After years of accelerated evolution of the online market, 2022 has brought challenges for the e-commerce business, which, like the entire market, has faced economic instability, inflation, stagnant or reduced consumption, and increasingly cautious customers. In addition, previous years of growth have brought increased competition, with the number of online players growing rapidly. How do online stores overcome challenges and what makes them different? Expansion into new markets along with continuous optimization of one’s own operational flow are two solutions applied by an increasing number of local online stores.

dEpurtat.ro is an online women’s shoe store that had a turnover of 4.2 million euros in 2020 and recorded a growth of 20% in 2021. Thanks to 11 years of experience in eCommerce, the store has become a market leader in its niche.

To be competitive in the market, I had to keep up with and invest in e-commerce technology, says Nicolae Slav, founder of EPurtat.ro. Who managed not only to maintain the leading position in its segment, but also to enter several markets of the region.

“Regional development is part of a larger investment plan planned by us for 2020-2022, in which we invest 2 million euros. With the support of MerchantPro, we managed to open 3 new stores in Bulgaria, Hungary and Greece in just three months. , where we have a portfolio of 35,000 products and the plan continues in Croatia, France and Italy. It was important for us to have an e-commerce solution that could keep pace with the growth of our business. The received support in the implementation of our business ideas, as well as their proactive, continuous development, helped me scale dEpurtat.ro”Mykola Slav explained.

Foreign markets increasingly accessible to Romanian stores

According to a recent study by Flow, in 2021, 76% of global shoppers will have made an online purchase from a store outside of their home country. The most active areas in this segment are fashion, accessories, shoes, cosmetics and personal care products, electronics and jewelry. And with the biggest challenge in 2022 being highly competitive, research shows that to stay relevant, regardless of market size, you need to know your customers better than ever and offer them a personalized experience.

“It is important for us to align and even be one step ahead of trends, so that stores on the Merchant Pro platform, in turn, are one step ahead of competitors. That’s why we’ve developed the new MerchantPro Next storefront, which offers, among many other benefits, unmatched technical performance in terms of loading speed or ranking in search engine indicators, as well as extremely fast verification with convenient payment methods such as pay-per-click. In addition, we wanted to offer complete flexibility and independence for those running an online store with our solutions. For example, since it is important to be able to design your site according to the profile of your target customers, online stores built on MerchantPro can develop their own store design from scratch, or they can choose a pre-configured design without intervention at the code level using the Widget Studio features.– explained Artur Redulescu, CEO of MerchantPro, an e-commerce platform of SaaS solutions for creating online stores.

The implementation of new opportunities to optimize the business and ensure its scalability was an important criterion when choosing a platform and a niche store that doubled its online business during the pandemic. Military-shop.ro switched to the MerchantPro eCommerce SaaS platform in 2016 precisely because the old provider could not provide the evolution along with the business growth. According to founder Augustin Vardianu, this was the right decision, as it helped him reduce IT development costs and periodically introduce new features that would differentiate him from the competition. newly Military Store has expanded its operations to the Hungarian market, with representatives of online stores highly appreciating MerchantPro’s multi-store hosting and management functionality.

“We’ve been working with MerchantPro since 2016 and we’re completely satisfied with the platform, from the features available to the solutions we’ve always received for our specific needs. In the meantime, we have also launched an online store dedicated to the Hungarian market and solutions for synchronizing multiple stores make our work much easier.”– said Augustyn Vardianu.

Optimizing flows and platforms to support development

In the face of rising inflation in recent months, online stores are focused not only on increasing revenues, but also on reducing costs and internal optimization to support development.

“We recommend that online stores rely on features that protect customers and provide them with a pleasant and authentic experience. For example, website content loading speed is critical to conversion and retention, so optimizing it has been a priority for our team’s engineering throughout all recent developments of the MerchantPro platform. And we managed to get higher average scores than other solutions. Additionally, streamlining back-office flows through ERP integration and effective operations management functionality are critical to maintaining business profitability and agility, especially in today’s inflationary and labor-scarce environment.“, – stated Artur Redulescu.

Thus, if 5 years ago a team of 30 people of the online store dEpurtat.ro managed the processing of 500 orders per day, reception of 1000 products, received phone calls and other actions in the operational area, today the amount of work is more than twice as much, all these things are done by a team of only 35 people. How did this show come about? Thanks to flow optimization supported by automation on the MerchantPro platform.

And the furniture and decoration store TheHome.ro, which has grown in recent years thanks to working from home and the interest of Romanians in decorating the space in which they live, relies on automation and optimization of relations with suppliers to offer a wide catalog of products. ERP integration and vendor management functionality are two areas available in the MerchantPro e-commerce platform that enable businesses to manage orders effectively.

How important is the size of the investment?

Such examples show that the dynamics of e-commerce have not only benefited those with significant investment budgets. Yes, Amazon has grown by 200%, as have other businesses, including Romania, but this growth is available to stores focused on optimized growth through different tactics.

In addition, the MerchantPro founder says that repeat customers are key:“First of all, the seller must make sure that the online store is SEO friendly, that it ranks well in searches, that the loading speed is better, regardless of the type of content displayed, and then the customer experience on the site must be personalized and customized in such a way as to maintain a high degree of visitor retention”.

Online store Veloteca.ro, for example, decided this year to move its online operations to the MerchantPro e-commerce platform precisely to benefit from increased productivity and greater flexibility in store management. In a growing niche, Veloteca is the number 1 seller of folding, electric, mountain, road, cross and trekking bikes for men, women and children.

“Previously, we used Magento where we faced two main challenges: the slow loading speed of the store and, more broadly, the need for high-cost recurring investments for custom development. Switching to MerchantPro was the optimal solution to all these problems, and the decision to migrate came at the perfect time“, – explained Christian Schneider.

Among the functionalities recently introduced by MerchantPro that have had the strongest impact on increasing the sales recorded by stores on the platform are loyalty programs, automation designed to create and run personalized promotions, satellite landing pages that can be created with just a few mouse clicks, the introduction of popular among consumers, payment methods such as Apple Pay, one-click payments or “Buy now, pay later”, as well as extensive automation of order processing and the return segment.

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