The recent proliferation of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technology has significantly changed the way consumers interact with e-commerce brands. Recent research shows that 80% of US consumers are aware of VR, while 79% of those who have tried it would do it again. 

Global adoption of immersive technology is definitely on the rise, led by the UK, US and China. In fact, 95% of the world’s VR devices are currently manufactured in China, and its own government is committed to supporting the development of virtual reality throughout the country. 

 How will AR and VR affect e-commerce retailers and what does the future hold? 

Both AR and VR offer today’s digital consumers a unique opportunity to go (of course) into an immersive experience where they can get up close and personal with a brand and its services or products. This bold new online shopping trend brings with it a wealth of possibilities. 

 Here we explore how VR and AR are impacting e-commerce, as we ask what the future holds for the relationship between these new technologies and e-commerce. 

 Bridging the Digital and Physical Worlds: 

While many experts and publications have announced the death of the high street, it appears that we are in the midst of a brick and mortar renaissance. 

 E-commerce brands are now able to deliver a more personalized customer experience than ever before, turning brick-and-mortar stores into an extension of e-commerce and vice versa. And with huge e-commerce players like Amazon gearing up for the brick-and-mortar arena, AR or VR-based features seem to have great potential to bridge brick-and-mortar and e-commerce experiences. 

While many established e-only brands are reluctant to set up brick-and-mortar stores due to cost and resources, it is possible to partner with brick-and-mortar retailers using AR and VR platforms, programs and brand awareness initiatives. 

To illustrate how these ubiquitous technologies are shaping e-commerce in physical terms, let’s look at the well-known American retailer Macy’s. To improve its in-store shopping experience and accelerate its business growth online, Macy’s has selected 69 furniture stores in the United States that now offer innovative, engaging features, functions and displays. 

Using the seamless combination of VR and AR to its advantage, Macy’s has combined online and offline shopping into one seamless, highly connected experience. Its latest initiative, “Visualize Your Space,” allows shoppers to place different pieces of furniture in their home environment while shopping in-store. 

Here, customers can see, touch and experience products in person and use comprehensive technology to decide whether they are worth buying. As a result of this AR-based initiative, the typical cart size in these tech stores is said to be 60% larger compared to other Macy’s furniture departments. 

Additionally, this success based on AR and VR has had a positive impact on the brand’s e-commerce sales, with its in-app sales growing by 50% at the beginning of last year. What a testament to the power of the marriage of VR, AR and e-commerce. 

Extreme Personalization and Immersive Online Shopping:

The interactive nature of VR and AR means that online consumers can now enjoy a much more personalized and meaningful shopping experience.

Although many are aware of AR and VR-based technologies, and despite their proven e-commerce success rates, 61% of brands do not use the technology at all. More and more e-commerce brands are now using these features to personalize and differentiate their customer experience. 

Many Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart, Boeing and UPS are using VR for consumer marketing in addition to educating, training and inspiring employees. 

One of the early adopters of VR technology, Amazon recently patented a mirror with Body Labs that can dress you up in virtual clothes, adding extreme personalization to the brand’s customer experience. 

This part-reflective, part-transmissive device, when fully realized, zooms in on the wearer’s face and transports them into a reflective environment where they can virtually try on different outfits, allowing them to make informed choices based on real-world interaction. without leaving home. 

Another notable example of brands using VR to drive extreme personalization while creating an immersive shopping experience in practice is the growing Snapfeet. An AI-powered algorithm uses a 3D biometric image to allow customers to scan themselves with its proprietary app, offering a series of “custom” recommendations based on characteristics such as shoe size, foot shape and style preferences. This immersive application also presents its recommendations with an interactive 3D image that allows the user to visualize the products before buying them: 

Although this innovation is in its infancy, it has already been well received by critics and consumers, suggesting that it will see a lot of growth of this type in the near future.immersive online shopping experience in boom. 

AR, VR and the Future of E-Commerce:

Research shows that in the US alone, around 22 million people experienced VR in 2018, and that number is expected to rise to 

9 million by the end of 2019. That’s an incredible adoption rate. 

However, here are some predictions about AR, VR and e-commerce in the near future: 

•  AR and VR will continue to drive and shape experiential marketing, giving e-commerce brands more tools and opportunities to deeply invest their audiences in their offerings. . . products, services or content in a mobile or virtual sense. 
•  The continued growth of immersive technology allows e-commerce brands to make brand storytelling much more interactive and engaging, allowing the user to control content and connect with the company on a deeply personal level. 
•  As AR becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives and applications and virtual touch points are readily available at every turn, e-commerce companies can use the data generated by these touch points to completely customize the user’s online shopping experience.

While every website has its site-visit fluctuations, you might notice a sudden downward trend, these might be because of the experimental moves you’re taking but it could be a result of a lack of planning.

The first thing that you should do is to check if there’s some technical issue with your website or if it’s just an issue for your users. Power cuts in your targeted regions might be a possible reason for this. Any incident that affects your viewership might be a problem.

Once you’re sure it’s nothing from the above reasons, these should be your next steps. Loopholes in your marketing strategies could be potential reasons for this downfall, here are some elite strategies that you can use to get back in the game, these are in no specific chronological order.

Ad stop!

That’s right, these are times when your paid campaigns are overtaking your organic traffic. Your paid ads are having such rankings and significance to them that your organic rankings are just getting overshadowed.

The only way to know if this is true is to turn off ads that are performing well and see if your traffic goes back to normal. If this doesn’t help, make sure to turn on your ads back, you don’t want to lose valuable clicks in the meantime.

Have you been fined?

While you might not realize it, something on your page could have been tagged ‘fishy’ by Google. Google has a dedicated set of penalties for issues ranging from plagiarism sins to your content law violation crimes.

Though the possibilities of getting a penalty are pretty meager because it should be a regular practice for you to check plagiarism, if you do get penalized, you’ll see it in your Google search console notifications. Analyze your mistake and correct it to get your traffic rolling again.

Back to Backlinks 

Backlinks are a key channel that streamlines traffic to your page. If the pages that have your link are losing traffic, then it’s obvious that even your page will lose it. It might as well be that the page that linked you, found someone else.

Whatever the case is, the scenario demands contact with the page that backlinked you. Ask if it’s just the usual traffic loss or if have they stopped linking your page due to lack of relevance. If the latter has started linking other pages, you must upgrade and find another firm to backlink you.

Link to external content.

That’s right, it isn’t necessary that something’s wrong with your existing content, it just might be the need for something new, keep evolving. If a site has an article about something related to what you’re trying to sell or promote, then link them instead of posting the same article on your own page.

You might think that you’re sending off your users, but you’re actually adding value to their intent, which later will be awarded loyalty.

To make sure this works well, try posting a tweet or sharing the post on another social media platform like LinkedIn and Facebook before publishing it on your own website. This way, people will see it first and know who wrote it—and if they like it, they might click through from there!

Are you the undisputed?

Don’t forget that you’re not the only marketer out there, there are thousands of marketers selling the same service in the same niche and so the competition is tough. So you’re probably losing traffic because you’re simply not ranking the same. 

Your competitors might have a hold on better ranking keywords or just overall better responsive content. See where you’re lagging, don’t just blatantly copy them, but learn and implement ways to make your content relatable and competitive again.

Which page is it?

Which pages are hurting the most on your website if your traffic is dwindling? Your homepage, category pages, blog posts, or item pages might be a good place to start. You may be able to get some ideas as to why your traffic has declined and what you might need to do to improve it if you see a drop in blog posts.

You may have to concentrate more on content creation or otherwise promote your category and item pages through your other digital marketing efforts if you see a drop in traffic. A decrease in traffic to category or item pages might be due to SEO issues or user experience problems, particularly if you have recently made some changes. 

Update your old content

Statistics: It might as well be the case that your content has just been outdated. It’s no more relevant to the new user intent or maybe your stats are stale. Rankings, charts, or any other kind of statistics change with time, it doesn’t mean that you have to upgrade them every day, but at least regulate them once in a while.

Make it more relevant: If you’re still using the same old design and text in your blog, there’s no way anyone will want to read it! Updates like re-designing the entire site or adding new sections are great ways of making sure that people who visit your site will know exactly what they’re looking for and find it useful when they get there. Remember, you just have to update them while preserving your brand identity.

Answer box trap

This user-friendly feature by Google isn’t so ‘friendly’ to marketers, these are simple answers to user queries that are visible without the need to open up a website. Google smartly picks up the page with the simplest yet the most satisfying explanation of the query.

If you find yourself stuck in the answer box trap, simply edit that part of the content into a longer, more detailed statement, so that it’s partially visible on the answer box and makes the user open up your page. Don’t worry, this won’t be called a trap to the user, you’re just claiming what you deserve!

How’s the ambiance?

After all the boxes are checked and you still can’t figure out what’s wrong with your content, well then it might be your easy-kill enemy, UX. Check if your website has lost its beauty, it might be your out-of-fashion user interface.

Constant updates to the graphics, navigation and overall user experience of your website are essential, keep updates rolling. Better navigation and stack updates make your site faster, and you already know the ups of having a faster website—you’re simply ahead of 2/3rd of the competition.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to bring back traffic to your site, it’s time to get started! Make sure you have your plan in place and follow up with the steps outlined above. Remember: there is no one-size-fits-all solution—each tactic will work differently depending on what kind of site you have, what content is already on there, and other factors. If at any point during this process things start going wrong or don’t seem right for your business, don’t hesitate to make adjustments until things look right again.

If you liked this article, you might like the others on our page, be sure to check them out. For any questions, drop them down below in the comments, or just find us on social media.

What is digital transformation?

To meet changing market and business requirements, digital transformation is the practice of employing digital technology to build new — or adapt current — culture, business processes, and consumer experiences. Digital transformation is the redesigning of the company in the digital era.

It extends beyond typical jobs like marketing, sales, and customer support. Instead, digital transformation starts with how you perceive and interact with consumers. Having digital technology at our side, we have the opportunity to rethink how we conduct business — how we connect our consumers — as we go from paperwork to spreadsheets to smart systems for business management.

BASIC STEPS TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION –

• FIND THE MEANING OF DIGITAL MARKETING FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION-

Because there is no globally acknowledged concept of digital transformation, the transformation process will range considerably from one company to the next. There are several things that one must consider.

Furthermore, there are many distinct stages of transformation for each section of your business, so you must decide what you want to alter.

First and first, it is critical to consider the broad picture and determine why you require digital transformation and also what benefits it might offer to your firm.

You’re ready to proceed once you’ve decided why your firm requires digital transformation. This will allow you to outline your plans and choose which resources you will employ.

• FIND YOUR CAPABILITIES 

A digital transformation is not something that happens immediately. It’s a trip that needs meticulous planning and execution. To begin with the digital transformation stages, you must first examine your firm and comprehend its existing situation. This includes assessing every aspect of your company, from your social media and website visibility to the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Once you have a good idea of where things currently stand, you can start making plans for change. Remember that change is a continuous process, so set realistic targets and create flexibility to handle future changes. You may start your road to becoming a digital company with a good plan in place.

• CREATE THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY

Digital transformation does not have to be comprehensive or occur all at once. In actuality, this isn’t always the most feasible or productive strategy. Instead, divide your change into doable chunks and create a detailed plan. Collaborate with stakeholders to gain buy-in at all levels and ensure that everyone is on track with the strategy. Most essential, don’t be hesitant to alter your strategy if something isn’t working. The key to navigating your digital transformation path is to be nimble and responsive. You can produce incredible outcomes with the appropriate approach and execution.

• ENSURE THE SKILL SET IN YOUR EMPLOYMENT 

There have been a lot of digital transformation initiatives that have not gone as intended. The primary cause of this tragic sequence of events is a lack of necessary abilities.

It’s not altogether unexpected given that digital transformation initiatives include the usage of new technology, which organizations may find difficult to implement owing to a lack of capabilities.

To conduct digital transformation, it is reasonable to conclude that high-quality human assets are required.

If you want to complete your project effectively, all of your staff, regardless of their management rank, must have a particular set of digital abilities.

• BEGIN THE TRANSFORMATION

It is now time to put the digital transformation strategy into action. Setting realistic objectives and timetables, as well as guaranteeing that everyone within the business is dedicated to reaching them, is essential. It also entails remaining flexible and adaptive while you carry out your strategy, as well as being open to making changes along the road. You may put the business up for achievement by staying focused on your objective and remaining adaptable in your approach.

It is critical to start gently and ensure that everything is operating well before going onto the following stage.

BENEFITS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION-

• DRIVES DATA-BASED INSIGHTS –

One of the most significant advantages of digital transformation is the ability of your company to gather and analyze data that can be turned into practical, revenue-generating insights. Previously, your data was dispersed over several disconnected platforms, or worse, you may not have gathered or utilized it at all. Digital transformation will allow for more robust data collecting, centralized data storage, and the development of tools to evaluate and interpret data into information that will support informed business decision-making.

• ENCOURAGES COLLABORATION –

Many individuals are afraid of change. The concept of a complete business undergoing a big digital transformation could be intimidating for personnel ranging from executives to entry-level workers. All procedures and tactics must be addressed, right down to the fundamental structure and business culture.

Employees may bridge generational and social differences by using the correct tools and training to engage in dialogues and learn together. A strong leadership mentality with clear instructions can boost the workforce’s digital intelligence and inspire cooperation.

• GOOD RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 

Digital transformation combines resources and information into a set of business tools. Rather than scattered software and databases, it consolidates company resources and removes vendor overlap. In 2020, the typical number of apps utilized in enterprise enterprises will be 900. Databases, applications, software, and databases may be integrated into a centralized repository for corporate insight through digital transformation.

• CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 

Customers have high standards when it comes to digital experiences. Customers are used to having many options, quick delivery and reasonable cost. The new fight for brands is the customer experience. According to Gartner, more than two-thirds of organizations think they compete primarily on customer experience.

One way to differentiate your business from competitors is to demonstrate that you value your customers’ privacy. Provide the client authority over how personal data is gathered and utilized, and give them the freedom to make data-related decisions.

• ENABLES DIGITAL GROWTH –

The third and most important advantage of digital transformation is this. The primary act that sets the groundwork for all subsequent corporate growth is digital transformation. Your organization will swiftly become outdated if you do not invest in digital business transformation. We’ve seen industry titans like Kodak, Toys R’ Us, and Blockbuster go bankrupt in recent years. Why? Because they were unsuccessful in their digital transition. Digital transformation is a must. It’s not the cherry on top of a great business. To withstand the digital tsunami that is swallowing the planet, you must evolve. You’ll gain the advantages of digital transformation and then become bigger and more profitable in the process.

CONCLUSION

A digital transformation is a continuous and challenging process. However, merely concentrating on consumers and following these procedures might result in significant growth.

Digital transformation could be motivated by a goal to enhance efficiency and productivity, or by shifts in the industry or competitive landscape. In many circumstances, it will be a combination of the two. Whatever the motivation for going on the digital transformation path, having a clear strategy and goals in mind from the start is critical.

What is WordPress and Why is WordPress SEO so important? 

WordPress is one of the popular platforms for content management. It makes up almost 35% of the whole internet, the most chaotic yet wonderful advancement of modern man. Even though WordPress started as a blogging platform it was only a matter of time for the open-source platform to blow up to be one of the most common, easy and loved platforms for content marketers. The elegance of WordPress lies in the simple fact that it was made with absolute simplicity that with just a bit of getting used to, even a kid could have made a website for himself. This ease made it a target for several big business tycoons along with the very common content creators. Currently the largest stage for content marketing, WordPress becomes a competitive place to survive as well.

Just as we said if anyone could make a website how can I highlight mine? The answer to this very question lies in Search Engine Optimisation. The very reason for WordPress to reach this epitome of success is that it made SEO elegantly beautiful for anyone and everyone. There are several simple yet marvelous tools in WordPress SEO that would boost your content to thrust it to the top in every d]search. For any content marketer, the dream is to have as much site traffic as [possible. Well, the technical issues will surely be a headache in that case as well. However, through some measures, you could build a smoothly running website that would most likely pop up first which in turn erupts the number of clicks on your website. PURE ECSTASY for a content marketer!!!

What are the practices I could use for Proper WordPress SEO?

As we just discussed, WordPress presents us with a variety of options to do efficient SEO of your website. Let’s go ahead and discuss some of the most vital points to keep in mind while we get on with the task of ranking your website first in search engines and reaching that state of ecstasy.

1. SEO Friendly URLs, Permalinking, Internal Linking

Any content you would be present on your website will have an associated URL with it and obviously if it’s a lengthy one you would surely make sure to optimize your content with relevant links within the content. This is a very important aspect of creating optimized content and hence from these very roots of structuring our content SEO comes into place.

By default, the URL associated with your website is often lengthy, puzzling to the reader, technical, and not at all  SEO optimized. For eg: https://www.wowowow.com/?p=10467http://example.com/archives/123.

This is surely boring and tacky from a user’s perspective and the same goes for the search engine. Hence it is quite pivotal to make sure that your URLs are customized and truncated. The Permalink option provided by WordPress in the settings part helps you with this where you are given the option to customize the URL and make it as user-friendly as possible. By user-friendly, we would like to imply that something about your content itself could be a part of the URL.

Another part associated with links that are often underestimated and are of paramount importance is Internal Linking. It is indeed trivial to add links that would direct to a separate webpage in case the user wants to refer to that particular term or topic. However external linking would deviate the attention of the user from your website to another. Internal linking that would direct your user traffic to the website itself optimizes the user activity in favor of your website and hence contributes incredibly to your website traffic.

2. SEO plugin

WordPress also provides a list of SEO plugins that add more functionalities and several tools to your SEO strategy. The competition between these plugins is also very high, hence there is a good number of plugins out there offering various kinds of services. Choosing the right plugin for your website according to the demands of your website is simply a very important part of bringing your website higher in ranking. Make sure to understand the various aspects of what the plugin claims to offer and how it would suit your content strategy.

 Also make sure to choose a plugin that is easy to use, efficient and can support your website in various aspects. You wouldn’t want to add several plugins to your website for different uses and crash your website now, would you? After all what good is high site traffic if the website itself is no longer accessible? So choose something that can deliver a decent all-around performance in the aspects of SEO that you like to focus on. Be wary of their cost as well. Choose something that would suit your budget and don’t be worried or intimidated by the high number of plugins available in the market. Through the in-depth analysis of the features of the website, you will surely be able to find an efficient and affordable plugin.

Some of the popular SEO plugins of WordPress include Yoast SEO, All in one SEO, Rank Math, etc.

3.XML Sitemap and Adding your Site to Google Console

XML Sitemap is yet another important term to keep in mind in the case of WordPress SEO. It is simply a specially formatted list of all the individual pages on your website. This would aid the search engines to find all of your relevant content. Adding an XML Sitemap doesn’t optimize your content or boost your site’s ranking, however, it helps the search engine to find your pages and rank them. It is very clear from this that adding XML Sitemap is hence a very pivotal part of building your website. Certain SEO Plugins would do this job for you as it comes as an inbuilt function. 

Another important thing to do is to add your website to the Google Console. Google console is a marvelous service provided by Google which offers you several tools that will help you analyze the activity on your website. It gives you exact information on detailed reports about all sorts of activity on your website and the traffic on the website. This would efficiently aid you in modifying your SEO strategy for more optimal performance of your website. It would give you a third-person view of how each page of your website would appear in a search, the number of clicks your site gets, and what exactly the user searched to get to your website and you could also trace the activity of the user to see what the user used your website for; All of them assist you in structuring future content for better results. Another important benefit of having your website added to the Google Console is that it keeps a constant check on the working of your website and would immediately alert you in case of any hindrance. The console checks your sitemap and essentially “crawls” through your website to analyze every detail that the tool could use while analyzing this data to use MonsterInsights to analyze your organic traffic. MonsterInsights would help you in viewing your insights from Google Analytics right from your WordPress dashboard.

4. Keyword Research, Tags, and Optimised Images

The most elemental part of WordPress or SEO, in general, is Keyword Research. The efficient use of keywords to highlight the services offered by the website to reach the target audience is the cornerstone of SEO-optimized content. Hence it comes at the very beginning if you come up with an SEO strategy. The keywords are nothing but words or phrases that the user has to type in the search engine for him to reach your website. Hene the ample use of these keywords in your content would simply assist the search engine to find your website first for matching the user’s request with the correct response. Hence it’s trivial to structure your content accordingly so that it gets enough attention during the search. This has a direct implication of boosting the rank of your website.

Yet another important aspect is to come up with unique and creative title tags and Meta descriptions for your content. This plays a vital role in developing and sustaining the user’s interest and attention to your website. These services are also provided by certain plugins but they follow a certain algorithm while doing so, so it’s suggested you give it a check to see if the originality is preserved. 

Images are another vital part of your content. Optimizing the filename of your image, and adding clear Alt texts are all elemental yet of paramount importance. Adding Alt texts to your images makes your content more accessible and helps all kinds of users to get the required context on your content.

5. Security and Speed of your Website

We could build a very pleasing and quite optimized website by following the above directives and maintaining the consistency of adding curated topics. And yes this would ideally lead to high traffic on your website potentially increasing your business. However, as we thought earlier if the website itself crashes, or gets breached by a hacker then all of these efforts would be in vain. Hence we need to make our website secure.

Around 20,000 websites get blacklisted by Google for malware and around 50,000 get blacklisted for phishing. When this happens it doesn’t show up at all in any search results thereby throwing all your SEO to waste. If blacklisted, a site will not show up in any search results.

This indicates that the security of your WordPress site is significant for good rankings. Several online platforms will help you out in keeping your website secure from other websites. Another important thing to keep in mind is to have a reliable hosting provider. WordPress by default suggests three such providers and with such a reliable source you could ensure the smooth and efficient running of your website.