Christma Celebration by Joseph Jacob Esther Attorney Jefferson City Missouri

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Upcoming Google AdWords Updates 2018 – Latest AdWords News, Updates & Features

Get here latest Google AdWords Updates for 2018. Top News and AdWords updates that will change Google AdWords campaign management in 2018 have been compiled here.

It has almost become a trend, that Google AdWords updates are always in the news in every month as Google has introduced several updates in Google AdWords. This is because Google has realized AdWords’ continuous increase in popularity and its concentration in the hands of the big players. Here, you will find all of the latest Google AdWords updates, News and features that have been introduced in 2018.

AdWords Update #1 Google AdWords Comes Up with Advanced Expanded Landing Page Report

AdWords Update Brief: With the new AdWords interface, advertisers have started experiencing some new updates in 2018.
One of the latest updates on AdWords is introducing the view of full reporting metrics for expanded landing page URLs. Landing pages are the prime factor to get conversions from AdWords traffic. So, it is important to review the performance report of landing pages for each URL (both Final URL and the Mobile Final URL). This feature was available earlier but, from now on you will also get the expansion of the landing page URLs in the same report.
What is an expanded landing page URL? As per Google’s explanation, an expanded landing page URL is the URL that people reach after contextual substitutions (for example: a keyword) have been made and after custom parameters have been added to the landing page URL.
It assists you to locate how traffic is coming to each landing page of your website. You also will get information like “Mobile-friendly click rate”, “Valid AMP click rate”, and other performance metrics data such as clicks, cost, conversion rate, etc. from each URL.

AdWords Update #2 Google Launches the New AdWords UI

Adwords Update Brief: Google has come up with a new interface for AdWords. Many new features have been introduced in the new UI. The reason why advertisers continue to toggle between the new and old UI is because some important features are missing from the new AdWords UI and these include:

• Display Remarketing Audiences
• Price Extensions
• Message Extensions
• Automated Extensions Report
• AdWords Lab
• Bid Adjustment for Targeting Methods
• Advanced Editing
• Business Data and Shared Library

Unless Google includes all features of AdWords in the new UI and creates it as the primary interface, people will continue to use the old UI. So, if you are used to the old UI, you may face difficulty in locating every element in the new UI.

AdWords Update #3 Google AdWords Introduces Promotion Extension

Adwords Update Brief: One of the latest updates of Google AdWords is Promotion Extension that has been added under ‘Ads & extensions’ tab. It appears with a tag icon on search text ads that helps the ads to stand out on SERPs. It is something that can be quite beneficial for Ecommerce sites. It can be used to showcase a special promotional sale or specific offers presented by the website. The benefits of Promotion Extension are:

• It can increase the CTR of the ad by as much as 10%

• The promotional message in the ad may appear twice, once with the ad copy and on the second occasion through the Promotion Extension.

• The fact that you can use limited characters in the ad copy, using the Promotion Extension really helps.

But, the new feature is only available on the new interface of Google AdWords.

AdWords Update #4 Google AdWords Reduces Ad Rotation Setting to Optimize and Rotate Indefinitely

Adwords Update Brief: In August 2018, Google has declared that advertisers will now be able to optimize and rotate indefinitely the ads and try to succeed. Till now, AdWords advertisers used to get the following four options only:

• Optimize for clicks
• Optimize for conversions
• Rotate evenly
• Rotate indefinitely

Going forward, advertisers will get two options only, where they will be allowed to test an ad group with one ad (A) against an experimental ad group with three ads (A, B, C) or more with rotation set to be optimized. There is some amount of complexity in setting ads with rotation, because the first ad will be displayed for 20% of the total time, the second ad for 10% of the time and the third ad for 70% of the time. This uneven time management is actually challenging as you need to optimize your ads accordingly to get improved results. You can even add a new ad in the rotation section to improve clicks and conversions.

AdWords Update #5 Google Brings Changes to Google Shopping Product Listings

Adwords Update Brief: In August 2018, Google has come up with a new variation in product listings under the “Shop Now” category. They have started showing prices along with a little detail about the product in a swipeable carousel manner, resembling the price extension format in mobiles. It includes a hyperlink, price, detail of the product, availability details and shipping option.

AdWords Update #6 Google AdWords Includes Bid Adjustment Facility for Interactions

Adwords Update Brief: In the month of July 2018, Google has come up with an update called bid adjustments to give the facility of interactions. They have come up with bid adjustments for calls to get call extensions in mobile search ads. This has been included in the “Advanced Bid Adjustment” section under the Ad Campaign level of Google AdWords. In case of all sitelink extensions, you must have noticed that even though you design your ads along with some extensions at the ad campaign or ad group level, they may or may not appear in mobile search ads. But, this time, Google is giving a better opportunity to ensure that your mobile ads will appear along with call extensions. But, this is only applicable for placing a call-extension or a campaign with call-only facility.

AdWords Update #7 Google Introduces Household Income Reporting

Adwords Update Brief: A new facility of “Household Income” reporting and targeting has been introduced in Google AdWords for search campaigns. In the new interface of AdWords, it is available from the ‘Demographics’ tab and in the old interface, it is available from ‘Location’ targeting.

AdWords Update #8 Google Helps to Identify Shifts in Ad Performance in Report Editor

AdWords Update Brief: Recently in July 2018, Google AdWords has come up with a new update for comparing two date ranges in the Report Editor. This will help to identify the significant shifts in ad performance over a period of time. The Report Editor is a tool that allows you to engage with your performance data through multi-dimensional tables and charts. You no longer need to download the data to study it, you can simply drag and drop the interface and create tables and charts within AdWords to work on it directly. It allows advanced filtering and sorting of segmented metrics, supports multi-segment analysis and helps to create customized charts. This date comparison feature on Report Editor is now available not only on new AdWords accounts but also on new AdWords UI. However, it has been assured that the feature will be rolled out to more accounts over the next couple of months.

AdWords Update #9 Google Launches AdWords Editor 12

AdWords Update Brief: One vital AdWords update 2018 come in June. It is about introducing a new version of AdWords Editor which has a fresh look and some new features to simplify the workflow. AdWords Editor 12 is available for all advertisers to successfully manage their ad campaigns. It helps to create customer rules based on your own best practices. AdWords Editor will suggest which ad campaigns or ad groups matches the eligibility criteria with your best practices before you post any change. You can either accept those recommendations or again create custom rules. It allows faster account download of new version or transfer of data from previous versions. It portrays a cohesive visual experience across AdWords Editor and it also supports ad bidding to maximize conversion rate.

AdWords Update #10 Google Introduces Automatic Bid Adjustment Mechanism

AdWords Update Brief: One more Google AdWords Update 2018 is automatic bid setting facility. As a marketer, your main aim should be to maximize conversions from your different marketing strategies, so AdWords has introduced Maximize Conversions, a new smart bidding strategy. When you are setting your marketing budget and investing in it, your focus should be towards setting the right bid for each keyword. Bid adjustment is a vital task for a marketer to get the maximum out of it.  You can either manually adjust your ad bids or trust on this new automatic mechanism that will set the right bid within your daily budget and will help to increase your conversion.

Now the question is- how will AdWords smart bidding help the marketers? In smart bidding, machine learning algorithms help to get more accurate predictions about each bid that impacts conversions, which is far better than the performance of a single person or team. It includes attributes like device and location, plus it gives contextual signals. It helps to optimize search bids and set performance targets that match your unique business goals. It also acts as a reporting tool that gives insight about your bidding performance and helps to deal with any issue quickly.

AdWords Update #11 Google Brings a New Audience Solution

AdWords Update Brief: Every month, Google goes one step ahead and introduces a new feature or mechanism in Google AdWords. Each AdWords update is to help marketers use the tool most effectively and maximize profit in their respective businesses. Another AdWords update 2018 was the new audience solutions that helps to find the next customer who is similar to your best customers with search and shopping. Here Google AdWords uses Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) to reconnect with people who have already visited the site. Apart from those, the feature engages both new and loyal customers which is equally important for a business. Research says that targeting similar customers can increase the conversion rate by 22%. As the new audience solution feature targets eCommerce businesses and has a strong impact on shopping, it includes Customer Match for Shopping to help you use your own data to reach the right customer, with the right message.

This is not the end; Google AdWords news is published every month featuring all the significant and interesting updates.

AdWords Update #12 Google AdWords is Complex for Small Businesses

AdWords Update Brief: The reason for the several updates is Google willingness to take on the several challenges faced by AdWords users. One of the biggest challenges faced is the need to bridge the ever-widening digital skills gap with 60% of small business or businesses having zero digital presence.

Recently, there was a Google AdWords news- Google has made a confession that Google AdWords is very complex and not at all easy for the small businesses to understand and operate. Google Product Marketing Manager, Duncan McGrath said, “AdWords is very powerful and there are amazing technologies and capabilities for whatever niche target you want to reach or how you want to bid or what ad format you want to use. But that said, it’s very complex.” Most insiders would state that smaller agencies or newcomers to the field also have a tough time dealing with AdWords.

The good news is that Google has understood the requirement of a much simpler and effective version of Google AdWords and why it is necessary to be introduced in the digital marketing world for the betterment of all kinds of players. For a professional renowned digital agency offering digital marketing services, it is an easy task to deal with any version of AdWords, be it as simple as it was in the initial stage or may be as complicated as it is today. But, today, a small business owner or a non-technical person who has no knowledge of online marketing, finds that working with AdWords is a mammoth task.

In the recent past, it has been noticed that Google Adwords news section also included some news regarding AdWords updates. Besides making Google AdWords simpler for the beginners, Google has come up with some new updates for the experts.

AdWords Update #13 Google Introduces New Ad Rank Thresholds

AdWords Update Brief: Google has rolled out a new Ad Rank thresholds update due to which your bids will now carry more weight and it will start considering the meaning of the query. Though it announced about this rollout in the beginning of the month of May 2018, many AdWords users are still not noticing its impact. They are expected to notice it at the end of May or beginning of June.

To understand the new Ad Rank thresholds Google AdWords update, you need to first know the meaning of Ad Rank. Ad Rank is nothing but the value given to the ad as per the position on search or web page. There are various factors involved in calculating the Ad Rank- the bid amount of the ad, the Quality Score and impact of the different ad extensions such as visual sitelinks, address sitelinks, timing sitelinks, etc.

Changes brought to Ad Rank calculation can be categorised into two types:

1. Bid Weight Related:

Depending on the meaning of the query, the weight of the bid will change. Bid can be weighted high or low in the Ad Rank calculation, but this will also bring about changes in the CPC.

2. Query Related:

Google will start holding thresholds high for a news-related query rather than a product-related query, because Google is trying to analyse the meaning of the query and serve searches accordingly.

AdWords Update #14 Google Unveils a New feature ‘Visual Sitelinks’ for Mobile Search Ads

AdWords Update Brief: One of the most significant Google AdWords updates of 2018 is the introduction of ‘Visual Sitelinks’. It is an AdWords feature where images are displayed in sitelink extensions of Google Search Ads. This feature has been spotted on mobile phones in a swipeable carousel manner and here the images will appear along with the text in the sitelink extension.

AdWords Update #15 Google Added Quality Score Metrics

AdWords Update Brief: Google has recently added seven columns in the reporting interface of Google AdWords for the better visibility of keywords. Google has added-

a) 3 status columns for Quality Score (QS):

• Exp. CTR
• Ad Relevance
• Landing Page Exper

b) 4 columns for the historical Quality Score (QS):

• Qual. Score (hist.)
• Landing page exper. (hist.)
• Ad relevance (hist.)
• Exp. CTR (hist.)

Here, Google AdWords advertisers will be able to see the Quality Score of current keywords in the present day as well as track the keyword’s history. PPC advertisers will be able to get last known QS and daily historical QS for the selected date range.

AdWords Update #16 Google AdWords Introduces Automatic Call Extensions in Mobile Ads

AdWords Update Brief: Google has brought another update in 2018 by introducing a new AdWords feature ‘automatic call extensions’ in Mobile Ads. This new feature of Google AdWords has been added to improve the CTR (click through rate) of the mobile ads. The update aims to benefit the local businesses as it has made easy for the customers to get the set phone number of the brand and contact them instantly.

AdWords Update #17 Google Allowed Scheduled Conversion Imports

AdWords Update Brief: Another recent update that is going to create a huge impact on you PPC campaign is the Scheduled Conversion Imports. Here as a Google AdWords advertiser, you will be able to see the impact of online ads on your offline sales and other valuable actions. Now, you can import conversions from clicks and calls into individual or manager accounts on a daily and weekly basis.

It involves some steps to import your conversions, such as:

1. Prepare Your Data for Import

1. Download conversion upload template in the form of Excel, CSV, or Google Sheets
2. Choose the format to enter your time zone in the file.
3. Enter the time zone
4. Add a new row for each offline conversion and fill the columns

2. Import Your Conversions

You can either upload it at one time or you can schedule it for future.

AdWords Update #18 Google Added Expandable Extensions in Carousal Format on Mobiles

AdWords Update Brief: One more latest update in Google AdWords is that Google has included extensions in ‘expandable manner’ on the bottom of the ads. Generally, the bottom lists the prices and the costs of the products and services, so it is also named as price extension.

Google has introduced the expandable extensions to utilize the space in a better way because if each ad started adding extensions, then the organic searches will come below the first fold or even below that.

Keeping the mobile searches in mind, they have once again introduced the carousel format to showcase different data. This time, if you keep on scrolling till the end, it is no longer giving the option to view more.

After coming up with so many news and updates on a continuous basis within one month in Google AdWords, it is obvious that Google is paying more attention towards AdWords and that is the main reason why it has even come up with free training sessions via Digital Garage, a new online training tool of Google.

AdWords Update #19 Google brings a mixed result of Local Inventory Ads (LIA) with Local Pack

AdWords Update Brief: With the beginning of 2018, Google has tested a new look for local search results where they mix local inventory ads (LIAs) and local pack. But in Google Maps, somewhere it is giving privilege to local packs, somewhere to LIAs only or somewhere to a mix of both. By adding this Google AdWords feature, Google has surprised everyone with an unusual update.

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HR consultant drive business success

Human resource (HR) management is at the heart of every organisation. It’s the department that keeps processes running smoothly, ensures employees are adhering to goals and maintains compliance. Important though these areas are, a small and growing business may not have the necessary time to invest in HR activities. They need to focus their attention on generating revenue, without which the whole business would crumble. As such, it is generally uncommon for a company of fewer than 100 employees to have a dedicated HR team.

Ignoring HR responsibilities entirely is a recipe for disaster. Employee relation issues and performance management concerns should not fall to a single manager who is unlikely to possess all the necessary skills and knowledge of an HR professional. With this in mind, many growing businesses decide that HR consulting is right for their company. Investing in this expertise can help take businesses from strength to strength, while freeing up management time to focus on increasing profit margins.

HR consultants can help with the recruitment process

Recruitment is no game, and the cost of making the wrong hire can seriously damage a business. On top of the financial commitment, each new hire requires onboarding, with the average new hire taking eight months to reach full productivity. For this reason, there are a number of critical considerations to bear in mind during the recruitment process: essential skills, employment history, communication skills, cultural fit, and attitude, to name a few.

HR consultants are well acquainted with the importance of selecting the right candidate, and they have recruitment down to a fine art. They can assist with the slow, tedious hiring process and conduct interviews that will highlight employees with potential. Importantly, due to their training, they are familiar with what can and cannot be asked during the interview stage.

HR consultants can also advise on what it takes to attract top talent in the future. This all boils down to a combination of company reputation, personalised training, excellent employee experience, productive performance management processes and the incorporation of employee recognition schemes, which will be discussed below.

HR consultants can help to reduce staff turnover

High turnover can impact morale, employee engagement levels and overall productivity. Companies that gain a reputation for high turnover can have difficulties recovering from this image, thereby damaging future recruitment efforts. To make matters worse, it comes at a high financial cost.

Any HR management professional is aware that retention begins with improved recruitment. A business also needs to ensure that employees feel listened to, appreciated and supported. HR consultants can advise on these areas to make sure a company is running smoothly and the employees are engaged and motivated.

HR consultants can assist with organisational change

At times, it is necessary to introduce certain business changes, but when they aren’t handled delicately and with precision, companies can experience widespread negative effects. By nature, people are resistant to change. Organisational change needs to be communicated clearly, slowly and tactfully, while the situation is kept under control. HR consultants are specialists in change management, and they can help with mergers, acquisitions and restructures. They can also assist with the introduction of new processes in relation to performance management.

HR consultants help organise reward and recognition schemes

Over the past few years, businesses have been waking up to the importance of employee recognition. It has been closely linked to employee satisfaction and higher retention levels, yet this critical performance management consideration is often overlooked.

If your business wants to introduce reward and recognition schemes, you want to make sure your bonus and incentive schemes are well-thought-out. HR consultants can help you create a balanced benefits package and roll it out through the company.

HR consultants detect and resolve employee engagement concerns

All modern organisations are well aware of the benefits afforded by increased levels of employee engagement. It has been linked to increased productivity, morale and discretionary effort. But what steps are your company putting in place to make sure employee engagement and employee experience are being prioritised? It might be that you need a consultation with an experienced professional who is aware of the latest research and knows what will positively impact engagement levels.

To determine the status of employee engagement in your company, consultants can help your business design and launch engagement surveys and hold focus groups. This will help you pinpoint areas for improvement, which will significantly improve long-term employee engagement and retention rates.

HR consultants help with performance management

Performance management is a constantly evolving field. As our understanding of psychology and motivation advances, so does our application of it. New HR trends are constantly developing, and companies who fail to keep up ultimately lose out to their competition.

One notable change over recent years is the abandonment of annual performance appraisals for a more agile performance management style. This process incorporates regular performance discussions. When a company decides to hire an HR consultant, this professional can help you design a new appraisal process, develop competency frameworks and ensure you have a suitable goal-setting process. Paying attention to performance management means you will benefit from more motivated employees, who are more empowered to carry out the function of their roles.

Increased adherence to compliance

How can any SME get ahead and thrive when they are forced to spend hours researching and adhering to rapidly evolving employment laws? This is a near-impossible feat, particularly for an unqualified professional. HR consultants can offer peace of mind in this area, as it is their business to know about the current laws regarding hiring, firing, and health and safety processes. Ignorance of these areas could end up costing you dearly in legal fines.

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Figure out the right time to make a career move

1 Function of Learning 
Career move is a function of how much you are learning. The day learning stops, you should move on, says Debashis Patnaik, senior director of HR at Dell EMC. Smart managers know how to motivate their teams by offering new learning opportunities through training or job-role change. If they fail to do so, despite your expressing the need, it might be time to look out, says Dinesh R, chief HR officer, OYO Rooms.

2 Company Growth 
Try to assess the company you are associated with. If there are signals of trouble, one should start looking out. Inspect if your company is growing or not. If the company is stable, it means your growth opportunities are also limited and that is a right time to move, says Raman Narula, founder, Formula Group.

3 Stalled Career Graph 
In case of no visibility on professional growth in the short term, and in some cases even in the long-term, take the plunge. It is important that you have a clear view on your professional growth two, five or even 10 years down the line, says Dinesh. If this is not moving as committed, you need to re-evaluate your choice against other benefits that come with the role, he says.

4 Loss of Interest 
People don’t quit jobs; they quit bosses. When the equation with the immediate manager turns sour, it’s time to quit. When it becomes difficult to work due to immediate manager and immediate co-workers, it is time to quit, says Patnaik. He said one should avoid working in an unfriendly environment as it is detrimental to being productive.

5 Co & Personal Goals 
Sometimes, there can be divergence between the organisation’s goals or culture and your own values and ethos. If these are very incompatible or you don’t find yourself very enthused about the big picture, it is time to check out, says Dinesh. But the timing for exit has to be perfect. If you do decide to leave a job, quitting at the wrong time can hit you in the pocket

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An employment agency’s relationship with his candidate

As a recruitment agency and employment business we are responsible for attracting candidates to our client and their job role; we are also responsible for matching the candidates we attract to the right company and the right positions.

Through building strong and open relationships with our clients and candidates we gain a better understanding of the recruitment needs and employment preferences for both parties.

We work closely with our candidates to fully understand the skills and experiences they have as well as the job they are looking for, but we also take the time to understand the sort of person they are, their characteristics and personality traits so we can match the person to the business and not just the skills to the job.

Here at aspire cambridge we class ourselves as one of the most pro-active recruitment agencies and recruitment businesses in Cambridgeshire because we ensure that we treat our clients and candidates extremely well – we always aim for that ‘match made in heaven’ for our placements based on skills and experience as well as personality. A person and a company need to fit for the placement to be successful and enjoyable for both the client and the candidate.

We have seen research that states a candidates biggest frustration when working with a recruitment agency is the lack of feedback; our recruitment consultants here at aspire cambridge ensure that we give feedback wherever possible from the application form right through to the interview; whether the candidate is successful or not. Our recruitment consultants have all been through the recruitment process themselves so they know how important feedback is to a candidate.

We work hard to always provide our candidates with the best possible candidate journey; ensuring that we treat our candidates as we would like to be treated ourselves. We don’t treat our candidates as our next pay check, instead we treat them as our friends and our clients, making sure they get the right job for them as we know this is what makes a successful placement and gains us trust and respect from both the candidate and the client. If the candidate is not happy in the role the client won’t be happy either, so we will never try and force the two together.

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Ways to Make Your Ecommerce Startup

The growth of the ecommerce industry remains strong. In the U.S., the industry grew by 15.6 percent to $394.86 billion last year, with ecommerce comprising 42 percent of all retail growth. Consumers have also now shifted to mobile. Mobile ecommerce poses another set of challenges to success which leaves online merchants little choice but to continue adapting. Merchants must be able to leverage the new developments in ecommerce technologies in order to secure an advantage.

Ecommerce startups may find themselves in quite an interesting position. On one hand, they can readily implement cutting edge or mobile-first strategies since they don’t have any legacy issues to deal with. On the other, they also need to enhance their infrastructure with these new technologies. Barebones shopping cart sites and apps just don’t quite cut it anymore.

Here are six ways startups can make their stores stand out.

1. Marketing automation
Even with a good catalog of products, ecommerce startups can’t just expect customers to just turn up and buy. Successful ecommerce efforts are always aided by strong marketing efforts. Ecommerce marketing helps to attract and convert customers, upsell and cross-sell, and generate repeat sales.

Due to the volume of customers companies have to reach, doing marketing tasks such as sending newsletters and following up on abandoned carts can be a tedious process. Marketing automation can be used to streamline these tasks. Automation services can be configured to send out customized offers or newsletters via email or as push notifications on mobile. These can even be sent out at an optimal time based on a user's past behavior so that messages land at the top of their inboxes. Moreover, effective timing can lead to increased email response times. Reminders can also be triggered if customers leave items in the online shopping carts.

2. Advanced analytics
Gone are the days when analytics meant simply tracking a website’s daily visits and how long each visit lasted. For ecommerce, advanced analytics offers means to accurately track each customer’s journey. Trackers can now determine traffic sources and gather data on each click made in the store. These data can be compiled and analyzed in order to generate insights on customer behavior and product and site performance.

Analytics tools can be configured to sync data from multiple sources and trigger actions such as notifications. These can even be integrated with automated marketing services as part of rule-based campaigns. Analytics could also be used to track internal team’s performance to see how quickly orders get fulfilled. Timely decisions and changes can then be made while being guided by solid evidence. Customers, especially loyal ones, could tell if improvements are being done to enhance their experience.

3. Personalization
Customers love being flattered and one way to do this is by offering a personalized experience. Among the simple ways of implementing personalization are automatically changing language and currency settings based on geolocation data and launching push notifications reminding customers of the items they browsed.

Customer data can be utilized to further improve their experience. Developments in machine learning are ushering in hyper-personalization in ecommerce. We are already seeing glimpses of this when store apps would display a targeted selection of products based on recently viewed items. Thirty-five percent of Amazon’s sales come from such recommendations. The combination of analytics and machine learning enables targeted messages and actions based on a customer’s historical information. Soon, machine learning may even be able to anticipate and predict purchases based on buying histories, trends and seasons.

4. Chatbots
Chatbots are an exciting development in ecommerce. Dubbed conversational commerce, messaging apps are now being used to enable ecommerce. One example is Uber’s integration with Facebook Messenger which allowed users to book rides within the chat window. Voice activated home devices like the Amazon Echo can be used to check user’s Capital One account balances and even order pizza from Domino’s.

Future developments would enable users to browse and compare products and even directly place orders within the chat app. Facebook is heavily investing in its Messenger developer platform to enable more partnerships and integrations. Subway has recently unveiled its Messenger bot to enable sandwich orders, and Wells Fargo looks to follow Capital One in allowing customers to access account information through Messenger. Startups could do well investigating how they can make an early splash in using chatbots for ecommerce.

5. Customer support 2.0
Among the pitfalls of doing business online is poor customer service. Digital channels do take away much of the human element of doing business so it is important to put up systems that would allow merchants to connect with customers. Customer support often came in the form of chat widgets and email and messaging systems which allow customers to interact with live agents.

The problem with this is that it can sometimes take a while, especially if the support team is encountering a large volume of transactions. However, being too pushy by bombarding users with messages can turn them off. One way to supercharge customer support is by carefully engineering the points at which these messages come up. Platforms like Giosg can be set to enable live chat to pop up just as a customer abandons the cart. This allows a live agent to address any concerns buyers may have in order to close the sale.

6. Fraud protection
A growing concern among merchants is fraud. Fraudsters often target ecommerce services to launder money by using stolen credit card details to purchase both physical and digital goods. Due to the chargeback system, real owners of the credit card gain a level of protection. Unfortunately, it’s the merchant that has to deal with the loss.

Implementing fraud protection has been gaining traction. But, for some, verifying orders has been a manual process. There are times where legitimate transactions get flagged or denied. While this could be simply a prudent move on the part of the merchant, these can ultimately result in lost customers. Availing of fraud protection services can help automate this process, and using their advanced algorithms, filter out fraudulent purchases while ensuring real purchases get fulfilled.

Providing superior customer experience
Everything considered, what this all boils down to is providing superior customer experience. Ecommerce startups should understand that the industry has become more competitive. These new technologies could be a difference maker but only if used strategically. There’s little point in packing all these features if they aren’t configured to work towards making the whole experience unique, smooth and hassle-free for customers.

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