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Showing posts from September, 2023
Smart fulfillment is at the core of AiHello’s platform. If you’re an eCommerce seller who does business on Shopify, Woocommerce or Amazon we help you smartly fulfill your orders. Let’s better understand this with an example. Say, I sell on Woocommerce and I sell all across the world. The main challenge is fulfilling each order that may be originating from various different countries all across the globe. In the case where a customer from the US or Mexico purchases an item, then we would want to fulfill the order through Amazon US since it makes geographical sense to fulfill that order through Amazon US. If a Woocommerce user buys your product from Amazon France, Amazon Italy, Amazon Spain or what have you, AiHello helps you fulfill that order through Amazon UK because, again, it is the most efficient means to fulfill that order. On Woocommerce, we have enabled fulfillment by AiHello so that we can choose whichever order that comes from that country, we will fulfill that order with th
The reasons are very similar in both cases: savings, variety, comfort and experience The current consumer is multichannel, and is willing to buy through all kinds of ways: from the traditional store to the computer, from the mobile app to social networks. What he wants, however, is to be able to decide at any time and place what channel he wants to use on that occasion to get the desired product. But what leads you to opt for ecommerce or, conversely, to go to the store? A new GfK survey of more than 23,000 buyers from all five continents reveals that the motivations for choosing one option or another are actually very similar. One of the main reasons that consumers are betting on online shopping is the possibility of saving money, since through the Internet it is possible to compare and access a large number of retailers, and also to those who propose real bargains. In fact, the economic saving is one of the main factors that pushes to buy online, and that was considered by 55%
A major reason why many ecommerce businesses thrive and do well is optimizing their inventory management. In layman’s terms, knowing exactly how many and where to restock an item. What to stock, how much to stock and where to stock are the three pillars of a successful ecommerce business and if one of those pillars are disturbed it will affect the business’ profit margins and revenue. Knowing how much to stock lays the foundation and the rest and do what a human does best – running a business. You let the AI do the heavy lifting of how much to restock, where to restock etc. Here I will show you how the AI informs you how much to restock during the holidays. The holidays are generally a period in which an ecommerce seller will either makes a killing with a high profit margin or does not sell well and get bombarded by extremely high warehouse fees. You need to be prepared months in advance because there is are lead times, shipping times, and the closure (or backlog) of Amazon warehouse
In e-commerce is equally important what happens before as what happens after the purchase. Before the consumer makes the final click that will cause the product they want to become a purchase, the brands have to pay special attention to a large list of items. The design of the web, the photos of the product, the comments of other consumers, how the prices of different products or services are presented. All these elements are crucial to convince the consumer and all of them have become the elements of manual that all the brands and all the companies take care of. But the truth is that these are not all crucial elements and are not the only ones that brands should watch with falcon eyes. One of the trends in e-commerce is that of thinking that once the sale has been closed the work is already done. The consumer has bought, the product has been shipped and everything the seller has to do or should do is done. However, this reasoning is a mistake and only causes problems and failures in
Welcome to AiHello Machine learning e-commerce application. The goal of this application is to optimize selling physical goods on the internet via Amazon & eBay. We will be optimizing the following features in order to create a 24x7 automated selling program - Pricing of the product based on current date: we want to increase the price of a product pre-emptively based on historical prices of similar products. For example we can know beforehand that snow shovels are in demand during winter so we can increase prices before winter approaches and start dropping prices as winter fades - Pricing based on competition : we want to avoid the race to the bottom by constantly lowering the price - Keywords optimization based on product description - Estimate sales of competitors and "lookup" competitors for optimizing inventory - Forecast sales & profit - Automated personal customer support - Suggest more products to sell based on current sales I will b
  The digital era has opened up new opportunities for those that are willing to start a business. If you are searching for a spot in the online market, Amazon can become a great marketplace for your company. In order to sell on Amazon, there are two options: either we take care of the entire selling process, or we rely on “Fulfillment By Amazon” (FBA). With FBA we "rent" a space in one of the logistics stores of the American company, which from that moment is the sole responsible of processing our shipments. For many companies, this represents a great advantage, since the logistic management of an e-commerce can become a real headache. However, despite the attractiveness of this system, paying FBA fees can cut into your bottom line. To combat overcrowding in their fulfillment center, Amazon began instituting a penalty on a low Inventory Performance Index (IPI) for their third-party sellers, who provide just over half of their sales. Initiated on July 1, 2018, these penalt
As a seller, there comes a time when you are most interested in scaling your customer acquisition channels to grow your business. Sometimes it can be a tall order knowing the best platform to bring traffic to your site; traffic that you can convert to actual customers. Perhaps you have already taken your time and created the killer content & product descriptions. You have also probably studied your site analytics – and you are well conversant with best selling locations (globally). However, you can do better; that there are ways you can test channels faster, get more flexible, and even leverage existing customer data for a more in-depth insight into your next audience? Sounds interesting, right? One thing is for a fact; eCommerce is all about generating sales. Artificial Intelligence can be of great help when it comes to prospects conversion- from finding the potentials to providing after-sale services. It sure has its flaws as well, however, the effects of AI in helping you be
In our previous post, we explained 5 keys to get consumers in online markets. Of course, that is not enough and we are here to give you 5 more pieces of advice to make you e-commerce grow. 1) It has to be a solution When we buy online, we can buy simultaneously in several spaces and various types of products. We do not have to navigate sections of a supermarket, for example, browsing shelves to see what we find, but you can put many things at the same time in the cart. This implies that companies have to be able to see the purchase not as something that is made product to product, but rather as a process in which products are keys to more things. 2) Many more audiences have to be reached, even those who have been forgotten In a physical store, space is limited. A supermarket can not sell vegan products if there is not really a significant niche market and a cosmetics store can not sell a type of shampoo that only buy 2 people in that neighborhood. However, the online store allows y
The psychology of why we buy is much more complex than it might seem, as well as how we respond to purchases and how these processes modify our perceptions about the things we do and about our relationship with brands. One of the elements that are associated with purchases and what brands should be considered is buyers 'remorse, which is known as buyers' remorse or poor shopping awareness, and that modifies how they act and how they feel consumers in relation to what they buy. Basically, consumer remorse is feeling bad after buying for one reason or another and it is a feeling that everyone has felt on occasion. It's the thrill that comes with deciding to buy something (and buying it) and you begin to think that maybe it was not such a good idea or maybe you should not have bought something that you really need. It is what happens when you buy a book despite having to read; when you buy new shoes although it is not something you really need or when you do with a product
One of the issues usually mentioned when talking about e-commerce is that it has served to break the frontiers. Consumers often look for specific things, products that they want, and it really gives them a little equal where the sellers sell them if what they offer them is what they want and if they make it arrive quickly and efficiently. This has created a boom in so-called cross-border trade (for example, we have to think about how we buy books today and where they come from nowadays: online bookstores sell all over the world, some of them even with free shipping no matter where you are) and has made consumers open their range of options. There are those who buy directly from Chinese e-commerces, although the products end up taking much longer to arrive than if they are bought in a geographically close online store. But is this principle absolutely true? Are consumers really so foreign to geography? I mean, are we buying without really caring about the physical location of who se
What are online ads for? In a market where brands not only have to face the general lack of interest of consumers in advertising but also have to be able to overcome the fact that consumers themselves are increasingly active in blocking advertising and not directly see it (after all, this is the era of ad blockers and consumers with the 'quick finger' to skip as soon as the online video ads can), you might fall into the temptation to think Online advertising, in the end, serves little or nothing. However, studies show that, despite everything, the ads seen on the network have an impact on consumers and have an impact, moreover, that goes beyond what happens in the network itself. That is, online ads not only impact consumers online behaviors, but also offline. This is just demonstrated by a study that has just appeared published in Marketing Science and that have made several university experts and linked to several technology companies that at the time of doing the analysi
You’ve already seen how easy it is to get started selling on Amazon’s Marketplace, and this is definitely the place for you to begin. For those just starting out without deep pockets for marketing, “Amazon is by far the best online marketplace for small businesses who do not have a big advertising budget,” says Bing Yang of Augustina Jewellery. If you’re already selling in an online market, you will be delighted to see how simple it is to move business to Amazon. But, even if you’ve never sold anything on the Internet, you’ll be on your way in no time. For a new seller, you can’t beat the fact that listing your items for sale on Amazon is free. That’s right, you don’t pay a thing unless your item sells. Whether you list a single item or start out with dozens, your only cost will be in commissions when your items sell. Then you’ll pay Amazon a flat 15 percent commission on the sales price. Amazon will charge your customers a set fee for shipping and handling, and if you buy your suppl
A few years ago, the San Francisco City Council ordered that an advertising campaign be stopped. They did not give it a day's worth of life when they forced it out. The campaign was at the bus stops and was an olfactory marketing. Bus stops smelled like cookies to boost a milk brand. City officials feared that it would be too annoying and had an effect on people with allergies. Despite this, it is not difficult to find on the internet photos that leave a trace of what happened: those who waited for the bus appear to have a dreaming face smelling those cookies. The idea is not particularly new. The truth is that in recent times olfactory marketing has become a kind of 'must' that everyone has to do, from the big chains to the smallest. Everyone seems to already have their fragrance. Smell is one more element when it comes to branding. However, and although the smell is the one that has become fashionable lately, it is not the only sense that can be taken into account whe
If you are a seller who is selling quite a few orders per month, you have probably thought about starting to ship your products via Amazon’s fulfilment. If you are still on the fence about this, we give you eight reasons on why you should definitely make sure your products on Amazon are FBA. Choose FBA for a tension-free shipping experience 1)       Items can be shipped to customers at any time with FBA. You don’t have to worry about anything related to handling, shipping, and returns. Amazon does it for you, working 24-7 to make sure your products reach the customers on time and that your customers have the best experience. You don’t even have to print shipping labels for your packages. All you have to do is monitor you inventory levels so you can send in more stock when it’s needed. 2)      You can make use of Amazon’s world-class shipping centers if you opt for FBA. Your customers get to enjoy options like low cost shipping, free shipping, and one day shipping without any addit
It is well known that the main source of traffic on to your listing is going to be through search. Thus, it becomes important to manage your Amazon SEO to keep it effective, fast, and relevant. Being relevant helps shoppers find what they are looking for. For example, an accurate title, product description and proper photos are sure to convert your traffic to revenue. Also, you should rank your products based on profitability. You want to make sure your products sell, but you also want to make sure that your revenue per product sold is maximum. Things that affect this are sales history, inventory levels, price, conversion rate, feedback score, and product reviews.   Importance of following the template   All the words that are present in your title are searchable! Thus, you have to make sure that your title is just perfect. It should not be too bloated, or contain very few keywords. This is hard. Which is why amazon is providing you with a template that you should follow in ord
According to a study conducted by Softdoit, 77% of companies use email in their marketing strategy, being the most used marketing technique, followed by social networks, event attendance and advertising on Google. This study seeks to investigate the use of marketing tools and techniques in companies and its integration with Customer Relationship Management or CRM. Thus, the study concludes that 56% of respondents use a CRM in their marketing and sales tasks. Likewise, the study adds 29% of the same proposes to implant it in its processes in the near future. This survey also aimed to see the evolution of software in the cloud of the companies. In this regard, Softdoit shows data demonstrating the growth in the use of software in the cloud: Of all the respondents, around 50.5% use a CRM in the cloud, while the remaining 49.5% still use systems hosted on their own servers. However, the study concludes that 11.7% of traditional CRM users are planning to migrate to cloud-hosted solution
- Start by going to the API Generation page on Shopify: https://help.shopify.com/en/api/getting-started/api-credentials#generate-private-api-credentials 2. In the private API section, click on the Apps link on step 4 and Sign in to your Shopify account 3. Click on Manage private apps on the bottom center of the page 4. Click on Create a new private app on the top right of the page 5. Add the name and email details of the App: AiHello is the name and info@aihello.com is the email 6. Click Save and Accept Shopify’s API Terms 7. Select the Admin API Permissions. Below are all the permissions we need and the service we use them for: In order to fulfill orders through AiHello (via 3PLs and FBA) we need Read and Write access to: - All fulfillment orders - Fulfillment services - Assigned fulfillment orders - Orders, transactions and fulfillments - Inventory In order to list AiHello as a secondary inventory location we need Read access to: - Locations In
E-commerce has become an increasingly important element in the day-to-day lives of consumers, who are increasingly buying online and are increasingly using the internet to access various products, services and brands. This has meant that the entire universe of traditional consumption has begun to analyze and to incorporate online tools into their sales processes. But the truth is that this is not the only change that has motivated e-commerce and its growing success. The situation is much more complex because online shopping has created new stress points for companies. In the new era of online shopping, they are no longer solely responsible for sales processes and making products reach consumers. Now, they are increasingly dependent on intermediaries. Logistics companies have become a sort of evil to assume for these companies. Online stores do not generally have their own delivery services and have a physical network, the recurrent problem is that brands continue to rely on messaging
The problem that comes with being a seller is that you are often faced with a tough choice when you receive negative feedback – Should you take a hit and move forward? Or should you fix that by trying to get more positive feedback? The thing is that positive feedback looks good on your seller profile, and also provides you a boost in search rank. But, boosting your positive feedback in any way that is not organic is against amazon’s policies. And, if you remember what we have always told you, you probably remember this – You are inside amazon’s walled garden, and here, you must abide by their rules or be kicked out. You probably don’t want the latter, so you’ll have to play it by the rulebook. Even then, there are a few things that you must always remember, even if you are playing it safe, and here they are. 1.   Do not contact your friends or family and ask them for reviews.      When you signed up as a seller you have signed an agreement with amazon which means that you are abo
One of the traditional examples that are put on how new technologies can change business strategy and can make a company a successful bet is Amazon. Amazon is the recurring example of how to use next generation tools to reach the consumer. The company has accumulated information, and they know the consumer is the key to its success. The data allow them not only to capture purchases but also to make consumers go sometimes beyond. Its algorithms are able to comb the trends and thus empower consumers to find the products they seek and those related to them. Who did not end up buying a book once thanks to what 'Customers who bought this product also bought the? The company has also been able to use these tools to make a much more personalized shopping experience. What the consumer sees when accessing the site is not the same thing that any other buyer sees. The homepage is very marked by the buying habits and interests that the consumer has shown, which makes not only that he feels
Brands and companies have to be as close as a friend to consumers in the different profiles they have in social networks. It is one of those lessons on how to operate in social media that everyone has come to assume. Social networks are an informal environment, which means that companies can not get stuck in their dry corporate language. They have to be close, nice and friendly with their consumers. In the end, in fact, they do not have to do anything they have not done before. They have to be as they are supposed to be the dependents of the stores with their consumers and as is often expected to be the customer service. They have to work in a close, near and pleasant way. Be authentic. But, although in reality if you think about it is nothing new, brands and companies have created a kind of new language for social networks. They have assumed that they have to be different. And this is where failure often occurs. Companies have realized that they have to be close, but in that capac
Multivariate Time Series Forecasting is an important problem in many domains. Be it forecasting the demand for a product, or finding weather patterns, using time series parameters from the present to predict the future is vital to many organisations. In this article we are going to see how to use recurrent neural networks with convolutional neural networks to predict time series forecast for grocery store sales. The data can be found here, and the code can be found here. This implementation was developed as a prototype for AI Hello, a company based in Toronto that provides e-commerce solutions including sales prediction for sellers on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Woocommerce, and Shopify. We are using an implementation called LSTNet to perform this prediction. LSTNet uses convolutional networks and recurrent networks in conjunction. Additionally, it also provides the capability to detect long or short term patterns according to the nature of the data. Data Preparation and Exp
E-commerce is one of the new tools that brands and companies have discovered in recent years to connect with consumers and to offer their products and services. Its growth has been increasing in recent times, which has meant that more and more sectors have been incorporated into online sales. There is more to see, for example, what has happened with food. The super online has become a new competitor with strength in the market. But this growth of e-commerce not only implies more opportunities but also more work and more analysis. Firms need to understand what consumers want in that environment and how they can adjust to it to position themselves. How can you get into the online shopping habits of consumers? How can you connect with potential customers and get them done with your own products and not those of the competition? 1) The battle begins with the click One of the mistakes that are usually made in e-commerce is to see it as a kind of isolated reality, in which it only matter
The smartphone is currently the consumer's best friend. It is the one who spends 24 hours at his side, the first thing he looks at when he wakes up and the last thing he sees before closing his eyes. And just as the mobile has completely transformed our way of communicating, entertaining or informing us, it has also given a 180-degree turn to our way of buying and relating to brands. Thus, actions like researching a product on the mobile web, comparing prices or making a suggestion through social networks have become something everyday. However, many consumers still find in the purchase through the computer (or even in the store) facilities that do not find a mobile. Vendors should pay more attention to facilitating the purchase process through smartphones and tablets. Among other things because consumers themselves ask for it, most consider that the shopping experience via web and app can greatly improve. And it is more than half of consumers say that it is easier to see the p
As e-commerce has become an increasingly important element of branding and business strategy, a number of elements have been added to the list of things businesses have to worry about and in which they have to focus if they want to connect with your potential buyers in the new times. One of those elements is delivery. Unlike traditional commerce, where consumers have things at the same time they buy them, in e-commerce one has to wait for purchases to arrive home. For companies in this sector, this is one of their most crucial issues and one, moreover, that they have to leave in the hands of a third party. They can not control the deliveries, but they have to contract them to third parties, which implies a new expense that is transferred to the consumer and that has become one of those elements of the eternal debate. Because... what do consumers prefer? Do you want to have your purchases right now and therefore are willing to do anything to have things as soon as possible? Or, on t
When e-commerce appeared, many people rushed to announce the death of traditional commerce. Consumers were increasingly buying online and, therefore, they were condemning physical stores to a possible future death. His luck was set and it did not seem to be very positive. But in spite of it, the physical stores are still there and they are a very important part of the buying habits. In fact, consumers are quite far from being buyers of one or the other scenario. They want to buy in all the stages and they want to do it also how and when they please. That does not imply, however, that they do not see the different sales channels without problems and without fail, and that they have no complaints and negative opinions about them. That physical stores have been around for so long does not necessarily mean that everything is seen in them with special good eyes. Consumers remain highly critical and continue to find defects that should be addressed. What are the things that most frustrat
First, you buy the products from a supplier to sell them under your brand name. You don’t actually manufacture them, which is the conventional way of doing business. You create a private brand and then put all the bought products under that brand so you can resell them. For this, you need to get custom logos printed on the items and their packages, and get the previous brand identities (if any) removed. This ensures that the customer will associate the product with your brand, not with that of the manufacturer. This strategy is extremely popular right now and most online sellers use it. You can find companies that will help you in creating your own brand identity. They’ll advise you on extending, promoting, and positioning your brand in the market, so you can make the best of it. Here are a few things that you need to know about this practice. Easier to handle Trading is easier than manufacturing, that’s pretty obvious. There’s a lot less trouble in comparison, so you need to throw