Brand Growth and Development in the eCommerce: Interview with Peter Bergkrantz, CEO of Stutterheim

Stutterheim created a new sense to melancholy and now uses it as an authentic brand definition. Not only that, the history of this brand and their success is incredible and inspiring.

We had a chance to communicate with Peter Bergkrantz, CEO of Stutterheim. We want to share his thoughts regarding the growth and development of a fashion brand online. But first, let’s start with the brand’s background.

Stutterheim is a Swedish fashion brand offering functional and beautiful rainwear famous for the highest quality, hand-made crafted products, timeless design, and melancholic yet beautiful personality.

The company was founded in 2010, and from that time, they are massively extended worldwide. The story of their creation was unusual, and with a stroke of genius: founder of the brand, Alexander Stutterheim, found his grandfather raincoat in a barn on a rainy day. Soon, he came up to the thought that there was no proper rainwear that he could find in Sweden for such occasion. That’s where it all has begun.

Over the years, the Stutterheim mission was and remains the same: Make people look good in bad weather.

From that time, the brand grew offline and online as well. Many collaborations with famous brands, featured celebrities’ looks, new stores worldwide, a user-friendly website, all of it is combined in a mature and extraordinary-looking brand with a rich history and special mood.

Now, let’s move on to the interview with our guest, Peter Bergkrantz, CEO of Stutterheim. Started in 2016, as Global Sales Director, he brought his vast experience of sales and leadership in the fashion industry to elevating the Stutterheim brand to new heights of success.

Peter shares practical insights from his experience regarding the direction for business strategy, revealing issues that companies are challenged in the eCommerce field. Also, he gives recommendations on how to set priorities and build a successful business strategy for young and growing retail brands.

WEB4PRO: Peter, you have broad experience working with different retail brands for many years. What inspires and motivates you and your team the most working at Stutterheim?

Peter: To see and follow how we develop the brand globally, especially in our digital sales channel.

WEB4PRO: From your perspective as the CEO of a famous fashion brand, what is your recipe for its success?

Peter: Stay true to your original idea of how the brand should be. In all aspects as product range, communication, and so on.

WEB4PRO: Product design, creation, and fitting is a long-term process. On what does your team put the focus when working on your products at Stutterheim?

Peter: Make sure it’s on-brand. Its got to be within our frame of look, quality, and colors.

WEB4PRO: How do you gain customers’ trust for the Stutterheim brand?

Peter: You do as you say. If you state you do premium rainwear, it’s got to be that – right?

WEB4PRO: What are the priorities which young and growing retail brands should set? What are your three main recommendations for them?

Peter: My first recommendation will be the following: don’t do all things at once, set your goals, and all but go for set milestones on the way.

Secondly, listen to your fans, your community, your customers.

And last, but not least, make sure to have a steady eye watching your inventory levels:-)

WEB4PRO: The last question is related to the future of eCommerce. What do you think will be trending in the eCommerce industry in the next few years?

Peter: Wow, big question! I hope there will be general actions among eCom companies taken against these massive return levels with stuff being shipped back and forth across the world. I see this as a big problem for the environment, and it’s for sure, not sustainable.

WEB4PRO: Totally agree with you. Environmental problems which are caused by products’ waste is a massive problem.

Due to climate change, people started to think about lean consumption. We also see companies that have the intention of using natural resources sustainably. They are looking for ways to decrease manufacturing waste and also building a sustainable business strategy. We agree that it is important to keep our planet up and running, and want to contribute to the growth of sustainable brands all over the world. That’s the part of our mission statement and business strategy.

In the end, we want to give massive thanks to Peter for his time and willingness to share valuable insights. It was a great opportunity for us to talk about eCommerce with such an experienced person that is truly passionate about his company and work. If you want to learn more about this brand, you can visit the Stutterheim official website or check our article about Stuterheim’s online store.

Types of eCommerce Business Models and Companies That Use Them

Understanding types of eCommerce business models is the key to starting and running your online store successfully.

In this blog post, we’ll walk you through an overview of traditional and trending eCommerce business models.

Take time to research them to make sure you choose the right model for your next business.

Traditional eCommerce Business Classifications

You may have heard about B2B and B2C business models. But what exactly are they? What is the major difference between them? Let’s learn in the following parts.

B2B eCommerce: Business to Business

B2B stands for business to business. The nature of B2B eCommerce is that it sells products and/or services online to other companies, not end customers. Those companies can be manufacturers, wholesalers, suppliers, retailers, and the like.

It’s noticed that the global B2B eCommerce market is expanding quickly. According to recent reports of Frost & Sullivan, its revenue will be predicted to reach $6.7 trillion by this year.

Take a look at the following two examples: Selini New York and Herman Miller.

Selini New York

As described in their website, Selini New York is a B2B wholesale and eCommerce company. Started as a neckwear business in 1991, Selini New York has grown and thrived to become one of the most fast-growing B2B eCommerce brands in the world. They currently specialize in menswear and accessories, both for men and women.

Herman Miller

Herman Miller has a reputation for “contemporary interior furnishings, solutions for healthcare environments and related technologies and services.” It’s reported to gain an annual sales of over $2 billion, and this figure is still on the rise. By making use of advanced technologies, Herman Miller sets it apart from other competitors to become one of the best B2B eCommerce success stories in the world.

B2C eCommerce: Business to Consumer

Unlike B2B, B2C means business to consumers. In other words, when you start a B2C eCommerce business, you sell products and/or services online to end customers. Those customers are individual people who may go to an online store to buy a pair of shoes or book a homestay for holidays. This is the business model that you’re most likely familiar with.

Below are some successful B2C examples that you may want to know.

Warby Parker

Warby Parker is recognized as one of the biggest names in the direct-to-consumer retail market. The brand sells eyewear products directly to customers at lower prices, compared with its competitors. That helped Warby Parker disrupt the industry and expand quickly. Now it has more than 90 physical stores in the U.S. and Canada, with value at $1.7 billion.

Bonobos

Bonobos were born in 2007, selling well-made pants. Ten years later, the brand was acquired by Walmart for $310 million, becoming “the largest U.S. clothing brand to ever start on the web.” What makes Bonobos different is that the brand puts more focus on customer service than traditional marketings.

C2C eCommerce: Consumer to Consumer

C2C eCommerce refers to online transactions among consumers. A C2C eCommerce business connects consumers via a platform where people can exchange their items. C2C eCommerce businesses make profits by charging transaction fees or listing fees.

Craigslist and eBay are two typical examples of this eCommerce business model.

Craigslist

Craigslist is a number 1 classified advertisements website with a lot of categories: jobs, housing, services, community, for sale, and discussion forums. Their revenue comes from fees for job postings and fees for apartment postings. Craigslist now makes over $1 billion in annual revenue.

eBay

eBay is one of the most popular online shopping marketplaces, and it’s now available in several different countries in the world. With eBay, you can buy from a bunch of product categories or create a seller account and start making money. As of June 2019, eBay has 182 million users worldwide.

C2B eCommerce: Consumer to Business

The forth eCommerce business model in this list is C2B, meaning consumer to business. In plain words, C2B eCommerce involves online transactions between individuals and companies. Affiliate marketing services and freelance websites are considered as C2B.

The following are two well-known C2B eCommerce companies:

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is an online advertising platform where webmasters and website owners (called publishers) can join to make money from it. Once you create a Google Adsense account and insert a code into your web page, Google will display targeted ads on your pages. Currently, Google has over 2 million publishers.

Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is an online survey tool that allows you to create surveys and share insights with your team. About 40 million customers are using Survey Monkey.

Mobile Commerce

Mobile Commerce or m-commerce refers to buying and selling products/services through mobile devices. With this business model, people can now make online transactions from anywhere and at any time.

Types of Mobile Commerce

Basically, there are many types of mobile commerce, which can be grouped into categories as follows:

• Purchase: Mobile ticketing, mobile vouchers/coupons/loyalty cards, content purchase and delivery, mobile storefront, mobile browsing, mobile purchase.
• Finance: Mobile banking, auctions, mobile brokerage.
• Marketing: Mobile marketing and advertising.
• Information: Information services, location-based services.

Here are two mobile commerce business examples:

Starbucks

Starbucks has offered the most popular mobile payment app in the three years 2017 – 2019, and it’s predicted to hold the same position this year. There are 23.4 million users aged at least 14, using Starbucks to make online purchases. Various supported payments and diverse loyalty programs contribute a lot to the success of Starbucks.

ASOS

From an online store, ASOS has become a global eCommerce giant with 72.3 million orders and a £33.1 million profit in 2019. Some reasons for ASOS’s success are free worldwide shipping, eCommerce localization, and an effective international online sales strategy.

ReCommerce

Resale commerce means purchasing and selling secondhand products. A recommerce company will look for old or vintage products, refurbish them if necessary, and introduce them to the market again. Cashify, Gazelle, and Bundli are examples of such businesses.

According to The 2020 topics and trends report from Facebook I.Q., buying secondhand goods become increasingly popular in the U.K. People now can buy luxury products like vintage and retro clothing with good quality at a lower price. For resellers, this is a huge opportunity to build a business and become an entrepreneur. The data also said that.

Let’s see how these recommerce brands work:

Vestiaire Collective

Vestiaire Collective is an online marketplace for buying and selling secondhand luxury clothes. Founded in 2009, the brand now creates a community with 7 million members from over 50 countries. Their products include vintage fashion, bags, watches, and jewelry for both men and women.

Poshmark

Like Vestiaire Collective, Poshmark allows you to shop online or list your items and earn money. This marketplace has over 25 million items from 5,000 brands and presented only in the U.S. It has simple categories to find needed items and various features for buyers and sellers to ease their shopping and selling experiences. It also allows users to create and share lists of picked products with the community, which makes the platform as social commerce space.

Types Of eCommerce Business Revenue Models

Dropshipping, wholesaling, subscription commerce model, private labeling, and white labeling are common business revenue models. Let’s take a look at each of them.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a business model where a store doesn’t keep products in its stock. Instead, it purchases products from third-party companies (also called suppliers), and then sell them to end consumers.

Wholesaling

In the wholesaling business model, a company will buy products in bulk from manufacturers or suppliers or distributors, stock those products in their warehouse, and then sell to other store owners or retailers.

Subscription Commerce Model

A subscription commerce business refers to selling products or services, and customers will pay monthly or yearly in the form of subscription.

Private Labeling

Private labeling business model means products or services are produced by a manufacturer but sold under a retailer’s brand name.

White Labeling

White labeling is the same as private labeling in some way. The difference is that a retailer will rebrand products or services provided by a manufacturer in a way as if the retailer made those products/services by themselves.

Top 15 Authentic British Fashion Brands & Their Online Stores on Magento

Inspiration comes from great examples and success stories. On a recent hunt for inspiration, we crafted a list of what we consider to be some of the most authentic British brands. Each of these brands has their own personality and is creating a name for themselves in the fashion world. These companies are more than just trendsetters — they’re also beloved brands that have gained the trust of their clients. Some of these companies are large, and others are smaller family-owned businesses. One thing they all have in common is how much they care about their clients and how much effort they have put into creating stellar online stores.

Let’s take a “tour” of 15 authentic brands and our favorite features of their websites. This journey will teach you about some fashion trendsetters and provide inspiration for future projects of your own!

Vevie

Vevie is a luxury women’s clothing brand that was founded by Caroline Greenslade, one of Britain’s top fashion designers. You may have spotted her designs in popular fashion magazines. Vivie offers stylish women’s clothing for travel, spa visits, and workouts. Their functional clothing makes women feel confident and attractive, and even the visuals and stories on their website make you feel refreshed and energized.

Vevie attracts customers who care about their health, and the brand inspires readers to join their health-focused lifestyle movement with their inspiring BEVIVIE journal.

When you visit their online store, you’ll find a lookbook with recent collections and a variety of their clothing. The Vevie team is consistent in their dedication to their philosophy, and they reinforce their ideas through interesting blog posts. We found this to be an excellent example of a website that looks fresh and clean, emphasizes brand vision, and makes readers feel good about themselves.

Solace London

Solace London is a brand centered around friendship, creativity, inspiration, and a love of fashion. It was founded by best friends Laura Taylor and Ryan Holliday-Stevens, who collaborated on creative design and grew their synergy into a famous high-fashion brand. They have spent 12 years working together, crafting their stylish clothing using sculptural elements and focusing on comfy, modern, and authentic fashion for a variety of occasions. Their celebrity customers have included Emily Ratajkowski, Jennifer Lopez, Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, and Zendaya, and they have been featured in Harper’s Bazaar.

The founders describe the style of their clothing as modern futurism balanced with timeless minimalism. Their style is for an elegant and confident woman who knows how to look great in chic pieces.

Solace London’s vision is echoed quite clearly in the design of their website: their online shop is sleek and concise; there are no distractions from the products they’re selling; there are no elements that are tough on the eyes. Their Lookbook, with its beautiful and sharp pictures, highlights their collections and emphasizes the overall quality of their products.

As Ryan noted in an interview with Fashionista, the word “solace” means “safe place.” Indeed, the Solace London website is a site that makes customers feel safe and included.

VogaCloset

The VogaCloset store offers accessible and stylish pieces for women, men, and even children. The store provides excellent looks for women of any size and figure and makes the latest trends very accessible.

The brand’s philosophy communicates the same idea: fashion exists to make people feel good, and it should be available to all. They prove their point by having unique — and useful — categories on their website: Shop by Figure and Plus Sizes. These categories help target audiences find clothing more easily, which saves them time.

Customers enjoy free delivery, order tracking, special offers, and more. In addition, VogaCloset uses influencers to promote their clothing. This helps the brand increase its presence on social media, and it lets customers share their experiences wearing clothes. This also promotes new trends.

This store’s motto, “Making fashion accessible,” inspired us, and they definitely rise to the occasion.

MeSheMe

MeSheMe is a fair and ethical company that sells everyday clothing for millenials. Their workers get paid fair wages and enjoy good working conditions. MeSheMe also donates money to Macmillan Cancer Support, a cancer-focused charity.

Their online store is accessible and user-friendly. On their listing page, customers can view items by color, price, and size, and the search and filter features help users hone in on something exact. Their online store places special emphasis on two unique categories: Sales, where customers can buy items at special low prices, and MeSheMe Exclusive, which highlights special designs.

MeSheMe cares about every customer. There are student discounts and special discounts for using their hashtag on Instagram. Any customer can be featured on their official Instagram page, which creates an emotional connection with the brand and helps build customer trust and loyalty.

MeSheMe creates good vibes, does good deeds, and designs clothing for forward-thinking and fashionable women.

Temperley London

Alice Temperley, founder of Temperley London, creates modern, bohemian, and feminine articles of clothing. The core focus of her brand is on ready-to-wear collections of cocktail, bridal, and evening dresses and suits. The company defines itself as a responsible luxury business, using eco-friendly fabrics and donating sales from excess clothing to charity. Famous faces including Michelle Obama, Olga Kurylenko, Kate Hudson, Amber Heard, and Florence Welch have chosen Temperley London to help create their stylish looks.

The brand’s personality appears in the store’s design: it’s bright and stylish, and it highlights popular dress styles and collections. One of the brand’s specialties is beautiful dresses for one of life’s most exciting occasions: weddings. On the Bridal category page, brides-to-be can book fittings for the dress of their dreams.

Beyond their clothing options, Temperley London has a blog where they share updates on their charitable activities and brand achievements. This keeps customers in the know.

Their website has many useful features, but we wanted to be sure to mention their detailed product and category pages. Product pages have pop-up windows with size and care guides, and there are video previews of products to help gauge how they look on real people. The comprehensive Lookbook lets customers get a preview of the latest collections.

The store’s look and feel are in line with the company’s philosophy, and the store makes the brand and their high-fashion dresses seem attractive to customers.

PJ Pan

Luxury pyjamas with superb quality — that’s what PJ Pan is all about. This brand sells men’s, women’s, and children’s pyjamas and clothes for around the house. The founder decided to create this brand after a failed shopping trip in 2008 when they couldn’t find good pyjamas. The next thing they knew they were searching for fabrics, and a few months later they had formed their own company. PJ Pan brings the finest quality homewear to their customers. The pyjamas are hand-tailored in Wales, and the fabric is sourced both locally and abroad.

Let’s take a look at the site’s design and content. One useful feature is the Matching page, which shows designs that are available for both kids and adults. This is a great idea for families.

Another great opportunity for customers is their Loyalty program. For each British pound spent, customers get 1 PJ Point, which can be redeemed to make a future purchase.

Blog posts and other site pages highlight background info and news on the brand, their manufacturing process, and their fabrics. These resources help customers explore the brand’s history and develop loyalty.

Among the other features they offer are quick product view, live chat, a calculator for delivery estimates, and gift wrapping. These features help the brand interact with customers and meet customers’ highest expectations.

In general, the store is a pleasant website that makes you feel, well, cozy.

Oki-ni

Oki-ni specializes in premium menswear from famous designers around the globe. Their customers are style-conscious men who seek exceptional clothing designs. They have been selling innovative and functional clothing online since 2001, longer than most other eCommerce brands.

We can feel their functional approach even in the design of the website: it’s unique and fashion-forward. The main page has a simple design and highlights the main categories and deals available, which makes for an efficient shopping experience.

The product page contains everything from size and delivery info, high-quality images, and customer support. There is also a Loyalty program in place, which lets customers earn rewards points to spend on future purchases. As we can see, Oki-ni cares about its customers and strives to create a convenient shopping experience for them.

In our opinion, the coolest part about their website is the Blog. The blog shares interviews with brand representatives, so customers can learn more about the history, philosophy, and product creation behind the brands they are interested in. This inspires customers and helps them feel connected to the brands they care about.

Oki-ni offers visitors high-quality men’s clothing, as well as a clear and functional user interface for an improved online shopping experience.

Heidi Klein

Heidi Klein is a luxury swimwear, bikini, and resort wear brand. Kate Moss, Olivia Palermo, Sienna Miller, and Jennifer Aniston are among their clients. The brand, which started in 2002 as the UK’s first pop-up holiday shop, has become a strong force on the UK market, as well as globally. Now they are an independent company that offers a variety of resort wear for the well-traveled client. Heidi Klein is dedicated to creating comfortable and elegant pieces that will match any style and body shape. The brand uses high-quality components to create their products, they test their fabrics thoroughly, and they ensure that their styles are versatile.

Their website is relaxing and makes you feel like you’re getting ready for a great vacation. The design is clear, bright, and inviting, and it evokes thoughts of the beach and long vacations. We explored the entire store, and here are some of our favorite parts about it.

First, the store has an advanced search feature, which gives customers a tailored view of the products available, suggests similar options, and simplifies search in general.

Next is the style guide page. This helps customers by specifying certain types of products and providing ideas for styling. Personal Swimwear Fit service allows shoppers to get expert advice on the perfect swimsuit and accessories.

Their loyalty program lets shoppers earn rewards to use toward future purchases. Growing customer loyalty and incentivizing active customers to make purchases are both good steps the brand takes.

All in all, Heidi Klein’s website is responsive, looks good, and has all the features shoppers need to find the perfect vacation piece. Moreover, their products are easy to fall in love with.

AQ/AQ

This stylish and glamorous brand positions themselves as a female-first company. AQ/AQ, which was created by Julie Lingard in 2007, designs clothing for confident and elegant women and makes them feel feminine and good about their outfits. Their mission is to make women feel unstoppable and to give them that extra spring in their step.

Their website gives a great overall impression. It’s cleanly designed, stylish, and simple. This helps users explore the brand’s history and philosophy, if they choose to do so, and to easily find the products they are looking for. There are several helpful features to guide shoppers, such as quick product view, detailed filters for the category page, and a live chat.

Their blog, Editorial, inspires readers with stories of successful women and highlights from the brand’s collections. You can even add products you like to your shopping cart right from blog posts!

This brand is truly great and authentic.

Bella Freud

Bella Freud is the founder and mastermind behind this brand. With styles mimicking those from the ‘70s, Bella Freud’s fashion differs from what other brands have in mind. They also differ by offering lines for both adults and children, so people of all ages can find clothing, accessories, and gifts.

The bright, engaging, and even audacious design of the website offers something to attract the attention of all sorts of customers.

We found the site as convenient as it is authentic to the brand’s ideals. It’s structured around product categories, with effective product pages that share images, sizes, and product details. There are no distractions on product pages that might keep shoppers from making their purchases.

The Lookbook page lets shoppers explore recent collections and provides an easy means for purchasing products. Purchasing from the Lookbook pages is similar to using a quick add feature, and it saves customers time when shopping.

Lastly, we want to add that this brand left a strong impression on us. Their store gives off vibes of revolutionary art and fashion, which is in line with the brand’s philosophy and ideals.

ALEXACHUNG

Alexa Chung, creator of the brand ALEXACHUNG, is a British writer, model, and fashion designer. She loves styling clothes and has been featured many times in magazines for her perfect looks and dedication to the fashion world. Her vision is to create clothes that people will like and want to wear. ALEXACHUNG starts with a foundation of experience in fashion, tacks on a touch of posh Parisian style, adds some British flair, and thus their style is born. Alexa launched her brand in 2016 and since then has served 15 countries around the world.

The design of the website corresponds to the philosophy of the brand. It’s a fun and girly site, with details to entertain customers while they shop. The site uses icons instead of category names in the footer, and the overall design sets the brand apart from competitors. We can see how each product looks on a model, which gives shoppers a sense of seeing the item in real life before purchasing it.

The New In category helps customers learn about the latest arrivals.

Details like these simplify the shopping experience. The brand’s philosophy and style shine through with the help of lookbooks and social media pages, and customers are free to learn plenty of interesting things about Alexa Chung’s products.

JOY

This fashion and lifestyle brand offers customers feel-good fashion. JOY crafts vintage-style womenswear and casual menswear, with something to please all customers. In addition to clothing, customers can find homeware and accessories on JOY’s site — all part of helping customers create beautiful interiors.

If you explore their shop, you can find a variety of features to assist customers, such as a loyalty program, effective product filters, and detailed product pages. These features simplify the shopping experience, and they help grow brand loyalty.

We want to point out one feature that does a particularly good job at assisting customers and growing loyalty: the Click & Collect feature. JOY partners with HubBox to allow online customers to pick up packages from nearby shops, such as pharmacies or post offices. Customers can access this program via a special application, which is easy to fill out on mobile devices. This is a great example of customer service.

Overall, the JOY website is designed well, with great usability. There are no extraneous pages or details. The store reflects the brand’s main message: providing feel-good fashion and imparting JOY on customers.

John Smedley

John Smedley has been around since 1784. It is the oldest manufacturing factory in the world, crafting beautiful, high-quality garments. Their classic clothing and retro collections remain popular among customers as decades and centuries pass.

The brand has collaborated with many famous companies, including Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith, Yves St Laurent, and Prada. Their dedication to British heritage and sustainability is truly remarkable. They have restored iconic British cottages, participated in a sustainability program for climate-change education, and developed methods to integrate sustainability into their company strategy. These efforts have earned them the respect and attention of many customers, like-minded non-profits, and other brands.

Throughout their long journey as a company, the brand has always defined themselves as a family business. All of their employees work closely together as a sort of community, which guarantees a dedication to the quality of their work and the clothing they deliver to the world.

In 2013, John Smedley received the Royal Warrant of Appointment from Her Majesty the Queen as a “Manufacturer of Fine Knitwear.” The brand has proven themselves to be a responsible company that is attentive to details and quality — and they provide truly British knitwear.

The store’s design is precise and classic, and in this way, it conveys the main ideas of the brand’s identity and positioning. Customers can learn everything about the brand and their background on the Discovery page, which highlights the brand’s history, from creation to the current day. The Discovery page also lets shoppers learn about collaborations and interviews with famous designers, lookbooks, and the brand’s detailed manufacturing process. By reading this page, customer trust in the John Smedley brand can grow, and readers are invited to travel the length of its impressive and ongoing history.

The shopping experience at the store is simple: customers can buy products from the listing page and find trending products and categories by fit and style on the dropdown menu. Each category has description with a blurb about its history and inspiration.

John Smedley remains a classic in terms of manufacturing processes, clothes, and business style. Their consistency and the years they have spent improving their strategy have made them a successful and timeless company.

Aquascutum

Aquascutum is synonymous with elegance. In operation since 1851, the company creates classic trench coats, polo shirts, formal shirts, and other business-style clothing. Aquascutum’s story began with the creation of waterproof wool and progressed with the design of their iconic coat, which was promoted by King Edward VII. Opportunities to dress celebrities, politicians, and members of the royal family helped the brand attract more and more customers. Their latest invention in garment technology was named the greatest technical advance in rainwear.

The Aquascutum website can be described as colorful, elegant, and truly British. They offer several features and useful pages: we want to highlight their free shipping, categories, and simple and functional filters as our favorites for how much they simplify the shopping experience.

The website offers detailed product descriptions, a full background story on their brand, and customer-support information.

We consider Aquascutum to be a great brand with a user-friendly store, a long history, and top-notch clothing.

Calm Collected

The clothing label CALM was founded in 2010 by Crew à la Mode. This brand specializes in premium yachting apparel, from activewear to everyday pieces. Customers can create capsule wardrobes, mixing and matching different pieces to wear as part of everyday outfits or for nautical adventures. Their products are best described as high-performing, and they certainly deliver on that count, seeing as they have a Performance page on their website. As a sportswear brand, Calm created their luxury garments to be comfortable, durable, and long-lasting.

They have a separate website with more information about their team, their work, what inspires them, and the details of their manufacturing. Crew à la Mode offers complete crew uniforms, as well as collaborations, customizations, stewardess services, budget planning, and more.

Their primary online store has a clean and minimalist design that mirrors the brand’s philosophy. They focus on products and style, keeping visitors from getting overwhelmed by extraneous website components. In addition to their products, they focus on their values, letting customers know about their manufacturing processes, their dedication to sustainability, and the quality of their clothing.

We enjoyed browsing their online store. Every section was fun to explore, with beautiful images and useful information about products and the company’s background.

Our tour of authentic British brands stops here, now that we’re full of inspiration. We have seen some great ideas, and hopefully, we were able to convey why we admire these successful and creative fashion brands. They not only help clients feel good but make our lives better and can improve our moods. They are making an effort to change the world, improve people’s attitudes towards difficult questions, and help people in need. They strive to be sustainable brands.

Thanks for joining us! We hope you enjoyed this tour as much as we did.

Choosing a CMS Platform for Your Store in 2020

When planning to start an online store in 2020, you may think about choosing a CMS platform. But doing that can be a tough task sometimes because there are a lot of options out there. Which one best suits your goal? Which one has a reasonable price but also offers the features you need?

Today’s article will guide you on how to get the selection process done right.

Why Use a CMS?

A CMS (content management system) is where you can hold and manage the digital content. It gives you templates or themes to customize the design, colors, style, etc. of your website.

Here are four reasons why you should use a CMS:

• Flexibility: You’re free to customize the colors, add or remove pages, create email marketing, or install extensions or plugins. You can change the theme for your website without disrupting the content.
• Accessible content management: You don’t need to know HTML or code to work with CMS. Most popular CMSs support intuitive and easy-to-use layout editors.
• Safety: You can go back to your CMS dashboard and edit content as much as you want. Everything is safe in there.
• Automation: CMSs, like WordPress, apply some intelligent automation mechanisms. For example, it autosaves a draft whenever you upload your content. Or, it’ll publish the content at the time you set before.

CMS Advantages

Let’s talk about some of the specific advantages that a CMS might offer. These advantages are also the features that you should consider when choosing a CMS platform.

Easy to Use

Most CMSs provide you with a powerful editor and a bunch of features, which makes your content looks top-notch.

SEO-Friendly

Using CMS gives you several benefits in the SEO game. When it comes to on-page SEO, a CMS platform allows you to handle HTML markup, permalinks, title tags, headings, and images.

Within Your Budget

Some CMSs offer reasonable pricing packages. Others are even free to use. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to create your own store.

Allow Integration of Web Analytics

CMS allows you to log in to view performance metrics like traffic, referrers, keyword queries, page views, and more. This is a great way to track the overall performance of your website and react to its changes.

Picking the Right CMS for Your Website

Many CMSs have a lot of features, but the truth is you sometimes may not need more than a few. For this reason, you should do thorough research before making a decision.

Make Sure It Is Scalable

You should keep scalability top of your mind when choosing a CMS platform. Ensure the CMS you select can grow with you and support the functionalities you think your business will need in the future.

Choose a CMS That Supports Omnichannel

If you want to give your customers a better omnichannel experience, you should choose a CMS that supports omnichannel. It should allow you to learn from every customer interaction and identify visitors’ intentions when they’re in your store. Hence, you can create content in real-time to maximize shopper engagement.

Choose a UI That Is Intuitive

You should choose a CMS that is mobile and desktop- friendly. Everyone in your team can work with it on the go without any issues.

10 CMS Platforms to Consider

As said earlier, there are many CMS platforms for you to choose from. Below we handpick the top 10 for you, along with their price, amount of stores, main benefits, etc.

WordPress

• Price: Free.
• Amount of stores: 1.
• Popular companies that use it: TechCrunch, Sony Music, BBC America.
• Main benefits: Highly customizable features, low-cost server maintenance, tons of plugins.
• Best for: blogging, eCommerce, capturing leads, etc.

Drupal

• Price: Free.
• Amount of stores: 1.
• Popular companies that use it: Tesla, Pinterest Blog, Lush.
• Main benefits: Flexible custom post creation, comprehensive taxonomy system, high-tech security.
• Best for: eCommerce.

Joomla!

• Price: Start at $29 per 6 months.
• Amount of stores: 1.
• Popular companies that use it: IKEA, Peugeot, Northern Railway UK.
• Main benefits: Powerful PHP applications, multilingual support, and unique templates.
• Best for: Complicated websites, not casual blogging.

Magento

• Price: Free.
• Amount of stores: Unlimited.
• Popular companies that use it: Christian Louboutin, Helly Hansen, and Urbanista
• Main benefits: Fast site loading speed, multi-website options, SEO optimization, and sales features.
• Best for: eCommerce.

Squarespace

• Price: Start at $22/month.
• Amount of stores: 1.
• Popular companies that use it: Tudor Watch, Rodarte, Lumio
• Main benefits: A massive collection of design templates, high security, 24/7 customer support.
• Best for: eCommerce.

PrestaShop

• Price: Free.
• Amount of stores: Unlimited.
• Popular companies that use it: Harry Fay, Charuca, Atelier Privé.
• Main benefits: Optimized product page layout, powerful navigation, intuitive interface.
• Best for: eCommerce.

Wix

• Price: Free.
• Amount of stores: Unlimited.
• Popular companies that use it: Tobias Becs, Good Feeling Goods, Cuts & Bruises
• Main benefits: Massive template collection, intuitive drag and drop interface, fast loading speed.
• Best for: Small businesses, restaurants, online stores, and artists.

Shopify

• Price: Start at $29/month.
• Amount of stores: Unlimited.
• Popular companies that use it: Kylie Cosmetics, Rebecca Minkoff, Frank Body
• Main benefits: Professional website builder, fully-customizable templates, and media assets.
• Best for: eCommerce.

Umbraco

• Price: Free.
• Amount of stores: Unlimited.
• Popular companies that use it: Vueling, Suffolk University, Inspirato
• Main benefits: Flexible CMS, intuitive editing experience, Umbraco cloud.
• Best for: eCommerce.

Sitecore CMS

• Price: N/A.
• Amount of stores: Unlimited.
• Popular companies that use it: GAF, Thule, BMI Group
• Main benefits: Drag and drop feature, multilingual content, responsive design, headless CMS.
• Best for: eCommerce.

CMS Security Comparison

Here is the comparison among the above CMSs about security. Use when choosing a CMS platform, but remember that no CMSs are 100% secure! However, some of the options provide robust security for their platform.

The Selection Process

When choosing a CMS platform, you should have a strategic selection process. Don’t jump into a CMS, and quickly determine it might be your ideal choice. It’s better to take some time to make a plan and check options.

Looking from a Business Perspective

A scalable CMS is a significant investment that affects your budget. But this investment will pay off soon, and it’s crucial to your company’s long-term success.

Always listen to the opinions of all stakeholders. But don’t forget to keep your business perspective in mind.

The Vision of the Project

Knowing exactly what your customers want. Does your new CMS fill the gap between you and your buyers? Does it help you deliver content to them effectively? Don’t follow the masses unless you know that investing in a CMS will benefit your store.

Strategic Goals vs. New Tech Stack

Before investing in a CMS, think about how it’ll help you solve your existing problems. You should buy a new CMS when you understand what the greatest impacts it’ll bring to you. There are many lightweight tools out there that can help you carry out marketing tactics. Try to extend your solutions.

Buyers’ Persona

What kind of content do your buyers need? How does a CMS deliver that content to them? How do they interact with the CMS? Create a detailed persona of your buyers, and ensure your CMS helps you manage content that is useful to their persona. Also, creating buyers’ persona will help you make your business strategy more client-oriented, which leads to more sales and increases customers’ loyalty.

User Scenario for Testing CMS Options

After you have a user scenario, remember to use it to test CMSs. Ensure the demos of your chosen CMSs cover the same usage scenario.

Build Your Dream Store

Here is the stage when you know what you want from a business perspective. You’ve accessed all risks, talked to the team and chose some options for your future store. Now, you need to find the right partner who will create you a remarkable store, and make all the work from a technical side. Below, we highlighted the main points of this process.

Find the Development Partner

If you don’t have the in-house development team, you want to find a reliable and competent partner or agency. They will help to come up with the best option and hold all the development process. They also will ensure that you know how to work with CMS, or they can provide you with ongoing support regarding technical questions related to your online store.

Write a Request for Proposal

An RFP helps to be both sides on the same page. This document shows your needs and objectives and helps service providers to demonstrate whether their experience fits your project goals or not. This will help you to ease the selection process.

Evaluate Agencies’ Responses and Select One Vendor

Before you select a vendor, take a look at your top choices and rate how they meet your requirements in technical, functional, and business aspects for your future store development. Consider how much they share your values. Make sure the solution they offer will grow with your company and remain relevant to your needs.

Make a Step to the Beginning of Success Story

You’ve selected a company that will create a great store for expanding your business or starting a new path online. Now, you may enjoy new experience, and with the right team you can be sure that the entire process will be smooth and interesting for you. It can take a month and more. But in the end, getting the right CMS and develop a store will pay off in the end.

Tiger of Sweden: a Sustainable Brand That Gives Customers Confidence of Being Yourself

Look how the brand with the vast knowledge and a youthful view of tailoring has grown and expanded worldwide.

Tiger of Sweden is a Stockholm-based fashion house established in 1903 and continues its long path of success till nowadays.

The brand was established by two partners – Marcus Schwartzman and Hjalmar Nordström. Both partners didn’t focus on rich people. Instead, they took the direction to produce suits for men from all walks of life. They made comfort and fashion accessible. Later on, the company started to grow and hired the best tailors to cover the booming demand for their suits.

After some differences over the brand’s direction, the company was ruled only by Marcus Schwartzman. That was a man of big ideas and innovations. He first brought an American car to the small town of Sweden and always was ahead of the time and demand. In the late 20s, he launched the “Tiger” – a range of suits graded in three levels of fabric quality. It was an instant classic, and to emphasize the success of these suits, the company has changed the name Tiger of Sweden. The new logo was created in 2018 and got its timeless feel. For their new visual identity, designers used an emblem from 1926 and font, which is similar to its 1960’s version. Now, Tiger of Sweden got their way to a future with an homage to their past.

There were many ups and downs. The company passed the World War 2, created the best factory for workers, the machine that measured customers’ body parts for creating bespoke suits, collaborated with famous bands, and last but not least, launched their first collection for women.

Nowadays, the company operates in Europe, South Africa, and Canada.

Here is the list of tips from the article which you can take after reading it:

1. Complete product page with more information. Help your customers to find the relevant information by adding details regarding sizes, colors available, product description with a care guide, and customers’ feedback. All of the mentioned information will help to purchase without going to the additional pages and possibly exit the website.
2. Create remarkable pages dedicated to the brand’s achievements. It can be either social or environmental initiatives or innovations. Highlight the history and results that the company made in the past years. This helps to strengthen the brand’s position in the customer’s minds and achieve more loyalty.
3. Add user-friendly features to promote brand worldwide. Use the power of advertisement and media to create brand awareness. Consider adding features that will help to share your collection on other sources such as Instagram. You can do it by using an Instagram shopping widget.
4. Improve customer service quality. Add FAQ regarding the order, shipping, returns, products, and related topics. Communicate with your audience through your website, newsletters, blog, and brand.

Let’s continue with an overview of the website and see what makes Tiger of Sweden famous and sustainable brand, and why their website sells. You can use this detailed review to add useful features to your store and elevate your brand to the next level.

Website Overview

The website has a clean design, and overall it translates the position of a luxury fashion brand. The header has plain style; however, it helps a customer to choose the desired product easily with the placement of all categories.

Below, a customer can check the latest collections and also sign up for the newsletter. If they want to do so, they will be redirected on the separate page, which has filled out the form and has an orange color (which reminds us of a tiger). This retention marketing strategy works great for collecting a base of loyal clients, giving them discounts, and sending relevant information about upcoming sales and new collections. It also helps to attract lost customers with emails and offers.

Now, let’s check each part of the website in detail.

Top Useful Features

Product Listing Features to Guide Customers to the Purchase

If a customer wants to browse through the product range, various filters will help them to get a better overview of the product.

Besides the filtering of the products, which consists of category, color, and material, a customer can change the view of a product to the outfit view to see how it looks on a model.

Also, by hovering the image, a customer can check the colors available and the price of the product. Many brands use detailed product descriptions to avoid uncertainty and long-time decision making. All of these user-friendly features help to place the order faster without any doubts regarding size, color, or price.

A Simple Yet Detailed Product Page to Build Trust

If a customer wants to check product-related information, they’ll get covered with all the information on the product page. This information is arranged close-together, a customer clicks on the relevant section and receives the exact information. This helps to focus their attention on a product and lets getting comprehensive information.

First, there are two size guides:

• Store’s size guide, which opens as a side pop up, and has all the sizes listed and how to measure section.

This will be helpful for those customers who are unsure about their size or Tiger’s clothing sizes. It includes Virtusize – a tool that helps to compare customer’s size with the size of the clothing from the store.

• If a customer clicks on the how-to measure icon, it comes to a separate page with all the sizes of each product. This will give a customer a feeling of confidence and safety because of one of the possible fears that occur while shopping is the choice of the wrong size.

All sizes are shown in swatches, which is easier for a customer to see what is available and also see if the specific size is out-of-stock.

The other useful feature that leads to the offline purchase is – View store availability. It helps the brand to make offline purchases.

As a responsible brand, Tiger of Sweden covers all possible questions that may occur during shopping, that’s why they provide customers with detailed information on shipping, delivery & returns, and payment methods.

These sections also help to avoid the uncertainty of a customer to the products and the store’s credibility. The pop up with information appears at the right side of the page and doesn’t disappear so that the customer can check everything on one page.

The product page includes big images of the product; You may also like block with similar products, and Wear it with block. The last one helps to find matching products, and also redirects to each product category, which means that a company can sell related products and make more sales.

One Page Checkout for Easy Order Placement

Fewer clicks and easy fill out forms make the process of order simpler.

A customer will place the order quicker, as they can see all the parts of the order, delivery, and edit if needed. A simple checkout decreases the cart abandonment rate and increases the number of orders.

Remarkable Sustainability Pages to Represent the Brand’s Initiatives

Sustainability is one of the most important parts of the business strategy nowadays for any brand that produces goods by themselves. Dealing with climate change, air and water pollution, deforestation and global warming is not an easy task. Many governmental and non-profit organizations convince companies to take responsibility and make a contribution to the Earth and people’s future. Tiger of Sweden is such a company.

To stay transparent and remain sustainable, the company strives to minimize all the internal waste, offset the carbon footprint, comply with the Fur Free Alliance conditions and support the Five Animal Freedoms. There are even more initiatives described in the Sustainability section.

Such information helps a company to show the connection with the global community, communicate brand values and the dedication of the brand to the world’s problems.

Brand History as a Powerful Marketing Tool

By highlighting the history of the brand, you allow customers to learn more about your brand and become your fans.

You also increase credibility to your business providing the additional information regarding your brand, collections, principles of manufacturing and work, etc. Creative storytelling is part of a successful marketing strategy. The design of the pages complement all together, and high quality graphics along with text don’t overload the reader.

Look how Tiger of Sweden highlights a new collection.

Additional Pages and Features to Provide Exceptional Customer Service

One such feature that grabbed our attention was a wishlist. A customer simply adds the desired item to buy it later, so it’s crucial to make the process of adding a product from wishlist to cart smooth.

Here a customer can add, remove the product, choose the size, and add the product to cart. This enables more order placements from the wishlist.

The next important page regarding excellent customer service is care guide for each product. It reduces customer’s anxiety regarding the purchase and helps them find relevant information in one place.

Most fashion brands showcase collections via press releases. It is a newsbreak about the brand or representative for the promotion through famous channels. So, it is important to keep the world with all the new collections and events that can increase the brand’s reputation.

Tiger of Sweden creates press releases in their press room and allows using their images for the external resources and publications.

Overall, this brand has a strong position on the market, and continues to grow its potential online and expand their eCommerce efforts.

What is CMS? A Guide with Definition, Costs, and Top Options for 2020

What is CMS? A lot of people may work with WordPress for a long time, but only some of them know it’s a content management system (a.k.a CMS).

Today we’ll explain it to you.

Content Management System (Definition)

In a word, a CMS is an online platform that allows you to create, edit, and share digital content. You don’t need to know HTML, CSS, or any programming language to do the basic site. Just select a CMS, install it, and start making use of it to build your desired website.

With a CMS, creating a website is like a piece of cake.

How Does CMS Work?

Let’s take a look at the best features of a CMS.

CMS Website Features

The interface of a typical CMS includes the following features:

• a user dashboard to manage websites.
• themes and templates to design websites quickly.
• plugins and integrations to add functionalities and capabilities.
• content management capabilities like the editor and media library.
• search engine optimization (SEO) tools to ensure the web ranks well in search engine results pages.
• Additional functionalities like a website builder to customize sites.

Let’s start at the top.

User Dashboard

A user dashboard is the entry point to a CMS. It’s where you can access all the features of your CMS and gain insights into its performance quickly.

From the user dashboard, you can access your back end on both mobile and desktop, edit pages, publish content, install plugins, track website performance, and other activities.

Themes & Templates

A CMS gives you the freedom to design a website and customize its appearance. Some content management systems may offer a few dozen themes, but others may contain hundreds of them.

Templates are often designed for specific industries like travel, writer, eCommerce, restaurants, etc. Each theme has a complete website structure and navigation menus. Just choose any theme that fits your goal and start the design process.

Plugins & Integrations

You can install plugins to your site for specific purposes. For example, if you want to check the keyword density and SEO level of your content, you can install Yoast SEO. Content management systems like WordPress support many types of plugins.

With CMS, you can install the Google Analytics plugin to track site performance. Also, you can make use of other integrations such as social media, payment processing, SEO tools, popups, etc.

Content Management

Think about the storage of a CMS like a series of folders, which allows you to upload text, links, videos, and images. You can even edit content within the CMS, like deleting unnecessary videos or cropping photos before publishing them to the site.

SEO

Most content management systems offer SEO tools to boost your website’s chances of ranking well in search engines like Google. These tools include:

• Automatic meta tag creation.
• Sitemap generation.
• Places to add content descriptions.
• Accelerated mobile pages.

Additional Functionality

Besides all the above features, a good CMS also contains additional functionality. Once you’ve created a post, you can post content immediately or schedule it to publish whenever you want. Thanks to that, you can put all the articles together into a content calendar and use CMS to share them.

A CMS allows you to add more users to your website. This feature is useful when you don’t have much time to control your site and want to assign someone to take charge of this task. Free to choose any role for them you want, like a subscriber or a contributor.

7 Most Popular Content Management Systems

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, and Magento are the most common names in the CMS industry. Let’s find out more about each of these.

WordPress

Source: BuiltWith

• Market share: 60.4%.
• Total live sites: 27,021,750.
• Usage distribution in the top 1 million sites: 341,364.
• Most popular sites using WordPress: TechCrunch, The New Yorker, BBC America.
• Price: Free.

WordPress currently powers over one-third of existing websites on the Internet. It’s an open-source CMS, meaning anyone can use and modify it for free. Using WordPress, you can build many things, such as eCommerce stores, blogs, online courses, social communities, etc. This powerful CMS also offers a massive library of themes as well as plugins.

Joomla

Source: BuiltWith

• Market share: 5.7%.
• Total live sites: 1,857,666.
• Usage distribution in the top 1 million sites: 20,128.
• Most popular sites using Joomla: Harvard University, The Hill, Linux, MTV Greece.
• Price: Free.

Joomla is the second most well-known CMS. It’s also open-source, but more advanced than WordPress. Some of Joomla’s best features include flexibility for different content types and multilingual support.

Drupal

Source: BuiltWith

• Market share: 4.7%.
• Total live sites: 651,648.
• Usage distribution in the top 1 million sites: 28,916.
• Most popular sites using Drupal: Tesla, The Economist, Australian Government.
• Price: Free.

Drupal offers lockdown security. That’s why it’s the common choice for government institutions and other security-conscious players. Besides, Drupal provides access controls, custom content types and views, and taxonomies for handling lots of content.

Shopify

Source: BuiltWith

• Market share: 2.7%.
• Total live sites: 1,187,578.
• Usage distribution in the top 1 million sites: 23,448.
• Most popular sites using Shopify: Gymshark, Fashion Nova, Taylor Stitch.
• Price: Start at $29/mo.

Shopify is a CMS designed specifically for eCommerce store owners. It offers an easy way to add, list, edit, and organize products with a streamlined CMS. Keyword tags, multiple variants for each product, and the facility to drag and drop product images are available as well.

Squarespace

Source: BuiltWith

• Market share: 2.7%.
• Total live sites: 2,001,701.
• Usage distribution in the top 1 million sites: 9,252.
• Most popular sites using Squarespace: Big Human, UberEats, Cornell Creme.
• Price: Start at $16/mo.

Squarespace offers one single interface where you can change the content, tweak design styles, add custom CSS, set up analytics, etc. This CMS also allows you to drag and drop elements to create a website design you want.

Wix

Source: BuiltWith

• Market share: 1.9%
• Total live sites: 3,800,881
• Usage distribution in the top 1 million sites: 6,009
• Most popular sites using Wix: Vintique, Good Feeling Goods, Tobias Becs.
• Price: Start at $10/mo.

Wix is an ideal CMS for beginners who want to create a website from pre-built templates and don’t want to customize things too much. Wix also provides eCommerce functionalities, but they aren’t as flexible as what you can do with Shopify.

Magento

Source: BuiltWith

• Market share: 1.8%
• Total live sites: 280,595
• Usage distribution in the top 1 million sites: 12,080
• Most popular sites using Magento: Coca Cola, Ford, Olympus, Warby Parker.
• Price: Free, but a full-featured Magento eCommerce is also available.

Magento CMS allows you to create new pages, blocks, and widgets for your online store. You can choose specific layout designs and templates to design your designed site. It’s a feature-rich CMS that you should take a look at.

Benefits of CMS

With a CMS, you can save a great deal of time in building a site and have more energy to create high-quality content. The last part of this article will show you the best advantages of using a CMS.

Fits any Type and Size of Business

Most content management systems support an easy-to-use interface and ready-made themes. This gives people with little or no-technical skills the ability to build their website and sell online or share knowledge of the world.

For tech-savvy users, they can add codes to the custom CSS to further customize their sites. Also, they can upgrade their CMS or hosting plan to experience advanced features like different storage levels and premium SEO tools.

Wide Range of Integrations

A CMS often comes with intuitive content management integrations with third-party tools. Let’s say you’re using WordPress for content management and HubSpot CRM. If you install and use the HubSpot WordPress plugin, you can easily group your contacts into lists and track every interaction they’ve had across your site. The benefits also cover built-in analytics, simple email automation, etc.

Flexible Management and Enhanced Control

All content management systems offer an easy way to manage content. You can:

• Set up categories, tags, links, and widgets to organize your content.
• Add text, images, videos, audios, etc. to posts and pages.
• Approve and delete comments or reply to comments instantly.
• Allow others to manage content and control your CMS.
• Schedule content to publish it at any time you want.

You can get these done by going into different CMS features like Posts, Pages, Media Library, etc.

Optimized Development Resources and Costs

If you don’t use a CMS, you may have to hire front-end developers to make changes to your site or back-end developers to integrate an app to your site. Once you decide to install a CMS, everything goes smoothly. Non-tech employees can manage content without involving the development personnel. Using a CMS undoubtedly helps save your resources of all types.

Website Usability: Tips to Test and Improve It

As the world is moving towards digital error, a lot of businesses are also striving to go digital. By this, we mean increasing their online presence using various online platforms such as websites.

Having a good website is often a plus since it helps people to find out more information about your business. However, having a basic website won’t cut it out for you. When building a website for your business, you need to put much focus on user experience.

This can be achieved by prioritizing customer engagement and investing more on the usability of the site. This brings us to the next question.

What Is Website Usability?

When it comes to online business, website usability plays a vital role. To have higher conversions, you need to ensure that your website is simple to use. Website usability can be achieved by focusing more on customers and improving each step of interaction with products or information on the store.

This includes easy navigation to enable them to find what they are looking for fast. You also need to ensure that customers will be able to complete several tasks without leaving the site. The effectiveness of your website can be measured by how easy it is to use it. According to Adobe statistics, 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.

This is a very crucial factor in online business, especially when it comes to customer interaction. Website usability can, therefore, be described as the act of improving the effectiveness of a website by investing more in user experience.

Benefits of High Website Usability

Businesses that have easy-to-use websites will always enjoy a few more benefits compared to the others. For instance, you will enjoy increased conversion rates.

A good website usability can also help you by minimizing users exit rate. This will instead help you to retain your customers and generate more sales.

Tips to Improve the Usability of a Website

To improve your site’s usability, you need to have a clear understanding of how people are going to use the website. This will help you to come up with a few ideas on how you can help them complete tasks fast within your site. With that said, here are a few tips that can help you get started.

Determine How to Test It

The first step towards achieving good website usability is by finding the best method to use for testing. Below are some tremendous effective methods.

Paper Prototype

This is one of the methods you can use to test your website usability. It is quite cost-effective since you will only need a few pieces of paper for the illustration. This method can be used in the early stages of the project just before the development commences. It is a great method for testing out different concepts.

Field Studies

If you want to receive direct user feedback for your site, this would be the ideal method to use. You can then ask them to take you through the process they use to access information on your website.

You will need to watch them as they complete different tasks as you take notes about the various usability issues you might have noticed.

Eye Tracking or Heatmap

This method will allow you to know the most viewed parts of your website’s pages in a particular order. It uses a color spectrum to indicate these actions.

When you notice a deep color in a particular area, it means the user spent more time in that area than on any other.

It is also an excellent method to determine which parts of your website need to be improved by looking at the less disengaging areas. It can also help you to highlight irrelevant content.

Online Website Survey

You can do a simple online website survey and ask your users directly about their experience on your website.

The method doesn’t cost much since you will be working with a simple questionnaire. When asking questions, don’t be too general or technical. Directly ask specific questions for you to get useful information. For this, you can use Google Forms or Instagram Stories with the poll, tests, or questions that can be placed inside the Story.

Select Tools for Website Usability Testing

After choosing a suitable method, you also need to choose among various tools to work with the site. Below are some commonly used tools for website usability testing.

Hotjar

Hotjar is also among the tools you can use to test the usability of your website. It provides users insights through visuals, and it is fast. The tool is ideal for web designers, product managers, and marketers, as well.

User Zoom

This is another platform you can use for the evaluation of your site’s usability and also the customer experience. You can reach out to their team of experts to help you get more out of your research.

Focus on Your Target Audience

For you to build a useful website, you need to consider the people for which you are making it for. Here are a few ideas you can use.

Improve Internal Search

You should make sure that users will be able to find what they are looking for easily. By improving the internal search, you will be making it easier for your customers to find the information they want within a short time.

Diversify Filter Options

You should also offer your users the freedom to choose their desired items by providing them with a variety of filter options. Using a few specific words might not be enough to bring them the item they want.

This will force them to browse through several items before they can get to the one they want. Try to mix filters with color swatches or adding images of the materials available.

You can also highlight products with categories for special occasions. This will help customers to find specific products faster. See ASOS example:

Optimize Landing, Product and Category Pages

This will help your customers to find your business quickly and learn more about it. Optimizing these pages will bring your business closer to your customer, with every search done. If you make each of these pages detailed and take into account the information the user wants to find at each stage of the buying process then you won’t make them confused and exit from the site.

This includes the availability of price and color swatches at the product listing, a wide range of filters for a product search, product information, size and care guide, and also related products. Look at Bliss’s example. Besides a simple product view on the product listing, there is quite a detailed product page with qualitative images, reviews, related products, price, and Add to Cart button.

As you can see, the main point on the listing and product page is the bright and visible image of the product. It will serve as a hook to customers to grab their attention.

Also, some other features will improve the overall user experience.

Allow Guest Purchase

For your site to be quite effective, it would be a nice idea if you allow people to make purchases as guests. Sometimes a user might be interested in the products only and not in the newsletters, and therefore, there’s no need to register or subscribe.

Here is how guest checkout looks like at Nasty Gal store.

Then a customer is redirected to the checkout page to fill out the information for the order placement.

Once again, the availability of guest checkout will ensure less cart abandonment and an easier order placement process for a customer, which leads to more sales.

Use Short Forms for Offers

When you are running any offers on your site, make sure to use short forms. Using long forms will just discourage users who don’t want to waste any more time to grab the offers. Besides, long forms don’t always look attractive. One of the common options is to showcase offers, returns and delivery information on the Top promo banner. Look at the one from Missguided’s example.

This will ensure that customers will see all the deals and buy more products.

Add More Payment Options

Keep your customers flexible by offering them a variety of options when it comes to payments. When you have limited payment options, you will only attract a certain number of customers who can afford the methods being accepted. Limiting customers is not such a great idea for a business.

Provide Website Availability and Accessibility

You should ensure that your website is always running and can be accessed at any given time by your customers. You can do the following to achieve this.

First, ensure that all your images have Alt-text, make your content dynamic without page reloading, enable resizable text, keep color scheme recognizable, and overall provide qualitative content.

Check Server Uptime and Broken Links

It is important always to check the server uptime and fixing up any links that might not be working properly. This will ensure smooth operations on your customers’ end and thereby improving the website usability.

Take into Account the Mobile Responsiveness

A lot of people are now using cell phones to access information from various websites. This shows that you have a higher chance of receiving more visitors when you have a website that is more mobile-friendly. If your site cannot adapt to the screen size of various devices, then people will be more likely to exit the site without exploring it all.

Don’t Forget about Learnability Aspect

You should focus on building a learnable product. This means the users should be able to easily learn how to use the product even on their first time of interaction with it.

Check the Familiarity of Site Features

Always aim to build your website using features that everyone is familiar with. The features shouldn’t be difficult to use even for the people visiting your website for the first time.

Visitors tend to spend much time on websites that are easy-to-use. However, the visit might be cut short when they realize it takes much time to work their way around the features used. Provide customers with understandable icons for major buttons and pages, such as bag, checkout, size guide, wish lists, store locator, etc.

Ensure Evidence Actions

Providing your users with evidence of actions can also help in increasing the effectiveness of your site when it comes to website usability. Users are more likely to remember a particular action when given straightforward evidence of the output it is likely to give.

This will help them in future interactions with your site. For instance, when submitting a form, you are likely to get a pop-up message notifying you that it has been submitted successfully.

You can also receive an error message whenever you try to submit the form with a blank field. Such actions always enable the users to know what is expected of them, the next time they will be filling the form on your site.

Establish Credibility

Credibility is one of the important attributes a business should have. Even if you provide great content, it can be rendered useless if the users don’t have any trust in you. Here are a few things you can do for credibility.

Make Contact Information Accessible

Bring your customers closer by providing them with your contact information. This will allow them to reach you easily with any questions they might be having. When you can answer them in a satisfiable manner, you can be sure of retaining your customers and attract even more.

Display Reviews of Your Products

People are more likely to develop much trust in your content when they see a little bit of evidence. Make sure to include reviews of your products on the website. Let the users know that your products are real and how other users are feeling about them. You can use review platforms like Trustpilot or allow your users to leave reviews right on your website.

Control Content Relevancy

A lot of people are likely to exit a website quickly when they find out that most of the content posted is irrelevant. Always stick to the course and post only content that is related to the products or services you are offering. This will keep your users more engaged.

How to Accept Credit Card Payment Online: a Step by Step Guide

For an eCommerce store owner, it should be a must-have to accept credit card payment online. A lack of payment options can cause a high abandoned cart rate, which then reduces your sales revenue. Often, if you can’t offer a card payment gateway they want, they’re willing to leave your store and look for another. According to Worldpay, 36% of global eCom spend, accepting a broad range of eWallets is essential. Take a look at the comprehensive payment methods’ statistics:

This picture was a part of the Worldpay Global Payments Report 2018 with a forecast for 2022. As you can see, eWallet and credit card payments are still the most popular among customers. As you can see, eWallet and credit card payments are still the most popular among customers.

In this post, we’ll show you an ultimate guide to accepting online credit card payment and other payment methods available for implementing into the online store.

Read it to get to know the what and the how.

5 Questions to Ask Before You Start

Ask yourself the following questions before accepting credit card payments. Then, you’ll clarify which payments you should use to please your prospects.

How Do You Want to Implement Payment Gateways?

If you’re familiar with technology, you yourself can accept credit cards without any trouble. In case you’re not tech-savvy, you can still offer online payments by outsourcing a job to a software developer that can add modules to your store. No matter which group you’re in, you don’t have to worry too much. There’s always a support team from the payment service provider who will help you out.

Do You Already Have a Website?

If you own a website, it’s easy to accept credit card payments. Just install shopping cart software or work with a payment company, and you’re done.

If you haven’t built one, you have other ways to receive online payments. For example, you can create online invoices or use online form builders like Google Forms.

What are the Products You Sell?

What you’re selling impacts on the payment gateway you should choose. Some all-in-one solutions like PayPal and Stripe aim at almost all types of businesses. Meanwhile, extensions and plugins are more tailored.

Besides, you can find payment processors that focus on a specific group of businesses, like micropayments for store owners who sell low-priced products.

What is the Amount of Your Budget?

Accepting Visa and MasterCard payment is great to boost sales for your store. It can be tricky to figure out how much it’ll cost. Pay attention to both upfront costs and monthly (or yearly) costs so that you can adjust your budget.

Bear in mind the following costs:

• Qualified rate
• Non-qualified surcharge
• Interchange differential
• Brand surcharge
• Foreign surcharge

Don’t forget tangential costs like outsourcing a designer or a developer, as well.

Is Your Site Secure Enough?

Customers always need a secured credit card payment. Hence, you should create a safe purchasing process for them and avoid fraud or scam as much as possible. It’s highly recommended that your site should be PCI-compliant.

What Is a Bank Merchant Account?

A bank merchant account allows eCommerce stores to accept credit cards. This account is a contract between an eCommerce merchant and a payment processing service or a bank.

Let’s say a customer has just paid for a product with a credit card. The money then deposited into your store before transferring to your bank account.

List of Card Payment Gateways

PayPal, Square, and Stripe are the most popular payment gateways. Let’s take a closer look at what they are.

PayPal

PayPal’s payment gateway has two options: Payflow Link and Payflow Pro. The former will give you a secure, PCI-DSS compliant template to let your customers complete the checkout on that template. Meanwhile, the latter is a premium payment gateway, meaning you can build a unique checkout experience for your store. The price is $25 per month, plus a one-time setup fee of $99.

Square

Square allows you to receive online payment in many countries like the US, UK, and Australia. Using Square, you can accept website card payments right away without needing to open a bank merchant account. Currently, this payment gateway takes a fee of 2.9%, plus $0.30 per transaction. There are no other hidden fees.

Stripe

A stripe payment gateway serves eCommerce, SaaS, and non-profit communities. It has an impressive list of features and free, simple API. However, Stripe is available for 34 countries only.

Stripe currently accepts most credit card payment types such as Visa and MasterCard. Its fee is the same as Square’s, that is, 2.9% $0.30 per transaction.

Payment Service Providers vs. Merchant Accounts: Which One Should You Choose?

To accept online credit card payments, you can open a merchant account or work with a payment service provider.

About merchant accounts, there are hundreds of payment providers to choose, from banks to payment processors. These accounts support better money management and higher security.

Merchant accounts can ask you to pay several fee types: application fee, setup fee, monthly fee, discount rate, per-transaction fees, cross-border fee, and rental fee for a credit card terminal. Not all these fees are always transparent in contracts, so you should be careful before writing your signature.

Unlike merchant accounts, a payment service provider (PSP) is a third-party that handles the entire payment process. It controls the whole process from the moment a customer enters their details to the moment money appears in your bank account. Stripe, Square, and PayPal are well-known PSP.

When using a PSP, you don’t need to open a separate merchant account. It also gives you a payment gateway and useful POS tools like inventory management, reporting suite, and marketing tools. That’s why a PSP is, most of the time, an attractive option for eCommerce businesses.

All-in-One Solution

If you prefer the all-in-one solution, we recommend you to try PayPal or 2Checkout. They are quicker and easier to set up and have reasonable transaction rates. You don’t need to pay fee monthly or setup fees unless you upgrade your account to Pro.

For example, with PayPal, you can now process payments within a few clicks. You’ll try and feel advanced features that help create an exceptional shopping experience for your customers and maximize sales.

PayPal also provides the PayPal Seller Protection mechanism. Hence, your customers will feel safe when buying from you, leading to a higher conversion rate.

Service Providers for Credit Card Payment Processing

Payment processors are eager to work with you. The challenge is how you can select the best service for your store.

To make it easier for you, we pick the three best services you can try:

• Helcim is a web-based payment processing solution for retailers making under $2,000 in revenue. Helcim accepts all major credit cards and integrates with standard shopping carts like Shopify and Magento.
• Flagship Merchant Services is ranked the best payment processing provider for eight years between 2008 to 2015. It offers free gateway setup with Authorize.net and a free shopping cart for eCommerce merchants.
• Square works like a credit card processor and a POS system. It also has a better pricing structure than other traditional processing systems.

How to Accept Online Payments with an Online Store?

Take either of the following ways:

Building a New Site With Shopping Cart Software Included

Shopify is a great example of shipping cart software (or shopping cart or eCommerce software app). It’s an ultimate solution to eCommerce merchants to accept online credit card payments.

When you create a store with Shopify, you don’t need to buy a separate domain or pay for hosting, since this platform gives you everything you need. You’ll have a full hosted store and a set of management tools to control sales across channels.

If you have coding knowledge and need more freedom to customize your store, Magento may be your ideal option.

Adding Additional Payments to an Existing Site

No matter what platform you use to create your online store, you can use third-party apps or plugins to add payments to your existing site. For example, if you run a WordPress site, try WooCommerce or Ecwid plugin.

Another way to add payments to an existing site is to find a payment processor that supports customizable payment buttons. Try to look for one that has facilities for editing the appearance of the button and transaction settings. When it comes to that, PayPal is the best.

Alternative Payment Methods for the Online Store

Credit cards are common methods to accept payments online. In addition, you can accept invoices or checks, or use the power of instant payments as they are the most popular now. You can try other payment methods like Google Pay, MasterPass, and Visa Checkout.

Magento OE 1.9.4.2, Magento CE 1.14.4.2, and Their Compatibility with Different Versions of PHP

Magento 1 was developed back before PHP 5 was used. In all versions, including the latest Magento Open Source 1.9.4.2 and Magento Commerce 1.13.4.2, a check is done for PHP 5.3 at the entry point of index.php. This means that all of the code of the core, as well as the code of custom extensions, must be compatible with PHP 5.3. This official resource declares PHP compatibility: https://docs.magento.com/m1/ce/user_guide/magento/system-requirements.html

However, incompatibility with PHP 5 was discovered when analyzing the latest versions of Magento Open Source 1.9.2.4 and Magento Commerce 1.14.4.2. Below we will take a look at the reason for these incompatibilities.

Analysis of Incompatibility Issues with PHP 5

Magento has the core class Mage_Core_Helper_Data, in which a method for getting a random string is implemented, getRandomString(). Its implementation in OE and CE before 1.9.4.2 and 1.14.4.2 looked as follows:

public function getRandomString($len, $chars = null)
    {
        if (is_null($chars)) {
            $chars = self::CHARS_LOWERS . self::CHARS_UPPERS . self::CHARS_DIGITS;
        }
        for ($i = 0, $str = '', $lc = strlen($chars)-1; $i < $len; $i  ) {
            $str .= $chars[mt_rand(0, $lc)];
        }
        return $str;
    }

In the latest Magento versions that we mentioned earlier, this method was released differently:

public function getRandomString($len, $chars = null)
    {
        if (is_null($chars)) {
            $chars = self::CHARS_LOWERS . self::CHARS_UPPERS . self::CHARS_DIGITS;
        }
        for ($i = 0, $str = '', $lc = strlen($chars)-1; $i < $len; $i  ) {
            $str .= $chars[random_int(0, $lc)];
        }
        return $str;
    }

As you can see, the only difference is one function: they replaced mt_rand with random_int. Therein lies the problem: the random_int function was added in PHP 7, but PHP 5 doesn’t support it. Consequently, if this method is called in PHP 5 when generating a page or executing any other code, it will lead to a fatal unknown function call error. Magento still declares compatibility starting with version 5.3 in the index.php file, which is incorrect based on what we’ve stated above.

Why did Magento replace the function in this method? It’s most likely because the behavior of the mt_rand function was changed in PHP 7.2. Developers wanted to keep the behavior of the getRandomString method as close as possible to its behavior in previous versions. In so doing, PHP 5 support was virtually discontinued for the sake of supporting PHP 7.2. Naturally, the logical solution to this problem is upgrading the version of PHP on your server to version 7. But in some cases, this can cause problems in custom modules that are incompatible with PHP 7. Many custom modules were written before PHP 7 existed and are no longer updated. It’s also not possible to fix encoded modules that are bound to certain PHP versions. So how do we solve this problem?

Solution

In these cases, the solution could be to copy the file app/code/core/Mage/Core/functions.php to app/code/local/Mage/Core/functions.php and add the following code:

if (!is_callable('RandomCompat_intval')) {
    /**
     * Cast to an integer if we can, safely.
     *
     * If you pass it a float in the range (~PHP_INT_MAX, PHP_INT_MAX)
     * (non-inclusive), it will sanely cast it to an int. If you it's equal to
     * ~PHP_INT_MAX or PHP_INT_MAX, we let it fail as not an integer. Floats
     * lose precision, so the <= and => operators might accidentally let a float
     * through.
     *
     * @param int|float $number    The number we want to convert to an int
     * @param bool      $fail_open Set to true to not throw an exception
     *
     * @return float|int
     * @psalm-suppress InvalidReturnType
     *
     * @throws TypeError
     */
    function RandomCompat_intval($number, $fail_open = false)
    {
        if (is_int($number) || is_float($number)) {
            $number  = 0;
        } elseif (is_numeric($number)) {
            /** @psalm-suppress InvalidOperand */
            $number  = 0;
        }
        /** @var int|float $number */
        if (
            is_float($number)
            &&
            $number > ~PHP_INT_MAX
            &&
            $number < PHP_INT_MAX
        ) {
            $number = (int) $number;
        }
        if (is_int($number)) {
            return (int) $number;
        } elseif (!$fail_open) {
            throw new TypeError(
                'Expected an integer.'
            );
        }
        return $number;
    }
}
if (!is_callable('random_int')) {

    /**
     * Fetch a random integer between $min and $max inclusive
     *
     * @param int $min
     * @param int $max
     *
     * @throws Exception
     *
     * @return int
     */
    function random_int($min, $max)
    {
        /**
         * Type and input logic checks
         *
         * If you pass it a float in the range (~PHP_INT_MAX, PHP_INT_MAX)
         * (non-inclusive), it will sanely cast it to an int. If you it's equal to
         * ~PHP_INT_MAX or PHP_INT_MAX, we let it fail as not an integer. Floats
         * lose precision, so the <= and => operators might accidentally let a float
         * through.
         */
        try {
            /** @var int $min */
            $min = RandomCompat_intval($min);
        } catch (TypeError $ex) {
            throw new TypeError(
                'random_int(): $min must be an integer'
            );
        }
        try {
            /** @var int $max */
            $max = RandomCompat_intval($max);
        } catch (TypeError $ex) {
            throw new TypeError(
                'random_int(): $max must be an integer'
            );
        }
        /**
         * Now that we've verified our weak typing system has given us an integer,
         * let's validate the logic then we can move forward with generating random
         * integers along a given range.
         */
        if ($min > $max) {
            throw new Error(
                'Minimum value must be less than or equal to the maximum value'
            );
        }
        if ($max === $min) {
            return (int) $min;
        }
        /**
         * Initialize variables to 0
         *
         * We want to store:
         * $bytes => the number of random bytes we need
         * $mask => an integer bitmask (for use with the &) operator
         *          so we can minimize the number of discards
         */
        $attempts = $bits = $bytes = $mask = $valueShift = 0;
        /** @var int $attempts */
        /** @var int $bits */
        /** @var int $bytes */
        /** @var int $mask */
        /** @var int $valueShift */
        /**
         * At this point, $range is a positive number greater than 0. It might
         * overflow, however, if $max - $min > PHP_INT_MAX. PHP will cast it to
         * a float and we will lose some precision.
         *
         * @var int|float $range
         */
        $range = $max - $min;
        /**
         * Test for integer overflow:
         */
        if (!is_int($range)) {
            /**
             * Still safely calculate wider ranges.
             * Provided by @CodesInChaos, @oittaa
             *
             * @ref https://gist.github.com/CodesInChaos/03f9ea0b58e8b2b8d435
             *
             * We use ~0 as a mask in this case because it generates all 1s
             *
             * @ref https://eval.in/400356 (32-bit)
             * @ref http://3v4l.org/XX9r5  (64-bit)
             */
            $bytes = PHP_INT_SIZE;
            /** @var int $mask */
            $mask = ~0;
        } else {
            /**
             * $bits is effectively ceil(log($range, 2)) without dealing with
             * type juggling
             */
            while ($range > 0) {
                if ($bits % 8 === 0) {
                      $bytes;
                }
                  $bits;
                $range >>= 1;
                /** @var int $mask */
                $mask = $mask << 1 | 1; } $valueShift = $min; } /** @var int $val */ $val = 0; /** * Now that we have our parameters set up, let's begin generating * random integers until one falls between $min and $max */ /** @psalm-suppress RedundantCondition */ do { /** * The rejection probability is at most 0.5, so this corresponds * to a failure probability of 2^-128 for a working RNG */ if ($attempts > 128) {
                throw new Exception(
                    'random_int: RNG is broken - too many rejections'
                );
            }
            /**
             * Let's grab the necessary number of random bytes
             */
            $randomByteString = random_bytes($bytes);
            /**
             * Let's turn $randomByteString into an integer
             *
             * This uses bitwise operators (<< and |) to build an integer * out of the values extracted from ord() * * Example: [9F] | [6D] | [32] | [0C] =>
             *   159   27904   3276800   201326592 =>
             *   204631455
             */
            $val &= 0;
            for ($i = 0; $i < $bytes;   $i) {
                $val |= ord($randomByteString[$i]) << ($i * 8); } /** @var int $val */ /** * Apply mask */ $val &= $mask; $val  = $valueShift;   $attempts; /** * If $val overflows to a floating point number, * ... or is larger than $max, * ... or smaller than $min, * then try again. */ } while (!is_int($val) || $val > $max || $val < $min);
        return (int) $val;
    }
}
if (!is_callable('random_bytes')) {
    /**
     * Powered by ext/mcrypt (and thankfully NOT libmcrypt)
     *
     * @ref https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=55169
     * @ref https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/c568ffe5171d942161fc8dda066bce844bdef676/ext/mcrypt/mcrypt.c#L1321-L1386
     *
     * @param int $bytes
     *
     * @throws Exception
     *
     * @return string
     */
    function random_bytes($bytes)
    {
        try {
            /** @var int $bytes */
            $bytes = RandomCompat_intval($bytes);
        } catch (TypeError $ex) {
            throw new TypeError(
                'random_bytes(): $bytes must be an integer'
            );
        }
        if ($bytes < 1) {
            throw new Error(
                'Length must be greater than 0'
            );
        }
        /** @var string|bool $buf */
        $buf = @mcrypt_create_iv((int) $bytes, (int) MCRYPT_DEV_URANDOM);
        if (
            is_string($buf)
            &&
            RandomCompat_strlen($buf) === $bytes
        ) {
            /**
             * Return our random entropy buffer here:
             */
            return $buf;
        }
        /**
         * If we reach here, PHP has failed us.
         */
        throw new Exception(
            'Could not gather sufficient random data'
        );
    }
}
if (!is_callable('RandomCompat_strlen')) {
    if (
        defined('MB_OVERLOAD_STRING')
        &&
        ((int) ini_get('mbstring.func_overload')) & MB_OVERLOAD_STRING
    ) {
        /**
         * strlen() implementation that isn't brittle to mbstring.func_overload
         *
         * This version uses mb_strlen() in '8bit' mode to treat strings as raw
         * binary rather than UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, etc
         *
         * @param string $binary_string
         *
         * @throws TypeError
         *
         * @return int
         */
        function RandomCompat_strlen($binary_string)
        {
            if (!is_string($binary_string)) {
                throw new TypeError(
                    'RandomCompat_strlen() expects a string'
                );
            }
            return (int) mb_strlen($binary_string, '8bit');
        }
    } else {
        /**
         * strlen() implementation that isn't brittle to mbstring.func_overload
         *
         * This version just used the default strlen()
         *
         * @param string $binary_string
         *
         * @throws TypeError
         *
         * @return int
         */
        function RandomCompat_strlen($binary_string)
        {
            if (!is_string($binary_string)) {
                throw new TypeError(
                    'RandomCompat_strlen() expects a string'
                );
            }
            return (int) strlen($binary_string);
        }
    }
}

What Is Sustainability? A Guide for Business

In many business organizations, sustainability has become a significant area of concern. Regardless of the industry you are in, having a strategy for sustainability can determine the success of your business. This is why most companies are now incorporating sustainability as part of their business strategies to do well.

With that being said, let’s find out more about sustainability and what it means to businesses.

What is sustainability? It is the act of how the biological system can endure different factors and remain diverse and productive.

Sustainability can also be defined as the ability by which we can satisfy our wants and needs without making it difficult for future generations to do the same as well. For this to happen, there are a few other things that need to be considered other than just natural resources. Both economic and social resources are also as necessary.

In general, sustainability is the ability to maintain a balance between natural resources, economic development, and social equity.

Why Is Sustainability Important?

When it comes to business, sustainability mainly focuses on two significant areas. First, there are the effects of the company on the environment and, secondly, the impact it has on the community.

For a company to be quite efficient, it should focus on having a positive effect on both the environment and society. This is why a good sustainability strategy is essential to business organizations. Without it, a lot of things can go wrong. This includes social injustice, environmental degradation, and inequality.

As the world is changing, the business sector is no exception. A business that can find a way to adapt to these changes and still be able to satisfy human wants efficiently will have a higher chance of thriving in the future.

Look at it this way, with the alarming rate of climate change, we are already experiencing a lot of changes. The environment is becoming unbearable for human survival due to global warming. A lot of resources are also being used in an attempt to curb the situation. Other problems come with climate change, such as water scarcity, among other disruptions. It might even get worse in the future if nothing is done from the people’s side.

That’s why some entrepreneurs and activists are working towards bringing the best ideas and innovations to change the situation. In this video, Christiaan Maats, a designer and entrepreneur, explains how meaningful products can embody the change we want to see in the world and sheds light on his vision of a circular society that integrates industrial society with its natural roots.

As mentioned before, sustainability can lead to the success of a business as it helps in improving a lot of things within the industry and the whole world. Most companies use the Environment, Social, and Governance metrics to help them track their progress when it comes to sustainability practices and ethical impacts of the organization. According to McKinsey’s research, the results showed that businesses that recorded high ESG ratings had reduced the cost of debt and equity as well.

The Three Pillars of Sustainability

For a business to be considered sustainable, there are three major factors that it should focus on. Also, proper strategies should be laid out to improve in these areas.

As mentioned before, a sustainable business is one that can meet human needs and still maintain the right balance between the three major factors. Here are the three major pillars of sustainability.

Environmental Sustainability

This refers to the ability to maintain the ecological integrity whereby all the environmental systems on the Earth are kept in balance. This means being able to utilize the Earth’s natural resources and allowing them to regenerate again. How can a company achieve this? By minimizing waste from the production, and returning resources such as trees, clean water, and air will help to achieve environmental sustainability.

Economic Sustainability

This is the process for which humans can maintain their financial independence to have access to specific resources they would need to satisfy their needs. This means that companies work through some charity initiatives to help people from developing countries to get a job, education to buy enough food, live under the roof, and drink clean water.

Social Sustainability

This refers to the ability to maintain a healthy and secure community through the acquisition of specific resources. This can be achieved by making sure that every person’s labor, cultural, and personal rights are respected. Also, there should not be any discrimination among people. That means that a company has fair working conditions and care about their employees through social and health benefits.

Examples of Famous Brands

Having sustainability initiatives can also help businesses to enjoy public support and improve their financial performance as well. Here are a few companies that are currently running sustainability initiatives.

Nike is focusing on how they can reduce waste and minimize its carbon footprint. Besides, the company works toward full recycling. Since 1992, they have collected surplus manufacturing materials and athletic footwear to create innovative surfaces for different needs.

Nestle is aiming to improve on its product life cycle, water efficiency, climate change, and waste as well.

Toyota and BMW are on the frontline when it comes to reducing pollution and increasing energy efficiency.

Sustainability in Business

There are a lot of ways in which businesses can transform and become more sustainable. Below are some of them.

Sustainable Society

A sustainable society is one that is self-sufficient and focuses more on how to reduce pollution and eliminate waste. This is the only way in which the coming generations can be able to find a well-preserved environment. One that will have reduced cases of global warming but with improved air and water quality, among other things.

To achieve this, a lot of effort should be put into raising public awareness and letting know more about sustainable choices. Also, quality education should be promoted to help the young generation to understand more about the environment they are living in.

Both the government and businesses should also invest more in building environmentally friendly infrastructure, as this can have a significant impact on society. People should also look to reevaluate their values and encourage practices that can help in conserving the earth’s resources and reduce the amount of waste produced.

Currently, there are a few brands that are helping in the fight towards achieving a sustainable society.

For instance, Eton is one of the biggest fashion brands in Sweden. They use cotton fibers for their products and have total control of their supply chain. Eton more on long-term cooperation with their partners and therefore providing fair labor conditions.

In the UK, there are also a few fashion giants like Beaumont Organic and Thought. They are also looking to achieve a sustainable society by using sustainable materials (as organic cotton or unused fabric rolls) to make their products.

Environmental Protection

A sustainable society can also be achieved when good environmental practices are applied. This includes minimizing the amount of waste and carbon emissions from the production industries by using sustainable technology.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi have strategies that aim at increasing their focus on water stewardship and replenishment.

Other businesses can also start initiatives on how to reduce waste products and also encourage the use of environmentally friendly materials.

Transparency in Public Communications

Transparency is another factor that can help maintain a sustainable society. When there is an open environment both in community and businesses, there will be an improvement in the performance.

This can be achieved through having public communications in all the levels in the company. It is essential to practice high levels of information disclosure and ensure that the information passed is entirely accurate and precise. With transparency, it will be much easier to identify and improve in areas of weakness. Filippa K is that brand that cares not only about the social aspect of sustainability. It also provides reports and work roadmap regarding the steps taken, so anyone can check where the products are produced and how they do it.

How to Create a Sustainable Business Strategy

As we have seen, sustainability is a significant factor in business. But how can you achieve a sustainable business? Consider these few tips.

Reconsider Objectives and Establish Your Mission

This should be the first step towards developing a sustainable business plan. It is essential to reconsider your objectives as a company and find out what sustainability means to your business. The business also needs to redefine its mission. An excellent mission statement might just be what your business needs to become sustainable.

What does a sustainable business plan include?

1. Environmental policies compliance. Your business already might be compliant with general law regarding production, quality of work, and product or services standards. You can look towards environmental protection policies or organizations that are dealing with it to join one of them. Also, each country or international association has different statements, so you can look toward the specific one that suits you.
2. Steps to minimize waste and control the number of resources used. If you have any factory or you deal with manufacturing, try to look toward minimization of waste from production or look into the long-lasting quality of your products, so they will serve longer to the customers. You can also collect and recycle the products that were in use. Consider the reward program, and your customers will help you to become more sustainable. Look at the example of the Timberland initiative.
3. A clear vision for the company. Assess global issues, such as global warming, air pollution, waste disposal, and choose the area where you can have a meaningful impact.
4. Integration of sustainability into your company. Write principles to ensure that you’ll see that the plan is taken into action. You can test the idea by creating a volunteer group, setting up the meetings with each department to give them full information and guidance on the new strategy.

Assess the Risks

A company that’s looking to become sustainable should also consider the risk involved with the methods they choose to use. The methods used should be of benefit to both the business and the environment around them.

Create a Sustainable Strategy

When coming up with a sustainable plan for your business, you need to make sure that the company will remain profitable. This is how you will be able to support the program. You can’t create a sustainable business strategy when you have no business. This is why you need to craft a plan that will help you stay in business. As a proven fact, sustainability can help your business to become even more profitable.

This is the time to look back to the Toms company. Just imagine, this company has provided 94 million people with shoes, clean water, and some of them got educational grants. Wow, right? Their business model was simple – a customer buys one pair of shoes, and they give one pair to the kid in need. Each couple of years, they’ve launched new collections, and now Toms sells shoes, sunglasses, bags, coffee, and won’t stop on that.

Adopt It to Your Organization

After laying down your strategy, it is also essential to find a way to incorporate it into your organization. Ensure the plan will not interfere with the business operations or demand more from the business. It should be in line with the activities within the organization.

At WEB4PRO, we wanted to be among companies that commit to a sustainable society. We know that we can’t make it through the production because we aren’t manufacturers. However, through the development, tips on optimization, less resource hungry solutions, and long-lasting websites, we help sustainable brands to achieve their goals. Together we are combining efforts and will see the sustainable world with happy people in the future.

See Results

A business should also come up with grand plans that can produce great results and help them achieve their goals. With an excellent mission statement, you should also be ready to lay down result-oriented strategies to back it up with. When developing the strategies, it is always a good practice to revisit the cycle occasionally. This will help you to always keep your mission, objectives, and progress in line.