CU-BSC.TTM-SEM-IV-Digital Marketing

A social networking service is a web platform which individuals use to create social networks or social relations with people who share similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections In-game advertising In-Game advertising is defined because the \"inclusion of products or brands within a digital game.\" the sport allows brands or products to put ads within their game, either during a subtle manner or within the sort of a billboard banner. There are many factors that exist in whether brands are successful within the advertising of their brand/product, these being: sort of game, technical platform, 3-D and 4-D technology, game genre, congruity of brand name and game, prominence of advertising within the sport. Individual factors contain attitudes towards placement advertisements, game involvement, product involvement, flow, or entertainment. The attitude towards the advertising also takes under consideration not only the message shown but also the attitude towards the sport . hooked in to how enjoyable the sport is will determine how the brand is perceived, meaning if the sport is not enjoyable the buyer may subconsciously have a negative attitude towards the brand/product being advertised. In terms of Integrated Marketing Communication \"integration of advertising in digital games into the overall advertising, communication, and marketing strategy of the firm\" is vital because it leads to a more clarity about the brand/product and creates a bigger overall effect. Online public relations The use of the internet to communicate with both potential and current customers in the public realm. Video advertising This type of advertising in terms of digital/online means are advertisements that play on online videos e.g., YouTube videos. this sort of selling has seen a rise in popularity over time. Online Video Advertising usually consists of three types: Pre-Roll advertisements which play before the video is watched, Mid-Roll advertisements which play during the video, or post-Roll advertisements which play after the video is watched. Post-roll advertisements were shown to possess better brand recognition in reference to the opposite types, where-as \"ad-context congruity/incongruity plays a crucial role in reinforcing ad memorability\". thanks to selective attention from viewers, there's the likelihood that the message might not be received. the most advantage of video advertising is that it disrupts the viewing experience of the video and thus there's an issue in attempting to avoid them. How a consumer interacts with online video advertising can come right down to three stages: Pre attention, attention, and behavioral decision. These online advertisements give the brand/business options and choices. These contains length, position, adjacent video content which all directly affect the effectiveness of the 7 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

produced advertisement time, therefore manipulating these variables will yield different results. The length of the advertisement has shown to affect memorability where-as a extended duration resulted in increased brand recognition. this sort of advertising, thanks to its nature of interruption of the viewer, it's likely that the buyer may feel as if their experience is being interrupted or invaded, creating negative perception of the brand. These advertisements also are available to be shared by the viewers, adding to the attractiveness of this platform. Sharing these videos are often equated to the web version of word orally marketing, extending number of individuals reached. Sharing videos creates six different outcomes: these being \"pleasure, affection, inclusion, escape, relaxation, and control\". As well, videos that have entertainment value are more likely to be shared, yet pleasure is that the strongest motivator to pass videos on. Creating a ‘viral’ trend from a mass amount of a brand advertisement can maximize the result of a web video advert whether it's positive or a negative outcome. Native Advertising This involves the location of paid content that replicates the design , feel, and oftentimes, the voice of a platform's existing content. it's best when used on digital platforms like websites, newsletters, and social media. are often somewhat controversial as some critics feel it intentionally deceives consumers. Content Marketing This involves the location of paid content that replicates the design , feel, and oftentimes, the voice of a platform's existing content. it's best when used on digital platforms like websites, newsletters, and social media are often somewhat controversial as some critics feel it intentionally deceives consumers. Sponsored Content This utilizes content created and paid for by a brand to promote a specific product or service. Inbound Marketing A market strategy that involves using content as a means to attract customers to a brand or product. Requires extensive research into the behaviors, interests, and habits of the brand's target market. 4.5BUILDING PRODUCT SYSTEMS The knock-on digital marketing techniques has always been that they have steep learning curves, they require constant attention, and there’s really no easy way to tie the efforts to sales in the long run. Here are the top marketing growth tips connected to brand-building tools: 8 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

1. Turn your email into a lead-generation machine. Email has fast become the ultimate in focused marketing for huge ROI. Consider establishing these aspects of your email system:  Timing and frequency  Enticing subject lines  Visuals plus copy  Optimization for all devices 2. Rethink and redesign search ads and landing pages. These are your big money-getters that often determine if a prospect will turn into a customer. Tune them up with:  Fresher, cleaner layouts  Focused, singular calls-to-action  Newsletter/email sign-up forms  Cross-sell/up-sell options 3. Add some serious muscle to your building materials blog. Blogs can be so much more than just a fashion statement. Provide rich content and get backlinks for greater ROI:  Set up an RSS feed for bigger audiences  Create calls-to-action in every post  Answer questions your customers have  Create evergreen content that stands the test of time 4.5.1Essentials for Building a Digital Marketing Project The ultimate goal of most digital marketers is to make a corporation that's found out to create attention, generate leads and sales which end in valuable customers – efficiently. Finding and attracting top quality prospects, converting visitors to customers then working hard to convert customers to advocates takes planning, organization, resources and content. The following are 10 critical foundation elements of a successful digital marketing project. Each item builds on the previous one and leads to an infrastructure that can support success and growth. 1. Strategy and Planning 2. Audience Analysis and Persona Development 3. Clear Messaging and Positioning 4. Measurement Infrastructure 5. Learning Plan and Testing Platform 6. Staffing and Resources 7. Content Creation 8. Media Selection and Delivery Technologies 9. Data Centralization 9 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

10. Reporting and Sharing 1. Strategy and Planning “Failing to plan is planning to fail” is an adage attributed to Benjamin Franklin. It is exciting to jump into a media program or participate in an event before you’ve worked through your messaging, positioning and learning program. The digital marketing strategy readings from Smart Insights include the SOSTAC framework which helps structure the output of your planning work. Situation – What is the competitive environment and what is your internal situation in terms of capabilities and team. Objectives – What are your business objectives and what are you trying to achieve Strategy – What is the approach you are going to take that takes advantage of what makes your business special and different. What is your competitive advantage? Tactics – What are the channels of communication you are going to use to connect with prospects and turn customers into advocates? Actions – What are the specific actions you need to take in the next 90 days to move your business forward? What near term items will make the biggest impact over the long term? Control – Reviewing performance through measurement and analytics. 2. Audience Analysis and Persona Development As a part of the building of your digital marketing machine, you've got to urge personal with the most segments of your audience by creating personas. I even have always found the method of researching an audience segment, creating a persona that represents that segment and socializing within the organization is incredibly helpful for putting a face to a segment. This helps with planning content creation for the person you're lecture and stepping into elements like their motivations, fears, personal aspirations and where they're getting their information into one view. This process is extremely helpful during the merchandise development stage because it gives the developers a true person, doing a true task to think about in their decisions. 3. Clear Messaging and Positioning In the grand scheme of things, words are inexpensive. they're also incredibly powerful in creating separation between you and your competitors also defining how you're solving a consumer’s problem. It’s also important because people’s radar for being sold to has gone high which suggests it's more important to be authentic than pushy. This all starts with being absolutely clear about the matter you're solving and the way you are doing that on your website. If you say that you simply simply are an “Integrated Solution for Sales Enablement” you're getting to confuse more people than if you say that 10 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

you “Make Your Team a Revenue Driving Machine” – this is often Outreach. Io’s headline on their homepage and it speaks on to the will of the sales manager trying to find help for her team. Nailing the worth proposition is one among the toughest messaging things to try to to in digital marketing but it's imperative to try to to right. If you'll clearly answer the question “why would someone buy from me than the other competitor?” during a succinct way, you'll improve your chances of winning that business significantly. 4. Measurement Infrastructure Getting your website properly instrumented and configured is job #1 but thinking through which media channels and communication platforms you’re getting to be investing in is critical to possess an entire measurement infrastructure. At the very least, a measurement infrastructure should include: A tag management platform. Tag management systems allow the marketer to control adding, modifying and removing tracking tags from all the different media systems. This saves your developers from having to go in and manage tracking tags for you. Google Tag Manager is free and is a great tool for most websites. A well configured web analytics platform like Google Analytics. Remember that you have to modify any web analytics platform to capture events and conversions, integrate with other services and filter out traffic from internal and bot sources. Add tracking tags from media delivery systems. Specifically Facebook, Google Ads and any ad networks you might be testing or investing in. You should also include tracking tags that allow you to re-market to people who visit certain pages of your site. Add tracking tags from any marketing automation or email programs you’re running Select a reporting platform that works for your business. At the very least it is a spreadsheet that you customize for your business –such as Google’s Data Studio or Tableau or Chartio. Your measurement infrastructure will evolve as your program evolves but these foundational elements will give you the base metrics and system connectors you definitely need. 5. Learning and Testing Plan For a digitally centric business to succeed and grow during this competitive environment, you've got to possess a test and learn mindset. this suggests not only having the steps within the customer journey identified and having metrics for every stage but having a thought for where you would like to be improving within the funnel to possess the most important impact on your program. Is it better messaging in your search ads or a far 11 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

better landing page conversion rate or a far better cause nurture to shut rate or a far better e-commerce shopping experience? There are some additional resources to assist you think that about what and where to check on the digital resources page, but the important concept here is that you simply need to be thinking ahead about the testing team, what testing platform you would like to possess in situ – Google Optimize is an option – and the way are you getting to get into a daily cadence of testing and learning – it's imperative for digital success. 6. Staffing and Resources Regardless of the dimensions of your digital program, staffing accordingly is important to drive your program forward. The technology can assist you be efficient and scale, but you would like to possess the proper skill set to make, implement and measure your program. This skill set includes general digital marketing, specific channel experience, digital marketing operations, creative skills including websites/images/video, content and analytics all contribute to program success. Some of these skills are often outsourced to agencies. Specific channel skills like paid search, display advertising and paid social are excellent candidates for agency help because they will bring the mixture of creative, technology, campaign management and optimization to those more discreet activities. Parts of the inbound channels like organic search and social are often outsourced but only very specific activities like audits, some content creation and competitive monitoring. generally, inbound channels got to be driven by the brand to take care of authenticity and connection between customers and brand. 7. Content Creation The technology to speak to a private during a 1:1 way digitally is here and now. Unique IDs for every device and browser, media delivery systems that share profile data across platforms and therefore the integration of digital behavior data with customer databases and CRMs give us the power to possess 1:1 conversation. However, the most important roadblock has enough content for everyone among the conversations. this is often why having a transparent set of persona’s that you simply can create content for helps drive the sort of conversations which will move the connection forward. Content is additionally super important for organic search keyword ranking, emails, site conversion, social media and nurturing programs. 8. Media Selection and Delivery Here is a way to think about how you will invest in channels to build your marketing machine. Building Your Digital Marketing Program and Media Strategies 12 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Start with channels that will take the longest to show benefit. Specifically, this means investing in organic search and organic social early on. This means you have to focus on what keywords define your authority, you start to build a community around your social profiles and start creating content that can be used to grow many different communication channels. When starting to spend digital advertising money – focus on channels where the consumers are highly motivated and actively looking for a solution. This, of course, means paid search. The work you did in the first stage around keyword identification and messaging plugs directly into this channel and you can used paid search to start testing messaging approaches and offers through landing pages. Next invest in paid social so that you can further refine the audience you are targeting. You have such fine targeting options with paid social and you can learn so much about who is engaging with and responding to your ads. This is also a great chance to start experimenting with new ad formats such as the different flavors video and promoting content to expand your social networks. When you are ready to scale and test at scale – investing in Google Display Network with their content-based targeting is an excellent next step. The cost per click model – in which all of your non-clicked impressions are “free”, the targeting based on content interest and the ease of adding the program through your Google Ads interface make this a great way to scale with control. Once these programs are in place should you start to think seriously about adding more traditional ad networks or experimenting with other types of digital advertising. By this point, you should have learned a lot about your go to market positioning, what messaging and offers are resonating and have a cadence for testing and learning. 13 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

9. Data Centralization Data centralization is one of the most challenging topics to tackle, but in the age of consumer centricity – the more you can find ways to break down silo’s between channel and internal data sets, the more opportunity you will have to automate communications at a one to one level. Here are a few areas to start: Do everything you can to capture the source of a customer and their motivation for working with you in your customer database and CRM. This connection between the why of doing business with you captured with the what they are doing with you gives you the ability to modify communications based on motivations. Maximize the number of touch points that flow through fewer digital media delivery systems. For example, digital media delivery systems like Marin Software combine paid search, paid social and e-commerce marketing in the same platform for management and optimization. Marketing automation platforms like Marketo and HubSpot give you the capabilities personal websites and emails using a single set of data and behaviors. By looking for systems and communications that can be tied together through an integrated set of data – you will be driving forward the centralization of consumer data that will pay dividends across many customer interactions. 10. Reporting and Sharing All of the systems we’ve discussed and many more generate data. The challenge for digital marketers is capturing data from across different sources and combining in a way that helps with monitoring and decision making. Reports out of Google Analytics for example really only tell us about the interactions with our website which is important, but only one piece of the puzzle. It’s easiest to start with pulling different sources of data into a spreadsheet and create critical views of customer flow by week, month and quarter. This is a great place to start because it is low cost and everyone in business has basic Excel skills. The next level is using a dashboard reporting tool like Google Data Studio, Tableau or Chartio. These systems use API’s to automatically pull in data from different systems and give you the ability to visualize the data. The bigger challenge for the digital marketer is sharing data, reports and dashboard in an efficient and compelling way. All too often, teams generate insights from their own programs and use that to improve their programs but fail to share their learnings with the greater organization. 14 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

4.6INTERMEDIATORS Unless customers are buying a product directly from the corporate that creates it, sales are always facilitated by one or more marketing intermediaries, also referred to as middlemen. Marketing intermediaries do far more than simply take a slice of the pie with each transaction. Not only do they provide customers easier access to products, but they will also streamline a manufacturer's processes. Four sorts of traditional intermediaries include agents and brokers, wholesalers, distributors and retailers. 4.6.1 The Importance of Intermediaries Any e-commerce website that's not owned by the corporate that creates a product, which it then sells to a consumer, also can be called a retailer. However – with companies like Amazon, which make their own products and sell them on to customers additionally to products made by other companies – the road between producers and retailers is becoming increasingly blurry. Marketing intermediaries are firms which will help a corporation to market , sell and distribute its products or services. within the Internet context, online intermediaries are often contrasted with destination sites which are typically merchant sites owned by manufacturers or retailers which supply information and products (in reality any sort of site are often a destination site, but the term is usually wont to ask merchant and brand sites). Online intermediary sites provide information about destination sites and supply a way of connecting Internet users with product information. the simplest known online intermediaries are the foremost popular sites like Google, MSN and Yahoo! These are referred to as 'portals' and are described further below. Other consumer intermediaries like Kelkoo (www.kelkoo.com) and Bizrate (www.bizrate.com) provide price comparison Marketing intermediaries Firms that can help a company to promote, sell and distribute its products or services. Destination sites Sites typically owned by merchants, product manufacturers or retailers, providing product information Online intermediary sites Web sites that facilitate exchanges between consumer and business suppliers. Online social network A service facilitating the connection, collaboration and exchange of information between individuals. 15 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Search engines, spiders and robots Automatic tools known as 'spiders' or 'robots' index registered sites. Users search by typing keywords and are presented with a list of pages. Directories or catalogues Structured listings of registered sites in several categories for products, as described earlier during this chapter. Most newspaper and magazine publishers like VNU (www.vnu.com) and Emap (www.emap.com) now provide online versions of their publications. These are as important within the online world in promoting products as newspapers and magazines are within the offline world. Online intermediaries are businesses which support business and consumer audiences, in order that they can serve both B2B and B2C information exchanges. Auction sites are another sort of online intermediary that support the B2B and therefore the C2C exchange. Online intermediaries sometimes support online social networks which are a sort of online community. The Google Orkut service (www.orkut.com) is an example of a private social network, while Linked In (www.linkedin.com) and Eacademy (www.eacademy.com) are samples of business networks. A business-to-business community serving the interest of Internet marketers is that the E-consultancy forums (www.e-consultancy.com/forum). Online intermediaries are typically independent of merchants and makes but are often owned by brands. In business-to-business marketing samples of such intermediaries include Clearly Business (www.clearlybusiness.com) from Barclays or bCentral (www.bcentral.co.uk) from Microsoft. These are samples of 'countermediaries' mentioned earlier within the chapter which are created by a service provider to supply valuable content or services to their audience with a view to enhancing their brand, in order that they aren't truly independent. Sarkar et al. (1996) identified many various sorts of potential online intermediaries (mainly from a B2C perspective) which they ask as 'cybermediaries'. a number of the most intermediaries identified by Sarkar et al. (1996), listed with current examples, are: • Directories (such as Yahoo! directory, Open Directory, Business.com). • Search engines (Google, Yahoo! Search). • Malls (now replaced by comparison sites such as Kelkoo and Pricerunner). • Virtual resellers (own inventory and sells direct, e.g. Amazon, CDWOW). • Financial intermediaries (offering digital cash and payment services such as PayPal which is now part of eBay). • Forums, fan clubs and user groups (referred to collectively as 'virtual communities' or social networks such as HabboHotel for youth audiences). 16 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

• Evaluators (sites which act as reviewers or comparison of services such as Kelkoo). At the time that Sarkar et al. (1996) listed the various sorts of intermediaries given above, there have been many separate internet sites offering these sorts of services. for instance , AltaVista (www.altavista.com) offered program facilities and Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) offered a directory of various internet sites . Since this point , such sites have diversified the services offered. Yahoo! now offers of these services and extra types like dating, communities and auctions. Diversification has occurred through the introduction of latest intermediaries that provide services to other intermediaries and also through acquisition and merger. Since Google issued shares, it's increasingly acquired or developed new services in its Google Labs (http://labs.google.com) to integrate into its services as Yahoo! has done throughout its history. for instance , it's purchased provider Blogger (www.blogger.com) and has introduced the Gmail e-mail service and Orkut social networking service. 4.7SELF-REGULATION The ICC Code has integrated rules that apply to marketing communications using digital interactive media throughout the guidelines. There is also an entirely updated section dealing with issues specific to digital interactive media techniques and platforms. Code self-regulation on the use of digital interactive media includes: ● Clear and transparent mechanisms to enable consumers to choose not to have their data collected for advertising or marketing purposes. ● Clear indication that a social network site is commercial and is under the control or influence of a marketer. ● Limits are set so that marketers communicate directly only when there are reasonable grounds to believe that the consumer has an interest in what is being offered. ● Respect for the rules and standards of acceptable commercial behavior in social networks and the posting of marketing messages only when the forum or site has clearly indicated its willingness to receive them. ● Special attention and protection for children. 4.8 DIGITAL MARKETING ASSETS Almost anything can be a digital marketing asset. It simply needs to be a marketing tool you use online. That being said, many people don’t realize how many digital marketing assets they have at their disposal. Here are just a few examples: Your website Branded assets (logos, icons, acronyms, etc) 17 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Video content (video ads, product demos, etc) Images (infographics, product shots, company photos, etc) Written content (blog posts, eBooks, product descriptions, testimonials, etc) Online products or tools (SaaS, calculators, interactive content, etc) Reviews Social media pages As you can probably imagine, this list just scratches the surface. Most digital marketing assets will fall into one of these categories, but clever marketers are constantly coming up with new ways to reach customers online, so the list keeps growing 4.9 DIGITAL PRODUCTS A digital product is an intangible or piece of media which will be sold and distributed repeatedly online without the necessity to replenish inventory. These products often are available the shape of downloadable or stream able files, like MP3s, PDFs, videos, plug- ins, and templates. Digital products can’t be held, tasted, or touched, but everyone consumes them—from music to videos, eBooks to online courses, and more. thanks to their popularity and simple distribution, many entrepreneurs build entire businesses around these intangible goods or launch digital product lines to enrich the physical products or services they provide . What makes them especially appealing, however, is that digital products are often created once and sold repeatedly to different customers without having to replenish your inventory, making them ideal for creatives, artists, educators, and freelancers trying to find new income streams that need less effort to take care of . While it entirely depends on who your audience is, a number of the digital products that employment rather well include graphic design work, templates, downloadable prints, music and audio, stock photography and print on demand products like custom tshirts, notebooks, etc. Selling digital goods and getting started within the online education sector has never been easier in today’s online world. consistent with Research and Markets, the web education industry is poised to become a $325 billion dollar industry by 2025, increasing from $187.877 billion in 2019. Not only can we sleep in a moment gratification economy, where we would like to possess products delivered instantly to our doorstep (or even better via our email inbox), but we also demand location-independent freedom from each side , the buyer and therefore the business perspective. 18 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Consumers are purchasing more and more digital goods, for example: membership sites, eBooks, audiobooks, digital courses or live lessons and tutorials, videos, songs, design, photography, templates, apps, masterminds or worksheets. There are actually many digital product options out there that you simply can increase your product suite. Digital products are indeed digital, which suggests they're intangible and not reliant on inventory. Today, nearly every consumer has purchased some kind of digital product, which suggests they’re not “scary” or “untrusted”. a number of the samples of what today’s hottest digital products appear as if are: Videos, Images, eBooks, Courses, Plug- Ins, Templates, MP3s, PDFs 4.9.1 5 apps for selling digital products If you’re building a digital product store or are looking for ways to add digital products to your existing store, there are a number of tools you’ll want to consider depending on your needs: 1. Digital Downloads: This free app by Shopify offers a simple way to sell digital products in your store. Upon purchase, customers can download their file immediately and receive a link in their email. 2. Sendowl: For more complex digital product businesses, Sendowl comes with a variety of features and useful automation, like expiring links and auto-generated license keys, to power your products. 3. Single: If you’re a musician selling music, Single was made with you in mind. Not only does it bridge the gap between physical and digital music sales, but it also lets you easily include clips on your product page for customers to sample. 4. FetchApp: FetchApp is another digital download delivery app that offers fewer features than Sendowl but has a free plan available (5MB of storage) and gives you the ability to attach multiple files to a single product. 5. Sky Pilot: This app is ideal for building a membership program, letting you sell files or exclusive video streams to customers. Customers can then access all of their previously purchased files through their own customer accounts. Beyond these digital product delivery systems, there are other Shopify apps to power and protect your digital goods, such as:  Charge Rabbit: This app lets you implement recurring billing, which is necessary to sell your digital products as part of a subscription. You can integrate it with Sky Pilot, mentioned above, to enable subscriptions for exclusive digital streams or downloads.  Photo lock: If you want extra protection for visual products like stock photos, this app offers most of the security measures you may need, from watermarks to source code protection. 19 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Disable Right-Click: When your content is your product, this app helps you protect it from theft. You can lock images and text so they can’t be saved or copied without your permission. 4.9.2 Advantages of Digital Products Digital products have many advantages that make them uniquely attractive to sell: Low overhead costs: Overhead is minimal. You don’t have to hold inventory or incur any shipping costs. In fact, for a lot of digital products, overhead is completely non- existent. Not only are there no shipping charges to factor in, but there is also zero need for storage facilities to handle inventory. Extremely high-profit margins: There’s no recurring cost of goods, so you retain the majority of your sales in profits. Because digital products don’t have any additional cost once they’ve been produced, the profit margins are well above any other type of product. You get to pick what you charge and then all of that is yours to keep. Potential to automate: Orders can be delivered instantly, letting you be relatively hands- off with fulfillment. Flexible products: You can offer products for free to build your email list, monthly paid subscriptions for access to exclusive digital content, or licenses to use your digital products. You have a lot of options as to how you incorporate digital products into your business. Possibilities are endless. Digital products allow for a lot of variations and possibilities, allowing them to be whatever you need them to be in order for your business to thrive. From monthly subscriptions to free content, you get to decide how you want to leverage the digital products you create. Maintenance is easy: Digital products are often delivered automatically after purchase, which means there’s little (if anything) you have to do once a purchase is made. When it comes to hands-off businesses, nothing can compete with digital products. Growth is inevitable: One of the fastest growing niches in business is e-learning and it’s only expected to skyrocket in the next five years. If you can incorporate education into any of your digital products, then you’re going to be able to cash in on one of the most profitable trends of this decade. 4.9.3 Dis-Advantages of Digital Products Digital products also come with specific challenges need to watch out for: You’re competing with free content: With digital goods, consumers can probably find free alternatives to what you’re selling. You’ll have to think carefully about the niche you target, offer premium value with your products and build your brand in order to compete. Susceptible to piracy/theft: You need to take precautions and reduce these risks by employing the right tools to protect your products. 20 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Some restrictions on how you sell: For example, you must sell physical products through the Facebook and Instagram sales channel, according to their commerce policy. Most of these challenges can be overcome, however, if you employ the right tools when designing your digital product business. 4.10 SUMMARY  Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies  Infrastructure is that the technology that powers everything you are doing , and it’s one among the foremost under-optimized aspects of digital marketing. Getting this right is prime to success.  Digital Marketing Channels are systems supported the web which will create, accelerate, and transmit product value from producer to a consumer terminal, through digital networks. Digital marketing is facilitated by multiple Digital Marketing channels, As an advertiser one's core objective is to seek out channels which end in maximum two-way communication and a far better overall ROI for the brand.  The knock-on digital marketing techniques has always been that they have steep learning curves, they require constant attention, and there’s really no easy way to tie the efforts to sales in the long run. The ultimate goal of most digital marketers is to make a corporation that's found out to create attention, generate leads and sales which end in valuable customers – efficiently.  Unless customers are buying a product directly from the corporate that creates it, sales are always facilitated by one or more marketing intermediaries, also referred to as middlemen. Marketing intermediaries do far more than simply take a slice of the pie with each transaction. 4.11 KEYWORDS  OptimizeMake the best or most effective use of a situation or resource.  Online MarketingThe practice of leveraging web-based channels to spread a message about a company's brand, products, or services to its potential customers  Campaign An organized course of action to achieve a goal.  Content MarketingThis involves the location of paid content that replicates the design, feel, and oftentimes, the voice of a platform's existing content. it's best when used on digital platforms like websites, newsletters, and social media are often somewhat controversial as some critics feel it intentionally deceives consumers. 21 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

4.12LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Google Learning- Enroll yourself in Online Digital Marketing course by google. _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 2. Discuss on Selling Digital Products _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 4.13 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short questions 1. What is a Destination site? 2. What is a online social network? 3. What is a search Engine? 4. Define digital product 5. What is a flexible product? Long questions 1. What are the components of digital marketing? 2. Explain the digital marketing channels 3. What are the essentials for digital marketing program? 4. Describe the role of intermediators involved in Digital Marketing 5. Mention the advantages & Disadvantages of Digital products B. Multiple choice questions 1. ____________ is not outwardly promotional in nature, but rather serves to educate and inspire consumers a. Content Marketing b. Digital Marketing c. Traditional Marketing d. Native Marketing 2. Companies that automate lead management see a __________ or more hike in revenue in six to nine months’ time a. 10% b. 15% c. 5% 22 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

d. 20% 3.__________ is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based technologies a. Digital Marketing b. Print Marketing c. Television Marketing d. Email Marketing 4. ____________ is the technology that powers everything that one does a. Infrastructure b. Internet c. Innovation d. Media 5. As an advertiser one's core objective is to find channels which result in maximum ___________communication a. Two-way b. Single way c. Multiple way d. Multi-dimensional Answers 1-a, 2-b, 3-a, 4-a, 5-a 4.14 REFERENCES  PYMNTS (2018-01-09). \"Study Finds Consumers Research Before They Buy\". PYMNTS.com. Retrieved 2020-05-19.  Brown, Eileen. \"Consumers trust user-generated content more than traditional advertising\". ZDNet. Retrieved 2020-05-19.  \"6 Key Benefits of User-Generated Content (and How You Can Achieve Them)\". Social Media Today. Retrieved 2020-05-19.  Chovanová, Henrieta Hrablik; Korshunov, Aleksander Ivanovich; Babčanová, Dagmar (2015-01-01). \"Impact of Brand on Consumer Behavior\". Procedia Economics and Finance. International Scientific Conference: Business Economics 23 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

and Management (BEM2015). 34: 615–621. doi:10.1016/S2212-5671(15)01676- 7. ISSN 2212-5671.  \"2019 B2B Content Marketing Research: It Pays to Put Audience First\". Content Marketing Institute. 2018-10-10. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  Pulizzi, Joe (June 1, 2020). \"B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing\" (PDF). Content Marketing Institute. Retrieved June 1, 2020.  \"Number of digital shoppers in the U.S. 2021\". Statista. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  \"Shopper-First Retailing: New Research from 6,000 Consumers and 1.4 Billion Ecommerce Visits Reveals What Shoppers Actually Want\". Salesforce Blog. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  \"In-Store Sales Still Rule, but Digital Helps\". eMarketer. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  https://kleberandassociates.com/digital-marketing-tips-for-building-products/  https://smallbusiness.chron.com/4-types-marketing-intermediaries-24330.html  https://www.zabanga.us/internet-marketing-2/portals.html  https://www.shopify.in/blog/digital-products 24 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT – 5: E- CUSTOMERS STRUCTURE 5.0 Learning Objective 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Dealing with E-Customers 5.3 E-customer service best practices 5.4 E-Customer experience 5.5 E-Customer experience tools 5.6 Measuring overall customer experience 5.7 5 Cs of Digital Marketing 5.8 Summary 5.9 Keywords 5.10 Learning activity 5.11 Unit end questions 5.12 References 5.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, the student shall be able to  Know how to deal with E-Customers and analyzing best practices for best customer experience  Learn the 5C’s of Digital Marketing  Learn to deal with E- Customers  Understand best practices of E-Customer services 5.1 INTRODUCTION Digital transformation is forcing companies to vary their business models and adapt to the new market reality. What’s interesting about this is often that it’s not the businesses that are driving this alteration. Instead, this alteration is being driven by the customer. Today, customers expect relevant content in reference to what they’re doing anytime, anywhere and within the format and on the device of their choosing. It's their journey that dictates your strategy. And so as to stay up with this new quite “always-connected” customer, your business must embrace technology to deliver an unmatched customer experience. Fortunately, putting the customer first is already at the middle of the many organizations' strategy. 1 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

According to research from IDC, two-thirds of the CEO’s of worldwide 2,000 companies will shift their focus from traditional, offline strategies to more modern digital strategies to enhance the customer experience before the top of the year - with 34% of companies believing they’ll fully adopt digital transformation within 12 months or less... Digital transformation is that the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, leading to fundamental changes in how a business operates and therefore the value they deliver to their customers. It’s about changing the way a business interacts with its customers and the way they supply their customers with a uniform experience whenever and wherever they have it. In fact, when asked about factors that influence a business’ decision to implement a digital transformation strategy, nearly half all organizations cited customer experience and customer satisfaction as their leading influences. The companies that do transform digitally are creating highly engaged customers. And these customers are:  Six times more likely to try a new product or service from their preferred brand  Four times more likely to have referred your brand to their friends, family and connections  Two times more likely to make a purchase with their preferred brand, even when a competitor has a better product or price Furthermore, highly engaged customers buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per purchase, and have 3x the annual value (compared to the average customer). A study at MIT found that companies that have embraced digital transformation are 26% more profitable than their peers! As the table below illustrates, there's a huge revenue and growth opportunity you could be taking advantage of by digitally transforming your business! 2 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

One thing's clear: It’s the customer who is in the driver’s seat. 5.2 DEALING WITH E- CUSTOMERS An E-Customer is that the New, Digitally Conscious Customer. Digital technology has transformed consumer habits. Mobile devices, apps, machine learning, automation and far more allow customers to urge what they have almost exactly at the instant they need it. What’s more, these new digital technologies have caused a shift in customer expectations, leading to a replacement quite modern buyer. Today's consumers are constantly connected, app-native, and conscious of what they will do with technology. due to the opportunities that rise from using modern technology, customers often rate organizations on their digital customer experience first. E-customer service is how online businesses provide assistance to customers with everything from making online purchase decisions to resolving issues - all while creating a seamless customer experience across channels and platforms. In this digital-first world, e-customer service isn't simply nice to possess, but rather a prerequisite for fulfillment . Data from Microsoft shows that for 95% of consumers, customer service is vital for brand loyalty. 3 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

However, it’s not enough to mention that you simply have customer service. Bad customer service is worse than none in the least. there's a big discrepancy within the perceptions of companies and buyers when it involves the standard of service, as 80% of companies believe they supply excellent customer service, but only 8% of consumers agree. Today’s customers have sky-high expectations. albeit fewer customers could also be experiencing problems, more customers are inclined to complain about customer service problems than ever before. The good news is that Millennials are able to pay 21% more to try to to business with companies who shine at customer service. 5.3 E-CUSTOMER SERVICE BEST PRACTICES Here are seven ways you can step up your ecommerce customer service game. 1. Get organized One of the essential aspects of a successful customer service department is organization. You might have an efficient process and a highly motivated team, but without organization, things will likely fall apart. Keeping track of customer conversations and equipping your team with tools that help them collaborate keeps everyone on the same page (so nothing slips through the cracks).Using a shared inbox, saved replies for repeated questions, and collision detection will empower your customer service team to solve customers’ requests in an organized, efficient manner. 2. Meet customers on their terms In ecommerce, one size fits none. Customers expect a personalized approach that makes them feel special. Businesses today have to interact with their consumers to get to know them better and form meaningful, ongoing relationships. Embracing “Me-commerce” means meeting a customer’s ever-changing and increasingly demanding expectations and habits. While there are customers who still want to call to talk to a customer service representative, others are interested in live chat or email, while some simply want to send you a tweet. According to Forrester, 31% of customers report reaching out to a company via Twitter, 33% have contacted a company using Facebook, and 45% have used online chat. 3. Enable self-service One of the most underrated tactics of good ecommerce customer service is self-service. Over 60% of U.S. consumers prefer automated self-service, such as through a website or mobile app, for simple customer service tasks. 4 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

What’s more, 77% of consumers have used a self-service support portal. According to Forrester, among all self-service channels, customers prefer knowledge bases the most. With a knowledge base, you can create and publish answers for customers and reduce your customer support volume by at least 20%. 4. Stand out from the crowd using personalization Unlike situations when customers just want quick answers to basic questions, there are times when they are looking for a personalized approach and expert advice. According to Accenture, 33% of customers who abandoned a business relationship did so because personalization was lacking. Consumers in general expect a personalized approach, and a report by Segment found that 71% of respondents are frustrated by impersonal experiences. Introducing a personalized, knowledgeable service is what sets leaders apart from other online businesses. 5. Harness the power of customer reviews Today’s customers are more empowered than ever to make informed decisions. They want to be heard, and they want to hear other customers’ opinions about products and services. Besides the fact that reviews are among major purchase decision factors, they’re also a great source of ideas for customer experience improvement. Brands are viewed more favorably by 77% of consumers if they proactively invite and accept customer feedback. What’s more, 52% of people around the globe believe that companies need to take action on feedback provided by their customers. 6. Improve your response time Ecommerce is all about speed and convenience. Customers who choose to shop online are expecting a fast reaction and prompt answers. According to Statista, 12% of Americans rate their number one frustration with customer service as “lack of speed.” Allowing customers to reach your customer service team using different channels is not enough. The key to a well-performing team is the balance between speed and convenience. When you’re able to serve customers with a consistent level of quality in a short period of time across different channels, you’re on the path to providing a fully functional, multichannel customer service strategy. 7. Measure, optimize, repeat No customer service approach is set in stone. Companies have to be proactive in solving customers’ problems while constantly improving processes based on data. 5 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Evaluating your team’s volume by channel, tracking busiest hours, and following trending topics among your customers are just some of the things that you can refine by measuring and optimizing results. Having a process in place to track performance will serve as a foundation for making future decisions, which is the first step toward successful customer service. Customer service is the backbone of any ecommerce business. As customers’ expectations for the ideal online shopping experience increase, customer service becomes essential to thrive in a competitive ecommerce landscape. Reinventing the online buying journey and incorporating some of these highly efficient customer service best practices will pay dividends across multiple parameters. It’ll help retain customers and grow their lifetime value while also acquiring new customers, which is crucial in any industry. 5.4 E-CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (ECX) The term e-customer experience refers to the sum of each touchpoint, engagement, thought or feeling that happens or is exchanged between the customer and your brand — as experienced from the customer’s perspective. E-Customer experience management, or ECX Management, is that the process of gaining and maintaining full control over the experiences your ecommerce customers have together with your brand. a correct approach to ECX management ensures your team will never be scrambling to deliver needless to say to a customer in need. To craft an honest customer experience (also mentioned as CX), every interaction matter — from the emails you send to the customer support software you employ and from your engagement on social media to how customers experience your online store. It’s a broad definition by design: The customer experience encompasses everything that happens from the instant a private hears of your brand, to the instant they actively plan to stop doing business together with your company. That is to say that the e-customer experience consists of a number of staples that you, as a provider, need to be aware of. 1. Pre-Purchase ECX. The ecommerce customer experience begins well before a private actually becomes a paying customer. As we said, it begins the instant a private notice your brand. From then on, everything that does (or does not) happen between them and your brand is taken into account a part of the customer experience. If you'll immediately make your brand’s value clear to even 6 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

the foremost mildly interested prospect, you stand a reasonably good chance of converting them within the near future. 2. Shopping and purchasing experience. Most obviously, the customer experience also consists of the moments surrounding the consumer’s actual purchases. Again, keeping your nearly converted customers informed is key to getting them to take the plunge. At this point, the prospect will be in need of some key pieces of information, such as:  Product specs, pricing, and availability  Transactional policies (e.g., returns, exchanges, shipping fees, etc.)  Brand/company policies (e.g., info on ethical operations, etc.) 3. post-purchase ecommerce customer experience. Instead of patting yourself on the rear for converting yet one more prospect, your focus will now shift onto keeping your new customer engaged and returning for more. 5.5 E-CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TOOLS In 2020, customer experience (CX) is increasingly driven by technology. Brands have already focused on serving personalized customer experiences based on the latest data across real-life and digital channels for the past years. Global online traffic has more than doubled year-on-year since the beginning of the covid 19 crisis as consumers isolate at home to flatten the curve. Now that customer journeys and purchasing behaviors increasingly shift to digital, it’s time for e-commerce companies to get strategic about delivering consistent digital CX across all touchpoints and consumer-facing channels. But that can be easier said than done. The Top 10 Digital Customer Experience Tools in 2020 Building a tech stack to meet the highest customer experience principles and trends can open a world of opportunity. But it can also create headaches. In 2020, 87% of companies polled by CMS Wire admitted to struggling with customer experience tools, mostly because functionality fails to meet expectations.With this in mind, leading e- commerce businesses are best advised to focus on a practice-proven combination of the ten following customer experience tools: 7 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platforms What it does: CRM platforms combine customer data capture with a broad range of marketing automation capabilities and analysis tools. Standard functionality includes contact management, interaction tracking and scheduling/reminders. Advanced features are AI-powered sales assistance as well as helpdesk integration, with a trend towards covering a wide number of functions within a single CRM platform. 2. Customer Journey Management Software What it does: Helps marketers produce data-driven customer journey maps, updated in real-time. Allows for creating journeys according to customer personas while tracking the performance of initiatives via impact maps and centralized reports. 3. Social Media Tools What it does: Puts customer profile data to work by delivering personalized engagement across social media channels. In a single application, social media software helps brands to create, manage and publish content across a variety of channels. It encourages collaborative workflows while maximizing the impact of content by adapted re-use across channels. Also supports social media listening, measuring and customer data management based on social behavior. 4. Customer Feedback Management Tools What it does: Provide a centralized and automated environment for gauging customer feedback. Allows for creating, scheduling, and conducting customer surveys, polls, and questionnaires while compiling reports on survey results. Automatically extracts qualitative data from user comments, reviews, emails or chats and allows for identifying dissatisfaction and risk of churning. Advanced solutions automatically create helpdesk tickets (see 7.) upon detecting negative feedback. 8 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5. Customer Experience Management Platforms What it does: Customer experience management platforms cover a variety of functionality under a single umbrella with the overarching goal of measuring the quality of overall customer experiences. To this end, platforms implement scoring systems to better understand specific moments as well as certain touchpoints in the customer journey, pointing out experiences that need improvement. 6. Customer Engagement Platforms What it does: Taking a perspective beyond conversion and sales, customer engagement platforms manage interactions across the entire course of the customer lifecycle. They provide marketers from different teams with a single tool for managing all customer touchpoints, including CRM, calendars, social media, and email marketing. Again, the focus is wholistic and includes selling, retention, reactivation and expansion activities. 7. Helpdesk Platforms What it does: Provides a central repository for all customer support interactions in one accessible database. Integrated with CRM platforms, modern helpdesk solutions help to keep track of customer satisfaction on an individual level in real-time. These platforms automatically assign tickets to each interaction and monitor resolution with analytics and dashboards. Integration with call center software is common next to automated survey functionality at the end of each interaction. 8. Personalization Platforms What it does: Powered by marketing-specific and proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning, personalization platforms convert rich customer profile data into individualized engagement. Based on past customer feedback or real-time behavior, they use AI and predictive modeling to create product recommendations and engage consumers on preferred channels at the preferred time. 9. Post Purchase Platforms What it does: The e-commerce experience does not end at the moment landing a sale. First of all, 45% of consumers want to receive an e-receipt after an online transaction. What’s more, 64% are open to receiving additional content and offers in their receipt messages. Post-purchase platforms maintain the conversation by enriching the journey with details such as delivery tracking or updates on shipments via email, push and text messages. 10. Frontend Experience Platforms What it does: As a centralized content hub in the MarTech stack, frontend experience platforms such as Styla help to create and deliver personalized experiences across e- commerce channels. The platform puts an agile and performant frontend layer and a 9 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

commerce CMS on top of online shop systems. As a result, the e-retailer can deliver a smoother, more engaging e-commerce experience with instant page loads and reduced time-to-market. That means more agility and control of shop websites with (headless) commerce, designed to let marketers and designers deploy immediate site changes. Always remember: Happy customers equal more conversions! The result is an inspirational and relevant e-commerce experience for customers. 5.6 MEASURINGOVERALL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE While customers’ perceptions of your retail experience are often a challenge to quantify, there are several go-to metrics that you simply can use. These metrics are an excellent start to understanding the customer’s perspective on your offerings, service, and business as an entire. 1. Customer satisfaction (CSAT). CSAT measures customer satisfaction with a specific product or service. Through multi- question surveys, retailers target specific aspects of the customer interaction like customer support experience, shipping and delivery, or product quality. 2. Net promoter score (NPS). Net promoter score, or NPS, refers to the percentage of your customers who say they would recommend your business.NPS is widely used as a simple, scalable way to measure customer satisfaction.Net promoter score is calculated by asking customers to rate, on a scale of 0–10, how likely they are to recommend your business to friends or colleagues. It differs from the customer satisfaction score in that it’s better able to measure a customer’s ongoing relationship with your business, as opposed to one experience in time. 3. Customer retention and loyalty. Monitor customer churn and loyalty to measure how you’re doing with your intended audience. Some of the metrics used to calculate customer retention, loyalty, and churn include:  Purchase Frequency  Loyalty Program Participation  Average Order Value  Purchase Return Rate 5.7 5 C'S OF DIGITAL MARKETING- MOTIVATING FACTOR FOR E-CUSTOMERS 1. Content 10 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Some may desire they're being told to make content for his or her website on a day to day , but the importance of content creation can't be understated. With the sheer amount of competition found within the digital space lately , you can’t just create an honest product or service, invest some money into advertising, and hope the remainder will just sort itself out. 2. Creativity The Internet era has brought with it many great things, and increased creativity is certainly one among those. Never before has it been this easy to seek out inspiration, research ideas, check out what your competitors do , and tweak everything you set bent fit your audience perfectly. Not only that, but powerful content creation tools like Canva and Pixlr are now free for all to use. Combine that with the gorgeous and free images from an internet site like Unsplash, and there's not any reason that your small company can’t produce professional grade social media posts and artwork. 3. Consistency “Not every company can write 10 blog posts per week. Small to medium businesses may only have the power to write down one blog post every other day or one post per week. There’s nothing inherently wrong thereupon. you only need to confirm that you’re consistent.” Experiment with content creation and establish a schedule that you simply can keep consistently, albeit that's one blog every week or month. send your newsletter on an equivalent day monthly. Create client reports on an equivalent day monthly 4. Communication The greatest thing the web has given us has undoubtedly been shoddy mobile games our youngsters can play on iPads while we take a 5-minute breather. But communication may be a close second. We now have access to instant communication lines to anyone, anywhere within the world, at any time. This exposes entire new markets for sellers, marketers and corporations. Once you can sell to anyone, you'll market to anyone. And you don’t even got to be a stone’s throw far away from your marketing agency anymore. Through communication tools like Slack and others, we will effortlessly work and collaborate with clients and employees on different continents. 5. Client Customization The customer is - and always has been - the foremost important a part of any successful business. No customers, no business. the extent of customization available in today’s day and age is unparalleled, to the advantage of both clients and marketers alike. The client 11 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

can now collaborate with digital marketing agencies to make tailor-made marketing plans that fit their needs perfectly. As marketers, we even have access to powerful tools that allow us to make things like Facebook retargeting campaigns for specific items that the client sells, make entirely custom EDM templates, and supply reports and monthly updates with surprisingly granular statistics. 5.8 SUMMARY  In today’s fast-moving, always connected and always on society, companies are forced to significantly consider implementing a digital transformation strategy, if they haven’t already.  Digital transformation offers organizations a chance to interact modern buyers and deliver on their expectations of a seamless customer experience no matter channel or place.  Content, Creativity, Consistency, Communication, Client customization are the 5C of the digital marketing.  CRM platforms combine customer data capture with a broad range of marketing automation capabilities and analysis tools. Standard functionality includes contact management, interaction tracking and scheduling/reminders 5.9 KEYWORDS  Disseminate: Spread something, especially information widely  ROI:Return on Investment  Leapfrog:A rapid change made by a company or any kind of organization to a higher level of development  AdWords:An advertising system Google developed to help businesses reach online target markets 5.10 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. List out the top CRM software’s and its advantages _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 2.choose a company and analyze how it has used the 5Cs of digital marketing for its development. _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 12 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5.11 UNIT END QUESTIONS 13 A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. Define E- Customer? 2. What is a e- customer tool? 3. What is customer satisfaction? 4. What is customer retention and loyalty? 5. What is client Customization? Long Questions 1. Explain the 7 ways to provide better service to E-Customers 2. Describe ECX and mention its types 3. Explain in detail about the ECX tools 4. Discuss the metrics used in measuring overall customer experience 5. List and explain the 5C's of Motivating factor for E-Customers B. Multiple choice questions 1. Facebook has three times the user base of_______ a. Instagram b. YouTube c. Twitter d. Skype 2. Facebook has a whopping _________billion active daily users a. 2.7 b. 2.5 c. 2.8 d. 2.6 3. Twitter has approximately _________ million daily users a. 200 b. 300 c. 250 d. 150 4. Instagram's visual layout has made it a hot spot for__________________. a. Digital Marketing b. Native Marketing CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

c. Influencer Marketing d. None of these 5. E-customer __________ is how online businesses provide assistance to customers with everything from making online purchase decisions to resolving issues a. Service b. Purchase c. Sale d. Marketing Answers 1-a, 2-a, 3-a, 4-c, 5-a 5.12 REFERENCE  \"Why Brand Awareness Matters\". CMSWire.com. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  \"Report Library\". DataReportal – Global Digital Insights. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  \"How Social Media Can Help Businesses Win Loyal Customers | The Manifest\". themanifest.com. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  Digital, Deliotte (June 1, 2020). \"Navigating the New Digital Divide\" (PDF). Deliotte. Retrieved June 1, 2020.  \"How to Use SEO to Build Your Brand\". Neil Patel. 2016-02-20. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  1.0kshares; 22kreads. \"Why Your SEO Focus Should Be Brand Building\". Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  \"New Study: Search Ads Lift Brand Awareness\". Inside AdWords. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  \"How to Approach Search Marketing Using PPC Advertising and SEO Services | Clutch.co\". clutch.co. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  Insights, Smart (June 1, 2020). \"Increasing brand awareness is main goal for social media strategies\". Smart Insights. Retrieved June 1, 2020.  \"Why is Content Marketing Today's Marketing? 10 Stats That Prove It\". Content Marketing Institute. 2016-08-29. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  Keller, Simon Dwight (2019-10-22). \"Improve Your Brand Awareness and Visibility with Content Marketing | Mentionlytics Blog\". Mentionlytics. Retrieved 2020-06-02.  https://www.superoffice.com/blog/digital-transformation/  https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-customer-experience/#2- ecommerce-customer-experience-examples-worth-copying 14 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267398077_What_does_the_e- customer_really_wants  https://www.techopedia.com/definition/30914/electronic-customer-relationship- management-e-crm 15 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT– 6: ONLINE BUYING PROCESS STRUCTURE 6.0 Learning Objective 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Online buying process 6.3 Deciphering the buying journey stages online 6.4 Using keywords to decipher visitors’ intent 6.5 Online buying cycle- 5 Tests for website optimizing for every stage 6.6 Summary 6.7 Keywords 6.8 Learning activity 6.9 Unit end questions 6.10 References 6.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, the student will be able to  Get familiarized with online buying process in e commerce website  Learn online buying cycle and successful test for the same  Understand online visitor Intent  Explain website optimizing 6.1 INTRODUCTION You can only persuade your website visitors to choose your product or service when you address their motivations, needs, and fears. Visitors are not concerned or aware of your website sales funnel. They come with their own buying funnel which may or may not match your sales process. Successful marketers identify the buying stage of the potential customer and match each stage with the correct sales methodology and techniques to meet the needs of the customer. Some prospects enter the sales funnel already prepared to buy. Others, the majority, arrive at your site to either browse, look for information, compare products, or even just kill time. In this chapter, you will learn the guidelines to decipher your visitor’s buying stage and to detect your visitor’s intent through the use of keywords. You will also find five tests to 1 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

help improve your website regarding your customers’ buying phases: the attention test, the interest test, the desire test, the action test, and the satisfy test. 6.2 ONLINE BUYING PROCESS The five stages consumers go through before making a buying decision are:  Attention stage: Need recognition  Interest stage: Information search  Desire stage: Evaluation of alternatives  Action stage  Post action stage These five distinct stages roll out in sequence for some buying decisions; others skip some stages. If you were to get hungry in the middle of the night (the need recognition), you might skip over the information search and evaluation phases and get right to the purchase stage. The length of time it takes a consumer to go through these phases varies based on a mix of internal and external factors. The buying stage determines the visitor’s interaction with your website. Each stage requires a particular set of information and an appropriate style of presentation to persuade more potential customers to convert. Visitors at the need recognition or information search stages are in the early phase of the funnel. They have not invested the time to determine the best solution for their need. The evaluation stage indicates that visitors are in the middle of the funnel. They are closer to making a buying decision. Finally, visitors in the purchase stage are in a late step of the funnel. These visitors have shown a level of commitment and are more likely to convert if you present them with the right information. 6.3 DECIPHERING THE BUYING JOURNEY STAGES ONLINE Before you design your website or landing pages for each of the buying stages, you must decipher the actual stages of visitors who land on your site. A good starting point is to analyze keywords that drive traffic to your website and decode visitor’s intent based on these words. You can then use visitor’s intent as a signal or an indicator of the potential customer’s location in the buying funnel. Both single keywords and generic search terms come loaded with information. They can indicate whether a visitor is in an early or late buying stage, or not in a purchase process altogether. Other searches might be easier to decipher. The following table shows possible visitors’ intent when they land on a website after searching for the term “laptop.” 2 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Keyword Perceived intent Type of intent Actionable Laptop Product evaluation E-commerce Yes Laptop technology Knowledge Maybe Laptop history Knowledge No Laptop reviews E-commerce Yes A visitor could be looking for product evaluation or reviews or could be ready to buy. In both cases, the visitor is in a buying process, mid or late stage. A search for the history of laptops, or the latest technology news, indicate the person is not in any buying process. If a visitor gets to the site by searching for less than generic terms such as “laptop reviews” or “laptop history,” you do not have to do much guesswork. The visitor is letting you know what he/she is looking for. A search for “laptop reviews” indicates the evaluation of alternatives stage. Another example is a search for “cheap laptops”, which might also signal a ”desire,” although this person is obviously price-sensitive. Finally, a visitor who lands on your website after searching for a particular model, “Dell XPS 13,” is possibly at the purchase stage of the buying funnel. During conversion optimization projects, we use software to mine analytics data for new keywords and understand visitors’ motivations when landing on the site. A website typically has thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of keywords that drive traffic to it, which can make the task of analyzing keywords quite challenging. 6.4 USING KEYWORDS TO DECIPHER VISITORS’ INTENT To decipher visitors’ intent by using keywords, use the following guidelines:  Create a list of keywords that drive a significant amount of traffic to your website. The determination of high-volume keywords depends on your site. For some, a high-volume keyword brings 500 visitors per month; for others, 50,000 visitors per month.  Focus on the top 100 keywords for your website. For many websites, 80% of their traffic comes from 20% of their keywords. This second list of keywords is another goldmine in determining visitor’s intent. 3 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Segment your keyword lists by visitor’s intent, bounce rates, and time spent on the site.  Be realistic: Do not aim at 100% accuracy. Deciphering visitor’s intent is a qualitative area of research. Your goal is to look for general trends to understand what brings visitors to your website.  Using keyword research tools can help save you a lot of time. Marketing experts have recommended tools like SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner and Buzzsumo. Search engines spend more time analyzing visitor’s intent based on keywords than any other online entity. The quality of search results, and, therefore, the quality of the search engine itself, depends on providing relevant data to the term a person searched for. Based on linguistics, search engines use complex algorithms to decode visitor’s intent. They also have the advantage of monitoring the pages on which people are clicking when they search for a particular term. If users regularly click on the same result, the engine creates an association between this type of result and the search term. In the following sections, we will cover how you can improve your website to deal with visitors at each of the buying stages. As you go through each section, you should keep in mind that a wealth of information creates a poverty of interest. Your goal is to provide the right amount of information for each stage and nothing more. 6.5 ONLINE BUYING CYCLE- 5 TESTS FOR WEBSITE OPTIMIZING FOR EVERY STAGE 1. Attention Are you able to capture the attention of your website visitors in the first five to ten seconds? In 2006, Invesp’s research indicated that online visitors decided whether they trusted a website in three seconds. In 2014, visitors were deciding whether they trusted a website in less than half a second. Which is found to be a normal trend in accordance with human adaptation to growth in technology. The Attention Test Answer these questions for each of your webpages: Does your page communicate trust to visitors? Are you able to intrigue the visitors and arouse their interest in the first five seconds? Do you use attractive images to intrigue visitors? Do you carefully craft titles and headlines to capture the attention of visitors? Do you grab visitor attention through unexpected events? 4 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

2. Interest stage: Information search You captured the attention of your visitors and convinced them to give you a chance. Next, you need to capture their interest. This is where cognitive progression plays a role. You anticipate the needs of your visitors, their mindset, and the information they expect to see on your website. Accordingly, you present to them all data in a clear, concise, and persuasive matter. The Interest Test Answer these questions for each of your webpages: What is the most important information your visitor expects to see on a page? To answer this, you need to know what brought your visitors to the website. Go back to the keywords section in this article, figure out your top keywords, and test your page to see if it addresses visitors’ searches. Is the information presented on the page relevant to the visitor? Is your page visitor friendly? Is it easy for your visitor to find the information they need in a quick way? Do you present information in a clear way? Do you give your visitor a reason to stay on the website? To gain and keep your visitors’ interest, you will need to present them with all the information they are seeking. On a product page, this would be: Product name Product features Product image 5 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Product price Product specifications and details (if applicable) Product reviews 3. Desire Stage: Evaluation of Alternatives Your visitors are now interested; next, you must convince them that they desire your product or service because it will satisfy their needs or solve one of their problems. Once you have that, you’ll find that even if lower prices are a strong motivator; giving your visitors what they want can still beat your competitors price. The Desire Test Let’s take Pug Shop Design as an example for this test. They are a B2B that provide design services to their visitors. Let’s answer these questions: Are you able to convince visitors to stay on your website? Are you able to persuade visitors to convert? Do you use special offers to increase visitors’ desire? Do you communicate unique product benefits, or company benefits, effectively? Are you able to use urgency and incentives to increase visitors’ desire? 4. Action Stage Every page on your website has a primary action you want visitors to take. Yes, we want visitors to convert (place an order, fill out a contact form, subscribe to our website), but getting to that macro conversion requires the visitor to go through a series of micro conversions (reading a piece of copy, clicking on a link, navigating to a page). Getting to the big “Yes” requires a series of small “yes’s.” Think of the ways you get your visitors to take an action: are you gently guiding the visitor to take an action or are you pushing that visitor to take the action? What way works better for your visitors? The Action Test Answer these questions for each of your web pages: Do you have the most important action (primary action) defined for the page? Do you highlight the primary action on the page using copy and design? (check out our complete guide to effective CTA buttons) Is it obvious, logical, and desirable for every user to take the primary action? Are your primary actions laid out in a persuasive and clear process from one page to the next? 6 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5. Post-Action Stage What type of relationship do you have with your customers? To some degree, this will depend on the kind of product you sell. Some products are a one-in-a-life-time purchase; others have the customer coming to your website on a regular basis.one. Even for one-in- a-life-time products, you should think about the referrals customer can provide. So, how do you move from a single transaction into a long-term relation with the client? The Satisfaction Test Answer these questions for each of yourwebpages: Do you provide an easy and clear way for customer service on your website? Do you track customer satisfaction with your website? Do you track customer satisfaction with your products? Do you deploy customer exit survey on your website? Do you keep in touch with your customers via email, social media, and other forms? A great way to contact and keep in touch with your customers/visitors is through polls. 6.6SUMMARY  The buying stage determines the visitor’s interaction with your website. Each stage requires a particular set of information and an appropriate style of presentation to persuade more potential customers to convert 7 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 Search engines spend more time analyzing visitor’s intent based on keywords than any other online entity.  The quality of search results, and, therefore, the quality of the search engine itself, depends on providing relevant data to the term a person searched for.  The five test for website optimization are  Attention test  Interest test  Desire test  Action test  Satisfaction test 6.7 KEYWORDS  Electronic storefront:It is an e-commerce solution for merchants who want to host a website that advertises their products or services and for which consumer transactions are generated online.  Advocacy:Public support for or recommendation of a particular cause or policy  Digital marketing plan:A strategic document that takes the current situation of a particular organization to set some midterm goals and to determine the strategy and means to accomplish them. It also describes the responsibilities, the time frame and control tools for monitoring  HubSpot:Company that sells software designed for inbound marketing 6.8LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. List out any 5 ecommerce websites and analyze the shopping experience and user friendliness of the website _______________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ 2. Choose any one company and analyze about the website optimization test for it._ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ 6.9 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions 8 Short Questions 1. Define online buying process? 2. What is an interest stage? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

3. What is a Desire stage? 4. What is an action stage? 5. Write short note on satisfaction test? Long Questions 1. List in order the 5 stages consumers go through before making a buying decision 2. Explain in detail the 5 tests for website optimizing for every stage of online buying cycle 3. Mention some tips to deal with Digital customers 4. List out some best practices for E-Customer service 5. Explain any 5 Digital experience tools B. Multiple choice questions 1. _____________ is the first stage of online buying process a. Interest Stage b. Attention stage c. Action stage d. Desire stage 2. Successful marketers identify the buying stage of the potential customer and match each stage with the correct sales methodology and techniques to meet the ________________ of the customer. a. Needs b. Likes c. Satisfaction d. Desire 3. Keeping in touch with the customers via email, social media, and other forms involves in ____________ stage a. Post action b. Action c. Interest Desire d. Desire 4. ________________ spend more time analyzing visitor’s intent based on keywords than any other online entity a. Search Engine b. Social Media 9 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

c. Web sites d. CRM Software 5. Information search comes under _______________ stage a. Action b. Desire c. Interest d. Attention Answers 1-b, 2-b, 3-a, 4-a, 5-c 6.10 REFERENCES  \"whitepaper-collaborating with digital agency\" (PDF). hcltech.com.  \"People-based marketing is the strategy of the future, new report claims\". Retrieved 2016-09-26.  Kim, Angella J.; Johnson, Kim K.P. (2016). \"Power of consumers using social media: Examining the influences of brand-related user-generated content on Facebook\". Computers in Human Behavior. 58: 98– 108. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.12.047.  Editorial, Reuters. \"Global spending on digital marketing nears $100 billion: study\". U.S. Retrieved 2018-09-24.  World Economics (June 2015). \"Digital and Mobile Continues to Dominate Share of Marketing Budgets\". Warc.com. Retrieved 10 January 2018.  Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k Whiteside, S (January 2016). \"Five digital marketing lessons from comScore\". Warc.com. Retrieved 10 January 2018.  Pratik Dholakiya (14 April 2015). \"3 Digital Marketing Channels That Work for Every Advertiser\". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 17 October 2015.  Edelman, B.; Brandi, W. (2015). \"Risk, Information, and Incentives in Online Affiliate Marketing\". Journal of Marketing Research. 52 (1): 1– 12. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.589.9857. doi:10.1509/jmr.13.0472. S2CID 15601535.  Dapko, J. L.; Artis, A. B. (2014). \"Less is More: An Exploratory Analysis of Optimal Visual Appeal and Linguistic Style Combinations in a Salesperson's Initial-Contact E-mail to Millennial Buyers Within Marketing Channels\". Journal of Marketing Channels. 21 (4): 254– 267. doi:10.1080/1046669X.2014.945358. S2CID 153877505.  https://www.invespcro.com/blog/optimize-website-online-buying-cycle-stages/ 10 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

 https://www.bluecorona.com/internet-marketing-services/  https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/digital-strategy- development/10-reasons-for-digital-marketing-strategy/ UNIT– 7: E-MARKET 11 STRUCTURE 7.0 Learning Objective 7.1 Introduction CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

7.2 Electronic Markets 7.3 E-Market’s impact on business efficiencies 7.4 E-Malls 7.4.1 4 Types of E-mall stores 7.4.2 E-mall, a trending concept 7.5 Electronic storefronts 7.6 E-Marketplace 7.6.1 E-Marketplace platforms 7.6.2 5 Types of E-Marketplaces 7.6.3 Benefits of E-Marketplace 7.6.4 Challenges of E-Marketplace 7.7 Summary 7.8 Keywords 7.9 Learning activity 7.10 Unit end questions 7.11 References 7.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVE After studying this unit, the student will be able to  To get familiarize with functions of E-Markets, E malls  To learn the Types, Benefits, scope and challenges of E-Marketplace  Understand Electronic Markets  Explain E Market Place 7.1 INTRODUCTION Roughly 60% of all internet users made a web purchase in 2016. This year, U.S. shoppers spent a record five billion dollars on Black Friday alone. Shopping online has become so popular that traditional brick-and-mortar malls and department shops are slowly dying. Still, the web playing field is crowded; consumers have numerous choices. to face out, you would like a technique that clearly separates you from the competition. Quick-buck artists come and go, and therefore the businesses that make it are those that provide consistency, quality and a secure, seamless shopping experience. 7.2ELECTRONIC MARKETS Electronic markets (or electronic marketplaces) are information systems (IS) which are employed by multiple separate organizational entities within one or among multiple tiers in value chains. In analogy to the market concept which may be viewed from a macroeconomic (describing relationships among actors in an economic system, e.g. a 12 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

monopoly) also as from a microeconomic (describing different allocation mechanisms, e.g. public auctions of telephone frequencies) perspective, electronic markets denote networked sorts of business with many possible configurations: First, the topology of electronic markets could also be centralized or decentralized in nature. Centralized electronic markets are hubs which frequently provide services to their participants. Decentralized settings involve sequential relationships within value chains which frequently are found when electronic messages are exchanged directly between businesses (electronic data interchange, EDI). Second, the services provided by electronic markets may serve infrastructural or allocation purposes. Among the infrastructure services are routing, messaging, identification and partner directories whereas allocation services enable pricing process which successively could also be static or dynamic in nature. Typical implementations are catalogs, exchanges and auctions. Third, the relationships of actors involved in electronic markets could also be stable or atomistic in nature. the previous usually refers to classical supply chains where business collaborate during a extended period of your time . within the latter case, the transaction partners are only stable for one transaction. this is often usually to be found in auction and other exchange settings. This results in two definitions: during a narrow sense Electronic Markets are mainly conceived as allocation platforms with dynamic price discovery mechanisms involving atomistic relationships. Popular examples originate from the financial and energy industries. during a broader sense, price discovery isn't critical for electronic markets. This covers all sorts of electronic collaboration between organizations and consumer also as the other way around. Examples  Company websites that serve communication and transaction purposes  Electronic purchasing systems on EDI-basis as well as based on catalogs  Systems that support the configuration of products, such as car configurators  Automated download of product information based on the scan of an article number  Activation of an emergency chain based on the monitoring of heart frequency  Social networks that link consumers, such as recommendation communities 7.3 E- MARKET’S IMPACT ON BUSINESS EFFICIENCIES Electronic markets are attributed important impacts on business efficiencies. From an industry perspective, transaction cost economics were wont to illustrate the connection between electronic markets and electronic hierarchies. While the previous are in line with the narrow electronic markets definition, the latter also are included within the broader 13 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

definition. this might be explained since actually electronic markets have emerged as platforms which combine several modes of governance or sorts of coordination mechanisms. These “all-in-one-markets” link the likelihood of competitive bidding for price discovery with the benefits of a predictable relationship to encourage relationship specific investments (non-contractible issues) and functionalities for closer collaboration. this attitude shows that it's important to differentiate between the market platform itself which creates an infrastructure between multiple parties and therefore the coordination mechanisms operated on this platform which could be market-like or hierarchical in nature. 7.4 E-MALLS An electronic mall, in its basic form, consists of a set of e-shops, usually enhanced by a standard umbrella, for instance a well-known brand could also be enriched by a standard granted payment method. The e-malls operators might not have an interest in a private business that's being hosted. Instead, the operator may seek benefits in enhanced sales of the supporting technologies (e.g., IBM with World Avenue). Alternatively, benefits are sought in services (e.g., Barclays with BarclaysSquer), or in advertising space and/or brand reinforcement or in collective benefits for the e-shops that are hosted like traffic, with the expectation that visiting one shop on the e-mall will cause visits to neighboring shops. For several generations, home shopping from catalogs, and later from television shopping channels, has attracted many customers. Today, shopping online offers an alternate to catalog and tv shopping. Electronic retailing (e-tailing) is that the direct sale of products and services through electronic storefronts or electronic malls, usually designed around an electronic catalog format and/or auctions. Like any mail-order shopping experience, e-commerce enables you to shop for from home and to try to to so 24 hours each day , 7 days every week . Compared to order , however, EC offers a wider sort of products and services, including the foremost unique items, often at lower prices. Furthermore, within seconds, shoppers can access very detailed supplementary product information. additionally , they will easily locate and compare competitors’ products and costs . Finally, buyers can find many thousands of sellers. Two popular online shopping mechanisms are electronic storefronts and electronic malls. The basic idea of an electronic mall is that the same as that of a daily shopping mall: to supply a one-stop shopping place that gives a good range of products and services. A cybermall may include thousands of vendors. for instance , Microsoft Shopping includes tens of thousands of products from thousands of vendors. 14 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

There are two sorts of cybermalls. within the first type, referred to as referral malls, you can't buy anything. Instead, you're transferred from the mall to a participating storefront. within the second sort of mall, you'll actually make a sale . At this sort of mall, you would possibly shop from several stores, but you create just one purchase transaction at the top . you employ an electronic handcart to collect items from various vendors then buy all of them during a single transaction. The mall organizer, like Google, takes a commission from the sellers for this service. “E-Malls also referred to as Electronic Malls or Online Malls are like normal shopping malls but they function online within the sort of website or app. sort of a normal mall has many shops and makes present inside it, similarly, an E-Mall website or app has numerous brands and suppliers a charge commission from these brands and suppliers depending upon the amount of sales they are doing .” In simple words, we will call an E-Mall, a web shopping mall with a set of multiple online shops on one platform. All the transactions from selecting the products to purchasing and selling of products and services happen with the assistance of the web . E-Mall may be a concept of E-Commerce and is one among the foremost trending and profitable sorts of business. The retailers who have their brands and stores on these E- Mall platforms are referred to as E-Tailers. 7.4.1- 4 types of E-Mall stores 1. General E-Malls: These general E-Malls are like general stores they do not specialize in any specific goods or service, instead you will find all kinds of goods and services on these online stores. For example, Junglee.com and Amazon.com. 2. Specialized E-Malls: These E-Malls specialize in specific goods or services and sell only that product. For example, 99acres.com specializes in buying and selling property and housing on an online platform and Netflix.com specializes in providing exclusive series, T.V. shows, and movies on an online platform. 3. Regional E-Malls: General E-Malls are basically on a global platform they are not a part of any local region or area. But Regional E-Mall’s function based on a local or regional area. Their sales happen in that area, their marketing is done in that area and their target is a part of that area. For example, limeroad.com or sochstore.com these online stores specifically target the Indian regions and the Indian customer base and famous for their Indian dress collection like Kurti, Saree, etc. 4. Pure online stores: These E-Malls are purely online stores meaning that products that you find on these platforms cannot be found anywhere else in any shopping mall or shop. Like Samsung mobile phones can be found on online stores as well as shops but products like the Netflix original series like House of Cards, Stranger Things, etc, can only be found on Netflix.com and cannot be found in the form CD or DVD on shops. 15 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

E-Malls are a very trendy concept nowadays, there are many factors that contribute towards the success of E-Malls. Let's check what are these factors how are they helping the E-Malls in becoming so trendy. 7.4.2 E-Mall a Trending Concept A) From the point of view of the customer: 1. Fast Buying Procedure: It easy to find products on the online platform, the buying procedure is also not very lengthy, the payment can also be made online, therefore, making it time-saving and easy to use for the customers. 2. 24/7 Buying: There is no time limit on the online platform, you can order the product anytime and from anywhere you want to. 3. All Types of Products at One Place: In the case of General E-Malls all kinds of products like retail, food, electronics, books, etc all are available at one place and people can buy all these items together from the platform making it easy for the customer since they don’t have to look for different shops to buy different products. 4. Able to Compare Feature and Prices: It is easy for the customers to compare the features and prices of various products. For example, the customers can compare prices and features of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 on the same platform and also check out the difference in their features and model. 5. Time-Saving: One of the most important factors that make E-Malls so trendy is that in the current scenario almost everyone in the society has a busy and fast life. Shopping on an E-Mall is a fast process, they don’t have to search for different products in different shops, transactions are done in one place and they don’t have to put in a lot of effort thus making it most suitable for today's busy lifesaving both time and energy. 6. Exciting offers and features: Customers get exciting offers and discounts on the online shopping portals, there are various discounts, offers, gifts, quizzes, lucky draws, etc. which makes online shopping interesting for customers. Also, these platforms or apps have exciting features like gift pack options wherein you can also send a message card, this makes online shopping more convenient for the customers. 7. Convenience: The customers can order any product from anywhere and that product will reach their doorstops making online shopping very convenient for them. 8. New Ways of Marketing: Online shopping platforms nowadays are using new and exciting forms of marketing to attract customers. The platforms know that they will be facing a millennial generation now and also that the older generations have also adopted the current trends, so they use social media advertising, influencer marketing, sponsoring of events and concerts, etc. These marketing techniques attract current generations and also cater to the needs of society. 16 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

B) From the Point of View of Sellers/Retailers: 1. Fast Selling Procedure: The sellers don’t have to waste a lot of them in putting in efforts neither do they have to explain the customer's anything in person or face them, also since all the transactions are done online it becomes a really fast procedure for sellers. 2. Selling 24/7: The sellers don’t have to worry about any time limitation for the sale of their product, their product can be bought anytime thus making it more profitable for them. 3. Low operational costs: The sellers don’t have a lot on operational costs or selling the goods, since everything is done on an online platform. 4. More reach to customers: There is no geographical limitation on the online shopping platform, the sellers can sell their products in any region at any point in time. 5. No need for a physical company start or setup: The capital investment is not very high thus making the business easy to start. 6. Easy to manage: It is easy to manage and track as everything is being recorded and everything is happening online thus making it a more efficient and effective platform. 7. Business can be run from anywhere: The seller can sell their product anytime from anywhere they want to. The seller could be sitting in a movie hall or in a restaurant and they can sell their product and can do deals. 8. Higher Return on Investment: The investment in this platform is very low but the Return on Investment is very high if your product is liked by the customer base. So, these are the reasons why E-Malls are trending nowadays from both points the view the buyers and sellers since these two are kingpins of every market. To conclude we would like to say, that seeing the current situation of pandemic and lockdowns E-Malls has become a basic need and in the near future E-Malls will be the choice of everyone, from every class and from any region in the world. The current society trends and the lifestyle has made E-Malls trendy and the most profitable form of business. 7.5 ELECTRONIC STOREFRONTS An electronic storefront is an e-commerce solution for merchants who want to host an internet site that advertises their products or services and that consumer transactions are generated online. Another name for an electronic storefront is a web storefront. Various software applications are available to merchants, which range from electronic shopping carts to secure payment gateways. Merchants that lack e-commerce technical skills find that storefront vendors are especially helpful when starting out or maintaining their online stores. An electronic storefront may be a internet site that represents one 17 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)