

24Seven Channel turning into Game Changer in Omni-Channel Retailing

24Seven Channel is a cloud based eCommerce platform for brick-and-mortar stores that facilitates scheduler based integration of various point-of-sale systems with industry major shopping carts and marketplaces. It enables its users to handle multiple channels with a single software interface.

Inventory Management is a key to run a successful online retail business and 24Seven Channel makes it easy. The merchants stay organized with multiple store locations and several warehouses.  It helps in saving time and money by automating synchronization of all the products from a point-of-sale system to all the marketplaces and shopping carts.

It allows you to upload optimized products feed with different pricing and stock quantities. It also helps in optimizing product titles and descriptions making them SEO friendly before pushing to online sales channels.  Additional images for each product, matching POS categories with eCommerce and setting different custom rules for each online channel are some of the features that 24Seven Channel brings in to overcome POS limitations.

24Seven Channel is a platform that provides detailed analytic competencies on how, when and where the sales are coming from. It allows identifying which online channels are performing well and where the response is below expectation. With its sorting and filtering feature, one can take a view of his upcoming web sales and take informed decisions about which online channel to remain focused upon.  

With prices starting at $100/month per channel, 24seven Channel brings in a host of services. This include multichannel orders management, product feed optimization, Inventory synchronization, custom rules setup for each sales channel, feed validation logs and automated two-way synchronization between various point-of-sale systems and multiple shopping carts and marketplaces.

For More Information visits: http://www.24sevencommerce.com/24seven-channel.html

Tips to make your POS eCommerce Integration promote your business

As Bill Clinton once commented - “the single most important factor in your retail business is – your customers”. Whether online or offline, your customers are the main driving factor behind the success or failure of your business. You must always remain on your toes to serve your customers with whatever best possible thing you can manage.

Now, if you are using a Point-of-Sale system, you are actually a few steps ahead of your competitors in wooing customers. POS systems offer some unique features to manage and control discounts and other sales offers that keep you stay in touch with your customers at all time. Let see how a few simple tricks can do wonders for your business!

Putting items on sale

Being a retailer, you must make both your retail and the web store a ‘happening place’ for your shoppers. There should be one or the other promotional activity running on your store. A group of your customers should always be looking for the next sales day or promotion activity. You can name a sale-campaign as “customer appreciation day“, “Value Return week”, “Stock clearance sales”, “Weekender Specials”, etc.

Now, in all cases, you can set the sale prices in your POS system in advance. Before you specify the sales prices of your products, you can specify start and end dates or the campaign or make it a weekly schedule (put some items on sale on Saturdays and Sundays) in your point of sale. When a customer buys an item on sale, POS will automatically take the sale price. When the campaign ends, POS will convert the sale price to the regular price.

You can set sales-schedule in your store. If you are using any POS integrated eCommerce, you can take this complete sales-schedule to your online store and avail these offers to your online shoppers.

Provide a gift with a purchase

In some popular POS systems, you can assign a promotional or gift item (called a “tag along” item) with every item in the database. Thus, when a shopper buys a particular item, the POS will automatically include the gift item in the sale. Even more, you can also specify the quantity of the gift item you want to provide with the purchase.

Before you give a gift for a purchase, you will need to specify an item as gift and place it as a “tag along” item to the item you wish. For example, let us consider that you want to give a skating board to the customer who purchases an item that priced at more than $300.00; you will need to assign the skating board as tag along item to each item whose price is more than $300.00.

If you have shopping cart software that integrates with the POS, these gift details can also be synchronized with the webstore for your online customers.

Setting up discount schedules

Many point-of-sale systems offer two wonderful types of discounting mechanisms; the mix and match - where a customer gets a discount when he/she buys a certain quantity of similar items. The second one is “Buy X, Get Y for Z”, in which the customer gets a certain number of items free or at a discount when he buys a certain quantity of those items at the normal price. In both the options, when a discount is set for an item, the item's price is automatically reduced as that item is added to a sales transaction (or to the shopping cart in case of the POS shopping cart software) and discount conditions are met.

How to connect your Point of Sale to eCommerce?

Plug your Point-of-Sale System into your Website:

Feed POS Inventory to your website, send Web Orders to POS automatically. Reduce labor cost.

24Seven Channel Manager enables two way data exchange between POS platforms and e-commerce platforms.

• Send POS product catalog to e-commerce channels automatically
• Automatically update online inventory every time an item is sold in POS
• Automatically download web orders to POS
• Connect top POS Systems with Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Amazon, eBay and other platforms
• Eliminate duplicate data entry

Learn more at http://www.24sevencommerce.com/24seven-channel.html or Call 408-329-6551

24Seven Commerce enables Omni-channel Connectivity for Specialty Retailers

How do you synchronize your physical store with your e-commerce platform, Amazon, eBay and other online channels?  You already know e-commerce is essential for your business. How do you manage in-store and online operations as one unified system? The answer - implement 24Seven Channel, the cloud-base Channel Manager. It’s a connector enabling bi-directional data exchange between physical stores and e-commerce platforms. It’s a simple answer to synchronization between online and offline operations. It’s an Omni-Channel plug-in for POS/ERP systems. This easy to use extension enables businesses to connect data between any and all channels to better serve both the instore and online customer.

24Seven Channel is a cloud solution for automating multi channel sales management.  It empowers Retailers to send optimized data feeds across various shopping cart platforms like Shopify and Magento, and marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Fancy, Farfetch, Google Shopping and Jet.com. Simultaneously, it downloads web orders from various online marketing channels into point-of-sale and ERP systems.

Channel Manager enables specialty retailers to sync multiple touch points. Enhance product data (images and web descriptions) before pushing content to various online channels.

Imagine sending product content from your point-of-sale system to all online channels automatically.  24Seven Channel brings it to the reality.  Now a retailer can scale their online business with an unlimited number of SKUs without redundant data entry.

Here's how it works:

· 24Seven Channel Manager is a cloud based connector that bridges the gap between brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce and marketplaces.

· It Feeds POS data to e-commerce platforms like - Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, NopCommerce, Channel Advisor, Open Cart and 24Seven Cart.

·         Inventory is synchronized automatically throughout the day. 

·         Web orders are automatically downloaded in POS for fulfillment and reporting.

Using 24Seven Channel, retailers can list and sell items on more marketplaces.  Feed product information to Google shopping.  Prevent shoppers from ordering items that are out of stock.  Improve ranking on Amazon, eBay and other marketplaces.

24Seven Channel Manger enables POS and e-commerce to work as one unified system, optimizing inventory, streamlining operations and reducing man power.

About 24Seven Commerce:

24Seven Commerce is a Silicon-Valley based global provider of integrated e-commerce solutions for independent retailers. The company specializes in Automated Inventory Synchronization between brick-and-mortar stores and online channels. With clients in 11 countries, their technology enables retailers of all sizes to sell on global marketplaces, including Amazon and eBay.  The 24Seven Commerce application suite includes 24Seven Cart®, 24Seven Link® and 24Seven Channel®. 24Seven Channel Manager is an Omni-Channel plug-in for POS. An easy to use extension that enables businesses to connect data between all channels to better serve online and offline customers. For more information, please visit: www.24sevencommerce.com.