Shift4Shop eCommerce Blog | eCommerce Features (2)

“Knowledge is power.” This aphorism has stood the test of time because history has proven it again and again. Look no further for an example than the United States. The tiny colonies created an intelligence network to fight an imperial superpower. The development of this network helped transform the young nation into the most powerful in history.

Every business owner wants to earn more customers and make more sales. Sometimes, though, this can seem like an impossible task. It can even be discouraging, especially if you're not growing at the rate you want. If you're already using the most well-known marketing tactics, and your SEO is on point, what else can you do? Are there any eCommerce tools you haven't taken advantage of?

Gift cards, or gift certificates, are something everyone knows about. But they're often not used to their full[...]

Buying products online has completely revolutionized the shopping experience. Modern-day tech means we can watch TV while scrolling through our favorite online brand’s site. All from the comfort of our sofa.

Consider the following: a product on your site has become unavailable. This product may simply be out of stock, or it may never be sold again. However, that product’s page has historically brought your website valuable traffic and conversions. How can you maintain that value, even without selling that product anymore?

Smart business owners are always looking for ways to improve the services they offer their customers, and for tools to help them adjust their business model to match their own vision. Customers always appreciate having more options, and if you can provide them without significantly adding to your workload, it's a winning situation for everyone. One eCommerce feature with this potential is in-store pickup, the practice of allowing the customer to pick up their online purchase from your location[...]

Looking to start a new business but without the commitment of investing a lot of initial capital? If so, dropshipping might just be the thing for you!

Just as not every eCommerce business is the same, not every product is the same. Selling typical retail items — say, kitchenware, toys, etc. — may be the most common business model, but it's hardly the only one out there. Some businesses, like online craft stores, rely on selling their products in fractional quantities rather than whole units. For example, a fabric store will only rarely sell an entire bolt of cloth, instead cutting it to order for sale by the yard. Other industries often[...]

The eCommerce leviathan Amazon has robots facilitating and speeding up work in their warehouses. Walmart uses flying robots to monitor inventory levels and flag missing items in their distribution centers. In this way, modern leading-edge companies resolve several issues that improve management efficiency and labor productivity. Moreover, robots work 24/7 and make fewer mistakes than humans. Small businesses should learn from the best; that's why this article is dedicated to the automation of[...]

Amazon got its start nearly a quarter-century ago in 1995. Jeff Bezos started the company using his parents' life savings.

eCommerce has come a long way over the last 26 years though. Instead of risking everything you have saved and combining a bunch of different services to set up your store, modern eCommerce platforms let you do it all in one place for as little as $20 a month.

Let's answer the question "which eCommerce platform should I use" by looking at five of the top choices.

Businesses deal with a lot of data. This statement might bring to mind sales charts, website traffic reports, and other types of information, and these are only a few of the data types that business management involves. Those kinds of data are collected by a business to help it create its strategies and identify areas for improvement, but we're going to discuss a different type of data that a business creates and maintains itself. Specifically, product data and its management.

Product data[...]

Checkout is a make-or-break moment for every customer journey in eCommerce, so it’s important to get it right. Currently, there’s a lot of debate on whether or not offering guest checkout is the right way to improve your sales numbers and customer experiences. Well, what isn’t up for debate is the state of cart abandonment: the current eCommerce cart abandonment rate is assessed to be, on average, 74%.

Some products just go well together. This could be because they're used for similar purposes as part of an unofficial set, or because they complement each other in some way. Other products are intended as accessories to another item and cannot even be used alone. For some small products, like samples, it simply makes more sense to purchase them as a group. Regardless of why, some customers are going to want to purchase certain items together anyway, so why don't you make it easier (and more[...]

Whether you’re dealing with booking clients for your spa service, or you’re scheduling meetings with your employees, you’re going to need a way to set that up. Of course, you can enter everything in manually – but, that method is bound to leave you with endless mistakes that lead to lapses in productivity and loss of sales.

By utilizing a scheduling app or booking software to automate your processes and make them more convenient and accessible for both employees and clients, you’ll see a boost[...]

As an e-commerce business, you want customers to be able to reach your site any time of the day or night. So, what happens when your site is not available due to your hosting company? You lose sales and possibly customers.

Smart business owners are always looking for advantages, and anything that saves time and effort is a big one. Tons of apps have been developed with this exact purpose in mind, bringing convenient methods of organization, management, and much more. Central to this ideal of efficiency is automation, in which software handles a task rather than a human worker.

Automation doesn't just save time, it also ensures every action is done consistently and eliminates the possibility of human error.[...]

Every second that your eCommerce website is down equates to money walking out of your virtual storefront. When considering the impact that a downed server has on eCommerce, one of the first examples that comes to mind is Amazon. Just a few years ago, their site was down for around 40 minutes, resulting in approximately $5 million in losses.

Most eCommerce businesses would be ecstatic if they could make in a year a fraction of what Amazon lost in 40 minutes. Still, every lost dollar, customer,[...]

You experience eCommerce every day. It's everywhere, and it's getting much harder to find someone who has never made a purchase online. If you've identified eCommerce as a (virtual) land of endless opportunity, you're right. But how does eCommerce work and how do you get started?

In this article, we'll introduce you to eCommerce and the different parts that come together to create the successful online stores we've all heard of — and we'll walk you through the basics of getting started to [...]

Product variations are one of the cornerstones of eCommerce, and it's impossible to shop for certain products without them. Apparel comes in multiple sizes and colors, furniture comes in different wood finishes, bed linens come in different patterns; the list goes on and on. All these variants are great for giving customers more choices, but sometimes product variations can be difficult for online sellers to deal with — especially if you have a large number of them. If you don't manage your[...]

Website audits are crucial aspects of doing business properly, especially in eCommerce. These audits are designed to cover several areas of your business, including SEO, content, CRO, performance, supply chain, platform analysis, and more. An audit is the perfect opportunity for you to see each component, evaluate it properly, and discover issues and areas where you can improve. The results will turn into a map you can use to optimize your business.

Your audit should be focused on what’s going[...]

There's no doubt that eCommerce has grown exponentially and continues to grow every year. Today, we've reached an age in which a business without a website is at a severe disadvantage. But you shouldn't look at an eCommerce website as something you simply "need" to have in order to survive (although you do). Instead, look at it as a vast opportunity for your business to reach a level of growth and success that wouldn't have been possible before the advent of the internet.

A lot goes into [...]