by Cozmot | Oct 8, 2020 | Covid19, Magento2, MagentoB2B
B2B commerce is undergoing incredible change due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. As a sector that very much relies on in-person interactions to seal the deal, business models are now shifting to prioritize digital engagement.
Indeed, one key finding from a study by McKinsey was that B2B companies now see digital interactions as two to three times more important to their customers than traditional sales interactions.
This swift move to digital requires additional shifts in strategy — no doubt. And that was the topic of conversation during a recent panel discussion where industry experts pointed to the significant transformation happening in B2B commerce and outlined strategies for success. The panel, which was sponsored by Adobe, left attendees with the following four key takeaways.
1. MAKE THE BUYING EXPERIENCE EASIER
Buyers are looking for safe ways to buy — this much is obvious. B2B companies should be evaluating their eCommerce sites to ensure they are creating superior experiences for their buyers. They want convenient, quick-click ways to gather information, such as accurate inventory status.
Shannon Hane, senior product marketing manager at Adobe and one of the panelists, shared an example.
“I have a chemical manufacturer who is using real-time inventory reporting on their site to make their customers feel very confident that they have the product in stock,” she said.
Fulfillment now requires new delivery options. Consider adding delivery automation, such as curbside pickup, buy online/pickup in store (BOPIS), touchless, and contact free services.
“We have one customer who put in place geofencing so that they are automatically notified when that customer is coming into the parking lot so that they can be ready to go, and it is a smooth, fast service,” she said. “So there are folks that are really innovating around the touchless piece.”
If you haven’t already, assess your site experience and add contact-free order fulfillment.
2. COMMERCE IS MORE THAN JUST THE PURCHASE
Make product information pages and site search work for you. Now is the time to be examining and revamping your product experience pages. Some buyers may not be able to order through a website because they are restricted — for example, certain healthcare buyers — but they are certainly using your site to research products and you want to impress them.
And don’t overlook site search.
“I wish more B2B companies would put site search at the focal point of everything that they are doing in 2020 because it is such a massive area,” explained panelist Justin Racine, senior commerce consultant at Perficient. “Site search is huge because if you ask yourself how many users am I losing on my website or in my commerce platform because my site search is crappy, can you answer that question? If you can’t, then that’s something you should take a look at.”
Many B2B companies are putting an emphasis on optimizing search. Another panelist, Mike Powers, director of eCommerce and digital marketing at Alaska Rubber Group, provided a great example.
“Within six months of going live … looking at the site search data, that actually allowed us to determine that our taxonomy needed to change,” he said.
So even something as simple as changes to taxonomy can build a better experience.
3. PRIORITIZATION ELIMINATES PARALYSIS
You may know that you need to do a better job but are unsure how to prioritize and move forward. Well, this panel offered plenty of advice, much of it around organization and technology. First, you need to get your leadership aligned with your vision and build digital commerce expertise in your organization. For example, you may need to find an external partner to help build the eCommerce plan and also hire an evangelist who rallies the internal teams.
Second, it’s time to assess your technology. But this evaluation should be done continuously, not just one time. A recommended best practice is to conduct customer input sessions: What do your customers think are important features that should be part of your platform? Get your sales team involved and part of this process, too. If you can get just a couple of salespeople embracing the platform changes, this will bring the entire sales team along and be a huge win for the internal team and your customers.
4. PAY ATTENTION TO BEST PRACTICES AND EMERGING TRENDS
The experts had numerous tips to share, some tried-and-true and many emerging. Pay attention to best practices and emerging trends to help you create differentiation for your business. Here are a few notable ones:
• Product previews: Product configurators and selection tools can help buyers get to purchase decisions quickly and confidently. Be sure to use customer ratings and reviews. B2B buyers want to know what their peer groups have to say. Videos and even augmented reality can be proxies for in-person product demos.
• New business models: COVID-19 has upset traditional business models. You may be facing a whole new set of customers and new users. Be open to creating new models to capture this demand, which can include pivoting from B2B to direct-to-consumer (D2C) and adding marketplaces like Amazon.
• Service: Now is the time to double-down on service. Online chat will be critical. Also, ensure you have touchpoints in place to help remind customers to order replacement products or parts. Email marketing can be a big help here.
These are just a few of the insights from the panel discussion on what the fastest-growing B2B companies are doing to innovate. Panelists also shared a few of their personal best practices — use customers as beta testers and learn how they want to use your platform; experience your site as if you are your customers and remove any friction; and build a strong internal team to scale successfully. Above all, you need a superior digital shopping experience to drive growth and build long-lasting customer relationships.
The fact is there’s a reason some B2B companies have been able to stay resilient throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and why some have not. There are real, concrete differences between the two groups. Discover the digital commerce secrets that are accelerating growth and setting B2B organizations up for success in a post-COVID world.]]>
by Cozmot | Oct 8, 2020 | Covid19, General, Magento2
study by IBM reveals the average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million, while the average time to identify and contain a breach is 280 days. Malware and digital skimming are among the most common attack vectors for eCommerce sites. According to a recent malware scan run by Sansec:
• Credit card skimming malware was detected on 8,170 unique stores across all platforms.
• 82% of stores that had malware were running an unsupported version of product.
• 24% of all affected stores suffered multiple malware incidents. This suggests that one out of four merchants are unable to identify the root cause and, as such, unable to close unauthorized access.
• On average, skimming malware was present on compromised stores for 13.2 days.
At Adobe, we are committed to helping companies deliver secure shopping experiences to their customers. We are improving our threat detection tool to help our customers proactively identify potential threats to their web stores.
Magento Security Scan Tool
This Magento Security Scan tool is an important part of Adobe’s strategy to help Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source merchants enhance security for their storefronts. The Security Scan tool will help merchants identify:
• Potential malware and vulnerabilities on the web store
• Out-of-date security patches
• Potentially vulnerable extensions
• Digital skimming injections
• Security misconfigurations
• More streamlined guidance on Magento Commerce security best practices
If potential threats are identified, the Magento Security Scan tool can alert the admin through an automated email notification.
Partnership with Sansec
Adobe has partnered with Sansec, a leading security company specializing in helping to prevent digital skimming. Through this partnership, Adobe will be adding about 9,000 malware and vulnerability signatures to the Magento Security Scan tool. Each of these signatures has undergone a multistage testing and validation process before being added to the scan tool. Every week Sanguine Security’s research team analyses 200 to 300 known eCommerce attacks. This information produces a valuable stream of possible attack vectors and indicators of compromise (IOCs). This data is continuously fed as threat signatures into our enhanced Security Scan tool, leading to approximately 300 new signatures added monthly.
Setting up the Security Scan tool
The Security Scan tool is free to use for any version of Magento Commerce, Magento Open Source customers, and partners in the Adobe Solution Partner Program and Adobe Exchange Partner Program. Merchants and their teams, including authorized developers, can access the enhanced scan tool directly by logging into their Magento accounts and choosing Security Scan. It is very easy to register your site to the scan tool and monitor your site on a daily, weekly, or on-demand basis.
Benefits of the Security Scan tool enhancements
The enhanced scan tool will help customers:
• Get real-time insights into the security status of their Magento store and suggests best practices that may assist in fixing the issue.
• Run over 17,000 security tests to help identify potential malware on their webstore.
• Get access to historical security reports of their Magento sites to track and monitor their progress over time.
• Get access to the scan report that shows the successful and failed checks and recommended further action, if any.
Adobe encourages merchants to enable the Magento Security Scan tool on all production storefronts. Detailed documentation on setting up scan tool is available here.]]>
by Cozmot | Oct 8, 2020 | Covid19
Covid-19 has put our world to the test, showing just how willing we are to spend large amounts of time indoors, with our families. It has also shown us just how important the workplace is as a space to socialize—many have realized that working from the couches in their pajamas is not so appealing after all. It turns out we miss those production hives that we once dreaded going back to every Monday morning.
And while we love our spouses, children and pets, all of whom have become our new “co-workers,” most of us miss our normal work lives. However, have you given much thought to other aspects of your previous work life? Were you pleased with the actual work you were doing? Social aspects aside, is there anything you would like to change about your career?
If so, don’t worry. Countless Americans and people around the world are considering a career change. They are looking for a career path with more growth potential or a more flexible schedule, so that they can stay at home without taking a PTO day if they do feel like working from the comfort of their couch. Well, the tech industry can offer you just that.
In today’s Internet-centric world, breaking into the tech industry is much easier than you might think. Where you used to have no choice but to earn a computer science or information technology degree from a four-year university—or a two-year degree from a local community, city, or technical college—that is no longer the case. Instead, many tech hopefuls are learning their new skills through coding bootcamps.
These intensive, short-term programs can take you from zero experience to programming professional in just a matter of months. Even better, these schools offer a wide array of class schedules and financing options. Whether you need a full-time, in-person program, part-time evening classes, online, or even a self-paced track, there is an option for you.
Most schools also offer financing options like deferred tuition payments and income sharing agreements (ISA), so you can learn however you want and pay tuition once you have finished your program and landed a job.
Now you know where and how to learn your new coding skills. Let’s look at some career paths you might want to pursue once you get there.
Web Development
Covid-19 has forced us indoors, which means we are spending more time online. As a result, demand for skilled programmers who can build top-notch websites has grown. The professionals who make the websites we use every day are called Web Developers.
UX
The Web Developers who build the part of the website that the user sees and interacts with are called Web Designers. Web Designers are responsible for building what is called the user experience (UX). Functions like search bars and “Click Here to Apply” buttons are part of UX, which are the responsibility of Web Designers.
UI
The Web Development process of programming the code that makes websites run and function properly—such as linked web pages, and the functions and buttons that Web Designers build—is called the user interface (UI). This is also referred to as back end development because it is all the programming that is going on behind the scenes.
The Web Development sector is booming. Web Development jobs are expected to grow at an impressive rate of 13 percent by 2028. Entry-level Web Developers can expect salaries of over $50,000 and often report high job satisfaction. More senior developers can expect a salary of over $90,000.
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by Cozmot | Apr 26, 2020 | Covid19, General, Wordpress
If you are running a website on WordPress, the notification plugin might save you from leaving your potential customers, website visitors behind. The quick and easy Notification Bar helps you keep visitors informed as it has the great attention-grabbing capability.
Here’s the list of notification bars plugins that are available for WordPress
Apex Notification Bar
Features
- Pre-designed read to use templates
- Multiple Notification Bar Positions and Styles, and Components
- Contact form integration options
- Multisite compatibility and responsive
- Premium version available with more options
Explore Apex Notification Bar Lite
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HashBar Notification Bar
Features
- Compatible with King Composer, WPBakery Page Builder, and Elementor Page Builder
- Option for Scheduling Notifications for a specific time
- Option to create unlimited Notification bars
- Show Notification on Specific URLs
Explore more about HashBar WP Notification Bar
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Announcement Bar Notification Bar
Features
- Great Customization and Positioning Options
- Display it Anywhere
- Option to add more content with ‘more’ tag and drop down
- Easy Setup and installation
Buy Announcement Bar Notification Bar
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Top Bar Notification Bar
Features
- Option to set time before the Top Bar appears
- Bottom border
- Bottom positioning
- User visibility settings
Explore the Top Bar in Detail
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Easy Notification Bar
Features
- Easy installation and setup
- Good customization options for color, background, and text
- Callout Button (Optional)
- Responsive
- No cookies or JavaScript required
Explore Easy Notification Bar in Detail
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Hello Bar Notification Bar
Features
- Show the right message at the right time to your visitors
- Offers Exit-Intent Popup
- Targeting visitors through 200+ parameters
- Google SEO & GDPR Compliant
- Allows A/B testing
Explore HelloBar Notification Bar in Detail
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WPFront Notification Bar
Features
- This processes shortcodes
- Position it anywhere and you can even make it sticky
- An optional button that can execute a JavaScript or open a URL
- Auto-close option and reopen button
- Set the start and end date of the notification
Explore WPFront Notification Bar in Detail
Installing a Notification Bar in WordPress (WPFront Notification Bar in this example)
Go to ‘plugins’ in the left menu bar of your WordPress Dashboard. Type the name of the notification bar plugin in the space given. Install it from there by clicking on ‘Install Now‘.
Once installed, go to your installed ‘Plugins‘ section (in the left menu bar), find your newly installed plugin and ‘activate‘ it.
Once activated, go to ‘Settings’ in the left menu and click on the ‘Notification Bar’ option.
Fill up the details such as the color of the bar, where and when you want to show it, the text you want to display, add buttons and other options.
Once you fill all the details as per your preference, tick the ‘Enable’ box to upload the notification bar on your WordPress website.
Here’s how it looks when it is live
We understand that some of you might be facing difficulty in finding the right developer for this task. Cozmot inc is offering help on a complimentary basis on installing the notification bar or choosing the right options for the bar. So, if you need a developer’s assistance for a task in the COVID hit days, feel free to reach us out.
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