The Omnibus Blog

"You cannot improve what you do not measure" This is an old maxim, but extremely valuable when managing your online business. Customer acquisition is one of the most important aspects in sales, and sellers try different techniques including ads and social media posts to get traffic coming to their website. And the smarter sellers try to measure how much each ad or campaign or post is contributing to the increasing visits to their pages. Now, a visit obviously does not mean a sale - Increased visits can lead to increased sales. But customers who visit your pages drop off at different stages. If one analyses and visualises the patterns of number of customers visiting their site and where they are dropping off, the pattern begins to look like an inverted triangle, commonly represented by a 'Funnel Chart'. For example, of the 100 people who visit your site, only about 43 may view a product detail page. 14 of them may add a product to cart while only 3 of them finally make

 The Supermarket Parallel When a customer visits a supermarket, he finds products beautifully organised in arrays of shelves. There are clear signboards over aisles indicating the categories of products. This structured approach of displaying products makes it easy for customers to purchase their products. Over the years, these companies have analysed customer purchase behaviour and have learnt that organising products in specific ways can result in increased sales. For example, keeping products that are frequently purchased together, like crisps and soda, can be placed next to one another to facilitate quick shopping experience. Alternatively they can be placed far apart to make the customer walk across the market, giving them a chance to explore and discover other products along the way. The latter increases the chance of increasing the basket sizes of customers who came to purchase specific products. Supermarkets also strategically place small but high margin items that are often im

The convenience that eCommerce stores provide to customers is hard to match. The broad selection, lower prices and avoiding the hassle of traffic to visit a brick and mortar store have proven to be significant advantages. However, a common concern that many customers share, especially when purchasing from a new store, is “What if the product that gets delivered is not the one that I had on my mind?” Product images are a great way to alleviate this concern. Customers generally get a good idea about the product by looking at the product images, and this is particularly helpful when the images are of good quality and shot from multiple angles. Giving the customer all the information that they need before making their purchase is an excellent way to establish trust. However, high-quality images come at a cost. They tend to be heavy, and heavy images increase the time to load the page. A slow-loading page is not a great customer experience, and in this era of short attention spans can resul

One of the dilemmas that many sellers face in the early days of starting their business is - “Should I start my own eCommerce website or should I simply sell on Amazon?” This is a great question - Each choice has advantages and disadvantages, and this post tries to dive deeper to understand which is the right path for your business. Selling on Amazon Amazon is a brilliant website with a vast selection of products at great prices. In addition, the Prime membership brings to customers fantastic offers like free shipping, 2 day delivery guarantees and early access to sales. Being a popular marketplace with decades of international presence and having earned the trust of millions of customers worldwide, Amazon’s reputation makes it easy for a seller to acquire customers. And considering that customer acquisition is one of the hardest problems to solve, Amazon is a great place to get your product out there. In addition to easier customer acquisition, Amazon also takes care of all the operat

Omnibus is an integrated, end to end sales platform that enables sellers to drive their sales through multiple channels like eCommerce website, brick and mortar stores, mobile app and marketplaces like Amazon. You should probably head down to our website to learn more about our platform and its features. In this introductory post, we thought of taking you through the journey of a typical seller, their challenges and where Omnibus fits in this journey. The Seller's Dilemma Let us consider a bookstore in the heart of Bangalore, Sri Venkateshwara Books (SVB). The bookstore was established in the 90s, a simpler time, when the internet had not yet permeated every aspect of our lives. Sales was easy - Customers would walk into the store, and the proprietor used to record sales in a large register. A handwritten chit would suffice for an invoice. Traditionally, brick and mortar stores have provided customers with unique experiences. Most importantly, customers are able to get a feel of