Do you have your own e-commerce business, and have you ever wondered who is actually your biggest customer?

The demographics of online shoppers and online shopping statistics is very interesting for dropshipping business owners, and this article will discuss all you need to know about the subject.

Think women are the biggest spenders? Think again!

This may sound sexist, but most people assume that women are more likely to shop online than men.

It’s interesting to note that women and men shop online in roughly equal amounts, and much depends on what you are selling.

If you sell makeup, skincare and jewelry, your target demographic will obviously be women.

However, sellers of fishing equipment, game consoles, and sporting equipment normally see far more men as customers.

Millennials are the group most likely to shop online.

According to recent online shopping statistics, millennials (18 to 34 year olds) are the demographic group who do the most shopping online.

Regardless of what you sell in your online store, your marketing strategy should therefore definitely target this audience.

The older generations have, in recent years, also shown an increase in online shopping. This, together with the recent Covid-19 pandemic, has seen an even greater increase in e-commerce, making it one of the most lucrative ways to make money.

Your business’s marketing strategy should depend on the product you sell.

If you consider the data in last year’s online shopping statistics, you will know that men are more likely to spend their money online buying mobile phones, technology, household goods, or vacations.

Women, on the other hand, spend most of their online shopping time buying clothing, groceries, and books.

Not all visitors to your online store will actually buy anything.

While it is a good sign if you see a lot of online traffic in your e-commerce store, recent studies have revealed that not all visitors will even end up buying anything.

67% of folks who regularly shop online admit that they often “window shop” online for entertainment purposes.

This statistic may seem rather depressing, but the good news is that 77% of all window shoppers will, at some point, make an impulse purchase.

This goes to show that the appearance of your online store and the attractiveness of deals you offer is very important as you could benefit from all these impulse purchases.

Over two thirds of customers conduct a Google search before making a purchase.

Studies into the demographics of online shoppers have shown that 68% (which is over two thirds) of all online shoppers will conduct a Google search of what they plan on purchasing before they buy it.

This should be clear evidence that you should do everything you can for your business to feature on the first page of Google’s search results.

Whether the consumer wants to compare prices of the product, read reviews, or learn more about it, this shows that today’s consumer is much more informed and has high standards when it comes to shopping.

Online shopping carts have a high abandonment rate.

Many online business owners often feel disheartened at the amount of abandoned carts on their website.

If this sounds like you, don’t feel bad because the global average for cart abandonment is a whopping 69.8%!

Research shows that many people will abandon their cart if they notice that there are hidden or unexpected charges. With this in mind, always be clear and upfront about shipping and admin costs because if these unexpectedly appear in the customer’s cart, they will feel disappointed and more likely to abandon the purchase.

To encourage potential customers to finalize the purchase, you could send them reminders about the items in their cart, and even consider offering them a small discount to entice them.

The international packaging industry makes a formidable financial contribution on a global scale to some of the largest economies. The cost of running a single Douglas case packer might not be that much. But when so many different industries combine their automated packing expenses it turns out to be a formidable contribution that drives the economy’s current spending trends. Consumer trends and industry inclinations play a huge role to spurt the growth rate of spendings in the packaging industry.

What Is Packaging?

Packaging is an all-inclusive business enterprise term that refers to the technical and structural layout of the efforts designed for the storage, shipping, and sale of consumer merchandise. In some cases, packaging may also include the product manufacturer’s advertising efforts. For some of the largest market-dominant manufacturers, packaging also includes their brand name and brand identity making it a fundamental part of the manufacturer’s business model. Packaging will always be the most important factor after creating an outstanding product.

What Are Some Of The Latest Packaging Megatrends?

Every sector of enterprise has megatrends which are alterations and modifications made by the manufacturers to their products based on the current market trends. These megatrends influence the business activity and success of brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce websites. One such example is the drink manufacturers UK, who have adapted to these megatrends in their product development and packaging. These megatrends have influenced how each product gets packaged, labeled, and presented for sale in the market by top entrepreneurs all over the world, including drink manufacturers. Let’s look at some of the most superlative packaging trends in the world today.

Electronic Printing:

2020 is the start of a new decade and revolution dominated by entrepreneurs offering their products for sale on the world wide web. Electronic printing uses computer propagation as the main method for designing physical product packaging presentations to create an overlay of images or graphics to present the look of the product. Electronic printing is a trend that has influenced the success of some of the most distinguished products internationally. We can say without a doubt that electronic printing is a trend that is here to stay with developments rapidly progressing forward.

When we compare electronic printing to the obsolete mechanical methods of typesetting, electronic printing offers organizations much more options for personalization and customization. A majority of the companies worldwide replaced analog processes with digital processes within the last decade. It is not easy, both financially and logistically, for large industries to retool a factory completely to update their operating procedures to make the necessary changes to implement electronic printing. In 2018 very few entrepreneurial organizations had not made the changes to shift towards electronic printing because this was the first time there were more digital presses in comparison to standard flexo presses.

Personalized Packaging

Electronic printing makes it much easier for organizations to customize packaging to add a personalized touch to their products for their clients. This trend has been in the works by some of the largest organizations in the world but now it has become a relatively common practice for all of the companies worldwide. There is no universally valid packaging for all entrepreneurs. This is the driving force behind all personalized packaging solutions.

Personalized packaging grants entrepreneurs a way to make their product look unique and stand out from the crowd from the other competitors offering the same product. Some brands have started to target specific markets by using personalized packaging as a tool to help them compete with their adversaries and succeed. A can of cold beverage instantly becomes appealing to a customer when they see their first name printed on it. It instantly becomes hard to refuse a can of refreshing beverage that has its name on it.

Personalized packaging is also used to reveal a brand’s story. This becomes even more attractive for consumers especially if they can connect with the brand’s story with something in their own life. Personalized packaging is a trend that is here to stay for a long time to come.

Products Dominated By Unique Brand Names

Products dominated by unique brand names are an Avante-Garde trend for the packaging industry. Stores can offer a line of unique products that are one of a kind to their industry and they are only available in that particular brand’s store. There are multiple advantages for brand names to employ this practice to help them compete in the market to procure a fair share of the market with their distinguished product lineup. With the help of the practices of this trend private brand names have far exceeded national brand names in the global market.

Products dominated by unique brand names started to become available in the market a few years ago with some of the biggest American companies making the necessary changes to implement this trend. Amazon had purchased Whole Foods with the intentions of providing their customers an extensive line-up of products that would be associated with their brand name. Lidl also came into the US market and also presented its brand name on its products to the consumers in the United States.

Aldi and Trader Joe’s are some other big names within the United States that implemented similar practices to seize their fair share of the market. Today, private labels reach one out of every four products sold in the United States, and this is a trend that is not about to change soon.

Evolution Of Flexible Packaging Materials

A trend that is quickly gaining momentum and popularity is flexible packaging. Stiff packaging materials were once a staple in the market. Today that trend has declined to give rise to flexible packaging materials. According to the Flexible Packaging Association, almost 19% of the total US packaging market is dominated by products with flexible packaging. Bags, envelopes, pouches, and wraps are all different forms of flexible packaging material that are always easily and readily available in the market.

In the past, flexible packaging materials were made of polyvinyl chloride or plastic that does not decompose easily and has a bad effect on the environment. Today we find that polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, and polypropylene packaging materials are extremely durable and environmentally friendly at the same time which is the reason why it is so popular.

Digital marketing makes branding your business much easier.

Branding is crucial for business success. A brand is the collection of identifiers (name, logo, packaging, etc.) that help people recognise a company, product, or individual. If your customers do not recognise your brand, then they are more likely to purchase from an alternative they can identify. Additionally, branding helps improve the success of all of your product or service offerings. Customers having a good experience with one product increases the likelihood of them purchasing a separate product of yours in the future.

Digital marketing utilises online technologies and channels to promote products or services. But, how does digital marketing help branding? Digital marketing allows companies to increase visibility, create associations between their products and symbols, and target customers at each stage of the brand recognition process (brand rejection, non-recognition, recognition, preference, and loyalty). These abilities provide companies more flexibility in advertising to customers and help them make their brand identifiers more widely recognised.

Importance of Branding

Branding has many important roles in a business. It drives customer brand awareness and recognition, builds customer trust, improves advertising results, and generates customer loyalty. Brand awareness and recognition helps customers recognise your product, service, and logo, which increases the likelihood of them choosing your offerings over a competitor’s. Likewise, customer trust in your brand makes consumers more likely to purchase from you in the future.

Customer loyalty is arguably the most important metric because it greatly increases the chance that past customers will purchase future products. Customer loyalty is often measured with the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric, which gauges how likely a customer is to recommend a product. Research America is a great resource for explaining more about the NPS and how beneficial it is for nearly every industry and organisation. Understanding how many customers have already achieved brand loyalty helps businesses revise their marketing plan to either target new customers, focus on converting existing customers, or focus on keeping current loyal customers happy.

Choosing Your Digital Marketing Strategies

There are many ways to market your brand online; prioritising the strategies that will provide the most value for your business is crucial for success.

Some of the most popular digital marketing strategies include:

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing
• Blogging
• Video marketing (typically on YouTube)

Choosing the right mix of strategies for your business will depend on a number of factors, including your marketing budget, company goals, industry, target audience, and more. For small and mid-sized businesses, starting with social media and email marketing is likely the best strategy. These options are both low-cost and highly effective at building an online brand. Social media allows you to engage with a large audience and help more people achieve brand recognition, while email marketing is useful for connecting with past customers to encourage them to buy again or to build customer brand preference or loyalty.

Larger businesses can choose to specialise in a few strategies or diversify their efforts across multiple channels and techniques to see which performs best for their industry and target audience. Preliminary research can be used instead to eliminate this guesswork and find which channels generate the best results before investing a large amount of time and money in nonoptimal strategies.

Optimising Your Website

Your website is one of the most important places to create your online brand. On your company website, you have nearly unlimited freedom to showcase your brand colors, logo, name, products, services, packaging, and all other elements of your brand. Your website is likely the first place many customers discover your brand or research your products, so your web pages should be helpful, engaging, and branded. Adding a blog to your website is a great way to provide more value to consumers.

Your website should represent your brand identity and highlight how your products or services meet the needs of your target audience. Including demonstration videos, positive customer reviews, and suggested next steps (a call to action) can help market your brand to consumers. Providing your contact information or offering forms to request more information can help turn your website into a lead generation powerhouse.

Overview

Overall, digital marketing can be a powerful tool to build your brand and increase advertising success. Maintaining consistency in messaging and branding across digital channels is essential for creating a holistic and unified brand image. However, switching tones can be acceptable, especially when creating content for your website versus social media. Generally, social media has a more casual tone, but it is important to keep the core messaging aligned with your website or emails.

By choosing the right digital marketing strategies for your business, you can effectively build your brand, increase customer brand recognition, and improve your sales over time.

Content writing affects your social media, website, and print marketing efforts that effectively increases your social media traction. It allows you to consistently engage with your customers through high-quality contents that bring in even more customers. Content writing allows you to showcase your brand through expertly crafted articles that can significantly add to your business’ growth and success.

As more and more businesses start to focus their efforts on new and modern types of marketing such as content marketing, it is only right to expect the high intensity of competition between brands. Of course, because of this growing competition you will also want your written contents to stand out.

It is highly suggested that to be able to ensure that you’re making the most out of your content writing, you have to properly outsource content writing. By doing this, you will not only get your money’s worth but at the same time be able to build content that not only resonates with your target audience but elevates your brand through the words of a professional content writing service. 

Once you have expertly chosen the perfect content writer for you, you will need to work on maintaining the continual stream of old and new customers by providing them with consistent written materials that will interest, entertain, and inform them of what your brand has to offer. 

Different Types of Written Content

• Blogging – Blog posts are definitely the most common type of content writing that you will find everywhere. This type of written content helps boost your website’s SEO rankings, since search engines reward websites that are constantly putting out new content. Blogging is very easy to throw into your marketing routine since it can cover a wide range of topics and have a variety of writing styles, depending on the topic and the goals of your business.

• Copywriting – This a basic type of content writing that includes things like writing your website copy, product descriptions, sales collateral, advertisements, and focusing on traditional print media and infographics. Copywriting is a type of written content that should be carefully crafted to be able to effectively promote your brand and catch the interest of potential customers.

• Technical Writing/Long Form – This type of content writing is probably the most intimidating but for someone who fully comprehends your own business and your own products, this can sometimes be the easiest type of content to produce. Technical writing ranges from creating white papers to ebooks to guides that explain how your product or service works, how your customer can apply it, and educate your audience on the specifics. 

• Social Media Posts – This type of written content is arguably the one with the farthest reach. Almost everyone is already on social media which is why the method of digital marketing began in the first place. The huge audience in these platforms allow businesses to stay relevant and in touch through platform specific posts. 

A Dedicated Content Team Without The Price Tag

If it is your vision to boost your business and customers in a cost-effective way, content writing should be delegated to dynamic professionals who are trained and experienced in the field that are more than capable of writing more than one type of written content. This strategy offers high-quality output that will not only save you resources but most importantly, will save you time and energy. 

We at UnicornGO will arrange a highly skilled and dedicated team that will provide you with unrestricted and unlimited content writing so that you may be able to concentrate on building your business, focusing on the big picture. With UnicornGO, you’ll finally be able to do all those sales and marketing campaigns you have been putting off due to writing holdup. Let us help you create without limits, contact our support team today. 

Small businesses start with limited investments. Any help and hiring to the business will cost the owner. It is tough to decide which cost to incur and which one to curtail. The financial matters of a business are not such in which attention should be paid to save cost.

Small business owners looking to save money consider hiring accountants as an unnecessary expense. Some businessmen think that it would be expensive to hire an accountant. However, an accountant takes care of some time-consuming business activities like taxes. Comparison will likely cost less per hour pay an entrepreneur saves by utilizing his precious time and energy.

Appointing an accountant to manage business accounts allows the entrepreneur to keep his mind cool because an expert handles his business details.

Some Questions That May Clear the Confusion

Here are some of the questions an entrepreneur should ask himself when deciding on the need of hiring an accountant for a small business:

Can I Handle My Business Accounting on My Own?

How much knowledge does an entrepreneur have about accounting? Does he know about the types of bookkeeping systems? What is an Income Statement? These are questions that need genuine answers, and nobody except the businessman himself can answer these questions.

If the response to the inquiry is no, it is time to introduce an accountant to manage business finances.

Am I Tech Savvy?

Perhaps, use of computer software and apps is common in everyday life. Using some apps daily does not make the user an expert in that particular field. Accounting for small businesses is not child’s play. Today’s accounting system depends on technology. New software keeps on coming, which helps in accounting but creates confusion for some not-so-professional.

The small business owner needs software that tracks the invoices and expenses as well. Still, these apps and software cannot operate on their own and need your precious time.

How can an Accountant Help Me?

Understanding what change an accountant can bring to the business is the foresightedness of the businessman. It may help in taking a better decision whether or not to appoint the accountant. An accountant can help in financial analysis, data management, generation of financial reports, etc.

Do I Have Enough Time to Handle My Accounting Myself?

Accounting of a firm requires complete concentration. It demands your heart and soul in one direction. The nature of the business may demand the owner to be on-road constantly or have regular meetings with clients.

The owner is continuously on the phone or replying to the mails; it could be anything. Whatever the reasons are, a simple question is, does the entrepreneur have enough time to handle the accounts book himself.

It will be a great relief to hand over the responsibility to a professional who takes some amount and will do your work systematically to meet the statutory compliance of accounting practices.

Am I Acquainting with the Process of Filing Tax Returns for Small Businesses?

The new small business owners are not acquainted with the tax filing procedures. It is challenging to deal with accounting and taxation procedures along with concentrating on the business. It is one of the reasons why so many small entrepreneurs hire accountants for sole traders.

The owner’s precious time is not for filing tax returns but for making new business deals and satisfying the existing clients.

Can I Bear the Expenses of Hiring an Accountant?

There are no fixed or standard rates to hire an accountant. The fees depend on the individual requirement and paying capacity of the business owner. The work experience and education of professionals are important factors that decide their professional charges.

The average cost of hiring a certified public accountant (CPA) to file a tax return ranges from £35 per hour (for common services) to £150 per hour (for complex accounting work).

Will the Absence of Accountant have any Impact on the Business in the Long Term?

Analyze and evaluate the business conditions. What will be the condition of the business 5 or 10 years from now? How much do you need an accountant in the future? If the accountant is not with the owner, what will be the consequences?

Advantages of Hiring an Accountant

Hiring an accountant helps the business in many ways and has plenty of advantages. Here are a few benefits of hiring an accountant:

• The accuracy of books increases
• Least accounting mistakes
• The owner has more free time for other productive tasks
• Helps to make decisions in the right direction
• Minimize business expenses

Accountant for Long Term Business Prospects

Hiring an accountant helps small business owners to do business with a peaceful state of mind and achieve newer heights with accounts in the perfect position.

An experienced accountant can help the business owner during every stage of their company’s growth and development. Hiring an accountant can make life easier for the entrepreneur, and he can concentrate on what he does the best. The small business owner’s specialty is running the business. Leave the financials to the accountant.