Business Alliances To Be Considered In An eCommerce Business

The exponential growth of Ecommerce stores in the last two decades has completely transformed the way of shopping for customers. The businesses are continuously finding new ways of attracting customers and make them regular patrons. Whether it is conversion rate, bounce rate, user acquisition rate, sales, profits, etc. every metric is highly important in ecommerce.

It has been predicted that the Indian ecommerce industry would reach the valuation of $200 billion by 2027. Some of the prominent players of ecommerce in the local market of India are Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra. But still, there are many small players who are having a niche in their field and can even lag them behind these players in their expertise. So, if you wish to develop an ecommerce store you don’t need to feel that you can’t compete with the bigger players because everyone has its own USP and you can beat them in your game. 3rd Party Alliances is one of the most important technique you can use to make a better version of your online store.

In this article, we would be discussing why 3rd party alliances are important, how they are beneficial for your ecommerce, along with details of many examples of 3rd party integrations.

Are 3rd party alliances important?

There should be no qualm in this that 3rd party alliances are highly important for your ecommerce application. When you start an online business, there are many different prospects involved in it such as developing an ecommerce store, marketing, shipping, logistics and delivery, legalities, etc. and you neither have expertise in all such aspects nor you can focus on everything at the same time. For e.g., if you will manage the payments, the shipping and logistics can deteriorate and vice versa. This arises the need for 3rd party alliances who are having expertise in these different segments and can help you so you don’t have to worry about that service and can focus just on improving your business.

Here are a few ways by which 3rd party alliances can boost your business:

• High volume order processing
• Payment gateways
• Multi-currencies, and multi-languages
• Mobile Commerce
• E-mail marketing and newsletters
• Discounts, Coupons, and Gift Cards
• Abandoned Cart Protection
• Ecommerce experts and consultants available for advice (and upsells)

You can’t manage all these features on your own. It needs a lot of time and a huge team which will definitely increase the cost as well. Henceforth, you take services from the services provide and pay them for their service. For e.g a payment gateway like Paypal will charge you to make payments on your ecommerce store, similarly, an ecommerce development company will also charge you for their services.

Does taking service from a 3rd party alliance can incur a loss in my business?

Definitely No! Firstly the 3rd party alliance doesn’t charge such a huge amount of money for their service so that you will get in a loss. Secondly, implementing services on your ecommerce store would only increase the sales which will result in more profit.

Paypal a very small fraction of the payment made on your site through its portal same goes with an analytics tool or marketing. Hence, you don’t need to worry about the expenses. However, if you are not focusing on your business and not hitting targets of sales then things can change.

Also Read: How to develop an eCommerce Website – Complete Guide

Different 3rd Party Alliances you need to care about

Here are the important 3rd party services providers that will help you in running your ecommerce store smoothly.

1. Technology/Development Partner

The first step in ecommerce is developing an online store. As you can’t be an expert in coding thousands of lines of code henceforth, you have to contact an ecommerce development company that will understand your requirements & idea, give you a quotation of costing and services, and will deliver you a fully functional ecommerce store of your industry. The agency will have a skilled ecommerce developer with proven experience and knowledge of different technology stack such as Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify, OpenCart, Prestashop, etc. An ecommerce development company can help you in building Web stores, B2C & B2B Marketplaces, E-auction Portals, Online Shopping Carts, Social Commerce, E-Procurement sites, etc. They can provide you with different ecommerce services such as:

• Technology Consulting
• Enterprise eCommerce Solution
• Mcommerce Development
• Plugin & Module Development
• Payment Gateway Integration
• Maintenance & Support
• Platform Version Upgrade

2. Branding Solution Provider

Branding is often a misunderstood term in many businesses and many branding solution providers can transform your business into a professional brand to reach a targeted audience. Branding is a concept to reach a targeted audience while building a positive perception and a professional image of your business that triggers emotions encouraging potential customers to prefer your business over competitors. There are many benefits of taking services from a branding solution provider such as:

• Increasing the awareness of your brand among your targeted audience
• Improving instant and long-term business recognition by the targeted potential customers
• Increase the trust, credibility, and reputation of your business
• Getting better results by marketing and advertising campaigns
• Acquiring new customers and their loyalty
• Improving customer acquisition cost and customer retention
• Expanding business

Before hiring a branding solutions provider, you should have a focus on some aspects. These are:

• Defining the position of your business in targeted markets
• Explaining the perception of your business by targeted potential customers
• Deciding targeted goals of branding
• Performing detailed market research to explain the demographics of your targeted audience, their desires, interests, and expectations.

3. Logistics and Delivery Partner

Logistics and delivery play a very important role in online business. There is a need for loading data in the warehouse, checking it, and then shipping it to different delivery addresses. There can be situations when the freight brokers are spending too much time while checking the load, or the truck gets hauled at the mid-way point to a warehouse, or your trucks are moving empty. So to optimize all these processes you need to take services from a logistics services provider. The logistics service include fleet management, logistics on-demand, warehouse management, tracking & forwarding, etc. A few benefits of a logistics partner are:

• Route Optimization: Determine the best option way of transporting a vehicle to reach its destination.
• Tracking Goods: You would be able to track all your goods by the mobile app of the provider.
• Easy Booking: Logistic mobile applications are focused on providing easy booking of supplies by the customers.
• Security: You also get the security of all your products or goods by a logistic partner
• Confirmation assurance: When the good get delivered to a warehouse or to the customer, the customer as well as a company gets the confirmation of product delivery.

Important factors to consider when choosing a logistics partner

• Checking the shipment rates
• Checking the mechanism of delivery and hidden cost(if any)
• Enquiring for additional benefits

4. Marketing Agency

Marketing is not just a part of the business but in fact, it is the business. Almost everything in the business depends upon marketing. With marketing, you can respond to your customers with ongoing product development. Marketing helps in finding the shortest path between the consumer and the brand. You can create campaigns that respond quickly to consumer preferences. There are different types of marketing agencies such as advertising agency, brand agency, graphics and design agencies, and digital or virtue marketing. Marketing encompasses not only determines consumer needs, but it also helps create consumer needs. It really begins with understanding your potential consumer.

5. Digital Marketing Company

A digital marketing company represents varied online methods of marketing to grow your business. Hence, a digital marketing company will take care of all your online marketing activities whether it is social media, Pay Per Click, Google Ads, Facebook Marketing, Instagram Marketing, Twitter Marketing, etc. It will help you in several different ways such as:

• You can focus on running your business: Online marketing aims to hire new clients by running campaigns.
• Reducing overall costs: Running digital marketing campaigns by your in-house team may require additional resources which can definitely increase the costs. On the other side, giving the contract of a campaign to a digital marketing agency is much less costly over time.
• Work with experts: The Search Engine Optimization team, Social media optimization team, content writers, etc are having expertise in their fields which can definitely impact your visibility on the web.
• Relevant to the industry: An agency will identify and research your industry niche to learn the behavior, preferences, and interests of the target audience.
• New ideas: A good agency will give you great ideas on what techniques will give you results. They’ll provide a new perspective on some of the things that your team had already been doing. They will assess your marketing efforts and creating new ideas based on the viewpoint of the consumers.

6. Product Photography Solutions

In an ecommerce site, the first thing a visitor sees is the image of the product. All other things are secondary, if the image of the product is not proper then the user will definitely not trust and wouldn’t buy it. It can make or break your business. Your products are the face of your brand this is why quality product photography is so important. It doesn’t matter how high quality your products are, no one will buy them if their images are of lower quality. Product photography solutions in ecommerce serve the purpose to create trust in products and give customers an idea of what they are expecting.
Some of the important stats regarding products photography are:

• 90% of online customers admit that photo quality plays the most important role in an online sale
• 78% of online customers want photographs to bring products to life
• Using a larger product photo size on category pages increase sales by 9.46%
• 91% of individuals want the ability to turn products around in full 360° spin” – Adobe Scene 7

7. Modeling Agency

If you are building an ecommerce site for clothing or fashion then you must understand the importance of models. Utilizing a model for your product encourage customers to buy the product by envisioning how the product will look on them. Images with live models can give clothing or another ecommerce item a level of character and shape that lay dow or mannequin shots just can’t. In short, images depicting live models simply tend to look more professional than other types of product photos.

8. Packaging Solutions

The packaging is another important thing to consider in ecommerce. It is considered just an outer carton covering but do a much larger function of winning customer trust. It is the primary reason why many ecommerce businesses are using branded (printed) packs so that they can improve the packaging. There are different types of packaging as per the parcel. Some of the most common packagings are:

• Corrugated Boxes: These are the carton boxes for packaging and are most common.
• Courier bags: These are used for lightweight materials for carrying jewelry items, clothing, electronic items, etc.
• Security Envelopes: Security envelopes are uncommon in ecommerce and are mostly used for sending important documents.
• Protective Packaging: Protective packaging is used when a brittle or prone to break item is getting delivered.

9. Recruitment Agencies

To carry out different business operations you must need a staff or a team of employees. And if you are a startup then it is not necessary that you will have a professional HR to carry out the recruitment operations. So it is best that you contact a recruitment agency who will hire for your business on behalf of you. They have access to the best talent available, including those candidates who are actively looking for a job. You would be also saving time and can use this time to focus on your business. It will be less costly to you plus a recruitment agency have expertise in different industries and can provide you with candidates which would be best for your industry. In short, a recruitment agency is beneficial because:

• Short-term and Long-term Cost Savings
• Expertise: Market Knowledge
• Provide additional services
• Save your time
• Have extended reach for the best talent

10. Legal Consulting Firm

In every business, there are some legalities associated with it regarding government rules, laws, licensing, taxation, etc. A legal consulting firm will provide you with assistance in your business activities in all legal matters. A legal advisor also provides guidance and support for documentation, negotiations, litigation, registrations, legal compliance, and keeping the overall legal health of the startup in check. In brief, a legal consulting firm will help you in:

• Support and opinion on legal matters
• Suggesting strategies to mitigating a risk
• Helping ecommerce business to identify situation which may require legal attention
• Providing support for drafting and vetting of contracts
• Guiding the business for its legal compliance management

11. PR agency

Almost everyone seems to know the term PR (Public relations) but don’t have a clear understanding of it. Though most of the business know that public relations is a great way of marketing and upgrading their online reputation, a very few know about what PR involves and why it is important. A PR agency will help in many different aspects. Here we will tell you in brief about these aspects.

• Helps your business in managing reputation
• Promote the branding of your business
• Strengthen community relations
• Opportunistic public relations
• Enhances your online presence

Wrapping Up

We have understood the importance and benefits of almost 3rd party alliances in this article. If you still had a doubt you can definitely reach out to us. Our experts will help you in every aspect. We at Emizentech, the best ecommerce development company in India is having expertise in almost every prospect of ecommerce. Whether it is WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify, Prestashop, or Opencart, we can help you in developing an ecommerce site in almost every framework. Let us know your requirements and we will turn it into an online store.