Why Personalized Goods Ecommerce Sites Need Real-time Product Customization

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At least 30% of all products purchased online are returned. And of those, 22% are returned because the product received looks different from what was expected. This can be especially true for specialty retailers selling customizable products. What will my custom wedding gift bags look like? How will those monogrammed champagne glasses look?

With billions in lost profits at stake, online retailers are increasingly offering product configurators that help design a product, and then provide 3D visualization of the finished product’s appearance. For example, see a product configuration from My Wedding Reception Ideas’ website.

Pulse Commerce’s clientele include several specialty gifts and personalized goods retailers. Photorealistic product configuration using dynamic imaging is one of the game-changing capabilities retailers could provide to help compete more effectively. In fact, analysts estimate that custom products can double conversion rates.

This is why Pulse Commerce partnered with LiquidPixels to bring dynamic imaging and product-configurator features to our clients’ retail and B2B websites. Pulse Commerce serves a number of specialty retailers with custom offerings, including My Wedding Reception Ideas (MWRI).

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Here’s what three CEOs had to say on this topic:

From customer feedback and tough industry competition, we at MWRI realized years ago, the need for a robust online proofing system to allow our customers to view their personalized products before purchasing. My Wedding Reception Ideas and Pulse Commerce partnered with LiquidPixels to develop a robust online proofing experience so customers are confident their wedding decorations, favors, or gifts are personalized just the way they want. MWRI has been a Pulse Commerce client for years, creating a solid relationship of trust, and confidence that Pulse Commerce would be able to deliver exactly what MWRI needs to offer an exceptional shopping experience to their online customers.

~Raymond Miller

CEO, My Wedding Reception Ideas

 

Dynamic imaging is now a requirement — essential for being competitive and providing the best possible shopping experience for online shoppers. What was previously a luxury has now become a staple for e-commerce sites. We’re leading the innovation and happy to help partners such as Pulse Commerce show their merchants that dynamic imaging is a necessity and how quickly it can provide value.

LiquidPixels solutions power a wide range of what are called ‘product configurators,’ that enable shoppers to quickly design a nearly unlimited range of product concepts and preview them instantly online. Users can mix, match, add and delete objects such as furniture, clothing, custom text, patterns, textures, and colors. Retailers, interior designers, manufacturers, marketers and any online business that relies heavily on images can benefit from these solutions.

~Steve Kristy

CEO, LiquidPixels

 

Ecommerce has never been so competitive. Barriers for entry are very low, which has caused the number of online stores to skyrocket, and has dramatically reduced switching costs for shoppers. Customer experience is now the main battleground for merchants trying to stand-out in the crowd and captivate shoppers. Only those who deliver an outstanding personalized experience stand a chance, and that’s why this partnership is so important.

~Manish Chowdhary

CEO, Pulse Commerce

 

About Pulse Commerce
Pulse Commerce is a leading provider of and unified commerce solutions, which enable established merchants to leverage all aspects of omnichannel commerce using a single cloud-based system. We are on a mission to level the omnichannel playing field for mid-market merchants, delivering enterprise strength ecommerce capabilities via cloud-based solutions.

 

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Building an Effective Digital Loyalty Program in the Amazon Age [Free Webinar]

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Did you know that you can boost your revenues by 95% if you increase customer loyalty by 5%?

 

In fact, it is seven times more costly to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one.
Companies like Amazon and Nordstrom know that investments in loyalty pay handsomely and have created outstanding rewards programs. These retailers have millions of subscribers and are market leaders in customer loyalty.

The importance of retail customer loyalty and retention is profound.

  • 73% of ‘members’ will recommend brands with good loyalty programs
  • 70% of consumers will spend more if they can be rewarded

Our webinar, featuring Robbie Kellman Baxter, best-selling author of “The Membership Economy,” shows how to apply the principles of the membership economy to the retail sector.

The webinar explains how to shift the retail paradigm from transactional, where a purchase is considered the finish line, to membership based, where the first transaction is the starting line.

Creating an effective loyalty or membership program is no simple task. Aside from discounts, what can we offer to encourage loyalty? Aside from purchases, what activities and behaviors should we reward?

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The transformation from the transactional economy to the membership economy is taking place along 4 key dimensions. And each dimension, alone, has recently been the source of disruptive innovation:

 

The structure of a loyalty program in the membership economy is just the beginning. The webinar also describes how to address the 4 characteristics of the most successful loyalty programs:

  • They are aligned with the brand
  • The program fulfills a customer need
  • The program adds enjoyment to the customer experience
  • Redemption is easy

And Manish Chowdhary, CEO of Pulse Commerce, provides additional examples of how companies can go the extra mile:

  • Pick a creative name. For example, SoccerPro gives customers a ‘PROfile’
  • Make points sound like treasure. For example, Pixi Beauty’s ‘Pixi Dust’
  • Reward more than just purchases. For example, rewards for site visits and social shares.
  • Offer more than just store discounts. For example, free gifts with purchase.

Our free, on-demand webinar demonstrates how your retail business can apply these strategies to improve retention and raise the lifetime value of your customers.

 

 

Written By:

Indy Pereira

Indy Pereira

Indy Pereira helps ecommerce brands optimize their shipping and fulfillment with Cahoot’s technology. With a background in both sales and people operations, she bridges customer needs with strategic solutions that drive growth. Indy works closely with merchants every day and brings real-world insight into what makes logistics efficient and scalable.

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The Definitive RFP Template for Order Management Systems Evaluation

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Nobody wants to create a Request for Proposal (RFP) document from scratch. If you’re buying an Order Management System (OMS) for the first time, you need to get educated on the general market and offering, learn which feature categories are important, and figure out the areas to investigate that you would never have considered on your own. Well, that’s a challenge!

 

Many clients have asked us for OMS RFP templates in the past. So, we’ve taken a stab at it, and we think we’ve done a pretty good job too!

 

This comprehensive Order Management System RFP template covers all of the important OMS feature categories, including some that most people fail to consider. And it has some nifty capabilities of its own:
  • Overall Summary that automatically tabulates how well a vendor stacks up against the features you consider “must haves” and “nice to haves”
  • Merchant Summary and Vendor Summary pages that auto-populate other areas of the RFP.
  • Feature Prioritization and Filtering, so you can easily filter out the features that you don’t need vendors to answer.
  • Over 125 OMS Features across 9 categories:
    • User Experience
    • Distributed Order Management, Customer Service Capabilities & Loyalty Tools, Fulfillment Capabilities, Inventory & Warehouse Management, Product Information Management (PIM)
    • Administration, Reporting & Analytics, and Performance, Security and Compliance,
    • Integration Support

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We hope you find it helpful.  A recent whitepaper of ours, 5 Hidden Costs to Avoid When Buying an Order Management System, complements your RFP Template well, identifying some of the potential show-stoppers you’ll want to avoid when procuring a new OMS.

 

Please drop us a line if you have questions, comments or suggestions.

 

 

Written By:

Indy Pereira

Indy Pereira

Indy Pereira helps ecommerce brands optimize their shipping and fulfillment with Cahoot’s technology. With a background in both sales and people operations, she bridges customer needs with strategic solutions that drive growth. Indy works closely with merchants every day and brings real-world insight into what makes logistics efficient and scalable.

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