Category: Uncategorized

The eCommerce industry has witnessed significant technological advancements in recent years. An interesting example would be Nike’s augmented reality-based solution called Nike Fit. According to the company, three out of five people wear the wrong shoe size, and they developed this to address such problems when people shop online. 

It wasn’t just Nike; other leading brands, such as Gucci and Adidas, are also exploring new ways to expand their reach by creating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the Metaverse. 

All these reflect the role of technology in eCommerce in providing customers with an exceptional experience. As the competition in the eCommerce industry continues to grow, businesses need to adopt innovative approaches to meet changing customer demands.

However, 2022 has seen its share of political and economic crises, such as the Russian-Ukraine war and the recession in the U.S.A. 

The big question is will these factors impact the digital commerce industry in 2023. If yes, how and what measures can businesses take to be least affected by the results? Apart from that, what are the other latest eCommerce trends that will dominate the industry? We will answer these questions in this blog, so let’s start with top eCommerce trends in 2023.  

1.) Unified Commerce

Unified commerce means bringing all your sales channels, payment systems, products, and customer interactions together on a single platform. It involves connecting your backend system to all the customer touchpoints (online and offline) they use to view and buy products. The ease of a single platform allows the consumers to purchase, receive and return items on their chosen channels. One of the key advantages of unified commerce is that it allows real-time critical data to flow between different channels. 

The centralized platform offers various benefits:

• It gives a holistic view of the inventory and stocks, making it easier to view and update stocks in real-time.
• You can access data insights across multiple touchpoints that help understand customer behavior and other performance KPIs.
• Saves resources and time invested otherwise in integrating various other platforms.
• Connecting online and offline sales channels drastically improves the customer experience leading to customer loyalty and higher spending.

The information can help chart effective marketing strategies, improve operational efficiency, and mitigate the hassle of managing numerous resources to help your business scale. 

2.) Improved customer service

For any business to thrive, retaining customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. However, for B2B businesses, the buying cycle is long and exhaustive, and there is a huge dependence on building long-lasting customer relationships. Good customer service is one of the simplest ways that help you retain your customers and have consistent revenue growth. As per a report, 72% of B2B buyers state that real-time, always-on customer service is key to boosting customer loyalty.  89% of consumers are more willing to make another purchase if they have a positive customer service experience. Interestingly,  good customer service can make customers more accepting of mishaps such as shipment delays. 

Having powerful customer service can greatly help retain the existing customer base. The customer should also be able to choose their communication channel, be it mail, phone, chat, or social media.  In 2023 businesses will have to work towards providing their customers with seamless customer service and reach them where they are available. 

3.) Personalization for brand loyalty

Personalization has already been a game changer for the eCommerce industry in the past few years. And moving forward, the personalization game will even become more critical.  Marketing strategies such as ABM (Account-based marketing) take a different approach to personalization, and it helps you determine accounts that have the potential to be the biggest revenue generator for your business. Using this technology, businesses can send personalized content to decision-makers of these accounts on the platforms they are active.

Common ABM strategies include:

1.) Identification of the key accounts 

2.) Content marketing strategy relevant to individual accounts

3.) Defining customer journey map 

4.) Leveraging behavioral data for creating customer personas 

5.) Developing the right content that inspires action 

4.) Impact of inflation on average order value 

Inflation in the U.S. has been at its record high in forty years. But how does it impact an eCommerce business? Let us understand this from a business perspective which is that during inflation, there is a direct decrease in purchasing power. It directly impacts manufacturing costs, and businesses might struggle to retain and gain clients. 

As per reports, the rising prices and the economic downturn have recorded payment delays of 10.5 days in the B2B eCommerce industry, and in 2023 this will continue to increase. When there is financial uncertainty, shoppers need extra assurance, and businesses should work on price optimization. 

Some steps that the companies can take to balance out their profits are: 

1.) Introducing deals and offers such as discounts on buying bundled items

2.) Do an inventory audit to identify the best sellers and those that don’t sell a lot. The key is to focus on the products that bring in maximum profits.

Read more: How we Automated the Commission Process for a B2B eCommerce retailer?

5.) Environmental concerns and sustainability

The climate crisis is one of the crucial issues looming worldwide. The eCommerce industry has also played a significant role in increasing the carbon footprint. The transportation and logistics industry is a major contributor to CO2 emissions in the U.S. and accounts for 29 % of greenhouse gases. With increasing awareness about the environmental impact, people have become more mindful of sustainability and ecological balance. They are ready to pay more or buy from brands that focus on these factors. 

It is a great opportunity for brands to build brand loyalty and differentiate themselves from competitors. They can opt for eco-friendly and sustainable practices such as: 

• Creating packages using packaging materials that are eco-friendly and sustainable such as 
• Making provisions for buyers to choose sustainable shipping options (e.g., “Ship all items together in one package, rather than sending them based on their availability”)
• Making it easy for people to reuse and recycle items. 
• Adding labels to packaging asking the consumers to reuse and recycle

6.) Dynamic pricing

Dynamic pricing is also called real-time pricing, where the price can change in real-time based on factors such as the demand and supply ratio, currency fluctuations, etc. It allows businesses to control their pricing and offer the right price to the specific customer at the right time. It will be a significant step in helping businesses maintain revenue and get the least affected by inflation. Businesses should conduct extensive research before they implement dynamic pricing in their system. It includes thoroughly understanding the competitor brands and customer base and identifying the sweet spot between being enticing and profitable. 

7. ) Social Commerce

As per a report by McKinsey, social commerce is set to grow three times as fast as traditional eCommerce platforms. It is already set to reach 1.2 trillion dollars by 2025 from its current $492 billion. Influencer marketing is one of the major aspects of social commerce that drive user engagement and sales.  When a product is recommended or endorsed by an influencer or creator, the buyer automatically trusts the product and is ready to buy it.

Investing in social commerce is definitely needed because it helps with customer engagement and boosts sales. But it also impacts the customer journey that businesses will need to take into account when they incorporate social commerce into their business.  Let us understand it how. So, in a traditional setup, when a buyer discovers a product, he heads to the brand-owned channels, such as their website, or app, to complete the purchase. But with social commerce, the consumer stays in the respective platform such as Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook to complete their purchase.  It might affect the direct-to-consumer relationships for brands, and to combat it, businesses will need a holistic approach to influencer partnerships and for social-first content.  

8.) Visual Search

Visual search allows users to search using images and is commonly used through tools like Google Lens. With 62% of Gen Z and millennial customers seeking visual search capabilities and 23% of Google search queries yielding images, this trend is rising. Despite this, only a small portion of about 8% of eCommerce brands have incorporated visual search into their website.

To stay ahead of the competition, eCommerce businesses can optimize their website for visual search. Major eCommerce platforms like Magento and Shopify offer visual search features that can be easily integrated into your website.

Some of the ways that you can prepare your website for visual search are: 

1. Adding images to your sitemap so that it can be crawled by Google 
2. Adding alt text to your images to give the right context
3. Sizing the images in the right sizes
4. Caption images with relevant keywords
5. Modify chatbots to accommodate visual searches

9.) Rise of Mobile Commerce (m-commerce)

One of the most popular eCommerce trends for businesses is going to be m-commerce.  If we go by the numbers, a report by Statista suggests that by 2025, mCommerce will account for over 10.4% of all retail sales in the US.  it is also one of the leading eCommerce trends in India, with an estimated eCommerce sales of $38 billion in 2020. Mobile Commerce isn’t a new phenomenon but something that is gradually happening for years now. As more and more people are getting used to smartphones and the internet being no more premium service, there has been a significant shift in the mobile consumer base. With time the average hours spent on mobile devices will only rise, pushing the growth of mobile commerce. So, eCommerce businesses should leverage platforms to connect directly with customers on mobile devices. It must include social media apps, SMS and Whatsapp messaging that initiates one-on-one conversations. 

Businesses in 2023 will majorly focus on improving the customer experience, sustainability, and stabilizing profitability. Unified commerce will keep gaining traction, and more and more businesses will look forward to unifying their various platforms for a seamless customer experience. Other technologies, such as blockchain, will keep evolving. 

FAQ

Since the Internet came into existence in the 90s, it has undergone a significant transformation. The first version – Web 1.0, was the readable phase focused on passive information sharing with minimal interaction between web users and websites. 

Next came Web 2.0, also called the writable phase, which completely transformed how users used the Internet. It opened new avenues of higher user participation, real-time information sharing, and giving users a voice.  One of the significant drawbacks of web 2.0 is data privacy concerns.  Currently, big corporations and organizations control our data. They drop cookies into our systems, record each activity we do on the web, such as our browsing history, surfing patterns, and personal information and hand them to advertisers.

But now, we are gearing up for the third phase of the Internet revolution, web 3.0, also called the semantic web. The positive factor of this web 3.0 is that it puts the power in the hands of the users making the web a more user-centric platform. Now, what exactly does it mean?

So, all the data we share on the web through various websites and online communities is stored in a centralized infrastructure owned by tech giants or government organizations. Companies buy servers, install the intended software and then store the data that the user shares. So they are the sole owners of our data records, and it is entirely upto them how they want to use it.   But with web 3.0, this will change where all the data will be decentralized, and no third party will own the data. 

What is Web 3.0 all about, and what exactly is decentralization?

The main crux of Web 3.0 is decentralization and an effort to make the Internet intelligent, backed with artificial intelligence and big data.  Technologies like Blockchain form the backbone of decentralization, a relatively new data storing and managing technique built on two core concepts: encryption and distributed computing. Encryption means that the data can only be accessed by people who own it, and distributed means that the data will be shared across multiple systems or servers in the network.  If the data in one system doesn’t match all others, it will corrupt the chain. 

The biggest advantage of web 3.0 is that it will allow people to exchange information online securely and privately. 

Now let’s explore how the powerful features such as security and decentralization that Web 3.0 offers can impact the digital commerce industry:

1.) Enhanced Security: Data breaches and fraudulent transactions are the biggest concerns for online retailers. As per a Fraud Survey 2020 report – 47% of businesses lost $42 billion due to fraud in the previous 24 months.  Web 3.0 is one of the most secure and reliable platforms compared to its predecessors.  From a safety standpoint, blockchain-based payments can significantly reduce fraudulent activities, given the transparency and visibility it offers through interconnected systems. The system will allow transactions to be tracked right from when the user clicks the buy button until the time he receives his order.

2.) Better Supply Chain Management

A Blockchain can significantly refine supply chains by enabling faster and more cost-efficient delivery, enhancing products’ traceability, and improving coordination between partners. It will ensure that all operations involved in the supply chain are transparent and secure.

Let’s take a scenario where a retailer sources products from the supplier, and the supplier gets the capital from the bank to fill the order. The above transaction involves informational flows, financial flows, and inventory flows. Now it is impossible to keep all the data together so that all entities involved get to know what is happening behind the scenes.

The finance record will not have information about the related inventory details. The implemented ERP systems usually record all types of flows involved. Still, it is hard to evaluate which entries (credits for return, accounts receivable, payments, etc.) correspond to which inventory transaction, specifically for large-scale businesses that process numerous orders in a single day. A blockchain-powered transparent system can alleviate these blind spots and help record all the information together.

Check the below image that clearly depicts how Blockchain helps record all transactions in one place and gives more visibility.

3.) Advent of decentralized marketplaces:  In Web 2.0, big online marketplaces and eCommerce giants earn commission by providing a platform to various sellers to sell their products to consumers. In the Web 3.0 version, third parties won’t need to facilitate such transactions, and the process can directly take place peer-to-peer. In such a model, most of the sales and release of funds will be managed by smart contracts. It means that buyers and sellers agree to a set of pre-specified terms and conditions, and when these conditions are met, the program will be automatically executed.  As of now, there are several types of decentralized marketplaces, such as marketplace applications, blockchain-specific marketplaces, and marketplace platforms. 

4.) Cost-effective and faster: Online transactions and processing using cryptocurrencies and blockchain can help mitigate the additional charges incurred due to mediators or intermediaries such as banks. Also, payment through cryptocurrencies is 96% faster than conventional payment methods. Another benefit of accepting cryptocurrencies is that it helps customers trust your brand and allow you to expand your customer base. According to a study by Forrester Consulting, 40% of customers that pay using cryptocurrency are first-time visitors, and secondly, their order values are 2x more than credit card purchasers.

5.) More effective omnichannel strategies:   The concept of omnichannel marketing isn’t new but comes with challenges for online retailers. The most common ones are transparency, traceability, and trust. The connectivity and transparency that Web 3.0 offers help businesses connect all their sales channels and operational activities, providing a seamless and secure buying experience. The transparency will give retailers and customers real-time access to product details such as serial numbers, order location, source of the order, order processing status, logistics movement, delivery status, and payment status, breaking the siloes. Since blockchain is a secure network where the information cannot be altered, it helps build trust amongst the entities involved.  Here is an example to understand how it can help with traceability. Walmart leveraged Blockchain technology to overcome the challenge of food-borne disease outbreaks, where identifying the source is crucial. But it usually takes days to weeks to identify the source. But with the help of a blockchain-based food traceability system, the traceability was reduced from days to just a few seconds. 

Today, Blockchain and Web 3.0 are in the nascent stages of development but with huge potential to disrupt eCommerce and several other industries. It could make online transactions much safer and more affordable. However, as they are still in their early stages of development, it remains to be seen what their full potential will be. Meanwhile, if you are willing to be at the top of your game in the digital commerce space, connect with us for consulting application modernization of your existing infrastructure to meet the needs of the future. To connect with us, head to our contact us page and we will be happy to get on a call. 

A top B2B retailer in the US needed to automate their complex commission process for their affiliates and sales partners worldwide. Previously, they manually calculated commissions, but as their customer base grew and the number of orders increased, this method became prone to errors, time-consuming, and costly. As a result, there was a pressing need for a solution to streamline the commission process.

The commission calculation was complex, and the technical difficulties made it one of the toughest projects I’ve tackled. Due to the complexity, it took a while to develop the solution. Let’s delve into the journey, the challenges, and how we overcame them.

An overview of how the commission is processed: 

1.) Some of the customers who buy from the website have pre-assigned sales representatives. The role of the sales representative is to provide their customers with assistance while placing orders and they are commissioned when these orders are placed.

2.) The sales representatives receive a commission percentage calculated on a pre-defined minimum spend value in a given timeframe which renews daily, monthly and weekly. For example, a sales representative is getting a commission based on the weekly cycle of a minimum spend of $500.  It means that the customer should spend more than $500 weekly for the respective sales representative to avail the commission. 

3.) Each customer can have multiple sales representatives and vice versa. Also, the commission value and minimum spend value for different representatives will differ. 

A quick overview of the solution 

To manage the complex workflow involved in the commission process, we have developed a separate sales commission calculation system for the back office team. The system allows the team to add details required for commission calculation, such as commission rate, minimum spend, cycle type (daily, weekly,monthly), type of commission, etc, for various sales representatives.   

When a customer’s order is processed and shipped, the commission is calculated for all related sales reps based on pre-set rules. If the customer receives a discount or returns a product, the commission will be adjusted automatically. The overall commission is then updated for each sales rep and can be viewed by the back office. To see an individual’s commission, they can simply select them from a drop-down menu and get the details instantly.

This approach worked well when there were just a few hundred orders. But as the number of orders increased to thousands daily, the commission calculation became too demanding for the system to handle.

The major technical challenge that we faced was:

Unwanted load on the server

We have implemented MySQL and PHP for the commission calculation. But it involved several database calls that increased the load on the servers, affecting the efficiency of the system. To address the issue we implemented Firebase.

Using Firebase for handling the calculation

Firebase is a kind of real-time database that can handle a large number of data at a time. So, instead of doing calculations using PHP and MySQL, we started processing them using Firebase. 
When the order is shipped, we send all the data to Firebase, and the whole commission calculation is done there. And then, we fetch the details from Firebase and display them in our sales representative commission panel. This reduces the total number of database calls and the load on our server.   

But when we thought that we had created a robust system that would not fail, surprisingly, implementing Firebase also didn’t work out. Here is why –

Limitations of Firebase

The solution we implemented involved using Firebase’s scheduler function, functions.pubsub.schedule(‘every 5 minutes’).onRun(async (context). We used to run the process of commission calculation every five minutes. During this time, whatever orders came into the system, the calculation would be performed for all those orders. So, we were processing commissions for multiple orders at a time. 

Firebase has some limitations, such as limited querying capabilities, and, since our processes were data-intensive mathematical calculations, they intercepted those limitations. In Firebase, the total number of writes (updates) that can be passed to a commit operation is 500. Secondly, the time limit for a single transaction is 270 seconds with 60 second idle expiration time. In our process, this time limit was exceeded and also the total writes were more than 500 since we were performing several functions at once for several orders that are: 

1.) Getting data for commission calculation 

2.) Performing the mathematical calculation with the data 

3.) Updating the commission for each sales representative 

The final solution 

To solve the Firebase issue, we came up with the solution of real-time database triggers of Firebase. Instead of sending multiple data entries to Firebase at a single time and using the scheduler function to process multiple orders, we used database triggers of Firebase. Using it, we send data for every order shipped, and calculation is done for one order at a time. It leverages the cloud functions that enable the system to handle events without updating the client code. The benefit of cloud functions is that it lets you run realtime database functions while giving you administrative privileges. 

This feature has solved many financial problems that our client was previously facing. In the past, commissions were processed and given, only for them to discover later that a product was returned or there was an issue during shipping. Now, everything is calculated and updated automatically, so if a customer returns a product, the commission will be adjusted when the return is complete. This automation has allowed our client to save 40-50% of their costs while making the entire process smoother.

Since our establishment in 2014, our Engineering team has grown 10x, written more than 1 million lines of code, built more than 100 digital commerce applications, and contributed to growing monthly revenues. Meanwhile, we have constantly strived to make our teams autonomous and processes efficient while maintaining our delivery timelines and quality standards.

Initially, our teams were divided into separate research and development, bug fixing, and new feature enhancement groups. However, this structure had some limitations, such as increased difficulty in managing bug fixes, longer resolution times due to a lack of end-to-end involvement, and limited knowledge-sharing opportunities. To address these challenges, we have adopted a more comprehensive approach, where each team works on a diverse range of tasks, promoting efficient knowledge sharing and broadening their technical expertise.

How have we structured our teams to function efficiently? 

We have three development teams, namely Guardians, Shapeshifters, and Alpha. Each of our teams has a mix of developers, testers, and designers. Each team is a mix of experienced and mid to entry-level engineers. This framework has helped us create the perfect dynamics in the team where each team can handle the end-to-end development and delivery process.  

Our objective is to form cross-functional, self-sufficient small teams that can work independently towards their objectives. Each team member has a well-defined role and responsibility, fostering a sense of ownership. The team leader’s role is to communicate the problem and its underlying purpose, then facilitate a collective brainstorming session to generate a solution. Our approach to managing our teams is built on trust in our people and their abilities and a focus on motivating them to deliver their best work.

Agile majorly focuses on three factors customer satisfaction, quick feedback loop, and continuous improvement. 

How do we strive to be better every day?

Agile isn’t just a methodology that many of us believe in, but it is a mindset that helps you become more efficient and productive and helps people bring forth their best work. It involves making small and continuous changes every day, and the Agile tools and platforms are an aid to do it. At Tecstub, agility is a core value. Our focus is always on continuous improvement. During the retrospective meeting, the entire team collaborates and answers the following questions:

• What worked well for us?
• What did not work well for us?
• What actions can we take to improve our process in the future?

Getting answers to these questions and transparent communication helps create an environment where everyone has an equal say and can put forward their thoughts. Since the goal of Agile is continuous improvement, retrospective meeting with continuous progress tracking has always helped us improve our processes and delivery times, where everybody is equally involved at every stage of development. We believe that for a team and an organization to thrive, the goal shouldn’t be “To not make mistakes” instead, it should be to fail fast and learn from them.

How do we tackle complex business problems? 

We have always taken up new challenges, and our development team has always worked its best to devise smarter and more effective solutions. For example, when we have a complex challenge and our development team isn’t sure of the right action plan to make it work, we run a  Spike . A Spike story in agile is an R&D process where the team takes time to analyze and understand the problem and tries to break it down into smaller stories. But to avoid unwanted delays, we set definite timelines for the  Spike story to complete. 

The goal is not to come up with the answer right away, but to figure out how much time it will take to finish a story. After that, the information and research are shared with the people in charge and their teams. This becomes part of our regular routine and helps us save time and make our stories more accurate.

The Sprint review processes to foster better communication and collaboration within teams 

We have different teams working on different modules for the same project, but during the development phase, all teams work separately.  However, each team is working towards achieving a common bigger goal, and every team must understand the system as a whole and what the other team is doing. Therefore, our sprint review meetings are organized every alternate Wednesday when all teams come together and discuss the functionalities that they have implemented. The main goal of this meeting is to create transparency and foster better communication and collaboration within the teams. 

How do we maintain constant collaboration and communication with our clients? 

We have a 15-day sprint release cycle, and the product owner closely works with the client to discuss and understand his requirements. Once he gets an idea of what needs to be done, he conveys the same to the development team and creates a backlog during the refinement meetings. Each development team member contributes equally to the brainstorming session to devise the right and most effective solution.

It gives the product owner a clear picture of how long it will take and helps determine priority tasks accordingly. Then, if the development team isn’t sure of any details or faces any roadblocks, he iterates the same to the clients. Since we develop and release the product frequently with the constant communication, everyone involved in the process knows the progress. As a result, it gets easier to pin down bugs or issues earlier in the development phase. 

Being Agile has a huge advantage – it lets us help our team do their best work. People like to feel valued and heard, and not be restricted to just following orders. Agile allows our team members to take charge. Having an autonomous team leads to greater job satisfaction, creativity, and overall well-being.

We believe in reaching the destination together, irrespective of the path.  It has helped us establish a transparent environment where each individual is involved in the complete development cycle, unlike the traditional siloed software development approach.

We are thrilled to announce the rebrand of TecStub and its story. We have begun this new chapter to signify our major milestones over the years, our vision for the future, and what we aspire to become. 

Our journey 

Tecstub started in 2014 with a vision to empower eCommerce businesses to take the first step in their digital transformation journey. Since our inception, we have successfully delivered complex eCommerce business solutions that are both technologically ahead of their time, robust and scalable. When we look back at our journey over these years, we see our clients’ and partners’ unprecedented growth and the impact they are creating. For example, one of our B2B eCommerce solutions is currently processing 5000+ orders daily and has grown to become a global industry leader.

Over the years of developing eCommerce solutions, we have understood that the right mix of technology, processes, and people is the key to business innovation. It is also our magic sauce to success that has helped us progress and grow.

Why did we rebrand?

Since we have significantly evolved in terms of our expertise and services, our existing branding didn’t effectively communicate the same message to our audiences.  Therefore we decided to update our story and write a new one that truly resonates with who we are, what we offer, and where we are headed. We wanted to have a brand identity that showcases the expertise we have acquired over the years and aligns with our refined vision, mission, and value proposition. 

Our rebranding is much more than a new logo, website, and revised color palette. It defines what we do and who we are at the core as a team. Our team has expanded tenfold since we set foot in the industry, and now have a stronger engineering team of visionaries, engineers, and outliers whose expertise spans diverse skill sets with one aim: to deliver excellence. We have always strived to create a collaborative work environment to empower individual strength and achieve a common goal. Our people are our backbone, and we are continuously honing and building our expertise and skill sets in new-age technologies. 

A significant change that has helped us transform our operations is the adoption of Agile software development methodology. It has become an integral part of our culture and has helped us refine and fasten our processes. Also, it was quite early in our journey that we saw the infinite possibilities that technology offers.

Our vision is to develop a digital commerce ecosystem with microservices at the core to enable any business. A digital commerce ecosystem is an integrated set of systems that work together to enable the process of selling and buying. It includes everything from the front end, where the customer visits the website and orders products, to the backend systems that manage the warehouse, logistics, and inventory. All these systems need to work seamlessly to serve customer orders faster and more efficiently. To make this happen, we are constantly innovating, keeping n mind the solutions, and using latest technology frameworks such as Microservices, DevOps, Cloud computing, and more to shape our vision of reimagining eCommerce.
Although we have rebranded, our core values and purpose remains unchanged. 

We care deeply about what we do and the impact we have in building a better, more sustainable future for our clients, people, and communities. With commerce at our core, together, we design, build and implement end-to-end solutions to help enterprises move to their ‘next’!  

Introducing the new brand identity :

Our Purpose

To deliver on the promise of “Build Together, Build Next!”

We have always believed in being partners with our clients, walking with them in their journey, offering them end-to-end solutions, and helping them grow and scale.  And this is what our tagline conveys  “Build Together, Build Next!”

The new logo and what it represents

Our logo is our visual identity that communicates our forward thinking approach and vision of helping enterprises move to their next. The TEC part is in bold, depicting our deep expertise in technology, and the building blocks come together as a forward-pointing arrow representing the futuristic nature of the solutions we create.

As we conclude our rebrand story, we would like to thank our employees and customers who have been integral to our journey and helped us become what we are today. 

Interested to join our team? Head to our career page for the latest open positions. 

For business inquiries, please fill out the form on the contact us page.

In this article, our ace Visual Designer from the marketing team Thilak takes us through his career journey, role at Tecstub, and creative process. 

Tell us about yourself

I was born and brought up in Chennai, and I  am an electrical engineer by degree and a designer by choice. I have been in the designing domain for the past 4 years, and since then, I have been transforming ideas into a design. I like connecting with new people, visiting new places, and playing football.  I am quite comfortable talking to anyone and mix with people quite easily.

What has your career journey been like?

I pursued a traditional education path and obtained a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. However, studying power systems, circuits, and resistors left me uninterested, and I realized this wasn’t my calling. Surprisingly, design never crossed my mind as a career option during my growing-up years. It wasn’t until after finishing my degree that I was introduced to design by my brother, who was already a seasoned designer.

He encouraged me to try my hand at designing and introduced me to various tools and platforms, teaching me the basics. My first project was to design a logo, and as I immersed myself in the process, I found delight in the details, such as color choice, placement, and contrast. This sparked my curiosity and I took it upon myself to learn more through online resources. I became familiar with design platforms like Adobe and Illustrator and with practice, my skills improved.

How did Tecstub happen?

One day I received a call for an interview from the Tecstub HR team. Since I am based in Chennai, getting to interview for a Gujarat-based company was slightly strange. But since the interview was virtual and the position was remote, I went for it. My interview experience was very smooth, and it felt more like a conversation because everyone on the panel made me feel very comfortable. The interview was conducted by the head of marketing, who is also my manager and the organization’s CEO. 

During the interview with Tecstub, I was asked not only about my professional background but also about my personal interests. When I mentioned my love for traveling, Kiran Soni, the CEO of Tecstub, offered to recommend some must-visit destinations.

I was impressed by the company’s openness and clarity about its vision for rebranding and what my role would entail. Their approach and drive left me feeling confident about joining the organization. And now, I am here to share my story. 🙂

Tell us about your role as a Visual Communication Specialist at Tecstub 

Working at TecStub is an entirely new experience because it is an IT consulting firm specializing in building eCommerce web applications, while my experience was usually in advertising and creative agencies. The organization has greatly evolved over the years in its expertise and services. But, the existing brand image doesn’t communicate the same message, so they have been working on a rebrand. Visual identity is an essential branding element for any organization as it helps to communicate what the brand is all about and helps unify the multiple aspects of a business through consistent visuals.  As a visual communication specialist, my role involves helping build a new visual brand identity that communicates what the brand stands for.  

At the start of my journey at Tecstub, I acquainted myself with what goes behind the development of eCommerce web applications and became well-versed in Agile software development methodology. It was essential to comprehensively understand the work process to lay the foundation for my creative process. Additionally, I also understood how the creative messaging of IT should look and have incorporated those elements into my designs.

Since I started working, I have been involved in all marketing initiatives, from designing business presentations to handling social media creatives to designing emailers, web pages, brochures, Linkedin banners, video creation, and more. 

Throughout my journey at Tecstub, my manager has provided insightful feedback that has enabled me to expand my understanding of design from different perspectives. At Tecstub, I have the creative freedom and independence necessary to excel in my work.

What does your creative process look like? 

My creative process starts with deep analysis and understanding of the target group, the platform, and the core message.  When I create a design, I try to understand what it is talking about and then try to give the gist of the content through my design. I focus on 70% design and 30% content rule.  When I design the graphics for our social media page, I use a minimal design approach and fewer elements to communicate the overall message. A user who sees a graphic should get the idea without reading the content.  The three things that define my job would be Creative, Attractive, and Emotive.  

What are your future goals?

I am currently focusing on the TecStub rebranding initiatives and looking forward to developing a new visual identity for TecStub that communicates its true story. The one future goal always constant for me is to keep creating, learning, and evolving. Because someone has rightly said, “You can’t use up creativity the more you use, the more you have.”  

This was Thilak’s career and growth story, all the way from Chennai. He even visited the office in Ahmedabad during a work-from-office week in August and got to know everyone better. We’ll be sharing more stories of our amazing employees and their paths to growth, so make sure to follow us on LinkedIn.

Also, did you know we are hiring? Check out our career page for new openings and join our team. 🙂

We have been working on a B2B eCommerce solution for a North American enterprise designed to bring convenience to wholesalers and retailers in the mobile repair parts industry. The platform has been built using the Magento 1.9 framework and is backed by a MySQL database that ensures seamless performance.

Through the years, our hard work has paid off as the web application has grown significantly, constantly evolving with new and improved features to enhance the user experience while managing complex B2B eCommerce operations efficiently. And today, we are proud to see the website process over 5000 orders daily.

However, this growth wasn’t achieved without challenges. The journey started with low order numbers, but as we continued to optimize and innovate, the platform attracted more and more traffic, leading to higher conversion rates. While this was an exciting development, it also brought new technical challenges that we have overcome with determination and commitment.  

The technical challenge

Our system is deployed in the Magento framework. We have developed a customized solution per customer requirements to manage incoming orders, which includes several third-party apps and various database calls. Our solution worked fine with a slightly longer order processing time. The average time to process an order should be 2-3 secs, but in our system, it was 7-8  secs, and if several orders were being executed simultaneously, the wait time was 10-12 secs. Although the time was slightly longer, it wasn’t a problem since the system’s core functionalities weren’t getting affected in any way. But the system started encountering problems when the number of orders increased dramatically. 

As the business continued to grow and the volume of daily orders increased, the demand on our system became too high, and we started to experience missed orders. This meant that while customers could place orders, add items to their carts, and successfully complete payments, the orders were not being accurately recorded in the backend of our system.

This was a major concern as the ability to effectively manage orders is at the core of any eCommerce platform. A malfunction in this critical component can lead to difficulties in inventory management and satisfying customer orders accurately.

The root cause of the issue was: 

• When there were several order requests placed simultaneously, the database tables that were frequently called resulted in a deadlock

• Because of the deadlock, the transactions used to get aborted in between, resulting in a rollback with no orders being actually recorded

The reason for the increased load on the database was because of the execution of six data-intensive functionalities at the checkout which were:

1. The functionality of pre-order, so multiple orders are created at the same time in addition to the normal order that the customer places
2. Generating the Shipment labels for FedEx/UPS/USPS etc.
3. Checking the Fraud using a third-party API
4. Updating the order in ElasticSearch
5. Syncing the stocks from one warehouse to another since we manage multiple warehouses at different locations
6. Updating the order in Firebase

We implemented a few solutions to address the problem, such as database optimization (reducing the number of calls to the database) and moving some parts of the code to the cart page instead of the checkout page. These solutions worked for us and performed well to some extent, but we faced the issue again when the orders increased. Also, when we moved some parts of the code to the shopping cart page, it increased the unwanted load on the cart page. If the cart page isn’t user-friendly or is slow, it can directly impact the shopping cart conversion rates and lead to increased cart abandonment rates.

The proposed solution 

To overcome the issues; the Tecstub engineering team came up with  the following solution:

1.) Reducing the total number of database calls 

2.) Decreasing the total number of operations at the checkout and placing them somewhere else

3.) Make some API calls to execute time intensive processes 

How was the solution implemented? 

1.) Reducing the total number of database calls
We started with identifying the features where the total number of database calls can be reduced. So, for each database query that was called and updated the database 2-3 times, we found a solution to reduce it to a single database call.  What we did was update those extra column values into the 1st call that is being executed.

 
2.) Decrease the total number of operations at the checkout.
For all the operations that weren’t primarily needed during the checkout process, we added them to a cron file. The cron file was executed every 4 minutes.  So, the orders were scanned and processed, and simultaneously, the extra functionalities that were added to the cron file were executed every 4 minutes. This particular solution helped decrease the load during the checkout process significantly.

3.) Calling APIs to execute time-intensive processes and reduce the load
We created the shipment labels during the checkout process, which would take 3-4 secs to execute. Once this execution was complete, it would initiate the next step of order processing. To overcome this dependence and save time, we created an API for generating the shipping labels with a timeout set to 1 second.  Now we don’t have to wait for the response to initiate the further processing of orders. The API generates the label and stores the tracking number in the database. If there is an error during the API execution, then we have the logs that we can review, but it won’t stop the order processing script from executing, and the order can be placed successfully in less amount of time. 

Impact

Our continuous efforts have helped us to improve the average order processing time. The system now takes about  2-3 seconds compared to 7-8 seconds before implementing the changes. Previously, our system struggled to handle just 800-1000 daily orders, but now it seamlessly processes a remarkable 5000 orders daily, a fivefold increase from before.

With extensive experience in Digital Commerce, we constantly face challenges that drive us to innovate and find scalable solutions for our customers. Our priority is always to address their key business problems and ensure customer satisfaction and steady growth.

Recently, I worked on a project for a client to enhance their Order Management System for better stock visibility and control across the company. This article will delve into the crucial aspect of order management, printing and shipping, and explore the difficulties we encountered and the solution we devised.

What is Printing and Shipping module, and how is it an integral component of order processing?

When an online shopper places an order through an eCommerce platform, it involves three critcal steps at the backend, to fulfill the order: pick, pack, and ship. These three steps are handled by the order processing team in the warehouse. 

The first and essential step for processing orders is to decide which order to process first. In the web application, when a customer places an order, he can select a courier service during the checkout process. It aids the buyer in getting orders as per his requirements and urgency. So, if a buyer needs his delivery done in a day, he will have to select the appropriate service, such as the express delivery option, and pay extra charges. Apart from that, different courier services have different times for picking up and shipping the items. In that case, the team needs to know which orders they should prioritize and prepare first so that the shipment can reach the destination at the earliest.  However, for the team to  figure out which orders need to be ready first without an automated system is time-consuming and error-prone.

The team faced a challenge in determining the priority of orders. To resolve this, we designed an order processing system that prioritizes orders based on courier schedules. Additionally, we incorporated intelligent picking to streamline the order picking process in large warehouses.

Here is a quick overview of the solution

To start with, we divided the order processing system into various blocks corresponding to different courier services that the buyer can select while placing the order. When an order comes into the system, the order gets added to the respective courier block chosen by the buyer. 

Based on the courier block and its priority, the system generates a list of orders.

The order processing team can then view the orders, start processing them based on priority and begin printing the shipping labels and related items needed to prepare the package. The number of orders they can process at a time is 30-50, which saves them a lot of time.

Another issue that this system prevents is order mismanagement. Since several people might be involved in order processing, we must ensure that each order is processed only once. To make this happen, as soon as a user accesses a set of orders and starts processing them, those orders get locked until they are processed.  

Once the processing is done, the system generates PDFs of orders, commercial and dangerous good invoices & shipping labels. After PDF is generated, the user gets the printout from the printer which they can use for packaging . 

The pitfall

This solution was beneficial and efficient and worked perfectly fine. But with time, as the application scaled and the orders increased significantly, so did the number of courier services, and the system started encountering issues.  

Two major issues:

1.) Loading speed: As the number of orders increased, the load speed of the order processing panel started to suffer dramatically. It would take about a minute to load and display the details. 

The root cause of the issue was: 

When an order was placed, we made an AJAX call at regular intervals and updated the order details in the system through the database. We performed various operations to display the intended order details, such as fetching the respective order data and sorting that data based on different priorities. But when there were several orders, fetching and sorting order details directly impacted the loading speed and caused delays in updating order details in the order management panel. 

2.) Process several orders at a time: To ensure that each order is processed only once, we have implemented an order-locking mechanism. Initially, when handling 30-50 orders at a time, our existing solution of using MySQL queries to lock and reserve the orders worked well for us. But more orders in the pipeline increased the backend load due to increased database calls, impacting the overall system’s efficiency. In addition, we wanted the system to be able to process and print the shipping labels for 100 orders at a time without faltering.  

In order to address these, here is what we did:

The proposed solution

1.) Using Elastic Search to prevent the load on the database

We implemented elastic search to fasten the order updation process in the admin panel. So instead of making that AJAX call to update our database, we used elastic search. Whenever the order is updated in our system, we update the latest data on ElasticSearch and load orders directly from it.  Since Elasticsearch serves as an index store for retrieving data pretty fast, it helped us with instant updation without increasing the load on our database.  It also helped us make our system robust enough to handle the increasing order values. The load speed was reduced from 1 minute to 7-8 seconds.  

2.) Implementing Redis to lock the orders until they are processed to prevent mismanagement

To make our system more efficient, we put in place a lock feature using Redis. This meant when an order was being processed by one person, it was locked using Redis and couldn’t be duplicated. This resulted in the system being able to handle 100 orders at once, lightening the load on the main database.

The solution successfully allowed the system to handle up to 500 orders daily. We’re always working on upgrades, like automating order picking through RPA, and have more improvements in the works. So keep an eye out for updates on our journey to a future-proof system.

 

Online shopping has changed a lot over the years and the pandemic only made it grow faster. With so many eCommerce websites, businesses must find ways to stand out and meet customers’ changing expectations. Simply having a website that works well is not enough anymore. To succeed and grow, businesses need a good front-end and an even better back-office system.

As a mobile app developer for eCommerce, I’ve worked on many different projects with different needs and challenges. In this blog, I want to share my experience working on a warehouse management app module. The goal of this module was to help the warehouse’s inventory management team process orders more accurately and quickly.

Let’s take a closer look at the challenge of processing orders, the complexity of back-office operations, and how we developed a powerful solution to help.

A quick overview of the eCommerce back office operations: 

For an eCommerce website to deliver orders on time, it needs a strong system that supports the back office operations. This includes an order management system to handle order processing (picking, packing, and shipping), an inventory management system to make sure the business always has enough stock, and a warehouse management system to run the warehouse smoothly and make the best use of storage space. When all these systems work seamlessly, then it helps with the smooth processing of orders.

The challenge

Our client’s eCommerce website caters to retailers and wholesalers. So, each order received in the system is a bulk order, meaning that the quantity needed for a specific order is usually large. Sometimes during the order processing, when there is not enough active inventory to fulfill any order, there is an immediate need for more stocks for order fulfillment.  If there is a delay in fulfilling the order, it directly impacts the delivery time, and the customer will not be able to receive their orders as per the schedule. This affects the customer experience and has a direct impact on return customers and sales.

The challenge was that the warehouse receives 200-300 new purchase order boxes for stock replenishment daily; some of these boxes contains the products needed to fulfill the orders which are being processed by the back office team currently. But to find the product, the back office team must check all those boxes, which is insanely time-consuming and laborious. Secondly, they also need to know whether there is the desired quantity of the product per the order. What if they can find the right product in a box, but there isn’t enough quantity to complete the order? 

The solution 

The mobile app we made for the warehouse team uses Swift, Coredata, and storyboard. It helped them manage tasks such as checking the stock, picking items, and assigning storage spaces (called bin locations) to make inventory management easier.

To solve the current challenge, we added an additional functionality to this app particularly to search for products in a purchase order that is received daily by the warehouse team by introducing a QR code. When the purchase order boxes are prepared for shipping at the procurement center (source from where the warehouse receives its stocks for further sales and distribution), they will be assigned a unique id. The procurement unit will use this unique box id to store the product details and quantity of the goods packed inside the box in the system.

Each box id will then be used to generate a unique QR code that will be printed on every box, before it is shipped to the warehouse.  So, when the boxes are delivered to the warehouse, the inventory team can use these QR codes to find the intended products by simply scanning it. 

How did the new search functionality work?

1.) Searching for the product and quantities inside the box

The warehouse team will open the mobile app and navigate to the search functionality. With the help of the search bar, they will enter the details of the products that they want to search for. They can select the product to be searched in various ways, which are:

• a drop-down menu that lists all the products related to the terms entered into the search bar  
• manually type the details
• scan the respective product barcode if they have the intended product that they want to search for at hand 

Once you have entered/selected the product to be searched, it automatically triggers the next action that is enabling the camera for the warehouse team to scan the QR codes of the purchase order boxes that have arrived.  A QR code stores information as a series of pixels that any digital device can interpret. In our case, the QR code stores the unique box id decoded by the phone’s camera during the scanning process. 

After the scanning, the next action involves triggering API calls to the web server using the unique box id and retrieving the data for that id.

The retrieved data is then matched against the entered search item. When there is a match, a green frame appears around the QR code and displays the product details and quantity; if there is a mismatch, a red frame appears. The person scanning the order can skip the boxes with the red frames and go ahead and open the boxes with green frames to prepare the order shipment.


2.) Scanning multiple boxes at a single time using multithreading

The next challenge was to make the process fast because there are about 200-300 boxes to be checked, and checking one box at a time isn’t feasible. So, we implemented a technique that allows them to scan 5-10 packages simultaneously. To accomplish multiple-box scanning, we used Swift’s multithreading concept. Multithreading allows you to run several processes simultaneously, keeping the user unaware of the changes because the thread switch happens quite quickly.   

The user will use their phone camera to scan one or multiple QR codes at a time. For example, if we want to scan five boxes at a time with the help of multithreading, we make 5 API calls at the same time to the server and get the intended details immediately.  
 
Through this minor feature addition which may seem small, it created a huge impact on the warehouse team, making them efficient in processing more orders in a day while saving cost. Most of the solutions we have developed for customers are always focused on helping businesses automate their processes and reduce redundancies, manual labor, and unwanted errors while saving costs.

If you are a regular internet user, you must have observed something unusual and effective at the same time on the web.

How about seeing an ad for your recently searched product on Amazon. Other than this, Netflix provides you with movie suggestions similar to the ones that you just watched. Lastly, Hulu informs you about the upcoming episode of the show you are watching.

These examples are not the end; there are many of them. The core motto of the brands behind these personalization messages is to enhance user experience and conversion.

As per Accenture[1] , 91% of the customers say that they will shop with a brand that provides relevant offers and recommendations to them. On top of that, Statista[2]  suggests that 90% of U.S. consumers find company messages that are not personally relevant annoying.[3]  These stats clearly prove that e-commerce personalization can be the cannon for your brand if implemented well.

For those who have an eCommerce B2B business, it is time for you to leverage the power of e-commerce personalization. If you already are, it is time to make some tweaks for better results.

This exhaustive guide will uncover some great aspects and techniques of e-commerce personalization for you!

How does E-commerce Personalization work?

Amazon can target product ads to you! Ever wondered how it does that?

Amazon and every other business giant target its users with relevant content by collecting their information. It may seem like a privacy issue to you right now. However, most of these firms use customer data responsibly and with user consent.

The data used by firms like Amazon are purchase history, search history, previously reviewed products, and demographics.

Based on this obtained data, users on the eCommerce platform are divided into different segments. After this, relevant content for each user segment is generated and targeted based on their position in the marketing funnel. This is about e-commerce personalization for the B2C model.

E-commerce personalization for B2B is a bit different from B2C. How? In B2C, the brand only has to convince the customer that its product is better than the competitors. Therefore, customers follow the impulse buying method as they only see the benefits and needs of the product.

On the other hand, the target entity here is a business. Brands cannot convince them easily. Businesses that buy from the brands tend to do thorough research about the products and services. As they have their dedicated sales, finance, and other teams, the collaborative logical analysis of all of them is considered before making the buying decision. Therefore, personalization works differently in B2B, and there are many factors that play a critical role, such as search, catalog, orders, promotions, etc.

Key E-Commerce Personalization Practices and Trends of 2023 for B2B!

As you are well aware of what ecommerce personalization is and how it works, let’s move on to the trends and practices that make e-commerce personalization better, efficient, and faster.

AI is the future

If we look at the technology, industrial, and other business sectors, AI has disrupted almost all of them in one way or another. The disruption is so intense that the market for AI is skyrocketing. The AI market size stands at $387.45 billion in 2022 and is expected to go up to $1,394.30 billion by 2029.

If we talk about eCommerce, it also shares a slice of this market. As of now, the adoption is slow, but it is happening. Statistics show that around 30% of retailers use AI for personalization. Amazon and eBay are two of those online retailers.

Artificial Intelligence coupled with machine learning and big data analytics can help eCommerce companies easily predict changing user behavior. Furthermore, this changing behavior of the users, whether it is the surfing pattern, viewed products, products added to cart, or whatnot, can be used for various purposes. AI can track these aspects to deliver personalized product recommendations and ideas about content type and its placement.

As there is no human intervention, AI can serve as a one-on-one personalized agent for the customers and small businesses. Further, AI can also help eCommerce businesses scale personalized recommendations. Retailers can use the recommendations provided by AI to further refine content and offers for better performance.

AI can track aspects like visitor behavior, third-party data, and historical data to make changes to the product details. Apart from these, AI can also be used to review ads and see if the right ads are delivered to the right audience.

Here are some AI in e-commerce personalization examples-

1. TELUS International uses e-commerce personalization techniques and AI technology to deliver more personalized ads that convert

2. Companies use a combination of Diderot effect and AI-based personalization to influence the buying behavior of the users.

Product Recommendation

B2C product recommendation is an easy and straightforward process. You analyze what the customer brought, and you can target them with similar products. B2B product recommendation works a bit differently.

In the B2B process, you not only have the opportunity to increase your average order value, but you can also work on e-commerce personalization for product recommendations.

For example, if a mobile repair franchise owner purchases bulk mobile repair devices like flex cables, you can recommend products related to those devices like a Front Camera with Face ID Proximity Sensor or mobile phone motherboards.

Enable Corporate Accounts

B2B buying may seem like B2C, but it is not. Unlike B2C, B2B buying has a lot of different minds behind it. As a B2B account can be an entire firm purchasing from you, brands need to provide a single account with the ability to handle multiple users along with multiple access role functionalities.

For example, the company hierarchy of a B2B client can have multiple members with various access roles(like, one can have permission to just shortlist the products while the other can place the order). To ensure that the overall process of accessing the eCommerce platform from a single account is easy, create a corporate account with access roles.

It can be the company’s senior manager shortlisting the products but an assistant manager placing the order. On top of all these, B2B clients also require real-time details about credit status, inventory levels, and invoices history.

Provide Informational Resources

One of the primary challenges that a vendor faces is knowing about the product. For example, if there is a new product in the market (say, a virtual assistant like Alexa), it can be difficult for the vendors to know if it is capable of captivating the audience or surviving the competition. So, being a part of the B2B model, you need to produce personalized informational assets for the clients.

These assets may include:

• Specification sheets: These sheets can include figures about the demand for the product along with aspects like customers’ expectations and market needs.

• Explainer videos: These videos can be a perfect e-commerce personalization asset that can be targeted to a B2B client. It can help them understand the product and its related terms easily.

• Whitepapers and eBooks: Big brands tend to produce product-related ebooks and whitepapers that clearly highlight the pain points of the users and their respective solutions.

The Useful Quick Repeat

E-commerce Personalization is not just about targeting users or SMBs with recommended products. It is much deeper than that. As we have already talked about real-time access to credit status, inventory records, etc., one more thing that can go in the B2B e-commerce personalization basket is the quick repeat functionality.

If a business is ordering products in bulk, it will be an arduous task for them to find the same products again and again when re-ordering. As reordering the same products is a common practice for businesses, you can add a feature like a button on top of their corporate account saying “Repeat the last order.” Further, you can add information about the last order just below the button. This single-click order function can reduce a lot of hassle and time for business prospects.

Handle the Checkout Process

As it is crucial for brands to introduce corporate accounts, it also becomes necessary to alter the checkout process based on that. For example, in a firm, there can be many people who could be placing orders for their respective product departments. The checkout process should compile these orders to get approval from the purchase manager.

Another example can be a business with multiple franchises. When multiple stores of the same franchise place orders, the checkout process should compile the orders into one and place a bulk order. The process can eliminate confusion and streamline the checkout process.

Leverage Email Marketing

Email may not seem like a good way to engage with business customers, but it is much more powerful than you think. As per stats, $1 spent on email can harness an ROI of $36. This is only possible if you stand out from the crowd.

As there are countless ecommerce businesses undertaking personalized email marketing, you need to distinguish yourself.

It can be done by sending personalized business emails to your business customers. Based on the time of the year or a special occasion, like Black Friday, you can send personalized emails with the banner “special discounts on bulk orders.” Moreover, you can shoot emails with offers like Order over 1000 units and get 1000 units of a supporting product free.

To keep your prospects updated with your deals, inform them about your new products via personalized emails.

Final Words

E-commerce Personalization is not a one-time job. It needs to be done as the organization grows and as the trends and buying behavior change. It is a never-ending process. However, if you do it carefully enough, it can provide you with limitless opportunities and revenue for an extended period of time. As of now, AI, machine learning, and augmented reality are some of the important technologies that can enhance the e-commerce personalization game for businesses.

Arrange for a personalized consultation with us at [email protected] to get started.