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Industry News: Emerging Education Trends in Australia

The education industry is seen by governments around the globe as an increasing contributor to a country’s national wealth and economic development. This blog details the most significant emerging trends in the education landscape in Australia and how it is becoming the most preferred choice for international students at the Bachelor’s Pass level, Master’s Coursework and Master’s Research level. Statistics published by the Australian Government Department of Education and Learning show that the highest number of students arriving in Australia for higher education come from South-East and Central Asia; particularly, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and India. The reports show that there has been a major leap in the influx of Indian students coming into the country for higher education, with a staggering 47.6% increase from the year 2013. This makes India one of the largest exporters of international students, following China and followed by Malaysia. Though Iraq, Egypt and Nepal don’t fall under the top 5 countries that have outbound mobile students to Australia; all three countries have shown a relatively significant increase in the number of students between the years 2013 at 2014, with figures at 51.8%, 40% and 33.8%, respectively. There are plenty of reasons for these hefty figures and a growing international student population in Australia, apart from Australia being sunny all year round – Australia promises ‘world-class education’ to students across the world with eight of the country’s universities being listed in the top 100 universities around the world and 5 of Australia’s cities being listed under the to 15 student-friendly cities around the world. Another major reason as to why there is major crusade of Chinese, Indian and other international students’ movie to Australia, is because tuitions and cost-of-living fees are relatively cheaper than universities in the United States and United Kingdom (being the second most popular choice for overseas students). A high proportion of graduates secure employment in the Australian job market and also transition from the ‘fast-track’ option to ‘permanent residence’ within a short span of time. To add to the long list of benefits, Australia’s English language requirements (IELTS, TOEFL) for universities have been relaxed and institutions now allow the partners/spouses of the applicants to apply along and secure places in institutes or vocational courses quickly and without difficulty. Fig.1 – Pie chart showing Percentage increase (from 2013-2014) in the number of overseas students coming from the top 5 nationalities studying in Australia Here are other interesting statistics about the choice of courses for international students as per trends observed and published by the Australian Government department of Education and Learning, in 2013 and 2014 – The top 3 subject choices for higher study in Australia are Management and Commerce, Engineering and Related Technology and Information Technology at the Bachelor’s Pass level. This is followed by a second category of popular courses that include Health, Society and Culture and other non-award courses at the Bachelors and Masters (by Coursework) levels. Engineering and Related technologies has seen a whopping 4987% leap from 2013 to 2014 at the Bachelor’s Pass level, because the job market for Engineers in Australia has doubled over the past year and has opened portals to more lucrative opportunities to overseas students. In the year 2013, a total of 84 students had taken up the subject, whilst in 2014, the same course received 4273 international students. Management and Commerce at the Doctorate (by Research) level has shown a stark increase of 368% of students from the year 2013 to 2014. Also, in the year 2014 alone, a total of 89,868 international students took up the subject at the Bachelor’s Pass level and 60,334 took up the course at the Masters (By Coursework) level, making Management and Commerce one of the most popular choices for study among international students. Though Creative Arts doesn’t have a very high cumulative total of overseas students, it has seen a major leap of 630% from the year 2013 to 2014 at the Bachelor’s Entry level. According to statistics, there was a summative figure of 30 students for the course in 2013. The year 2014 had as much as 219 students for the same course, indicating a growth in the popularity of the ‘Creative Arts’ field. A relatively medium chasm remains between male and female student rates in Australia. 2013 showed that there was a total of 1, 68,089 males while there were 1,60,313 females for the same year. There has been a 7.4% increase since, in the number of males opting for higher education in Australia in 2014, with a corresponding, 4.1% increase in the number of female students. “It is predicted that within the next decade, Australia is going to have the largest percentage of inbound international students, particularly from China and India and followed by Malaysia, Nepal and Saudi Arabia between 000’s-020” – Britishcouncil.Org   This is further exemplified by the bar chart below – With the statistics listed above, take a look at the top 10 universities in Australia that are attracting foreign students for 2013-2014 – 1. RMIT University 2. Monash University 3. The University of Melbourne 4. Curtin University of Technology 5. Non University Higher Education Institutions (Victoria) 6. University of Sydney 7. The University of New South Wales 8. University of Wollongong 9. Non University Higher Education Institutions (New South Wales) 10. The University of Queensland This is the first of the many detailed studies that we will be publishing about the trends in Education Sectors around the world. While this one focused on the emerging education trends in Australia, there will be more articles on the education trends on other countries in the upcoming weeks. Stay connected with GetFriday for more such interesting insights and follow us on our social media sites for further updates!  

Industry News: Emerging Education Trends in Australia Read More »

The education industry is seen by governments around the globe as an increasing contributor to a country’s national wealth and economic development. This blog details the most significant emerging trends in the education landscape in Australia and how it is becoming the most preferred choice for international students at the Bachelor’s Pass level, Master’s Coursework and Master’s Research level. Statistics published by the Australian Government Department of Education and Learning show that the highest number of students arriving in Australia for higher education come from South-East and Central Asia; particularly, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and India. The reports show that there has been a major leap in the influx of Indian students coming into the country for higher education, with a staggering 47.6% increase from the year 2013. This makes India one of the largest exporters of international students, following China and followed by Malaysia. Though Iraq, Egypt and Nepal don’t fall under the top 5 countries that have outbound mobile students to Australia; all three countries have shown a relatively significant increase in the number of students between the years 2013 at 2014, with figures at 51.8%, 40% and 33.8%, respectively. There are plenty of reasons for these hefty figures and a growing international student population in Australia, apart from Australia being sunny all year round – Australia promises ‘world-class education’ to students across the world with eight of the country’s universities being listed in the top 100 universities around the world and 5 of Australia’s cities being listed under the to 15 student-friendly cities around the world. Another major reason as to why there is major crusade of Chinese, Indian and other international students’ movie to Australia, is because tuitions and cost-of-living fees are relatively cheaper than universities in the United States and United Kingdom (being the second most popular choice for overseas students). A high proportion of graduates secure employment in the Australian job market and also transition from the ‘fast-track’ option to ‘permanent residence’ within a short span of time. To add to the long list of benefits, Australia’s English language requirements (IELTS, TOEFL) for universities have been relaxed and institutions now allow the partners/spouses of the applicants to apply along and secure places in institutes or vocational courses quickly and without difficulty. Fig.1 – Pie chart showing Percentage increase (from 2013-2014) in the number of overseas students coming from the top 5 nationalities studying in Australia Here are other interesting statistics about the choice of courses for international students as per trends observed and published by the Australian Government department of Education and Learning, in 2013 and 2014 – The top 3 subject choices for higher study in Australia are Management and Commerce, Engineering and Related Technology and Information Technology at the Bachelor’s Pass level. This is followed by a second category of popular courses that include Health, Society and Culture and other non-award courses at the Bachelors and Masters (by Coursework) levels. Engineering and Related technologies has seen a whopping 4987% leap from 2013 to 2014 at the Bachelor’s Pass level, because the job market for Engineers in Australia has doubled over the past year and has opened portals to more lucrative opportunities to overseas students. In the year 2013, a total of 84 students had taken up the subject, whilst in 2014, the same course received 4273 international students. Management and Commerce at the Doctorate (by Research) level has shown a stark increase of 368% of students from the year 2013 to 2014. Also, in the year 2014 alone, a total of 89,868 international students took up the subject at the Bachelor’s Pass level and 60,334 took up the course at the Masters (By Coursework) level, making Management and Commerce one of the most popular choices for study among international students. Though Creative Arts doesn’t have a very high cumulative total of overseas students, it has seen a major leap of 630% from the year 2013 to 2014 at the Bachelor’s Entry level. According to statistics, there was a summative figure of 30 students for the course in 2013. The year 2014 had as much as 219 students for the same course, indicating a growth in the popularity of the ‘Creative Arts’ field. A relatively medium chasm remains between male and female student rates in Australia. 2013 showed that there was a total of 1, 68,089 males while there were 1,60,313 females for the same year. There has been a 7.4% increase since, in the number of males opting for higher education in Australia in 2014, with a corresponding, 4.1% increase in the number of female students. “It is predicted that within the next decade, Australia is going to have the largest percentage of inbound international students, particularly from China and India and followed by Malaysia, Nepal and Saudi Arabia between 000’s-020” – Britishcouncil.Org   This is further exemplified by the bar chart below – With the statistics listed above, take a look at the top 10 universities in Australia that are attracting foreign students for 2013-2014 – 1. RMIT University 2. Monash University 3. The University of Melbourne 4. Curtin University of Technology 5. Non University Higher Education Institutions (Victoria) 6. University of Sydney 7. The University of New South Wales 8. University of Wollongong 9. Non University Higher Education Institutions (New South Wales) 10. The University of Queensland This is the first of the many detailed studies that we will be publishing about the trends in Education Sectors around the world. While this one focused on the emerging education trends in Australia, there will be more articles on the education trends on other countries in the upcoming weeks. Stay connected with GetFriday for more such interesting insights and follow us on our social media sites for further updates!  

‘Kaizen’ – How It Is Helping Us… And You!

In the 10 successful years of virtual assistance operations, GetFriday’s client base has been growing at an exponential rate and benchmarks itself on efficiency. With 14 dedicated virtual assistant teams handling clients from across 60+ countries, GetFriday’s VA’s are working round the clock to make sure that all tasks outsourced by clients are executed with unfailing precision and deadlines are strictly adhered to. Being the longest running VA company in the world, comes with its share of perils. Operational effectiveness is paramount to maintain the satisfaction levels of clients. And with competition looming, it has become even more important to become effective operationally and turn it into a competitive advantage, which cannot not be replicated easily. With this in mind, the term “continuous improvement” started to resonate within teams at GetFriday. This is the story of two such teams, GMT (UK) virtual assistance team and FE (Australia) small business team. Both these teams managed to bring and implement a globally recognized quality tool at GetFriday. What Is Kaizen? For the benefit of those of you who are unaware about Kaizen, here is a brief explanation of the philosophy – It is a Japanese philosophy that aims at ‘eliminating waste’ in the organization, without large capital investments. The word literally translates to ‘change’ (kai) ‘good’ (zen).” Any activity that does not add value to customer is a waste and needs to be eliminated. The overall objective being continuous small improvements. Identification of Non Value Added Activities: Every Wednesday, the teams meet to identify the Non-value added activities that stops them from delivering quality results on time to clients. Some example of Non value added activities identified and eliminated are listed below. This added to small continuous improvements within the teams and results began to show. The pending emails were identified as waiting inventory. It was decided to generate a daily report on the number of emails to be responded to. These emails usually are customer interactions. Elimination of this waste had immediate positive effect on the satisfaction level and responsiveness within the team. The tasks were taken up as per queue by associates irrespective of time required for each task. Therefore adding to waiting time for small tasks, which could easily be completed in less than an hour. It was decided to complete any task taking less than an hour before closing hours of the day and any task taking more than 1 hour to be completed in a single business day. This significantly reduced wait time for small tasks. It was found that clients need to be reached through right communication channels, otherwise any clarification with regard to work would have to wait till the next business day. Therefore associates were encouraged to explore Skype, phone calls and Gtalk as additional mediums of communication. Kaizen practice at GetFriday Document the current situation Visualize the ideal situation Define measurement targets Brainstorm solutions to the problem Develop Kaizen Plan Implement plan Measure, record and compare results to targets Prepare summary documents Define the problem Standardization To elucidate further, here are two small case studies of the problems and the solutions that the GMT and the FE teams came up with:- Case Study 1   Define the Problem: When a Virtual Assistant has completed a task for the client, the QC tracker has to be updated by the team-in-charge, after which the task will undergo quality checks by the Quality Team. There could be instances wherein the Team Lead is not at the desk or is in a meeting and if in that case, the QC tracker is not updated on time, there could be delays in getting the task approved by the QC and the VA could ultimately miss the deadline for the task. Document the current situation: The problem as mentioned above is documented on a board and also in an excel sheet. Visualize the Ideal Solution: The ideal solution for the problem is the situation where TL is always present to update the tracker. Define Measurement Targets: The numbers of tasks which are being delayed due to this tracker update problem are noted down, and targets were set to bring them down to zero. Brainstorm solutions to the problem: Once every week, all the team members gather in a meeting room to discuss all the problems and brainstorm on the ideas and feasibilities of the room for improvement. For this particular problem also, all the team members gathered together and brainstormed ideas for a feasible solution. Develop Kaizen Plan: The solution that was decided was that now, the QC tracker will be shared with two senior VA’s in the team and if in case, the Team Leader is not available, the tracker can be updated by either of the VA’s immediately. Implement plan: The decided solution was then implemented in the next week, and improvements were noted. Measure, record and compare results to targets: Results (delays/ missing deadlines due to the QC tracker issue after implementing solution) were noted and compared with the targets set (zero delay) in the earlier Kaizen meeting. Prepare summary documents: Results and improvements were noted for the complete Kaizen activity for this particular problem. Standardization: The solution was regularly implemented, and results were noted every week to bring in standardization. Following these simple methods, GetFriday’s GMT team was able to find the solution to many other similar problems. The following case study summarizes the solution found and implemented using above mentioned 10 simple steps.   Case Study 2   Problem: There is an urgent task that needs to go by the end of the day and there are no resources available in the team to handle the task because the VA’s already have a lot of tasks to do for themselves. In such a situation, there is a resource crunch. Solution: The Virtual Assistant who has received the task request should check with the shift in-charge who is present on the floor and find out if any Virtual Assistant is free in his/her team

‘Kaizen’ – How It Is Helping Us… And You! Read More »

In the 10 successful years of virtual assistance operations, GetFriday’s client base has been growing at an exponential rate and benchmarks itself on efficiency. With 14 dedicated virtual assistant teams handling clients from across 60+ countries, GetFriday’s VA’s are working round the clock to make sure that all tasks outsourced by clients are executed with unfailing precision and deadlines are strictly adhered to. Being the longest running VA company in the world, comes with its share of perils. Operational effectiveness is paramount to maintain the satisfaction levels of clients. And with competition looming, it has become even more important to become effective operationally and turn it into a competitive advantage, which cannot not be replicated easily. With this in mind, the term “continuous improvement” started to resonate within teams at GetFriday. This is the story of two such teams, GMT (UK) virtual assistance team and FE (Australia) small business team. Both these teams managed to bring and implement a globally recognized quality tool at GetFriday. What Is Kaizen? For the benefit of those of you who are unaware about Kaizen, here is a brief explanation of the philosophy – It is a Japanese philosophy that aims at ‘eliminating waste’ in the organization, without large capital investments. The word literally translates to ‘change’ (kai) ‘good’ (zen).” Any activity that does not add value to customer is a waste and needs to be eliminated. The overall objective being continuous small improvements. Identification of Non Value Added Activities: Every Wednesday, the teams meet to identify the Non-value added activities that stops them from delivering quality results on time to clients. Some example of Non value added activities identified and eliminated are listed below. This added to small continuous improvements within the teams and results began to show. The pending emails were identified as waiting inventory. It was decided to generate a daily report on the number of emails to be responded to. These emails usually are customer interactions. Elimination of this waste had immediate positive effect on the satisfaction level and responsiveness within the team. The tasks were taken up as per queue by associates irrespective of time required for each task. Therefore adding to waiting time for small tasks, which could easily be completed in less than an hour. It was decided to complete any task taking less than an hour before closing hours of the day and any task taking more than 1 hour to be completed in a single business day. This significantly reduced wait time for small tasks. It was found that clients need to be reached through right communication channels, otherwise any clarification with regard to work would have to wait till the next business day. Therefore associates were encouraged to explore Skype, phone calls and Gtalk as additional mediums of communication. Kaizen practice at GetFriday Document the current situation Visualize the ideal situation Define measurement targets Brainstorm solutions to the problem Develop Kaizen Plan Implement plan Measure, record and compare results to targets Prepare summary documents Define the problem Standardization To elucidate further, here are two small case studies of the problems and the solutions that the GMT and the FE teams came up with:- Case Study 1   Define the Problem: When a Virtual Assistant has completed a task for the client, the QC tracker has to be updated by the team-in-charge, after which the task will undergo quality checks by the Quality Team. There could be instances wherein the Team Lead is not at the desk or is in a meeting and if in that case, the QC tracker is not updated on time, there could be delays in getting the task approved by the QC and the VA could ultimately miss the deadline for the task. Document the current situation: The problem as mentioned above is documented on a board and also in an excel sheet. Visualize the Ideal Solution: The ideal solution for the problem is the situation where TL is always present to update the tracker. Define Measurement Targets: The numbers of tasks which are being delayed due to this tracker update problem are noted down, and targets were set to bring them down to zero. Brainstorm solutions to the problem: Once every week, all the team members gather in a meeting room to discuss all the problems and brainstorm on the ideas and feasibilities of the room for improvement. For this particular problem also, all the team members gathered together and brainstormed ideas for a feasible solution. Develop Kaizen Plan: The solution that was decided was that now, the QC tracker will be shared with two senior VA’s in the team and if in case, the Team Leader is not available, the tracker can be updated by either of the VA’s immediately. Implement plan: The decided solution was then implemented in the next week, and improvements were noted. Measure, record and compare results to targets: Results (delays/ missing deadlines due to the QC tracker issue after implementing solution) were noted and compared with the targets set (zero delay) in the earlier Kaizen meeting. Prepare summary documents: Results and improvements were noted for the complete Kaizen activity for this particular problem. Standardization: The solution was regularly implemented, and results were noted every week to bring in standardization. Following these simple methods, GetFriday’s GMT team was able to find the solution to many other similar problems. The following case study summarizes the solution found and implemented using above mentioned 10 simple steps.   Case Study 2   Problem: There is an urgent task that needs to go by the end of the day and there are no resources available in the team to handle the task because the VA’s already have a lot of tasks to do for themselves. In such a situation, there is a resource crunch. Solution: The Virtual Assistant who has received the task request should check with the shift in-charge who is present on the floor and find out if any Virtual Assistant is free in his/her team

Save 60 Minutes A Day

Save 60 Minutes A Day With GetFriday

As the saying goes, even a second is precious for a busy person and saving a whole 60 minutes is equivalent to striking a pot of gold. To have 60 whole minutes of your life back, could mean spending more time with your family, catching that movie you wanted to watch at the theater, jogging with your pet, Bruno at the beach, relaxing at the spa or just unwinding on the couch. To assist you all your business, personal and administrative requirements, GetFriday’s Virtual Assistants can help offload your work while you catch that much needed break for yourself. GetFriday has now come up with a series of ‘Save 60 Minutes A Day’ videos for you, capturing the very essence of how our virtual assistance services could help a client offload tasks and make a difference in his/her life in the process. The first of these videos, titled ‘Meet Jane’, is about a working mother of two, who is also an entrepreneur of a successful e-commerce store. Not being able to strike a balance in her work and personal life, Jane gets really flustered, but manages to change her life for the better by hiring a GetFriday Virtual Assistant! Her virtual assistant helps her by saving 60 minutes of her day everyday, by handling all her e-commerce back-end work for her, while she finally gets to spend some quality time with her kids! We are going to have a lot more videos in the ‘Save 60 Minutes A Day Series’, so, stay tuned for more updates!

Save 60 Minutes A Day With GetFriday Read More »

As the saying goes, even a second is precious for a busy person and saving a whole 60 minutes is equivalent to striking a pot of gold. To have 60 whole minutes of your life back, could mean spending more time with your family, catching that movie you wanted to watch at the theater, jogging with your pet, Bruno at the beach, relaxing at the spa or just unwinding on the couch. To assist you all your business, personal and administrative requirements, GetFriday’s Virtual Assistants can help offload your work while you catch that much needed break for yourself. GetFriday has now come up with a series of ‘Save 60 Minutes A Day’ videos for you, capturing the very essence of how our virtual assistance services could help a client offload tasks and make a difference in his/her life in the process. The first of these videos, titled ‘Meet Jane’, is about a working mother of two, who is also an entrepreneur of a successful e-commerce store. Not being able to strike a balance in her work and personal life, Jane gets really flustered, but manages to change her life for the better by hiring a GetFriday Virtual Assistant! Her virtual assistant helps her by saving 60 minutes of her day everyday, by handling all her e-commerce back-end work for her, while she finally gets to spend some quality time with her kids! We are going to have a lot more videos in the ‘Save 60 Minutes A Day Series’, so, stay tuned for more updates!

E-Commerce Store – Holiday Season Check List For Increasing Sales

Holiday season is near and this is the time online stores see a surge in sales. But like all things in life you need to be prepared. GetFriday has been around for 10 years now and we have come to understand and learn from our ecommerce clients, the essentials that are required to increase sales during the holiday season. Click on the picture below to see this blog in a slideshare format. Here is a checklist for your quick consumption:   1. This is the best time to launch new products This is the time of the year GetFriday associates get busy with remodeling e-commerce stores, resizing and editing the product images, proof reading the content, uploading products on amazon and rearranging the website display. Most e-commerce firms would consider this as the best time to launch a new product. The chances of succeeding now are far higher than any time later. The known factor about customers is that they are willing to spend more during this season. US retail sales for December 2014 was $442.9 billion – this was an increase of 3.2% over December 2013.   2. Start early with promotions and campaigns A recent study conducted by Oracle Marketing Cloud and Edison Research shows that consumers are doing their holiday shopping early, spending as much as $900 more in the month of October than in December. Start early with planning holiday promotions and campaigns. Our data shows that e-commerce stores start preparing for the holiday season as early as September – October and are ready to launch their campaigns. This give enough time for e-commerce stores to conduct experimental marketing and figure out ways to succeed with customers. With consumers, too willing to take advantage of early shopping discounts and promotions, the timing of promotions and campaigns has gained relevance in recent times. Remember you are competing for the customer wallet. If you are not ready for launching promotions for all your visitors in October, it is advisable to start campaigns with your existing database of clients. Give them the opportunity to take advantage of promotions before your new visitors. It is a known fact that cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than retaining an existing customer. 3. Increase your advertisement budget Let us simplify advertising for you – As you reach more customers with relevant offers, chances of sales increases proportionally. Holiday season is the best time to increase your spending on marketing, as you know for sure customers are looking for your products. If not yours they will land on a competitor’s website. Research shows that social media has a major impact on purchasing choices made by holiday shoppers. “More than half of users (52 percent) say they learned about a product they later purchased because of Twitter, and it’s so convenient to find gift ideas on Twitter that 39 percent say Twitter serves as their new holiday shopping list,” a 2014 Twitter study found. 4. Is your operations ready for holiday season? Make sure operational capabilities are ready for the holiday season. This is the time new customers would be experiencing your product and service, and chances of making them your loyal customer rests with the experience they will gain. It is a common practice with large retailers to hire employees during holiday season to manage customer operations. Learning from this industry practice, you could hire virtual assistants to help manage operations during the holiday season. 5. Is your website spreading the joy – with analytics? Your website needs to reflect the holiday season spirit and create the festive effect. Happy customers tend to buy more. You probably already know that the website is your store front. Look at data generated from your campaigns to optimize your pages. Let the best sellers be visible to your customers. 6. Be ready for customers purchasing from their phones UPS compass in its recent article How America will shop in 2015 quoted IBM data to reveal that mobiles accounted for 45 percent of all 2014 online holiday traffic and for 22.6 percent of online sales, a 27.2 percent gain over the 2013 total More than 50 percent of online shopping traffic came from mobiles during the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. These numbers drive home the point of need to be prepared with providing customers options of shopping through their mobiles and making their experiences pleasant and user-friendly.

E-Commerce Store – Holiday Season Check List For Increasing Sales Read More »

Holiday season is near and this is the time online stores see a surge in sales. But like all things in life you need to be prepared. GetFriday has been around for 10 years now and we have come to understand and learn from our ecommerce clients, the essentials that are required to increase sales during the holiday season. Click on the picture below to see this blog in a slideshare format. Here is a checklist for your quick consumption:   1. This is the best time to launch new products This is the time of the year GetFriday associates get busy with remodeling e-commerce stores, resizing and editing the product images, proof reading the content, uploading products on amazon and rearranging the website display. Most e-commerce firms would consider this as the best time to launch a new product. The chances of succeeding now are far higher than any time later. The known factor about customers is that they are willing to spend more during this season. US retail sales for December 2014 was $442.9 billion – this was an increase of 3.2% over December 2013.   2. Start early with promotions and campaigns A recent study conducted by Oracle Marketing Cloud and Edison Research shows that consumers are doing their holiday shopping early, spending as much as $900 more in the month of October than in December. Start early with planning holiday promotions and campaigns. Our data shows that e-commerce stores start preparing for the holiday season as early as September – October and are ready to launch their campaigns. This give enough time for e-commerce stores to conduct experimental marketing and figure out ways to succeed with customers. With consumers, too willing to take advantage of early shopping discounts and promotions, the timing of promotions and campaigns has gained relevance in recent times. Remember you are competing for the customer wallet. If you are not ready for launching promotions for all your visitors in October, it is advisable to start campaigns with your existing database of clients. Give them the opportunity to take advantage of promotions before your new visitors. It is a known fact that cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than retaining an existing customer. 3. Increase your advertisement budget Let us simplify advertising for you – As you reach more customers with relevant offers, chances of sales increases proportionally. Holiday season is the best time to increase your spending on marketing, as you know for sure customers are looking for your products. If not yours they will land on a competitor’s website. Research shows that social media has a major impact on purchasing choices made by holiday shoppers. “More than half of users (52 percent) say they learned about a product they later purchased because of Twitter, and it’s so convenient to find gift ideas on Twitter that 39 percent say Twitter serves as their new holiday shopping list,” a 2014 Twitter study found. 4. Is your operations ready for holiday season? Make sure operational capabilities are ready for the holiday season. This is the time new customers would be experiencing your product and service, and chances of making them your loyal customer rests with the experience they will gain. It is a common practice with large retailers to hire employees during holiday season to manage customer operations. Learning from this industry practice, you could hire virtual assistants to help manage operations during the holiday season. 5. Is your website spreading the joy – with analytics? Your website needs to reflect the holiday season spirit and create the festive effect. Happy customers tend to buy more. You probably already know that the website is your store front. Look at data generated from your campaigns to optimize your pages. Let the best sellers be visible to your customers. 6. Be ready for customers purchasing from their phones UPS compass in its recent article How America will shop in 2015 quoted IBM data to reveal that mobiles accounted for 45 percent of all 2014 online holiday traffic and for 22.6 percent of online sales, a 27.2 percent gain over the 2013 total More than 50 percent of online shopping traffic came from mobiles during the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. These numbers drive home the point of need to be prepared with providing customers options of shopping through their mobiles and making their experiences pleasant and user-friendly.

GetFriday Newsletter – E-Commerce Insights

Industry News: E-Commerce Insights GetFriday has begun its monthly endeavors of providing you with information that could be of use to you. We aim to impart important insights to our clients to help them promote and help e-commerce stores grow. At GetFriday, we have had diverse experiences with our clients, most of them largely E-Commerce clients. The year 2015 is packed with a number of changes and prevalent trends in the E-commerce industry. Industry players need to now understand and adopt these changes in order to be able procure revenue and attract traffic. Some of the top trends for the E-Commerce industry for this year are highlighted below and are as follows:- Sales are now being effectively carried out over mobile phones. A recent survey shows that mobile now “account for 50.3% of all E-Commerce Traffic”. Also, the new Google algorithm change that requires websites to be mobile-friendly should be well in place for E-commerce websites by now in order for a better ranking on search engine sites in order to attract traffic. Social media sites are now turning into lucrative platforms for driving sales to e-commerce websites. A lot of consumers are now turning to Pinterest, Polyvore, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to ‘discover’ new, prevalent e-commerce products and to Twitter for specialty/niche industries. Setting up Facebook stores are also becoming a popular trend, helping E-commerce websites directly on the platform through a trusted and secure payment gateway. Social commerce has been viewed as one of the most important e-commerce trends for the year and funnels a large part of website viewership and traffic. But if generating traffic was not enough, Facebook tops the list as the social media site that brings in the highest conversion rate for e-commerce traffic at 1.85%. People shop whenever it is convenient for them during the day or night and don’t necessarily use the desktop or the laptop to surf e-commerce websites. People shop or go through e-commerce websites on the move, during the day, before they go to bed at night and even between the periods 12-2PM at the work place and on Sunday Evenings. This is a proven statistic. E-commerce websites should take a note of this and if you are PPC advertiser, this could work as a model for you to be able to place your ad campaigns effectively. These have been some of the top trends for 2015. There will be more updates and more newsletters on what’s fresh and what’s doing the rounds in the e-commerce industry. Stay tuned for the latest postings, tips, offerings and blogs specific to the e-commerce industry in the next issue and follows us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn as well.

GetFriday Newsletter – E-Commerce Insights Read More »

Industry News: E-Commerce Insights GetFriday has begun its monthly endeavors of providing you with information that could be of use to you. We aim to impart important insights to our clients to help them promote and help e-commerce stores grow. At GetFriday, we have had diverse experiences with our clients, most of them largely E-Commerce clients. The year 2015 is packed with a number of changes and prevalent trends in the E-commerce industry. Industry players need to now understand and adopt these changes in order to be able procure revenue and attract traffic. Some of the top trends for the E-Commerce industry for this year are highlighted below and are as follows:- Sales are now being effectively carried out over mobile phones. A recent survey shows that mobile now “account for 50.3% of all E-Commerce Traffic”. Also, the new Google algorithm change that requires websites to be mobile-friendly should be well in place for E-commerce websites by now in order for a better ranking on search engine sites in order to attract traffic. Social media sites are now turning into lucrative platforms for driving sales to e-commerce websites. A lot of consumers are now turning to Pinterest, Polyvore, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to ‘discover’ new, prevalent e-commerce products and to Twitter for specialty/niche industries. Setting up Facebook stores are also becoming a popular trend, helping E-commerce websites directly on the platform through a trusted and secure payment gateway. Social commerce has been viewed as one of the most important e-commerce trends for the year and funnels a large part of website viewership and traffic. But if generating traffic was not enough, Facebook tops the list as the social media site that brings in the highest conversion rate for e-commerce traffic at 1.85%. People shop whenever it is convenient for them during the day or night and don’t necessarily use the desktop or the laptop to surf e-commerce websites. People shop or go through e-commerce websites on the move, during the day, before they go to bed at night and even between the periods 12-2PM at the work place and on Sunday Evenings. This is a proven statistic. E-commerce websites should take a note of this and if you are PPC advertiser, this could work as a model for you to be able to place your ad campaigns effectively. These have been some of the top trends for 2015. There will be more updates and more newsletters on what’s fresh and what’s doing the rounds in the e-commerce industry. Stay tuned for the latest postings, tips, offerings and blogs specific to the e-commerce industry in the next issue and follows us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn as well.

GetFriday Newsletter – Get Friday and Social Media

With GetFriday stepping into its 10th year of operations, we would like to take the opportunity to firstly, offer our sincerest thanks and gratitude to every client who has supported us in our endeavors along the way. Without your conviction and belief, it would have been impossible for GetFriday to achieve the kind of success it has. We have spread our wings through social media marketing and have built our presence on a number of popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. Through this, we aim to help clients discover our latest postings whilst also providing exciting opportunities to avail the best of GetFriday’s virtual assistance services. A series of social media campaigns will be launched on a monthly basis for this special year and clients, both old and new, will be chosen as the recipients of tremendous benefits. A recent ‘Friendship Day’ campaign was launched on the official GetFriday social media pages on July 27th, 2015. The campaign was primarily targeted at clients who had availed GetFriday’s services and to help clients’ friends avail the same, by gifting them GetFriday hours, along with submitting a special tweet, a shout-out or a personalized message for Friendship Day. The result of the campaign was nothing short of a grand success, wit the existing clients also receiving exciting, referral benefits. Similarly, GetFriday ran an exciting “World Entrepreneurs Day” campaign from the 17th-21st August. The prime motive behind launching such an exclusive campaign was to celebrate entrepreneurs and their contributions around the world. As many of our clients are businesspersons themselves, we offered them $25 as cash prizes and also a complementary offer wherein the clients referrals earned 25% off on the first month’s bill if they signed up during the offer period. The campaign proved to be fruitful and gave the golden opportunity to clients to earn exciting prizes and benefits and also gave GetFriday a chance to welcome new clients into the GetFriday family. More such campaigns will be launched across GetFriday’s official pages. Stay tuned and follow us on our social media sites for latest offerings, blogs and news. Not only will you be able to view the latest internal news, but you will also be able to benefit from the fresh, quality content posted for professionals and entrepreneurs across various domains and industries on a weekly basis. We love to hear from you and we bet you would love to hear from us too! Let’s stay connected.

GetFriday Newsletter – Get Friday and Social Media Read More »

With GetFriday stepping into its 10th year of operations, we would like to take the opportunity to firstly, offer our sincerest thanks and gratitude to every client who has supported us in our endeavors along the way. Without your conviction and belief, it would have been impossible for GetFriday to achieve the kind of success it has. We have spread our wings through social media marketing and have built our presence on a number of popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. Through this, we aim to help clients discover our latest postings whilst also providing exciting opportunities to avail the best of GetFriday’s virtual assistance services. A series of social media campaigns will be launched on a monthly basis for this special year and clients, both old and new, will be chosen as the recipients of tremendous benefits. A recent ‘Friendship Day’ campaign was launched on the official GetFriday social media pages on July 27th, 2015. The campaign was primarily targeted at clients who had availed GetFriday’s services and to help clients’ friends avail the same, by gifting them GetFriday hours, along with submitting a special tweet, a shout-out or a personalized message for Friendship Day. The result of the campaign was nothing short of a grand success, wit the existing clients also receiving exciting, referral benefits. Similarly, GetFriday ran an exciting “World Entrepreneurs Day” campaign from the 17th-21st August. The prime motive behind launching such an exclusive campaign was to celebrate entrepreneurs and their contributions around the world. As many of our clients are businesspersons themselves, we offered them $25 as cash prizes and also a complementary offer wherein the clients referrals earned 25% off on the first month’s bill if they signed up during the offer period. The campaign proved to be fruitful and gave the golden opportunity to clients to earn exciting prizes and benefits and also gave GetFriday a chance to welcome new clients into the GetFriday family. More such campaigns will be launched across GetFriday’s official pages. Stay tuned and follow us on our social media sites for latest offerings, blogs and news. Not only will you be able to view the latest internal news, but you will also be able to benefit from the fresh, quality content posted for professionals and entrepreneurs across various domains and industries on a weekly basis. We love to hear from you and we bet you would love to hear from us too! Let’s stay connected.

GetFriday Newsletter – GetFriday Turns 10!

GetFriday completed it 10 years of existence in the Virtual Assistance Industry in August 2015. This is a huge milestone to achieve for us and on this joyful occasion of turning 10; Team Get Friday would like to thank you all. You are the clients believing in our abilities and supporting us for very long time; we owe it all to our clients and the strong bonds we have fostered through time. Through the course of these 10 years, GetFriday has seen its share of ups and downs, but thankfully, we have had more ups than downs. For 10 years, GetFriday has helped offload tasks for more than 13,000 clients around 60 countries with its personal virtual assistance services. A lot has changed and we are now slowly evolving to be a business support service from virtual assistance support. The competition has been tough. Many of our competitors have disappeared and others are stuck in middle age blues. Our steadfast focus on learning from our customers has enabled us to survive and flourish for a decade now. We believe, GetFriday has gone on to bring about a positive change in the lives of all its clients, no matter how small or big the task outsourced. During a time when personal virtual assistance services were literally unheard of, GetFriday sprang up in 2005 as the sister concern of YMII (Your Man In India) and began offering personal, administrative, secretarial and specialized services to clients, virtually. The success of our venture, which began way back in 2005, was featured and documented in the best-selling book, “4 Hour Work Week” authored by Tim Ferris, in 2007. Within just a span of 2 years, GetFriday achieved so success and acclaim and carved its place as an indomitable player in the market of virtual assistance services. As a celebration of our successful 10-year run and for having been associated with us during our incredible journey, we are going to run a year-long campaign with oodles of benefits and exciting offers for our wide client-base.

GetFriday Newsletter – GetFriday Turns 10! Read More »

GetFriday completed it 10 years of existence in the Virtual Assistance Industry in August 2015. This is a huge milestone to achieve for us and on this joyful occasion of turning 10; Team Get Friday would like to thank you all. You are the clients believing in our abilities and supporting us for very long time; we owe it all to our clients and the strong bonds we have fostered through time. Through the course of these 10 years, GetFriday has seen its share of ups and downs, but thankfully, we have had more ups than downs. For 10 years, GetFriday has helped offload tasks for more than 13,000 clients around 60 countries with its personal virtual assistance services. A lot has changed and we are now slowly evolving to be a business support service from virtual assistance support. The competition has been tough. Many of our competitors have disappeared and others are stuck in middle age blues. Our steadfast focus on learning from our customers has enabled us to survive and flourish for a decade now. We believe, GetFriday has gone on to bring about a positive change in the lives of all its clients, no matter how small or big the task outsourced. During a time when personal virtual assistance services were literally unheard of, GetFriday sprang up in 2005 as the sister concern of YMII (Your Man In India) and began offering personal, administrative, secretarial and specialized services to clients, virtually. The success of our venture, which began way back in 2005, was featured and documented in the best-selling book, “4 Hour Work Week” authored by Tim Ferris, in 2007. Within just a span of 2 years, GetFriday achieved so success and acclaim and carved its place as an indomitable player in the market of virtual assistance services. As a celebration of our successful 10-year run and for having been associated with us during our incredible journey, we are going to run a year-long campaign with oodles of benefits and exciting offers for our wide client-base.

GetFriday Newsletter – GetFriday’s Independence Day Celebrations!

August 15th, 2015 marked the beginning of the 69th year of India as an independent nation and the employees at GetFriday welcomed this momentous occasion with pomp and style. Each year, the Independence Day celebrations at GetFriday evoke the feelings of pride and love and people, no matter caste, creed, or religion, are awash with patriotism in in their hearts. This year too, was no exception. Right from the start of the day, all the way till midnight, each employee contributed to the celebrations in their own way and brought out the best of their cultures to the workplace. The office was decorated with balloons, flags and confetti and people walked in wearing the tricolors of the Indian flag on their clothes with pride and were seen flashing Indian wrist-bands, Indian flag badges and even painted the Indian flag as tattoos on their faces! Such was the air of nationalism at the cheerful GetFriday office during the Independence Day celebrations. Colorful saris, stately attires and unique jewelry were adorned for this occasion and each employee looked their Indian-best! GetFriday employees have been working round the clock and through the year tirelessly. Events such as these at the work place gives employees a chance to let their hair down, have some fun and bond with each other. In honor of this momentous occasion, two separate cultural events took place for the employees working in the day shift and the night shift. Revelry prevailed and every employee put their heart and soul into make the cultural events a grand success. The action-packed event began with fun games and an invocatory song and dance. This was followed by teams putting their sweat and blood into the collage-making activity, socially-driven street plays and a grand fashion show competition that displayed the rich culture and heritage of the different states of India. The celebrations at the GetFriday office in Bangalore lasted through the night and will go down as one of the most memorable events for the year 2015. Independence Day celebrations will remain etched in the hearts and minds of employees for years to come and promises to be bigger and better the next year! Here’s to our incredible India and here’s to more such wonderful occasions!

GetFriday Newsletter – GetFriday’s Independence Day Celebrations! Read More »

August 15th, 2015 marked the beginning of the 69th year of India as an independent nation and the employees at GetFriday welcomed this momentous occasion with pomp and style. Each year, the Independence Day celebrations at GetFriday evoke the feelings of pride and love and people, no matter caste, creed, or religion, are awash with patriotism in in their hearts. This year too, was no exception. Right from the start of the day, all the way till midnight, each employee contributed to the celebrations in their own way and brought out the best of their cultures to the workplace. The office was decorated with balloons, flags and confetti and people walked in wearing the tricolors of the Indian flag on their clothes with pride and were seen flashing Indian wrist-bands, Indian flag badges and even painted the Indian flag as tattoos on their faces! Such was the air of nationalism at the cheerful GetFriday office during the Independence Day celebrations. Colorful saris, stately attires and unique jewelry were adorned for this occasion and each employee looked their Indian-best! GetFriday employees have been working round the clock and through the year tirelessly. Events such as these at the work place gives employees a chance to let their hair down, have some fun and bond with each other. In honor of this momentous occasion, two separate cultural events took place for the employees working in the day shift and the night shift. Revelry prevailed and every employee put their heart and soul into make the cultural events a grand success. The action-packed event began with fun games and an invocatory song and dance. This was followed by teams putting their sweat and blood into the collage-making activity, socially-driven street plays and a grand fashion show competition that displayed the rich culture and heritage of the different states of India. The celebrations at the GetFriday office in Bangalore lasted through the night and will go down as one of the most memorable events for the year 2015. Independence Day celebrations will remain etched in the hearts and minds of employees for years to come and promises to be bigger and better the next year! Here’s to our incredible India and here’s to more such wonderful occasions!

Simple Guide To E-Commerce Product Taxonomy

What is taxonomy? When you think of ‘Taxonomy’, you immediately associate the term with the classification of organisms into hierarchical groups as per what you studied in your biology class. Quite right, except that in this case, the word is used to describe not the classifications of organisms, but the classification and organization of ‘unstructured information’ on e-commerce websites for the benefit of users and the business. Why taxonomy? Taxonomy is an extremely crucial component because it helps users navigate through e-commerce websites in a more user-friendly manner, enhances their search experience and thus increases the prospects of a higher ROI for the business. Instead of sifting through the haystack in the wild web, the application of taxonomy helps with search navigation and leads to a more manageable experience – one that is less time-consuming, organized and leads to the ‘right’. Here we provide you a guide to understand ‘e-commerce taxonomy’ better, its benefits and how a business can implement it effectively. Content Strategies & Taxonomy There’s a lot more to taxonomy than just mere categorizing. Just as librarians would sift and arrange books according to title, labels, author and call numbers, this would also apply to e-commerce websites, except that the content can be subdivided, using ‘taxonomy structure’. Taxonomy categorizes unorganized information while the metadata describes the category. Metadata will help with better categorization and more recognizable content from the e-commerce website design perspective. Website Design & Taxonomy A website with unstructured content could lead to difficulties when it comes to navigation and searches. Taxonomy directly corresponds with website design in the form of ‘taxonomy view’ and helps create a positive user-navigation experience, with the neatly arranged categories. Here is a screenshot of an Australian e-commerce website and their distinct categories of footwear, clothing, bags and accessories etc., making navigation through the page an easy, comprehensible one. The highlighted boxes in red in above image shows the categorization of the different footwear for women on this website for easy user navigation and quick searches. What Are The Common Problems Of E-Commerce Sites With No Taxonomy? Let us take the simple example of a taxonomy tree and see what problems could arise from not planning out e-commerce websites taxonomy efficiently:- Categories: -Men -Women -Kids Men: -Babywear -Boys -Adults Women: -Babywear -Girls -Adults The next category after men and women is kids. Now under kids, you can either have the combination of:- Kids -Baby-Boys-Girls Or Baby-Boys Baby-Girls   If you go back to the original taxonomy tree, you will notice that babywear, boys and girls are already listed out under men and women separately. So, by creating another sub-category for ‘kids’, there is an ‘overlap’ or a ‘duplication’ of categories. At this stage, as an e-commerce website, you could either continue to work with the same structure or go back and start and remove the category of ‘kids’ from the parent category. By doing so, you will need to rebuild another taxonomy design from scratch. That leads us to the next part of understanding how to go about building an effective taxonomy. How Do You Build An Effective Taxonomy? Now that you know and understand that taxonomy is crucial for an e-commerce website, you need to build one. With the right direction and information, you can go on to build an effective taxonomy for your e-commerce site. Here’s how you can do it:- 1. Detailed Planning With A Team Taxonomy creation cannot be handled by one member at the work place. A special, multidisciplinary team working across a wide-range of domains is required. The team should have in-depth knowledge in the field of taxonomy, content creation/management, website design and development and SEO in order to do full justice to technical, managerial and business angles. 2. What Is The Scope? Once the team has been formed, find out what the scope is for the project and ask/answer these questions jointly as a team. Is it a small one or a large-scale project? What is the purpose of creating the taxonomy? What is the context in which it will be used? What is the ultimate goal we are trying to achieve? What will the design of the e-commerce website look like? What is the content scope? And who is ultimately the end user? 3. Check Inventory, Make A Draft To start with, begin by jotting down the inventory. Build a taxonomy based on only what you can sell. Once you have done that, make a draft of the taxonomy. Have your hierarchies and categories clearly listed out and divided based on utility, price, size, type, color and make etc. and make sure that the content created adheres to and falls within the functions of each category. 4. Implement & Test It Now is the stage for the implementation of the taxonomy that can be achieved through website design. This will initially take the form of skeleton wire-frames, navigation maps and interface. The second step would be to ‘populate’ the taxonomy with content and integrate it with the existing content management process. The final step and the most crucial step to the implementation process is to check if the taxonomy is corresponding with the onsite search results. Once the implementation stage is complete, it would be wise to test it thoroughly to identify any loopholes and flaws in the design. Check for ambiguity of categories, navigation and whether it takes more than ‘3-clicks’ for customers to find what they are looking for. 5. Maintenance The final and the most crucial step is to maintain the taxonomy structure. As the organization grows and the requirements change, the basic taxonomy model can be modified or amended, adding newer concepts, information, context, content and vocabulary. This will not only ensure that the e-commerce website is consistent in its performance but will also draw in more returns for the company. Benefits of E-commerce taxonomy: -Better e-commerce website navigation and design -Effective retrieval of information -Less time wasted in searches -Improves brand image and the reputation of the

Simple Guide To E-Commerce Product Taxonomy Read More »

What is taxonomy? When you think of ‘Taxonomy’, you immediately associate the term with the classification of organisms into hierarchical groups as per what you studied in your biology class. Quite right, except that in this case, the word is used to describe not the classifications of organisms, but the classification and organization of ‘unstructured information’ on e-commerce websites for the benefit of users and the business. Why taxonomy? Taxonomy is an extremely crucial component because it helps users navigate through e-commerce websites in a more user-friendly manner, enhances their search experience and thus increases the prospects of a higher ROI for the business. Instead of sifting through the haystack in the wild web, the application of taxonomy helps with search navigation and leads to a more manageable experience – one that is less time-consuming, organized and leads to the ‘right’. Here we provide you a guide to understand ‘e-commerce taxonomy’ better, its benefits and how a business can implement it effectively. Content Strategies & Taxonomy There’s a lot more to taxonomy than just mere categorizing. Just as librarians would sift and arrange books according to title, labels, author and call numbers, this would also apply to e-commerce websites, except that the content can be subdivided, using ‘taxonomy structure’. Taxonomy categorizes unorganized information while the metadata describes the category. Metadata will help with better categorization and more recognizable content from the e-commerce website design perspective. Website Design & Taxonomy A website with unstructured content could lead to difficulties when it comes to navigation and searches. Taxonomy directly corresponds with website design in the form of ‘taxonomy view’ and helps create a positive user-navigation experience, with the neatly arranged categories. Here is a screenshot of an Australian e-commerce website and their distinct categories of footwear, clothing, bags and accessories etc., making navigation through the page an easy, comprehensible one. The highlighted boxes in red in above image shows the categorization of the different footwear for women on this website for easy user navigation and quick searches. What Are The Common Problems Of E-Commerce Sites With No Taxonomy? Let us take the simple example of a taxonomy tree and see what problems could arise from not planning out e-commerce websites taxonomy efficiently:- Categories: -Men -Women -Kids Men: -Babywear -Boys -Adults Women: -Babywear -Girls -Adults The next category after men and women is kids. Now under kids, you can either have the combination of:- Kids -Baby-Boys-Girls Or Baby-Boys Baby-Girls   If you go back to the original taxonomy tree, you will notice that babywear, boys and girls are already listed out under men and women separately. So, by creating another sub-category for ‘kids’, there is an ‘overlap’ or a ‘duplication’ of categories. At this stage, as an e-commerce website, you could either continue to work with the same structure or go back and start and remove the category of ‘kids’ from the parent category. By doing so, you will need to rebuild another taxonomy design from scratch. That leads us to the next part of understanding how to go about building an effective taxonomy. How Do You Build An Effective Taxonomy? Now that you know and understand that taxonomy is crucial for an e-commerce website, you need to build one. With the right direction and information, you can go on to build an effective taxonomy for your e-commerce site. Here’s how you can do it:- 1. Detailed Planning With A Team Taxonomy creation cannot be handled by one member at the work place. A special, multidisciplinary team working across a wide-range of domains is required. The team should have in-depth knowledge in the field of taxonomy, content creation/management, website design and development and SEO in order to do full justice to technical, managerial and business angles. 2. What Is The Scope? Once the team has been formed, find out what the scope is for the project and ask/answer these questions jointly as a team. Is it a small one or a large-scale project? What is the purpose of creating the taxonomy? What is the context in which it will be used? What is the ultimate goal we are trying to achieve? What will the design of the e-commerce website look like? What is the content scope? And who is ultimately the end user? 3. Check Inventory, Make A Draft To start with, begin by jotting down the inventory. Build a taxonomy based on only what you can sell. Once you have done that, make a draft of the taxonomy. Have your hierarchies and categories clearly listed out and divided based on utility, price, size, type, color and make etc. and make sure that the content created adheres to and falls within the functions of each category. 4. Implement & Test It Now is the stage for the implementation of the taxonomy that can be achieved through website design. This will initially take the form of skeleton wire-frames, navigation maps and interface. The second step would be to ‘populate’ the taxonomy with content and integrate it with the existing content management process. The final step and the most crucial step to the implementation process is to check if the taxonomy is corresponding with the onsite search results. Once the implementation stage is complete, it would be wise to test it thoroughly to identify any loopholes and flaws in the design. Check for ambiguity of categories, navigation and whether it takes more than ‘3-clicks’ for customers to find what they are looking for. 5. Maintenance The final and the most crucial step is to maintain the taxonomy structure. As the organization grows and the requirements change, the basic taxonomy model can be modified or amended, adding newer concepts, information, context, content and vocabulary. This will not only ensure that the e-commerce website is consistent in its performance but will also draw in more returns for the company. Benefits of E-commerce taxonomy: -Better e-commerce website navigation and design -Effective retrieval of information -Less time wasted in searches -Improves brand image and the reputation of the

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