5 Trends Currently Shaping Online Selling

Because of the rapid growth in e-commerce in recent years, technology, techniques and strategies have grown in tandem. Presently, consumers can find virtually any product or service they want online and with ease. Thanks to the deepening of the internet and advancing technology that are shaping e-commerce trends. As things stand now, it looks like these trends are going to remain relevant into the foreseeable future. The reason e-commerce businesses cannot afford to overlook or ignore them. In fact, an estimated 80% of small businesses presently have some basic e-commerce capabilities and do tap into these trends. Going forward, e-commerce is likely to become commonplace among small business owners and these trends will hugely shape the process.

For many small businesses that are presently grappling with challenges like inflation and supply chain issues to keep pace and remain competitive, they need to keep a keen eye on e-commerce trends that can help them drive growth into the foreseeable future. Here are 5 of such trends.

1. Simplified Shipping Options

Evolving technology most of which is now simplified is greatly enhancing shipping operations for e-commerce business owners. They now rely on digital platforms that simplify and enhance shipping operations using advanced e-commerce technology. These platforms are great in empowering e-commerce businesses to seamlessly ship bulk purchases taking advantage of discounted rates thereby making huge savings on shipping costs. This trend is bound to continue into the foreseeable future since most businesses are always worrying about operating costs. Some of the platforms are so sophisticated as to have even more than 80 integrations that include leading marketplaces with data and insights that help business owners make smarter and cost-effective shipping decisions that include branded tracking and even return capabilities. This is made possible by a collection of apps, widgets and application programming interfaces that help to make it easy to configure new workflows and seamlessly meet the demands of business growth.

2. Personalized Products

Aside the initial purchase, customized reports and shipping notifications are also trending in online selling. Presently, shippers use alerts to notify customers about the status of the products they purchased. The information they give include products’ delivery status, including any delays and or changes in delivery times and dates. These alerts usually go out via email, text, video message or, in some cases, a customizable dashboard where customers can view incoming shipments. If tied to customer accounts or addresses, they can receive a request for different delivery time or location, pre-sign for packages and even more. These special arrangements provide great opportunities for shoppers who appreciate buying products that are uniquely their own. There are presently online buying platforms that allow for this customization of products to make shopping much easier and convenient for consumers.

3. Micro Purchasing Moments

Many e-commerce business owners have since discovered that impulse buys or convenience shopping are not exclusive preserves for brick-and-mortar stores. Thanks to micro-purchasing trends in online shopping that involves purchases which are typically made by someone looking for a quick solution or information in a hurry and in most cases from a mobile device. It is thus convenient for such shoppers to quickly compare two or more similar products and clicking a “buy now” link to conclude the transaction. This allows e-commerce business sites to establish themselves as a resource, make information easy to digest and substantially simplify the purchasing process for shoppers. Doing this ultimately earns such sites more customers and sales.

4. Video Content

Video content marketing is a social media trend and social media keeps developing. This now makes video content in very high demand on e-commerce sites. Most of these videos are essentially how-to videos that concisely explain to customers how to use products. They additionally offer tips for using the products and in some cases showcase testimonies from customers who have used the products before. These videos also highlight product features, video reviews on social media and “live shopping events” on the social channels of e-commerce retailers. These videos help to drive engagements and offer a quick and appealing way to demonstrate new or popular products to attract shoppers. The ultimate marketing aim of using videos is to provide a more appealing interactive experience for shoppers with a view to enabling a steady stream of conversions.

5. Flexible Payment Options

Cumbersome payment options usually engender high cart abandonment particularly if online purchases are limited almost exclusively to credit card purchases. What is trending is that businesses have found a way around that by granting more flexibility to shoppers when it comes to collecting payment for products purchased. This trend has been growing for several years. As a result, many e-commerce sites now accept a variety of payment options such as credit/debit cards, online checks, digital wallet and mobile payment services, crypto-currency and even installment payments via third-party providers. This trend promises to continue into the foreseeable future.

6 Common Types of E-Commerce Fraud Threatening Online Shopping

If you run an e-commerce store and you are desirous to stay ahead of inevitable online threats, protect your business revenues and preserve customer loyalty, it is in your best interest to embark on a comprehensive approach to tackling e-commerce fraud. This is because, as online shopping and e-commerce business continue to grow, e-commerce fraud grows in tandem. These days, online scammers/cybercriminals are in “business” 24/7 using all kinds of tricks to scam online shoppers. Technically, e-commerce fraud is a form of cybercrime that directly affects online consumer transactions. These crimes do not just have a negative impact on consumers; they create significant operational problems for e-commerce businesses too. Many e-commerce businesses lose good money on refunding transactions, dealing with fake chargebacks, and more. This is in addition to regulatory fines, loss of customer trust, and a decrease in long-term revenue, all negatively impacting the fortunes of the business.

Following are six of the commonest types of e-commerce fraud you must know about and be prepared to deal with to grow your e-commerce business.
 
1. Credit Card Fraud

Anytime cyber criminals are able to steal the identity of a customer, they can use the customer information for many different purposes mostly criminal. They can even obtain contact details to sell to third parties, steal passwords to access accounts, and much more. When these criminals embark on credit card fraud, their main focus is usually on accessing payment details. They use data breaches, phishing attacks, hacking strategies, and more to gain access to a customer's credit card details. Some of these criminals can even hack into e-commerce businesses’ databases to access huge volumes of credit card information at once. When this happens, these businesses risk serious damage to their reputation. What to do? Businesses can now deploy some smart payment solutions to checkmate cyber criminals. These payment processing solutions now come with built-in tools for automatically detecting and mitigating fraud. They can automatically monitor suspicious transactions, alert victims to threats, and even stop payments from going through if they suspect fraud. This way, customers can conveniently shop seamlessly with a bit more confidence.

2. Chargeback Fraud

Technically, chargeback fraud is one of the few types of e-commerce fraud that has a more significant impact on businesses than consumers. Chargeback is what happens when customers make a purchase, receive their product/service, and then dispute the charge with their credit card company to get a refund. Some customers can do it for legitimate business purposes and really not to steal money as criminals will do. This is why this form of fraud can at times be really difficult for businesses to address. Such businesses can turn to smart tools for help. These tools can help flag potentially suspicious orders based on filters, like order size, frequency, and shipping address. With these tools, businesses can accurately create blacklists of customers who are known for committing chargeback fraud to help mitigate the problem.

3. Refund Fraud

When criminals steal a customer’s identity, they can pose as the customer and request refunds for even legitimate transactions. In refund frauds, it's usually a criminal posing as a customer, who never actually purchased a product/service, who asks for their money back. Some criminals at times attempt to return stolen or counterfeit products to the business and request refund while others can also ask for refund claiming they never received the product they paid for. Some customers can even commit refund fraud themselves by way of "double dipping". Double dipping occurs when a customer requests a refund from both their product retailer and the credit card company to get double their money back. What to do? Businesses can limit refund fraud by way of extra caution. They can carefully validate a purchase with a customer by asking for pictures of the item, and double-checking to ensure that a refund is legitimate.

4. Brand Impersonation

Cyber criminals now use phishing attacks on e-commerce platforms to steal enough info to impersonate the business. They now pose a serious threat to e-commerce businesses and their customers. Criminals use phishing and social engineering tactics to leverage deceptive emails, messages, and websites to trick users into sharing sensitive information. They can even fake websites, pictures, products and other personal business information so well that that it takes the legitimate business quite some time to detect. Many businesses only find out about criminals "impersonating" their business from victim incident reports. By this time, at times a lot of damage has been done already. What to do? Businesses can mitigate brand impersonation by adopting an advanced approach to detecting instances of phishing, social engineering, and brand impersonation against their customers. AI-powered solutions can help businesses proactively detect, counter, and control fraud with exceptional efficiency.

5. Affiliate Fraud

Affiliate fraud happens only in e-commerce businesses that use affiliate marketing programs to sell their products. These businesses pay commissions to third parties or affiliates who help in generating sales. This is where criminals come in who want to earn commissions using underhanded tactics.  To commit affiliate fraud, criminals use tactics like bots, fake accounts, and click farms to generate artificial traffic, sales, and clicks designed to inflate their commission earnings. Some criminals use tactics like cookie stuffing to place cookies on a user's computer without their consent. This is designed to inflate the number of sales or clicks attributed to an account. While some others submit fake leads and customer information to e-commerce businesses to claim rewards they haven't earned. What to do? A very careful and diligent approach to affiliate marketing is advisable. It helps if businesses can carefully vet affiliates, partners, and influencers very well. This is with a view to carefully validating each purchase and using attribution tracking tools to ensure they're paying and distributing commissions correctly.

6. Identity Theft

Online, identity theft is one of the oldest forms of fraud in e-commerce business. It happens when a cyber-criminal uses someone else's personal information with intent to commit a crime. It involves such vital info as the person’s address, name, and credit card details which these criminals use to open accounts, make unauthorized purchases, or complete online actions. These criminals can acquire sensitive customer information in a range of ways, from leveraging data breaches to using phishing tactics. Armed with such vital and sensitive information, they can then criminally use the information to impersonate the victim. If they manage to gain access to steal employee information from e-commerce businesses, they can use the information to gain access to e-commerce platforms and back-end systems for criminal purposes. What to do? It is advisable for e-commerce businesses to invest in more advanced authentication methods. These are methods that require multi-factor authentication for all users of customer and employee accounts.

Final Thoughts

It is now well known that e-commerce fraud is on the increase just as e-commerce businesses are increasing online. As the threat to e-commerce landscape continues to evolve, the strategies used by e-commerce businesses to mitigate fraud must continue to evolve too. By staying aware of the latest threats and committing to a strategy of constant optimization and evolution, e-commerce businesses can stay secure over the long term.

To protect their revenue, customers, and brand reputation, e-commerce business owners must ensure they're using holistic methods to address fraud. What is needed is not just using secure payment gateways and implementing strong authentication methods. It also requires diligently monitoring transactions and user behavior, tracking fraudulent websites, and leveraging state-of-the-art tools to stay one step ahead of threats.

Smart Consumer Tips to Pay Less on E-Commerce Shopping

As more and more people are taking to shopping online, there is a corresponding rise in e-commerce business. Shopping online has become more convenient than ever before. Aside the convenience of shopping online, shoppers are increasingly in search of good bargains. This is more so with the countless options now available to them. With these numerous options available, there is a tendency to overspend without even realizing it. To hedge against this tendency, there are smart strategies that can help shoppers pay much less for their purchases. When adopted, they help shoppers maximize savings on their online purchases. These here are some smart tips to help shoppers spend less in their online shopping.

Sign Up for Price Alerts and Diligently Track Price Changes

You can actually pay less for products if you diligently track price fluctuations over time. Based on demand, inventory, and seasonal factors, prices of online products usually change quite often. If you track these changes closely enough, you can actually take advantage and make your purchases when prices are lowest. That helps you to maximize savings on purchases. In some instances, some e-commerce websites at times offer price match guarantees. This allows shoppers to claim a refund if the price drops shortly after they make a purchase. For best results, shoppers can rely on reputable price tracking tools like CamelCamelCamel or Honey to monitor price fluctuations. With these tools, anytime a product you’re interested in drops in price, you automatically receive an alert.
 
Always Lookout for Free Shipping Deals

While shopping online, shipping costs can add up quickly and often go unnoticed until the checkout stage. Always be on the lookout for free shipping offers to cut shopping costs. This is because many online retailers usually offer free shipping promotions at certain times of the year or after you meet a minimum order threshold. Taking advantage of these offers can help you save good money. If you are diligent enough, you can find free shipping codes online. You can also closely monitor websites like RetailMeNot and Honey. These websites often have updated lists of active discount codes. These codes can sometimes include free or reduced shipping options on some products. Checking these websites out before finalizing your online purchase can help you save on shipping costs.

Take Advantage of Cashback and Rewards Programs

Some popular e-commerce platforms at times partner with cashback and rewards programs to offer additional discounts to shoppers. These programs do give a percentage of their purchases back to shoppers as cash or points. Shoppers can accumulate these over time and redeem on future purchases as they choose. If however you choose to activate the cashback offer before shopping, you’ll automatically earn rewards with each purchase. If you shop with credit cards, some do offer cashback for shopping through their portals. You can take advantage of this by choosing to shop only with credit cards that have these special offers.

Occasionally Abandon Your Cart to Trigger Discounts

When online retailers are eager to close sales, they offer discounts and other incentives to persuade shoppers to complete their purchases. When retailers notice shoppers who have abandoned their shopping carts, some quickly send follow-up emails with discount offers to entice these shoppers to complete their purchases. This practice works especially well with websites where customers are already logged in or subscribed to their email list. So, if you commence shopping and you leave your shopping cart unattended for a day or two, it could result (but not guaranteed though) in special deals or discount codes being sent your way to entice you to complete your purchase. You can make a bit of savings from such offers.
 
Try to Buy in Bulk or Bundle Products

You can take advantage of the marketing cliché. “buy more, pay less.” This is yet another very effective money-saving strategy. So, if you buy items in bulk or take advantage of bundled product deals, you can actually pay less per item when compared to when you are buying singly. To sell more, many online retailers usually offer discounts when shoppers purchase larger quantities of a product. This usually engenders significant savings for bulk purchase shoppers. For most shoppers, bulk purchase is particularly useful for high consumption items like household essentials, toiletries or beauty products that require frequent purchase. You may in addition come across some websites that offer bundles where related products are packaged together at a lower overall cost than if bought separately. You can also take advantage of this type of packaging to save costs. If therefore you always try to opt for bulk purchases or bundles, you can actually save big on both the item price and potential shipping costs. But, always make sure you’re buying only items you actually need so as to avoid wasting money instead of saving it.

Take Advantage of End-of-Season Sales

Many online retailers occasionally embark on sales to clear up old inventory. These retailers often mark down products to make room for new inventory by offering significant discounts on old items that are still in great condition. So, smart shoppers can always take advantage of that if they plan their purchases around end-of-season-sales cycles. It is one of the best ways to save on e-commerce purchases by shopping out of season at periods of discounted sales at give-away prices. If you want to stay well informed about such sales, it is best to sign up for newsletters or follow your favorite retailers on social media. You’ll always be among the first to know since many online retailers usually announce these promotions through these channels. Since these offers usually last while stocks last, you can always act quickly to get ahead of other shoppers as soon as you get the right information.

Wrapping Up

The foregoing tips are essentially to help you save in your online shopping. Paying less for most if not all your e-commerce purchases is one great way to save money while shopping online. Whichever of these tips you feel like adopting, aim to be a smart shopper by paying less for your purchases. That ultimately results in significant savings as the bottom-line.

Frequent Challenges for E-Commerce Stores and How to Overcome Them

As e-commerce businesses continue to grow, they inevitably face new and evolving challenges. These challenges emanate from e-commerce trends, check out processes, product delivery times, abandonment of shopping carts and so on. Managing these challenges requires strategic solutions if you want your store to compete favorably in a seemingly saturated e-commerce market.

Here are some of these challenges and their solutions:

Not Being Up-to-Date on Market Trends

Inevitably, the e-commerce landscape is constantly evolving occasioned by constant changes in new technologies, consumer behaviors, and market trends. Many e-commerce businesses usually struggle to stay up-to-date with these changes. Failing to do so can result in missed opportunities or falling behind competitors. Therefore, being aware of the latest e-commerce trends is really crucial for businesses to remain competitive and meet customer expectations.

To stay informed about e-commerce trends, businesses should engage in continuous learning and industry research. This can be achieved through various means, such as subscribing to industry newsletters, attending webinars and conferences, and following thought leaders on social media. Additionally, using analytics tools can help businesses monitor market trends and customer behavior in real time. This vital data enables businesses to adapt quickly to changes.

If you run an e-commerce business, you can leverage reputable e-commerce platforms like Shopify that regularly update their features to align with the latest trends. These platforms frequently roll out new tools and integrations designed to help merchants stay competitive. So, if you use the right platform that really evolves with the e-commerce industry, it will help you to ensure that your business is sufficiently equipped with the latest capabilities to meet rapidly changing market demands and trends.

Frequent Shoppers’ Indecision

Shoppers’ indecision occurs frequently because of overwhelming number of products that are usually available online. This is why many shoppers at times face “choice paralysis.” This phenomenon occurs when consumers are presented with too many options, making it difficult for them to decide which product to purchase. When shoppers are undecided, it can lead to abandoned shopping carts or customers leaving the website without making a purchase. To remedy this problem, you can turn to Artificial intelligence (AI). Smart AI tools have become crucial tools in helping customers make purchasing decisions. Here is how. You can use AI-driven product recommendations to analyze a shopper’s behavior, preferences, and past purchases to suggest products they are likely to buy. AI product recommendations work by collecting data from various touch-points, such as browsing history, items added to the cart, and previous purchases. The tools use machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and suggest products that align with the customer’s preferences. You can then personalize these recommendations to each user. Doing this greatly increases the chances of conversion.

Shopping Cart Abandonment

With an average abandonment rate of around 70%, shopping cart abandonment is increasingly becoming a significant issue in e-commerce business. Shoppers frequently abandon shopping carts for a variety of reasons that include unexpected shipping costs, complicated checkout processes, and uncertainty about a purchase.

If you want to reduce cart abandonment, you must first try to identify the reasons why shoppers are not completing their purchases. Next is to focus on addressing the underlying causes of cart abandonment. If for instance price sensitivity is the cause, you can offer a limited-time discount code to encourage shoppers to complete their purchases. You can in addition simplify the checkout process by minimizing the number of steps in the process. Additionally, offering multiple payment options can reduce friction and improve conversion rates. When it comes to shipping products, transparency about shipping costs and delivery times offered upfront can help manage customer expectations and reduce cart abandonment.

Not Quite Visible in a Crowded Market

E-commerce business is hugely competitive. This makes it quite difficult for businesses to stand out and attract customers. If you want your business to be noticed and to thrive in such competitive environment, you must vigorously promote it online. These days, you can easily leverage the popularity of social media platforms to do so. You can take advantage of the in-house marketing tools on these platforms to promote your business. For example, hugely popular social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok offer powerful tools for businesses to connect with potential customers through targeted advertising. On these platforms, you can leverage demographic data, interests, and browsing behavior to create highly personalized ads that resonate with your audience. You can significantly boost visibility for your products by partnering with social media influencers. Partnering with influencers who align with your brand’s values and target audience can help your business to reach a broader and more engaged audience.

Not Getting Enough Reviews from Customers

As most digital marketers very well know, customer reviews are a powerful tool for building trust and credibility in the e-commerce space. But, getting customers to leave reviews can be quite challenging. This is because most often satisfied customers do not feel compelled to leave a review unless prompted but dissatisfied customers are more likely to voice their complaints online. This is why many businesses are usually left with disproportionate number of negative reviews that could harm their reputation. To remedy this situation, it is advisable to encourage more customers to leave reviews. You can do this by implementing review incentive strategies. Offering small rewards, such as discount codes or loyalty points, can actually motivate shoppers to share their experiences. You can in addition make the review process as simple as possible to encourage shoppers to respond. You can even send automated follow-up emails with a direct link to leave a review. Doing this can increase the likelihood of receiving positive reviews. This helps to balance the overall review profile and enhances your business reputation.

Negative Reviews

Make no mistake about it, negative reviews can significantly impact an e-commerce business’s reputation and bottom line. Online, shoppers typically leave negative reviews when their expectations are not met by an e-commerce business. These expectations may relate to product quality, poor customer service, or billing and shipping issues. No matter how well-intention, negative reviews can deter potential customers and damage the credibility of an e-commerce business. Negative reviews are here to stay though and there’s not much digital marketers can do about them except to explore all ways to mitigate their impact on a business. If you want to mitigate the impact of negative reviews on your business, you must try to focus on proactive customer service. This involves making it easy for customers to contact support and resolve issues before they escalate to negative reviews. Offering multiple channels for customer support, such as live chat, email, and phone support, ensures that customers can reach out in a way that is convenient for them. Smart marketers can however also use negative reviews as an opportunity to improve their business. If marketers make efforts to respond to reviews promptly and professionally, it is easy for them to demonstrate their commitment to customer satisfaction. If need be, marketers can even address negative reviews publicly. Doing so can even turn a negative situation into a positive one since other shoppers/customers can easily notice a business’s dedication to resolving problems promptly as the problems crop up.

Slow Deliveries

These days, most shoppers expect fast and reliable delivery of the products they purchase online. Slow shipping times can be grossly detrimental to these expectations. Anytime customers experience delays in receiving their orders, it can lead to dissatisfaction, negative reviews, and a decrease in repeat business. Significantly, order fulfillment is the real backbone of timely deliveries. It involves the entire process from receiving an order to delivering it to the customer. Sadly, many e-commerce businesses really struggle with fulfillment due to inefficient processes, lack of infrastructure, or reliance on third-party logistics providers that may not prioritize speed. What to do as a remedy! You can turn to reputable online fulfillment specialists that offer a network of fulfillment centers strategically located to reduce shipping times and costs. If you integrate these services in your e-commerce business, it is possible for you to automate and streamline your order fulfillment process that ensures quicker deliveries. A good fulfillment service uses advanced algorithms to predict which fulfillment center should handle an order, based on proximity to the customer and inventory levels. This helps to further reduce delivery times.

Summing Up

From the foregoing, it is clear that e-commerce businesses do face a range of frequent challenges. These challenges range from managing delivery times to staying visible in a crowded market. If you take positive steps to address these frequent challenges head-on, it is possible for you to enhance your e-commerce business operations, improve customer satisfaction, and achieve long-term success even in an increasingly competitive e-commerce business landscape.

Why You Must Position Your Website Well

If you run an online business, you must have a website. Most modern day businesses operate largely from websites for very obvious reasons. These businesses use their websites to showcase their brands and their offerings with a view to generating many more customers than they might ordinarily generate using physical stores. In view of present day realities, with more and more consumers shopping online instead of in-store, it is a very smart thing to do to position your website well enough to help build your business for higher profits.

First you must invest in the aesthetics and functionality of your website. If your website is poorly designed and looks scruffy, it is not likely to attract a lot of customers. Many customers may not trust it well enough to decide on spending their money trading on it. Generally, a well-designed website somehow very confidently communicates to customers how serious your business is. It helps your business to build trust and better business as a result. Many vital customer decisions are usually made based on the appearance and layout of your website instead of some other considerations.



If you are a marketer, there is no doubt you are aware that the present marketing trend tilts towards remote working, remote shopping and high-speed deliveries. Working out of a well-designed and responsive website favors this trend. With more and more millions of shoppers looking towards e-commerce sites for their shopping needs, positioning your own website well enough to tap into this huge customer base is good for your business. Therefore, it helps to position your website well enough for it to be able to capture a huge chunk of the growing market share of these consumers who now prefer to shop online.

The digital market world is characteristically ever-changing. For this reason, it pays to always be a step ahead of the curve. If you can anticipate changes in the digital world and change your website to accommodate these changes; that is smart. Doing so somehow helps to position your business as modern, cutting-edge and competitive. It can help to put you one step ahead most of your competitors in the highly competitive digital market space. You must habitually look to the future with a view to identifying new trends on time. That will enable you to quickly make the right changes to your web offerings to reflect your modernization drive with a permanent eye on your competition.

Lastly, never overlook the power of inbound traffic to your website because traffic is another element that can greatly affect the sales your website is capable of attracting. Anything you do on your website to help it attract more and more inbound traffic is good for sales. If for instance your website is able to attract say 100 web users/day and perhaps only about 10% of them actually do business with you, it simply follows then that if you explore ways to attract more traffic, you inevitably increase your sales as well. Simply logical no doubt! If you have the knowhow, you can use SEO techniques in addition to other promotional efforts to attract traffic to your website. Doing so helps to ensure the right consumers are landing on your web pages in good numbers. These are the sort of consumers who have already shown some interest in doing business with you by actively using your keywords to search for products online. The SEO techniques you’ve deployed help to send such consumers directly to your website.
 

4 Small Business Trends Steadily on the Rise

If you are very current with trends, you must have noticed that small businesses are going through a whole lot of changes in recent times. Apart from ethical and regulatory requirements, the advancements in communication fields, IT, marketing and other fields are playing major roles in engendering changes in the way and manner people run small businesses these days. The small business trends discussed here currently appear to be rising steadily because more people have started to pay more attention to them. Just take a look around you. You will discover that many small business owners are now:

 

Focusing more on customer service: Many small business owners have realized that if you support your customers well, your chance of customer retention increases tremendously. Of course, they know that repeat customers are extremely valuable to their businesses. With advancement in technology, many now use chat apps to literally lead customers by the hand to do business with them. Many are now able to provide 24/7 support services by way of availability, prompt response and prompt solutions. Right now, if you do not have chatbots for customer interactions, the time to deploy some in your own business is now.

Getting their businesses online: That simply means, less storefronts and more websites! The good news is that small businesses lately have become quite divergent and very daring too. With current popularity and real advancements in mobile technology, most small businesses are now flourishing significantly on the internet. The internet somehow allows these businesses to make some reductions in physical storefronts thereby saving on maintenance costs and some other space related problems. So, get smart now by getting yourself a business website if you don’t have one already. It goes with the trends.

Paying more attention to environmental issues: Small business owners are steadily endeavoring to go clean as well as green in the way they run their businesses! That is largely because environmental issues have become a very big concern of the modern world. Going with the flow, it is an excellent thing to see that small businesses have started paying special heed to environmental issues. With global concerns rising over issues like global warming, pollution, plastic, flora and fauna extinction, small businesses now do things to enable them conform to going clean and green to protect the environment in which they do business. So, you now see small businesses deliberately encourage cutting down on plastic and paper use and urging their customers to do same. Online shopping is one great eco-friendly way many of them do business these days.

Having more social media presence: These days, smart marketers consider social media presence a necessity and not a luxury. For that reason, having a presence on social media has become an absolute must for almost all business ventures who want to remain competitive. Hitherto, the online presence people were used to was mainly limited to having a complete website. Not anymore! With the advent of very popular social media platforms like, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, the game has changed completely. Social media craze has compelled many businesses to expand their online presence to the social media where the customers can be found and interacted with very easily. Right now, even the smallest businesses of the lot are trying their utmost to up their games on social media by socializing and promoting their goods/services to a very large mass of people. That no doubt is good for business. Get social, by putting your own business on social media platforms. That is the place to be right now if you sincerely want to take your business to the next level.