EworksWSI Cyprus Digital Marketing Blog

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in March 2016 and has been updated with additional content in June 2021. What was initially a secondary option for businesses to push extra product, eCommerce has disrupted traditional retail and taken over as the primary option for many shoppers. And as consumers continue to show brands love by buying their products online, the percentage of total retail dollars spent will continue to slide toward eCommerce. The realities of eCommerce and the new direction they have paved for the shopping industry mean businesses n...  Read Full Article

So you have an Online Store – now what? The adage “Build it and they will come” doesn’t work when talking about websites, as we talked in part one and two of our blog series. So you will have to invest at the correct level to drive traffic and for many brands or retailers that translates to maybe 8-15% of revenue – it depends on the market, product, and how established the business is. The trick will be to develop a marketing blueprint that builds your organic traffic, forms your loyal customer base while also funding new customer acquisition through paid adverti...  Read Full Article

In this second post in the series about getting online (you can find the first part here!), we are taking a look at the technology platforms and decisions you will need to make as part of that process. You might be surprised that I didn’t look at this first, but in truth, you want to run a business, not become an IT expert. IT will become a more significant part of your world as an eCommerce operator, but if you don’t get your strategy and mission correct first, and have good content, then no platform will save your enterprise. Thankfu...  Read Full Article

There is no doubt that these are unprecedented times, and while my grandmother might have remembered the ‘Spanish Flu’ living through a pandemic like this is a new and scary experience. However, if we look at the impact of SARS on consumer behavior in China, then we can get an idea of what might happen post-COVID 19 – SARS catapulted China forward to be the leading online economy. eCommerce has been growing quickly and steadily for the last 10 to 15 years as the data from Statistica shows. Still, I believe one of the significant impacts of COVID-19 will be to accelerate...  Read Full Article

Stripe launches in Cyprus Stripe  is now generally available in Cyprus. This means Stripe can now support businesses in 39 countries (29 in Europe) with their complete payments platform, enabling them to sell to customers around the globe. This launch was built almost entirely by the teams of Stripe's European engineering hub, that’s everything from new integrations with financial institutions to extending support for Stripe’s products. The inclusion of Cyprus,the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and Malta is launch is the result of feedback from a number of businesses ac...  Read Full Article

Why is Your eCommerce Store Losing Sales? Is your eCommerce website plagued with the empty cart syndrome? Does your site suffer from low conversion rates? Does it generate less leads and even lesser sales? If you’ve been nodding a “yes” for all the questions, you may be making some critical mistakes. We’ve created a list of mistakes to avoid in order to boost your e-commerce site’s performance. 1. Write good Product Descriptions Your customers can't touch your product before they buy it in your eShop. They want to obtain all the information they need to be sure that they make the ...  Read Full Article

Shopping online in the EU There is much to consider before shopping online as a client and much to be done by the e-commerce site to address the buyers concerns. The Swedish Consumer Agency, ECC Sweden, who is Part of the European Consumer Centres Network published a set of guidelines for online shoppers in the EU.  These online buying guidelines for clients are common sense and easily addressed by the e-commerce site owners. The reality is though that many e-shops ignore their client's expectations in terms of company and product information, personal data preservation and o...  Read Full Article

From June 13th 2014, the EU has strengthened and harmonised the Consumer protection rules. The Consumer Rights directive applies the same way in all EU countries (including Cprus!) which means that consumers europe-wide can always be sure about the rules that apply when cross-border purchases are made. In the same way, traders, e-commerce owners and other businesses in EU countries also know what they have to provide in terms of consumer rights.   What does the directive mean for e-shops in Cyprus?   So called hidden charges are banned as well as other cost tra...  Read Full Article

  An eCommerce website can benefit your business by bringing in more traffic and converting it into quality leads. Thanks to simplified eCommerce platforms and the ability to sell most products online, eCommerce is within reach for the majority of today's businesses. In the U.S. alone, eCommerce is growing at 10% each year, and this isn’t expected to slow down.   Benefits of eCommerce Here are just a few of the benefits to adding eCommerce to your sales strategy:   Distribute your products to a larger geographic region. Sell more products than what you cou...  Read Full Article

The eCommerce game. In business, you need to be flexible and adapt when necessary; don't be content with what you've built, but instead be passionate about improving upon it at all costs. With these wise words in mind, we created an infographic to outline the opportunity businesses have to take advantage of eCommerce and all the ways it's changing the shopping game: As consumers, we've all felt it over the the last few years: Shopping has changed. Whether it's getting grocery delivered to your door or happily avoiding malls over the holiday season, eCommerce has evolved the re...  Read Full Article

  Obtaining consent to transfer EU customer data to the U.S. We'll discuss here the recommendation to obtaining EU customer consent regarding the transfer of their data to the U.S. If the customer refuses to provide their consent, they should not be enabled to continue with their transaction. On 6 October 2015, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the Commission's adequacy decision on the EU-US Safe Harbour arrangement is invalid. (see judgment pdf)  This ruling  has invalidated the existing Safe Harbor Framework, which allowed the transfer of data ...  Read Full Article

  How to fight shopping cart abandonment Shopping cart abandonment is one of the most important factors impacting conversions. Resarch has shown that approx 68% of all visitors of e-commerce sites abandon their shopping carts, totalling a value of 3.5 trillion €. The good news is that 63% of this amount is potentially  recoverable. But how?   As a start, we try to understand what does visitors motivate to abandon their shopping cart instead of completing their purchase. Why do visitors abandon their shipping carts: 28% Unexpected shipping cost - mostly if the shipping ...  Read Full Article

table, th, td { border: 1px solid lightblue; }   This chart shows the global market share of technologies in the category eCommerce. The current market leader is WooCommerce.     TOP 10 Ecommerce APPLICATIONS These are the most used eCommerce are:  #    APPLICATION     %  1 WooCommerce 34 ...  Read Full Article

Paypal enables transfers to IBAN Bank accounts in Cyprus apparently at no cost.   An important management feature for ecommerce owners are the payment gateways installed on their ecommerce site that allow their customers to pay their purchases online. One popular payment gateway used in Cyprus is Paypal as the Paypal business account eliminates the need for a separate merchant account. Until recently eCommerce owners, and we'd include here all  websites that allow receiving money online through Paypal, were obliged to transfer funds from and to their Paypal account th...  Read Full Article

Running an Ecommerce site is a great opportunity to service your clients 24/7 independently of their location and ,at the same time, keeping fixed charges low. As all internet businesses, you need visitors to be successful online. No visitors, no sales. There are numerous online service providers who all fight for the consumers’ attention. European consumers are used to make their everyday doings online. The question is how to be visible online and reach the potential buyers? Consumer behaviour has changed as the internet is now the main commun...  Read Full Article

Shopping cart abandonment We call Shopping cart abandonment the situation when online shoppers add items to their online shopping cart, but leave before completing the purchase. Why are shoppers leaving the shopping cart? Shopping cart abandonment rates vary on different sites, but many of the top reasons people leave the shopping cart are the same across ecommerce sites. Here are some of the major reasons why potential buyers abandon their cart:     A significant portion of site visitors who add something to the cart never complete the transaction. Lots visitors of your site...  Read Full Article

The success of a B2B eCommerce site depends on many parameters, but what is the most requested B2B feature selected by B2B eCommerce companies? According to Forrester’s Choose B2B eCommerce Features That Matter: Where B2B Companies Are Spending Money In 2014, the top rated feature B2B eCommerce companies will be investing in is Related Products on Product Detail Page. 72% of the 155 companies surveyed agreed with that statement, and only 10% disagreed. What are “Related Products on the Product Detail Page” exactly?  It’s an upsell or cross-sell feature, or a re...  Read Full Article

When beginning a new ECommerce project, we start to focus on the overall ecommerce strategy before really getting into the design/development of the eshop/website itself.   The ECommerce Customer Lifecycle is part of the general WSI Lifecycle that frames all web related development projects and is used at EworksWSI as a tool to help us better define our client's ecommerce strategy. Depending on the outcome of the discovery phase we'll decide on the most appropriate ecommerce platform to build that will deliver all requirements  within a given budget. At WSI we'll th...  Read Full Article

Why is e-commerce less efficient in Cyprus? According to the STATISTICAL SERVICE OF CYPRUS (CyStat) in the USAGE AND E-COMMERCE SURVEY IN ENTERPRISES 2013 in Cyprus, only 8,7% of enterprises using the Internet had received online orders (excluding manually typed e-mails), during 2012. In relation to the total sales (in monetary terms, excluding VAT) sales via websites represented only a small percentage in many of the enterprises. Only in 9,9% of the enterprises in Cyprus that received electronic orders, the value of the turnover resulted from those orders represented mor...  Read Full Article

WSI eFusion Security features   - WSI Efusion has a multitude of security mechanisms in place, such as AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Access Control), attack detection and annihilation mechanisms, encryption of sensitive data, firewalls, anti-virus, etc. - WSI Efusion is a PCI Level 1 compliant product (re-certification pending). Accordingly, all cardholder data specific mechanisms, environments, policies, procedures, etc. have been audited for security compliance by an accredited 3rd party investigator. - The WSI Efusion  code and environments are regula...  Read Full Article

Cyprus's VAT rates set to increase The standard VAT rate in Cyprus of 18% will increase to 19% as of the 13th of January 2014. The reduced VAT rate which is currently 8% is increaded to 9%. The reduced VAT rate in Cyprus applies to those goods and services falling under schedule 12 of the Cyprus VAT legislation: The main VAT reduced categories in Cyprus include:  - Catering,  - Tourism,  - Passenger transport, Goods or services that fall within the reduced rate of 5% and 0% will remain unaffected, these are included in schedules 5 and 6 of the Cyprus VAT legislation. A...  Read Full Article

 Cutting through the eCommerce jargon Internet ecommerce is like everything else - a bit daunting if you don't know the terminology. So here's our guide to some of the terms you're likely to come across when creating your eshop. Ecommerce jargon - a short dictionnary Payment gateways Acquirer / Acquiring bank: this bank provides you with a Merchant Account specially for e-commerce payments. Not all banks are acquiring banks, so you may have a business account with one bank, and a Merchant Account with another. Some patyment gateways ...  Read Full Article

Increased of standard VAT rate in Cyprus Effective 14 January 2013, the current standard VAT rate of 17% will increase to 18%. Effective 13 January 2014, the standard VAT rate of 18% will  increase to 19% Also effective 13 January 2014, the reduced VAT rate of 8% applies for services under Schedule 12 of the Cyprus VAT law (including catering services, passenger and baggage transport within Cyprus via taxi or bus). VAT rates for Cyprus need to be adjusted on e-commerce systems. Below please find a short reminder how to modify Cyprus tax rates on your WSI e-commerce applica...  Read Full Article

Setting up and running an e-Commerce site is hard enough, but getting traffic to it and making sales is even more complicated. We would like to share below some Search Engine Optimization tips to assist you maximize search engine generated traffic to your online store. Optimize your meta tags Label each of your pages with a unique title and description – search engines love it. You can find the meta tags in the <head> section of your HTML code. Most e-Commerce software generate automatically meta tag, and some (such as WSI efusion) allow you to customize each page. The ti...  Read Full Article

“We have a great product, but how do we get people to buy it?” Thousands of new businesses are started every month with entrepreneurs turning their understanding of a consumer or business problem into a new product or service solution.  But there’s more to starting a business or launching a new product than a great idea and a market in need of a solution. Many new businesses score well with the solution they’ve created including the logistics of suppliers, manufacturing, and distribution to bring that product or service to market. However, one of the greatest challenges of starti...  Read Full Article