e-Commerce: Complete. Configured. Connected.
Posts tagged e-commerce
The Other 99% Of Entrepreneurs by Guest Blogger, Sramana Mitra
Feb 9th
This week we are pleased to have Sramana Mitra join us as guest blogger. Sramana is a noted entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley and is an author of several business books and a very active blogger as well. You can find out more information on Sramana at the end of this post. Of note, in 2010, Sramana started a program called “1 Million by I Million,” the goal of which is to help, through her virtual program, 1 million entrepreneurs achieve 1 Million or more in revenue – by the year 2020. At Plimus, we have a simple business philosophy; we make money only when our sellers make money. We think Sramana and her 1 Million program is a natural fit for our sellers, and we hope many of you will take advantage of what this program has to offer. So, without further delay – Sramana welcome.
Thank you Plimus for inviting me to blog to your followers today. I want to talk with you today about my recent piece Reengineering Capitalism where I highlighted a phenomenon that the global entrepreneurship ecosystem is paying very little attention to: Over 99% of entrepreneurs who seek funding get rejected. Yet, the entire world is focused on the 1% that is “fundable.”
The media, when pitched a startup story, is interested in who funded the venture. They seldom ask how much revenue the company has or if it is profitable. Incubators take pride in how exclusive they are and how many “deals” they “reject.” Angels and VCs, of course, discard most of their “deal flow.” And entrepreneurs? They seem to have confused the definition of entrepreneurship altogether. Entrepreneurship, they mistakenly believe, equals financing!
This is wrong.
There are numerous stories of successful businesses that have been built without a penny of outside financing. I want to share with you some wisdom from the heroes of the other 99%. They live in a world of entrepreneurs who enjoy their freedom and are not looking to sell their businesses or take them public. You could say these businesses are built-to-enjoy, as opposed to built-to-flip. Needless to say, outside financing, by definition, requires an “exit,” and for most businesses, that means a sale to a larger company.
But the entrepreneurs I will introduce you to today are not interested in selling their companies. They just want to continue doing what they are doing: building value.
Meet Girish Navani, CEO of eClinicalWorks, a super-successful healthcare IT company based in Boston. He has never taken any funding but has built a $100 million-plus business by delivering value to customers.
Girish says, “I don’t foresee leaving the company for at least 10 years. I would like to leave it a private company with no external investors and absolutely no thoughts whatsoever about Wall Street. I am having fun and take great pride in my freedom. There is no reason I would give that up. We are a cash flow positive company. We have recurring revenues and no debt. We have a large customer base that is growing exponentially.” [You can read Girish’s full story here.]
Meet Andrew Fox, CEO of ClubPlanet, a $30 million-plus nightclub ticketing services company that is also 100% founder-owned. Andrew loves nightlife and says, “The business is very successful and has a lot of room for growth. I think that we have a lot of suitors out there who mention really ridiculous numbers at times. This is such a great lifestyle business that I don’t know if I could ever sell it. All of my previous businesses I built to sell, but this time around you might find me right here in thirty years. I hope by then it is $300 million a year. Based on our growth trajectory, we are seeing really good signs of improvement. [You can read more of Andrew’s story here.]
Then there is the oft-cited Sridhar Vembu, who has turned all tables with Zoho, a $100 million-plus SaaS company that competes with Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com without a penny in outside capital.
I have had numerous conversations with Sridhar over the years, and each time he reinforces the same basic philosophy: “I want to build this without outside capital. I don’t want to sell the company.” [You can learn more about Sridhar’s methods here.]
Each of these entrepreneurs could raise money in a nanosecond given how much success they’ve had. The fact that they don’t gives you an idea about the advantages of the self-financed, organic growth model. No matter how much Wall Street gyrates, these entrepreneurs experience and demonstrate a level of stability and steadiness that is exemplary.
Imagine if the American economy had many more such steady private companies that are far removed from the movements of the speculative markets, how much more robust things would be? It really is time that the media starts celebrating more of these kinds of heroes: the other 99%.
And for young entrepreneurs, as you evaluate role models to emulate, perhaps it is not a bad idea to also consider some of these lesser-known heroes. They can give you a picture of the realities of an alternate, deeply satisfying universe.
In conclusion, I want to leave you with a 1:49 minute video message. Please listen to it, and stop for a moment to think about your path forward. Is a single-minded focus on fund-raising your only option?
New Era in Payments for the Industry
Feb 6th
Although you may not have noticed, February 1, 2012, was a big day in the payment world – although it passed with limited fanfare. The date was important because it marked the enforcement of new rules from Visa around payments, both online and offline. Now, service providers, like Plimus, are required to have clients, who drive more than $100,000 a year through Visa (or any other credit card association), create a direct relationship with their acquirers, or what we commonly refer to as payment processors. Clients doing less than $100,000 a year can still be processed as part of the service provider’s own merchant account.
For us, this has meant implementing a process by which our largest clients have started establishing a relationship, in collaboration with Plimus, with processors directly. From an operational perspective there is very little change to the way in which our service operates, as revenues are still delivered to, and then paid out by, Plimus on behalf of our clients. That said, there is nonetheless a need for larger clients to complete a few forms that are new and unfamiliar in the context of our business.
The reasons for the shift in policy are really threefold:
1. The payment processors are now able, within an established and clearly regulated set of rules, to include payment service providers as a part of their business
2. The financial institutions at each end of the transaction (if you will, the banks for the buyer and the seller) will have visibility to see which merchants are doing business with them
3. Consumers will be safely and securely served by services that are designed to protect their personal information and financial identity
As it turns out, there are some great benefits for the merchant as well. First, because merchants are now viewed by the financial institutions individually, they start to build an individual reputation, rather than being seen as just a constituent part of their service provider’s total volume. Perhaps even more powerfully, the relationship they establish with the payment provider is transferable, meaning that subscriptions can be easily brought along if the merchant decides, for whatever reason, to leave their service provider and strike out on their own.
At Plimus we understand our vendors filling out yet more forms is not something they have on their list of favorite things to do. In that regard, there is necessarily a degree of inconvenience to the new regulations; but in the long run, the benefits to all the players in the payment chain are irrefutable. In the big scheme, these new regulations deliver a high level of transparency to our industry, and represent a strong indication that the industry is taking e-commerce seriously and has made the transition to just being commerce. After more than a decade of experience as a pioneer in this industry, we could not be more pleased.
If you’d like to learn a little more about the new regulation, feel free to click through to
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-expands-payment-service-provider-model.pdf.
B2C Marketing Predicts Continued Increase in Shopping Cart Abandonment in 2012
Jan 27th
Turning browsers into buyers has always been a focus for Plimus. We work closely with our vendors to ensure their sites are consumer friendly with a quick and easy payments processor for buyers to complete their purchase. As you may recall, Plimus’ customizable processing platform allows vendors to combine unique selling features such as single-click purchasing and repeat customer features with customizable order pages that create a seamless checkout process. By enabling an easy, simple solution, vendors will consistently improve sales closure rates.
However, a recent article by Charles Nicolls of B2C Marketing, “Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate Set To Rise in 2012,”caught our attention. In the piece, Nicolls discusses how the shopping cart abandonment rate has risen to an all-time high of 72 percent in 2011. Furthermore, he predicts this rate will continue to grow this year and explains the methodology behind his predictions.
Despite online sellers’ efforts to simplify checkout processes, the addition of new security features and the implementation of new payment methods, shopping cart abandonment rates have steadily increased during the past three years.
So why do we see an increase in un-purchased goods and services in shopping carts?
According to Nicolls, the answer can be found by dissecting the diverse characteristics of consumers who abandon their carts versus those who don’t. As consumers become savvier online, they are more aware of different sites or techniques to find the lowest price available. No longer will they simply purchase from the first website they visit; instead, they will want to compare prices for the best deal.
The result … lots of full shopping carts left in the virtual aisle.
It will be interesting to see if Nicolls’ hypothesis holds true. As I mentioned above, we’ll continue our corporate charter by providing the customizable Plimus Marketplace to our customers, helping them increase their revenue. Let us know if we can help you!
Wild, Wild West No Longer
Jan 20th
Amid the noise this week about SOPA and PIPA, and the stunning takedown of Megaupload, a very real business reality is upon us: e-Commerce is no longer the Wild, Wild West. If you’ve never watched Middle Men, the Luke Wilson movie about the first company to work out how to make money processing payments, it’s probably worth a watch. It tells the story of how the pioneers into the unregulated world of online content sales resulted in the first wave of government attention. And it’s likely as much a forecast of what is to come as it is a re-telling of what had already taken place.
Nobody in the industry is untouched by the increased scrutiny on what is being sold, how, and by whom. At Plimus, for instance, we’ve been involved lately in a couple of initiatives driven by the new need for transparency. As many people already know, we’ve recently updated our approach to processing PayPal sales, allowing each vendor to receive revenues into their own, self-directed PayPal account. And we’ve initiated detailed reviews of a number of vendors who are selling products that fit into some categories that are receiving some much closer examination by the credit card associations and other financial institutions.
Change is rarely comfortable, and of course for the vendors whose ability to sell through Plimus is currently curtailed, the business disruption is far from pleasant. Given our business model of making money only when sales actually close, it’s also not that appealing to Plimus to have to create barriers to making sales. In the context of where the industry is headed, however, it’s a natural progression that is both unavoidable and likely for the best in the long term.
Payment processing is really just a long line of trust: each player in the chain must trust those both up- and down-stream in order to agree to complete a transaction. The sophistication and obfuscation of the Web can make it difficult for each player to be absolutely sure who else is in that chain, and there has been a recent awakening to a need for much greater transparency up and down the line. Everyone is seeking to continually firm up their processes to ensure they can have 100% confidence that consumers are being handled properly, and that there’s nothing misleading going on at any stage of the game. It’s not nearly as exhilarating as the initial rush of setting up new and innovative ways to do business online, but it’s every bit as necessary to the long-term health and stability of the whole industry.
The new approach to PayPal is actually helping us get revenues into the coffers of our vendors more quickly, and will ultimately be a great catalyst in accelerating business’ ability to re-market and continue to optimize their sales. Expanding the transparency of our client base so that all the players in the financial chain have total confidence in the process will increase our ability to add new and exciting sales methods and business models, and ultimately increase the conversion ratios we can deliver to the whole community.
Change is never painless, but perhaps the move away from the Wild, Wild West will ultimately bring benefits that we can’t see through the clamor of updating and re-imagining today’s business processes. Either way, it’s a reality that history tells us is coming whether we like it or not.
Plimus CEO Profiled in “Entrepreneur Journeys” Blog
Dec 2nd
This past week, Plimus CEO Hagai Tal was featured in Sramana Mitra’s Entrepreneur Journeys blog. This seven-part series, provides a candid look at Hagai’s evolution as an entrepreneur and how his journey led him to Plimus.
Sramana said it best: “Hagai Tal is the CEO of Plimus as well as a serial entrepreneur and active angel investor. He began his career with the Jerusalem Post, where he created their online presence and established their online business strategy during the late 1990s. He then was an early member of JDate.com before heading off to serve as an active angel investor and serial entrepreneur. Today he leads Plimus, which offers companies a total service e-business platform. Plimus allows companies of all sizes to create online sales and affiliate partnerships through the Plimus e-commerce system and affiliate network.”
Hagai is a great leader and an integral part of Plimus’ success to date. He’s built this company on the foundation that Plimus and its employees are all part of his extended family. When selecting new team members, Hagai not only wants not only great, talented people, but also folks who can work well together. He understands that, in order for the company to be successful, we must appreciate and respect one another.
This series is a great read – I urge you to take the time.You can check it out by clicking here.
Plimus Survey: More ‘Likes’ Can Equal More Dollars for Online Vendors
Jul 22nd
Earlier this month, Plimus issued the results of our most recent social media survey. The random, at-large consumer survey conducted via Survey Monkey was shared to consumers on popular social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter. It examined the influence that social networks have on digital commerce, and ways in which vendors can leverage these networks to better engage shoppers and increase customer loyalty. The survey found that consumers are engaging with brands more frequently as social networks become more influential in the purchasing process.
Some key survey findings include:
- 85 percent of participants visit social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn daily
- One in three consumers indicated that online vendors could better engage them by incorporating more social media elements into their sites
- More than half of all respondents reported that peer recommendations most influenced the purchases they make online
As the popularity of social networks continues to grow, vendors have the opportunity to capitalize on the social shopping trend by eliciting positive peer recommendations and reviews in order to drive consumers to their sites.
Here at Plimus, we understand the importance of developing a seamless, simple user experience for the buyer. Sellers must eliminate the tiresome process and hassles of online payments and I guarantee they will see more visitors to their website. And more visitors mean more transactions and higher revenue streams.
Learn more information about the survey via our press release.
More than Metrics
Jul 13th
I regularly read TechCrunch for today’s industry news, as the outlet has a fresh perspective about what’s new in the industry. Recently, I caught a good post about e-Commerce and how successful online retailers must look beyond the common industry acronyms, such as LTV (lifetime value) and COCA (cost of customer acquisition), and focus on knowing their buyer.
“e-Commerce: Beyond The Metrics,” written by Gautum Gupta an associate at General Catalyst Partners who focuses on financial services, enterprise IT, consumer services and new media. With his diverse background, Gupta provides an interesting perspective on the online retail marketplace and the importance of understanding the buyer.
Gupta writes:
Commerce, both offline and online, has historically been largely anonymous and impersonal. Offline, customers walk into stores, see the exact same merchandise, are greeted by employees who don’t recognize them, and are all bound to the same terms and conditions on the back of every purchase receipt. Online, the pen and paper of the old mail-order catalog were replaced with drop-down menus and search boxes.
This statement caught my attention because of its raw truth. There are too many online retailers not selling their products or services the right way. These vendors do not understand who they are selling to and therefore, do not know how to effectively retain current customers – or how to attract new buyers.
The article also discusses how truly understanding the customer is more than knowing his or her name and basic demographic information. Complete knowledge of the consumer means knowing not only the buyer’s purchasing habits, but also those of his or her family and friends. It means understanding a shopper’s brand and style preferences and what factors influence their opinions and purchases. In retail, understanding a customer in this way allows the seller to build a better relationship with the customer, resulting in stronger brand loyalty and higher buyer conversation rates.
While the offline world faces additional challenges in getting to this level of understanding, the online world has and a built-in way to capture much of this information. Each click a consumer makes on a site leaves a trail that vendors can mine for limitless information on a user’s preferences. Additionally, vendors can engage in social media channels to learn more about their customers; they can adjust their websites to include eye catching graphics; and host surveys and polls to better understand what buyers say makes them tick.
Plimus works with several interesting companies that help online vendors develop websites that attract the attention of prospective customers. One, Justinmind, a recent winner of the prestigious Red Herring Top 100 Europe Tech Awards, provides application prototyping solutions to help international banks, governments, IT consultants and technology agencies better define and validate their business applications and websites through highly interactive wireframes. With customized websites and business applications, sellers are able to gain a stronger understanding of their audience and increase overall business operations.
Justininmind is just one of many customers leveraging Plimus’ Digital e-Commerce platform to handle its global online sales. We’re pleased to be able to work with several companies that are pioneering the new digital commerce era with innovative websites and customer offerings.
We’re always excited to work with new customers, give us a shout if you want to learn more.
Survey Finds Challenges in Getting Tablet Users to Pay for Content
Jun 30th
Last week, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) released the results of a survey that revealed some interesting observations about the preferences and habits of tablet owners when it comes to purchasing content.
Among the findings:
- Just less than half of all tablet users would be willing to pay for content if it meant avoiding advertisements
- 25 percent would prefer to buy content directly from publishers, rather than an intermediary such as Amazon or iTunes
- Newspaper apps have been downloaded by more than a quarter of the tablet users surveyed; 20 percent reported downloading a magazine app in the past 12 months
- On average, tablet users spent $53 on apps in the past year
The finding that has prompted the most discussion in the Plimus breakroom, however, is that tablet users willing to pay for content overwhelmingly seek flexibility in how they make those purchases. They want the ability to select between recurring paid subscriptions, single-issue purchases and one-time downloads. For online publishers, this presents challenges in how best to streamline and ease the buying process.
These challenges need to be addressed if publishers are going to realize their intention of generating revenue from this new platform. If these self-identified “early adopters,” who are typically more affluent, educated and media-savvy, are reluctant to commit to paid subscriptions for news, television shows and other content the outlook doesn’t look great for the general public’s adoption of paid content.
With the OPA forecasting that roughly 23 million people in the U.S. alone will own tablets by next year, publishers need to quickly figure out how they will streamline the subscription process for those willing to pay for content – while at the same time determining how to entice those who are reluctant to pay. As a vendor that has been able to monetize this new content delivery model, Apple provides a strong example for publishers looking to provide a seamless and easy online transaction process.
Here at Plimus we are working to address this growing market segment with our flexible and adaptable payment platform and Buy Anyware API that online publishers can build into their apps. Plimus solutions offer a streamlined payment process that becomes part of the content consumption experience. If you’re a publisher who’s struggling with this issue, give us a call – we’d love to help you capitalize on this growing market.
Plimus Chats it up with Brian Walker, Forrester Research
Feb 2nd
Last Friday, I caught up with Forrester’s e-Commerce guru, Brian Walker, about some of the progress Plimus has recently made and what we have in store for 2011. We last spoke with Brian during the launch of the Buy Anyware API…so obviously we had a lot to talk about! Our call with Brian covered a number of topics including; customer success stories, trends that we are seeing in the market as well as the directions we see e-Commerce heading.
During our call, we discussed a few specific Plimus customers that have seen great success through the adoption of single-click purchasing, enabled by the Buy Anyware API. Customers from a variety of industries including; One Hour Translation and Matrix Games have all realized benefits due to this new hybrid payment model, which allows returning users to make purchases without launching another browser window.
Additionally, we touched on the growing trend towards dynamic subscription payment methods. Our discussion around how traditional online subscriptions have evolved in response to changing customer demands was extremely interesting. We also talked about how this payment method is even taking off in the cloud with vendors such as Plimus customer, CloudShare, offering a self-service “point-and-click” cloud platform that enables businesses to create, collaborate on and run full enterprise applications instantly and on-demand.
Brian was especially interested in learning more about how the advent of the app store has changed the Plimus business. The wave of apps and the consumer demand for them has created a huge rush in businesses (across all verticals, telcos, software, entertainment, social gaming – to name a few) to develop the software and build their presence in the app space. This new “in-app commerce” is continuing to grow and Plimus considers it among the company’s priorities.
Lastly, we talked a little bit about a term we have recently coined “Connected e-Commerce.” We will delve more into this later, but in short Connected e-Commerce refers to the connection between vendors, consumers and affiliates in today’s buying process.
What do you think? Is there anything you’d like us to ask Brian during our next check-in?
Charlie Born,
Head and VP of Marketing
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/raster/188700129/
Plimus Affiliate Marketplace
Jan 19th
As a follow up to last week’s Affiliate Summit show in Las Vegas, I wanted to just summarize a few highlights of our successful Affiliate program. As you all read in my last post, Plimus met with hundreds of vendors and affiliates at our booth and hospitality suite and had some of our affiliate experts on hand to answer all questions including Mark Hassin, who is our VP of Strategic Accounts. Overall, we had a great time at the show and met some awesome new sellers and affiliates seeking a platform for maximized conversions and optimized ROI. While we work with many of you already, we look forward to being the perfect platform for the rest of you very soon.
In case you missed us, here’s a bit more about our program. The new Plimus Marketplace is the go-to place to find exclusive deals to the many innovative products available for promotion. This easy-to-use marketplace allows affiliates to find items to sell and to begin partnering with sellers all in one spot. The Plimus Marketplace hosts catalogues of products that affiliates and sellers can browse the more than 100,000 products by specific requirements, such as, average earning per sale, average commission, percentage of active affiliates, etc. We make it easy to find the product that works just for you.
As a member of the Plimus Marketplace, you’ll receive offers completely exclusive to Plimus; a plethora of top converting products to promote; as well as access to the more than 5,000 active sellers on the Plimus Marketplace to date. It’s time for you to join our community!
Additionally, I’ve outlined a few of the top headlines coming out of the show. With such an engaging, active affiliate community in attendance, it’s hard to just pick a few but here are some.
- This year’s show had the biggest attendance rate ever with over 4,600 attendees. As FeedFront reports, the steady climb over the years, especially during this economic hardship, is proof of the strength of the affiliate marketing industry. In fact – I think the trend goes beyond just affiliate marketing – but the maturity of online marketing as a science.
- It’s clear that while the social web and the broadcast effect of sites like Facebook create the buzz and global awareness, it is known and trusted connections that make sales. The actual selling process demands more e-commerce-like, demographically-tuned, personalized approaches. As the audiences segment into smaller and smaller communities, it is clear the strength of online marketing as demonstrated by affiliates will become a stronger force in the industry.
- Although it’s been around since 2005, this year’s hot buzz new trend seems to be “multi-channel e-commerce.” Even leading analyst firm, Forrester Research is predicting that this will be the largest growth area of 2011. What do you think?
Are there any others that I’m missing? If so, please share. As I mentioned above, Plimus is excited to start working with many new sellers and affiliates in the New Year. Visit our website to learn more about the Plimus Marketplace.
Charles Born,
VP and Head of Marketing
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carworld/3780566252/
