Amazon.com Inc. has recently acquired e-commerce technology startup Veeqo Ltd and confirmed it in its statement. It happened last November but the company announced the acquisition several days ago.

Quoting Veeqo’s website, it is the inventory and fulfilment platform built by an ecommerce seller, for ecommerce sellers, made in Swansea, Wales. It provides a cloud service that helps online retailers manage their business operations.

The startup’s service mainly targets retailers that sell their merchandise through not one but multiple online platforms, such as Amazon and Shopify  and helps avoid a great deal of duplicate work.

With Veeqo’s cloud service retailers can centrally perform tasks such as inventory management across all the online channels through which they sell their merchandise. It reduces manual work for a retailer’s employees and thereby increases operational efficiency.

Retailers can track inventory levels, determine when stock is running low and order new merchandise from suppliers. If a retailer has a presence in multiple markets, it can use Veeqo to coordinate what merchandise shipment should be routed to which location.

Veeqo also provides features to manage customer orders, returns and refunds. The service has a built-in analytics tool to predict future customer demand and help retailers ensure that they have a sufficient amount of merchandise in stock.

A few months ago, Amazon said that about 2 million third-party sellers offer their products on its e-commerce marketplace. With Veeqo’s service, the company can help simplify operations for third-party sellers that offer their products not only on its marketplace but also on other platforms such as Shopify.

Third-party sellers are central in Amazon’s e-commerce strategy. They accounted for about 60% of Amazon’s online sales last year. Small and midsized businesses in the U.S. sold more than 3.8 billion products through the company’s e-commerce marketplace during the 12 months ended Aug. 31, up from 3.4 billion the prior year.

Amazon could also use Veeqo’s features to manage sales across multiple e-commerce platforms to advance its Multi-Channel Fulfillment program. That program allows retailers to use Amazon’s logistics network to ship products they sell through other e-commerce platforms.

Amazon’s representatives added in the official statement that the company “plans to continue investing in new features and improvements to help Veeqo serve sellers globally from its home in Wales, facilitate growth for sellers’ multi-channel businesses, and enhance the experience of their customers”.

As siliconangle.com reminds, Veeqo is the second e-commerce technology startup that Amazon has acquired in so many years. Early last year, the company acquired Selz, a startup with a platform that helps online retailers with tasks such as website development and managing ad campaigns.

Amazon’s cloud unit, Amazon Web Services Inc., also offers multiple solutions for retailers. Among those solutions is the Amazon Personalize service that AWS launched in 2019. The service uses machine learning to help companies with tasks such as generating shopping recommendations.

AWS has a long list of major retailers among its customers, including Best Buy Co. Inc. and J Sainsbury plc, the second-largest supermarket chain in the U.K. Best Buy recently named AWS as its preferred cloud provider as part of an initiative to upgrade its technology capabilities.

Indonesia flies under the digital radar despite its sizeable ecommerce market. The country’s population is 278.3 million, the fourth largest globally. With over 10 million residents, Jakarta, the capital, is the biggest city in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

Indonesia consists of over 17,000 islands, creating both ecommerce opportunities and a logistics challenge. Consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates that ecommerce consumers in small towns and remote islands save 15 to 25% by shopping online because there are few brick-and-mortar stores and prices are high.

Demographics

Eighty-seven percent of Indonesians are Muslim, the largest population worldwide. Twenty percent of the country is middle-class.

According to practicalecommerce.com, Indonesians are avid social media users, and the country is a mobile-first market with many residents never owning a computer. A McKinsey survey shows that  almost 80% of internet traffic goes through mobile connections. The population’s median age is 30 years, and young consumers are digitally sophisticated. The 30- to 39-year-old group accounts for 47% of ecommerce spending.

Ecommerce Statistics

A report from the Singapore-based Institute of Southeast Asian Studies shows that about 138 million Indonesians shop online — roughly one-half of the population. The ecommerce sector accounts for 72% of the total value of the digital economy. Only a quarter of ecommerce purchases are cross-border, but researchers expect the market for goods from other countries to expand.

Indonesia is the ninth largest ecommerce market, with projected 2022 sales of USD $59 billion, according to Statista. Redseer, a consulting company, reported that the number of online shoppers in Indonesia grew from 75 million pre-Covid to 85 million during the pandemic.

Revenue. Fashion comprises 31% of Indonesia’s ecommerce revenue. Electronics and media is second at 23%, followed by food and personal care at 16%, toys and hobbies at 16%, and furniture and appliances at 14%.

The most significant ecommerce player in Indonesia is retailer JD.id, with 2021 revenue of $2.3 billion. Next is Shopee.co.id, a marketplace, with revenue of $390 million. Orami.co.id, a “parenting platform” combining commerce and content, posted 2021 revenue of $295 million.

Payments. Sixty-six percent of transactions by volume in Indonesia is cash. The most popular digital method in 2020 was preloading cash value onto an e-payment application via a website or mobile wallet — accounting for almost 30% of all total payments. GoPay ranked first among those applications, followed by two domestic providers: OVO and ShopeePay.

Top 5 Marketplaces

The top visited Indonesian marketplaces, according to ecommerceDB, a division of Statista, are as follows.

Tokopedia. Founded in 2009, Tokopedia is a B2C and C2C marketplace. It garnered 135 million monthly visits in the first quarter of 2021. Electronics is the most popular product category, followed by fashion and groceries.

Shopee. The aforementioned Shopee, founded in Singapore in 2015, earns most of its revenue in Indonesia. It is the second-largest marketplace there in terms of traffic, with 127 million visits per month. Shopee’s most popular categories are beauty, household appliances, and fashion.

Bukalapak, founded in Indonesia in 2010, is another C2C and B2C marketplace with 34 million visitors per month in the first quarter of 2021. It also serves mom-and-pop shops known as warungs located in more remote areas. Bukalapak now has about 6 million merchants selling a wide variety of products. In 2021 Bukalapak went public in an IPO that raised $1.5 billion.

Lazada, owned by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, emphasizes low prices. Electronics and fashion are the two most popular product categories. Lazada also offers a logistics and payments infrastructure for its ecommerce sites in various countries in Southeast Asia. In the first quarter of 2021, the site captured 30 million visits per month in Indonesia.

Blibli, owned by Djarum Group, a multi-brand manufacturer, received more than 19 million monthly visits in the first quarter of 2021. It sells electronics, apparel, food, and kitchen appliances. Blibli integrates omnichannel B2B and B2C and offers several payment and delivery options.

Challenges

Although it has seen significant growth, ecommerce in Indonesia faces challenges. For instance, the country lags behind its neighbors in logistics and service. A high percentage of deliveries are on motorcycles. Indonesia also lacks an educated, digitally sophisticated workforce. Just 13% of Indonesians have a university education.

Moreover, only 49% of Indonesians use banking services.

Unlike other countries, C2C marketplaces play a prominent ecommerce role, which contributes to fraud and uneven service quality.

The contract logistics company DHL chose ReverseLogix to deal with eCommerce returns. ReverseLogix will now be responsible for all the supply chain constraints.

The company provides end-to-end returns management services B2C and B2B. To be more exact, they engage in solutions to connect eCommerce return systems. They allow the companies to streamline requests, logistics, and other processing.

DHL is going to make use of that to fulfill various customers’ needs and please their requirements.

The National Retail Federation informed the high returns in 2021. The rate rose by 78% amounting to over $761 billion. DHL undertook this opportunity to correlate with growth for the company.

Chris Blickhan, the vice president of development, stated that returns have evolved into a critical factor in satisfying today’s e-commerce customers prompting retailers to seek out partners like DHL Supply Chain to help put in place and execute efficient, fast, and cost-effective returns.

Retailers have recorded a huge benefit from the pandemic and the restrictions. The consumers ended up spending most of the money on retailers. For example, the spending for Valentine’s day went up to $23.9 billion.

Customers already planned to celebrate the holiday. Three-quarters of the customers wanted to make up for the missed time. They call it an “important” expenditure due to the pandemic’s current state. This is going to benefit the retailers. The increased revenue acquisition will enhance eCommerce returns.

There will be a spike in per person expenditure. It is going to rise up to $175 per person. It is higher than the last year, which was $164.76.

Manufacturers in Europe have prioritized developing self-service ecommerce but face such challenges as channel conflicts and lack of support from management, a new study finds.

Manufacturers, both foreign and domestic, face the same set of challenges—and priorities—when it comes to B2B digital commerce.

A small survey of 50 European manufacturers from Stockholm-based digital commerce research firm Copperberg and ecommerce firms Intershop and Evident finds that a lack of regional market knowledge (38%) and a lack of support from the organization’s top executives (34%) are the top two challenges standing in the way of developing or expanding a digital commerce strategy.

But the top priority for rolling out or expanding B2B ecommerce is developing digital self-services to increase buying convenience (62%), according to the Copperberg survey.

What is digital self-service?

Digital self-service is a solution or a group of solutions enabling web users or employees to be completely autonomous on a website or intranet.

These tools and information enables them to find the answers to their questions without having to contact customer suport or their HR department. Digital self-service usually affect actions that are quite simple, such as asking for a quote or even managing a contract.

Why is self-service important?

The implementation of one or more self-service solutions becomes relevant when a client service department is facing numerous online requests, to the point where it’s humanly difficult, if not impossible, to manage these.

Beyond this, self-service meets the ever-growing needs of Internet users: autonomy and speed.

Studies are clear on this point: web users first look for a way to find the information on their own before contacting customer service.

A Zendesk study shows that 81% of customers try to take care of their own problem before reaching out to support channels.

If you don’t manage to meet their expectations, you risk suffering the wrath of your clients. With users hyperconnection, a customer lets his entourage and the entire web know that he is not satisfied. This word-of-mouth, or even worse this bad buzz, can have a significant impact on your business and drive away potential prospects.

76% of clients have stopped doing business with an organisation due to its poor client service and 39% have even immediately abandoned their purchase to switch to another supplier.

Benefits of digital self-service

Self-service can take many forms and be adapted to a multitude of sectors and services. Its benefits are numerous:

• Increased customers’ satisfaction

By providing an optimized customer experience to your users, through a solution that effectively answers their questions, available 24/7, you give them autonomy and time savings that will make all the difference. A satisfied client is a loyal one! According to a Salesforce study, more than 88% of clients say that an immediate answer to their issue encourages loyalty.

• Reduction of low added-value incoming contacts

“I’ve lost my confirmation”, “Where’s my parcel?” or “I’ve lost my credit card”, this type of questions with low-added value are recurring ones in all customer services. These routine questions are time-consuming for customer advisors to handle because they are the most recurring ones. Yet at least 80% of these low added-value contacts can be fully automated. By responding automatically to these routine questions, your team members will have more time to devote to contacts with greater added value or to real issues and you will be able to observe a reduction in incoming contacts ranging from 30 to 50%!

• Increase in conversion rate

Self-service solutions are designed to simplify the customer journey. By streamlining access to information and communicating it at the right time you will gain your client/prospect’s trust.

Self-service solutions also offer the possibility to dynamize sensitive processing funnels, such as quotations, and thus promote conversion.

How to sell online and establish long-term relationships with key customers having access to data about their preferences, behaviors, and purchases? How to add a layer of personal touch to the shopping experience that is missing on traditional CRM systems?

Live commerce platform Immerse brings new digital foot traffic as an add-on website sales channel.

It’s a unique platform that connects its clienteling capabilities to retail clients’ CRM software.

The Immerss platform allows businesses to keep track of client purchases. This, in turn, gives in-store associates who might be working from remote locations the ability to identify the most loyal customers as well as their preferences to provide a more targeted service.

Two years ago, Arthur Veytsman, CEO of Immerss, developed a live commerce platform that changed how e-commerce sites serve their customers. It enables online merchants to sell online in real-time, dramatically speeding up a process that until now has mostly been done in person or offline.

Tools like FaceTime, Zoom, and SMS messaging are all connection tools. The software is completely embedded with the client’s back end and platform, which allows to be there when the conversation starts.

How It Started

Once Veytsman had a luncheon meeting with the president of Lucchese, a 138-year-old custom bootmaker based in Texas. The retailer was looking into potentially using live commerce as an option to work with online influencers.

He was dissatisfied with the results of traditional CRM chat features. He saw a gap in how his salespeople performed in the direct-to-consumer store. On the sales floor, he explained, they do well when talking to clients and know how to meet their needs.

The Lucchese website never gave his sales staff the ability to speak to clients in the same manner. The chat channel was just meant to be a customer service arm. What the company needed was a way to connect clients with trained salespeople.

Lucchese’s president signed up with Immerss in July 2019. The new software went live in 2020.

The integrated platform took Lucchese through the pandemic. Post-pandemic retail at the custom-made boot store picked up even further. The company created a digital showroom because the number of inquiries coming through the sales portal was so high.

A panel of products enables the sales associate to see what the customer recently viewed. The salesperson can suggest an item directly in that window back to the client.

Together they can walk it all the way to checkout. It is a very embedded experience during the call.

It is a full clienteling app versus discombobulated ways of connecting to people together. It is all under one platform. In addition, it’s a tool for sales staff to sell worldwide with no limitation. It brings in traffic from the website as an add-on sales channel.

The Immerss platform brings a fully integrated solution connected with the retailer’s back-end software and CRM. The platform works via desktop, mobile devices (both iOS and Android apps), and web browsers.

Immerss is also integrated into the Shopify app. Veytsman’s roadmap is to do similar integrations with other SaaS platforms, e-commerce platforms like Salesforce commerce, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and more.

Shopping on social media platforms is growing at a torrid pace — three times faster than traditional e-commerce platforms — and is on a pace to reach US$1.2 trillion globally by 2025, according to a study released Tuesday by an international professional services firm.

62 percent of this growth will be driven by Gen Z and millennial shoppers, reported Accenture, which defines social commerce as shopping on a social media platform where a person’s entire experience from discovery to final purchase can be performed on the platform.

Influence of Influencers

Social commerce may become mainstream for all shoppers, but right now, it’s primarily attracting younger shoppers. That’s partly because influencers are driving social commerce and younger adults and teens are much more likely to engage with and follow social media influencers.

Social media are often cited as a top channel for product discovery, as they have given rise to influencers as key components to generating awareness as part of a marketing strategy. This can help small businesses or lesser-known brands on the net. 59 percent) of social buyers are more likely to support small and medium-sized businesses through social commerce than when shopping through e-commerce websites.

Consumer Trust Issues

Consumers do cite trust as a critical barrier to purchasing on social media, and the platforms will need to solve for these barriers by improving merchandising capabilities and highlighting payment security.

Concerns voiced deal with proper purchase protection, proper returns, refunds, exchange policies, the authenticity of social sellers.

Trust is one area where traditional e-commerce players currently have an advantage over social commerce players.

Ad Scams

The quality of advertising on some social platforms can also be contributing to consumer skepticism about social commerce.

Too many ads, particularly on Facebook, are scams, that is training people not to buy off of these platforms. While Instagram and Facebook have limited or little trust as entities, social media influencers may be more trustworthy.

Some existing traditional e-commerce activity are likely to shift to social platforms. Social commerce has shown incremental growth over the past few years and is expected to continue to grow in the double-digits as the capabilities mature for end-to-end transactions. They’re already massive in China.

Subscription box services are becoming increasingly popular in the United Kingdom. Driven by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns more and more Brits have signed up for one or more subscription box services.

Food, drink, recipe boxes and male grooming drive the growth in the subscription box market in the United Kingdom. Because of the several lockdowns, many consumers want to have convenient home deliveries of essential items.

The UK Subscription Box Market report by Royal Mail shows that more than a quarter (26 percent) of shoppers in the United Kingdom are currently signed up to a food and drink subscription box service.

These kinds of services showed the highest growth year-on-year in 2020. The markets of food and drink subscription boxes, as well as recipe box subscription services have a combined value of over 1.18 billion euros (up from almost 500 million euros in 2017) with this forecast to grow to over 1.77 billion euros by 2025.

Growth among several types of boxes

According to Royal Mail, more and more businesses are now recognizing the potential of these boxes to serve the daily and essential needs of consumers. And it’s not only food or grocery boxes that grow in demand, there has also been strong growth in personal care and grooming items (such as razors, blades and shaving accessories), hygiene-related items (such as deodorants) and household staples (such as laundry detergent).

The UK subscription box market is set to be worth 2.13 billion euros by 2025.

The authors of the report think that the trend of subscription services will likely continue post-pandemic. “Due to changes in consumers’ shopping behaviors, and the convenience that these subscription plans provide.” Overall, the subscription box market in the United Kingdom is expected to be worth 2.13 billion euros by 2025.

Most subscription box services are cancelled within a year

Earlier this month, research showed that only one in fifty UK shoppers have kept their subscription services for more than a year. The average consumer in the United Kingdom even cancels their subscriptions within 5.3 months.

Here are some good new ecommerce books for this summer 2021 selected by Sig Euland from Practical Ecommerce on Amazon. There are titles on cryptocurrency, customer experience, fulfillment, leadership, social media marketing, startup strategies, and building an online course.

1. Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away): The Simple Playbook for Delivering the Ultimate Customer Service Experience by Micah Solomon

“Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away)” presents a step-by-step guide to building winning customer service culture to transform your company. Follow stories from innovative and successful companies, including Amazon and The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, and learn what it takes to turn routine customer interaction into lifelong engagement and loyalty.
Paperback $19.99; Kindle $9.49.

2. Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World’s Most Successful Entrepreneurs by Reid Hoffman, June Cohen, and Deron Triff

In “Masters of Scale,” LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman teams up with the executive producers of the “Masters of Scale” podcast to offer hard-fought lessons from iconic companies and disruptive startups. Taken from more than 100 interviews, this book offers collective insights distilled into a set of counterintuitive principles. Learn to find a winning idea and turn it into a scalable venture. Kindle $13.99.

3. The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance by Eswar S. Prasad

“The Future of Money” follows the current state of money and the impact of disruptive digital currencies. Explore the positive developments, such as greater efficiencies and improved access, and learn how to guard against the dangers of what’s to come.
Hardcover $35.00.

4. Million Dollar Micro Business: How to Turn Your Expertise Into a Digital Online Course by Tina Tower

“Million Dollar Micro Business” is a step-by-step guide for creating an online course. From ideation to launch and growth, identify what you can teach and develop into a course. Learn to build a digital learning website, market and launch your new course to the right audience, and scale your platform through automation.
Paperback $21.99.

5. Launch: How to Sell Almost Anything Online, Build a Business You Love, and Live the Life of Your Dreams by Jeff Walker

This is an updated and expanded version of the best-selling “Launch,” a guide for starting new products and businesses. This new edition features chapters on applying social media in your launches, live-streaming to deliver content, and using paid traffic and advertising.
Kindle $12.99; Hardcover $23.99.

6. The Startup Growth Book: 50+ Proven Ways to Scale Your Business Without a Marketing Budget by Andrew Lee Miller

“The Startup Growth Book” teaches entrepreneurs and marketers how to build sustainable, scalable growth, channel by channel, with no advertising. Learn how to scale organically using multiple channels, such as email, organic search, social media, and more. Drive your growth without outsourcing to an agency or a third-party marketing team.
Paperback $19.95

7. Social Media Marketing: Guaranteed Strategies To Mastering, & Dominating Any Platform For Your Brand by Jonathan S. Walker

“Social Media Marketing” is a resource for anyone who has little-to-no social media presence. Learn how to grow an interactive follower base organically. Get proven strategies for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Increase interaction of your followers. Monetize and maximize profits from your social media platforms.
Paperback $15.99.

8. The Sea We Swim In: How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World by Frank Rose

Building on insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, “The Sea We Swim In” shows how to see the world in narrative terms. Learn how a story can help you establish a brand identity and turn consumers into fans.
Kindle $12.99; Hardcover $21.95.

9. Customer Experience Excellence: Six Strategies to Deliver Exceptional Growth in 90 Days by Tim Knight and David Conway

“Customer Experience Excellence” is a guide to creating a successful customer experience platform. Drawing on the research of the global consulting group KPMG, the book details the winning systems of companies that have produced authentic customer communication systems at scale.
Paperback $25.95; Kindle $25.95.

10. Fast Fulfillment: The Machine That Changed Retailing by Sanchoy Das

“Fast Fulfillment” explores the ins and outs of the delivery side of online businesses. Learn the secrets of fast fulfillment, and design a plan for your own disruptive innovation.
Kindle $13.49.

11. Leadership for Founders: Seven Habits to Lead You and Your Team to Success by Fiona Macaulay

“Leadership for Founders” provides proven practices on how to be a leader who fosters innovation, attracts the right talent, and retains customers. Launching a new project is difficult when the long-term survival rate is so low. Explore these best practices to ensure success for you, your team, and your organization. Paperback $19.95.

12. Decisively Digital: From Creating a Culture to Designing Strategy by Alexander Loth

“Decisively Digital” explores how to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world. Learn how to establish a digital culture and realize the benefits of modern work for your employees. Take advantage of analytics, big data, and cloud computing. Explore how digital innovation can drive your business results. Paperback $25.00; Kindle $15.00.

Ecommerce warehouses are often not environmentally friendly.

• They consume vast amounts of energy.
• Many pose hazards to their employees.
• Material handling equipment, lighting, heating, air conditioning create emissions, some of them toxic.
• Warehouses are also noisy. Machinery in warehouses creates noise pollution. Machines, forklifts, and conveyors produce high-intensity sounds that are not only a nuisance but also a health and safety risk.
• Warehouses can generate much waste, largely from product returns.

Emissions. Toxic warehouse emissions are largely related to the facility’s size, layout and design, inventory levels, and equipment. Primary culprits include:

• Exhaust fumes from picking-up and drop-off of goods,
• Idling of materials-handling equipment such as forklifts,
• Chemical emissions or toxic gases from manufacturing or assembly processes,
• Bad ventilation, particularly in winter,
• Poor maintenance of heating and air conditioning systems.

A recent DHL whitepaper (PDF), “ECO-mmerce: How online retail can build the sustainable supply chain of tomorrow,” addressed warehouse health and safety. The paper points out that “to improve the environmental performance within warehouses, logistics companies are increasingly turning to environmentally friendly material-handling technology, such as forklifts with newer, more efficient batteries and chargers. Companies are also increasing the speed of loading trucks and delivery vehicles. This helps to reduce the dwell time of trucks at distribution centers, reducing their emissions.”

Noise. The degree to which noise can impact humans ranges from levels that interfere with understanding speech (annoyance and nuisance) to levels that cause adverse health effects (hearing loss and psychological effects). Variables include intensity, frequency, and pattern of noise as well as the nature of work that exposes the individual to the noise source.

The normal human ear can detect sounds between 0 dB to 140 dB (decibels). Long-term exposure to noise levels above 75 dB seriously hampers individuals’ hearing and affects their physical and psychological wellbeing. Anything over 120dB can cause discomfort or pain.

A very loud work area can make it nearly impossible to hear alerts, alarms, and co-workers. Many noise regulations impose mitigation measures — such as sound walls and other soundproofing techniques — if noise reaches a defined level. Hearing protection is a must in workplaces where loudness levels and exposure times exceed the allowable standards.

The sounds from mechanical vibrations can expose staff to permanent and debilitating health effects. An acoustic consultant can measure noise and vibration and recommend mitigation steps.

Waste. Companies that minimize warehouse waste avoid environmental damage while improving health and safety among employees. There’s often no greater source of warehouse waste than product returns.

According to the DHL paper, “Returns are a significant source of waste. Retailers and logistics companies are accelerating the scale of recycling and sustainable packaging in their ecommerce operations. Containers and packaging make up a major portion of municipal solid waste in the U.S., amounting to 82.2 million tons in 2018, according to the most recent data from the EPA. At the same time, thanks in part to the growing use of recycled materials, the recycling rate of packaging and containers was 53.9%, up from 49.4% in 2017. Packaging systems must be designed with care, using the least amount of materials and energy, maximizing recycled content, and increasing the potential for reuse.”

Engineering and Design

Companies commissioning new warehouses and distribution centers are using facility-specific carbon footprint calculations. Engineers and architects can configure energy-efficient and low-CO2-emitting processes for material handling systems and storage technologies. They compare the environmental impact of various structures and machines and advise on sustainable heating and cooling solutions.

Every aspect of a building impacts the total energy that drives CO2 emissions. A zero-energy facility produces enough renewable energy to meet its own annual energy consumption requirements. This is the objective that global organizations wish to achieve.