Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Put simply, the difference between traditional ecommerce sites and marketplaces is that the former tend to only display the goods and services of the brand that owns the site, whilst the latter displays a number of goods from different vendors alongside each other.

Social commerce involves using social networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to advertise and sell goods and services. Social commerce tactics may also include the provision of product advice for online shoppers, offering personalised purchase options, and encouraging users to submit relevant photos or written feedback online. It is becoming an increasingly popular move for brands hoping to engage younger generations.

Mobile commerce involves the buying and selling of goods and services online using a hand-held device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Put simply, headless commerce represents a kind of software architecture that separates the front-end from the back-end of an ecommerce platform. The primary advantage of this set-up is that both ends are able to operate independently from one another without having to continually adapt when the other respective end makes changes on the platform. This means that user-focused front-end changes can be made faster.

Dropshipping is a way of managing supply chains whereby retailers do not have to keep goods in stock. Instead, the retailer can transfer customer order and shipment details to the relevant manufacturer or wholesaler, who can then ship the goods straight to customers’ front doors. The benefits of Dropshipping are that you simplify your fulfilment process, save money on having the buy the good first, and save on having to store the goods until they are sold.

Put simply, data-driven marketing encompasses the types of analytical techniques used by marketing professionals to make predictions about consumer behaviour. It involves thinking carefully about factors such as engagement trends and conversion rates, with a view to building bigger and more successful marketing campaigns, often focused on personalising customer experiences.

Conversational commerce is a kind of live customer support service conducted online using popular messaging apps, chatbots, or voice assistants. Companies currently offering conversational commerce solutions include Facebook, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, and Live Person. Increasingly, businesses are using artificial intelligence and voice recognition technologies to power their online customer support services.

A payment gateway is an online system ensuring that customer credit or debit card information collected via your website is processed safely and securely. These gateways work by encrypting, forwarding, and authorising card payments. If a card is deemed illegitimate, the gateway will reject it. Many digital commerce platforms will provide their own payment gateway options, however you can also choose from a range of specialised providers.

What are the best payment gateway providers in Australia?

• PayFlow (PayPal)
• eWay
• Stripe
• Tyro
• SecurePay
• Square
• 2Checkout
• Kash
• Windcave
• Authorize.Net
• AfterPay
• Worldpay
• CommWeb

A digital commerce platform is a piece of software allowing companies to manage sales and a number of other business operations online. Many retailers across a range of sectors use digital commerce platforms to sell goods and services, something which allows them to expand their offerings beyond the limits of physical stores. There are a wide range of digital commerce platforms out there for business owners to choose from depending on your your budget, your team size, your type of business, your type of customer, and locations of markets you want to access.

What are the most popular Enterprise & Corporate digital commerce software in Australia:

• Ultra Commerce
• Magento Commerce
• Shopify Plus
• BigCommerce Enterprise
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud
• SAP Hybris
• Oracle ATG Web Commerce, and
• IBM Websphere Commerce.

What are the most popular Small & Medium Business digital commerce software in Australia:

• Shopify
• Wix
• Weebly
• Squarespace and
• WooCommerce.

Afterpay and Zip Pay are special forms of payment providers that allow customers to make purchases without making upfront payments. In other words, both allow customers to spread their payments across a number of instalments. Their late fees and terms and conditions can differ slightly however.

The customer journey is a kind of map that explains how a customer first comes into contact with your brand, interacts with your marketing material, engages with your web content and makes profitable purchases that will help to grow your company. Rather than considering granular brand interactions, it takes into account the holistic experience of being a customer.

Search engine marketing (SEM) refers to any kind of marketing involving search engines. Pay-per-click marketing, on the other hand, refers to forms of advertising that involve paying for online adverts based on the number of clicks they attract. Some forms of PPC advertising can fall under the SEM banner.

Personalisation involves honing your digital marketing strategy so that as many customers as possible feel that their needs and desires are met resulting in more meaningful interactions with your brand. This usually takes the form of using consumer data points such as demographic information and behavioural patterns to show targeted ads and offers to relevant customers at the right time.

Inbound marketing is a strategy whereby businesses encourage customers to view and purchase its goods and services through engaging content and positive experiences. This marketing material can come in a variety of forms including social media posts, content marketing such as blogs and web articles, online videos, marketing emails, and branded freebies. Generally speaking, inbound marketing is customer-focused and designed to entice.

Google Shopping – once known as ‘Google Product Search’ and even ‘Froogle’ – is a service offered by Google allowing users to find products across a range of digital commerce sites simply by typing what they are looking for in the search bar. It is an easy way to compare products and their current prices.

Attribution modelling is a kind of data analysis that involves examining which of your marketing channels should be credited for particular successful conversions. The aim of the modelling is to understand which marketing touchpoints in the conversion path impacted the outcome that ultimately generated the best return on investment (ROI) for your company.

A Smart campaign is the default type of campaign offered by Google Ads. What sets Smart campaigns apart from their predecessors is that they utilise smart technologies to constantly analyse and improve the performance of Google Ads with minimal management form your marketing team. This can save a considerable amount of time and energy that can be channelled into other projects and is a great tool to adopt if you’re a small business or just starting out in Google Ads.

The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving, with new channels and strategies popping up every few months. Generally speaking, however, the key digital marketing channels include search engine optimisation (SEO), content marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing (SMM), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, influencer marketing, and affiliate marketing.

Website user experience (often referred to as UX) refers to how easy and enjoyable a website is to interact with. Websites with strong UX credentials tend to be very easy to navigate, free from bugs, attractive, and easy to use on all devices. Marketers who focus on improving UX often see customer engagement and conversion rates increase.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a technique used by digital marketers to encourage search engines to prioritise their websites in search results. The idea behind SEO is to optimise a website to make it as amenable to search engine algorithms as possible. SEO is a constantly changing field but, generally speaking, can involve strategies such as adding keywords to content marketing, hosting a user-friendly website, and linking back to other websites.

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is a digital marketing technique designed to encourage people to take a particular action when they visit a website. In other words, it is used to convert website visitors into valuable paying customers. CRO is carried out by designing particular elements of a webpage in such a way that visitors will be more likely to convert before leaving the site.

In very basic terms, web hosting involves a given storage space provider offering a company the opportunity to put their website on an internet server. As soon as the hosting company has agreed to host the website, users will be able to access and edit it online. Hosting companies tend to differ widely in cost and ability to offer technical support, so it is vital that businesses do their research before settling on one.

Inbound marketing involves promoting your company by creating content and implementing marketing campaigns that attract qualified customer traffic to your brand and services. This requires having a fully optimised webstore and attracting through content, social media marketing, SEO, paid digital advertising and retargeting to build your brand.

For us, outbound bound marketing focuses on engaging your existing customers and prospects through digital content and nurture stream activities to grow long lasting relationships.

Nurture stream marketing involves developing strong relationships with customers at every stage of their purchasing journey to ensure that they remain loyal to your brand and encourage their friends to engage with your company. Broadly speaking, it focuses on listening to customer needs and providing answers to any of their questions

Customer lifetime value (or CLV) is a measurable statistic that many marketers use to analyse customer loyalty and retention rates. It describes a customer’s total worth to a business over the period through they interact. It is a useful value to measure as holding on to existing customer can be which cheaper than acquiring new ones.

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform is a kind of technology used by businesses to successfully manage interactions with customers, as well as collect valuable data to help make better business decisions.

There is no one perfect project collaboration software solution for all cases. You need to consider your specific situation and what problem you’re trying to solve. Broadly this could be looking at these 3 factors:

• People – who will be using it?
• Processes – what are your current business processes? Does the software align with them?
• Technology – what other systems does it need to work alongside?

New options are constantly emerging and existing products evolving. G2 is a good site to compare and read reviews of project collaboration software.