Ecomheroesis in the E-Commerce Enablers Industry

Ecomheroes

ecomheroes

It is no secret that the eCommerce industry has been growing considerably in the last few years, and more and more businesses have had to reshape online to meet their clients' needs. But we need to find out how is going to look the online shopping in another few years or how these changes are going to change people's habits and how they buy. Another important period that has to be mentioned in eCommerce's growth is the pandemic. The last two years have changed consumers' habits because they have no choice but to buy online. But other than the fact that more and more people buy online, from essentials to clothes, gadgets, or vacations, the development of technology is playing an important role in the future of eCommerce. So, let's see some important key factors that will shape the future of online shopping: Analytics and human behavior Even though at the beginning of the eCommerce area, we could not picture how we could replicate the experience from a physical shop in a virtual space, now we can only picture creating an online shop with different tools that help businesses do that, from tools that can analyze someone's behavior or profile based on their experience on the website to AI that can make patterns for businesses to create unique marketing strategies for each customer. How technology is developed today can help eCommerce businesses create that physical experience in an online space and even reach more potential customers by better understanding human behavior and how they buy online. Other than this, digital analytics can provide useful data in real time. Live Online Shopping This is still a new strategy that online shops started to use by combing the old eCommerce tricks with live streaming and technology. Businesses can collaborate with influencers for their campaigns and, at the same time, sell in real time their products while live streaming. Instead of taking the customers out from the live video to your website, they can buy directly. For this, businesses can use tools to make the purchase process easier for their audience. Not only that the video is the new black, but it also can be integrated with online sales. It may seem like the future, but it's already around us. live shopping software Augmented Reality We are not strangers to this concept but integrating into an online shop would be the next level. Unfortunately, shoppers still abandon their carts without purchasing, and businesses can struggle to understand the reason behind this habit. And this is where AR can help. Retailers may consider creating virtual showrooms or stores to up the interest factor of the online shopping experience. These platforms can give users a virtual experience that comes close to visiting a real store from the comfort of their homes. In addition, these types of virtual visualization offer customers a new level of involvement. They can push a button and see the thing for themselves rather than relying on the product's dimensions and description to comprehend how it will appear. For sure, we will see many changes in the future for the eCommerce industry as technology is constantly developing. But these are the closest changes that will happen for online businesses. Of course, for every step we take technology and software industry are already building the right products and services for businesses to handle the changes. Also, people's habits changed radically, and in the next years, more and more people on this planet will be customers, almost only in the online space. But until then, retailers and eCommerce businesses should be ready to transform their modus operandi if they want to keep their customers!

The Online Shopping Trends of the Future

Customers’ buying behavior keeps changing often. To make a business run effectively, you need to understand your buyers and also the latest trends and technologies in the market. The online grocery business is gaining a higher reach in recent days. When compared with other eCommerce industries, grocery eCommerce platforms assure same-day delivery and in some cases 2 – 3 hours delivery. With a wide range of customers and unlimited product categories, the industry is showing steady growth. Let us have a clear understanding of the online grocery business with its models, its features, and also let us analyze the top, leading grocery eCommerce platforms in the market. Types of Online Grocery Business Models Before launching your own grocery ecommerce platform you need to analyze your business model and should develop your online grocery store that suits your business well. Let us understand the types of online grocery business model in detail. – a single grocery platform that allows several vendors to get associated with it and allows them to sell their products through the platform is the multivendor grocery platform. Multi vendor Grocery Platform – meeting out the customers’ needs through local offline shops through an online marketplace is called the hyperlocal marketplace platform. Hyperlocal Grocery Platform – selling our own products through a single digital platform and attracting more customers to the marketplace is the single vendor grocery store Single vendor Grocery Platform Here is the list of top 15 most popular Online Grocery Platforms 2022 For Building App & Website 1. Zielcommerce – The #1 Solutions To Build Grocery  Ecommerce Platform Zielcommerce is a cost-effective grocery ecommerce software that can be along with lifetime license and one-time payment. The platform provides multifacted grocery solutions like multi vendor, hyperlocal and single vendor. This platform has been integrated with more than 50+ third party APIs. Platform Highlights Zielcommerce is flexible ecommerce grocery store that acts as a one stop solution for all business demands. The platform comes with multilanguage and multicurrency support that will make you reach the global customers easily. The platform has all necessary marketing tools that are essential to promote the . grocery ecommerce platform A Detailed Key Highlights of Grocery Ecommerce Platform The excellent admin dashboard makes this online grocery platform more reliable and helps to enhance the business. Streamline your order flow with an effective order management solution. A flexible commission set-up for multi vendors grocery store Multiple payment gateways integrated in this online grocery store software. By purchasing Zielcommerce with minimum investment you can get the amazing returns Explore Zielcommerce Grocery Ecommerce Platform 2. Ownmyshop – Personalized Online Grocery Store Software Ownmyshop enables you to expand your brick and mortar grocery store software to an aligned digital grocery eCommerce store. With this grocery ecommerce platform, you can analyze the shopper's data and their behavior. This will help in personalizing the customer's online experience. Platform Highlights Ownmyshop delivers the best grocery ecommerce website that has all essential and comprehensive features to uplift your online grocery store and make it a big success. The platform has inbuilt advanced search facility that will enable the users to find their products easily. The user-friendly platform will retain the customers with your business. The power-packed features of this grocery eCommerce website: Manage deliveries with the grocery delivery management system that is pre-built in this online grocery store software. Optimize your route for delivering the products with the help of Google Mapping. Delivery agents will get an exclusive delivery agent app that will help them to have a clear picture of their tasks. Explore Ownmy shop online grocery ecommerce solutions 3. Zemez – A Trustworthy Grocery Ecommerce Platform Zemez is trusted by more than 20K businesses. This online grocery platform will let your customer have end-to-end real-time delivery tracking. This grocery store software is developed with the latest technologies that can give a user-friendly experience to the customers. Platform Highlights Zemez is a well-known software that can fulfill all online grocery shopping demands. The elegant design and user-friendly theme grabs the attention of the visitors and helps in easy conversion. Zemez provides wide range of payment options that can facilitate the buyers to decide on purchasing the product without any hesitation. The ultimate features of this grocery ecommerce website: Zemez is integrated with business intelligence that can give you a clear insight about your business. Get the advanced reports and statistics with this grocery eCommerce platform. No extra cost is required to promote the platform as the ecommerce grocery platform is SEO-friendly and will get you organic traffic with less effort. Have a detailed product description catalogue for managing your products. Explore EMEZ Grocery Store Software 4. Rocketbazar – A Reliable Online Grocery Store Software Rocketbazaar, a leading grocery eCommerce platform, lets you manage your business effortlessly. This grocery eCommerce store software will provide solutions for multi-store grocery shopping and delivery. Customers can explore the products using advanced search options. Platform Highlights Rocketbazar has become a powerful ecommerce grocery software after undergoing tremendous market analysis. This market segmentation has made this platform a perfect choice for any startups and fits into any business type. The grocery ecommerce platform provides various options for revenue generation. The exclusive features of this grocery eCommerce  Platform: Customers can either pick-up the groceries from the store or can even have door-step delivery. Scheduling the delivery of the groceries is possible with this online grocery store software. Live grocery order tracking is an advanced feature that is enabled in this grocery ecommerce website. Explore  Rocket Bazar Online Grocery Platform. 5. IONWE – Customizable Online Grocery Platform IONWE has a dedicated central admin that can manage the overall grocery eCommerce platform. This eCommerce grocery store software has a perfect inventory management that allows the store owners to be well informed about the stock details. The store owner can fix the pricing for the groceries and also can have offers and discounts that will delight the customers. Platform Highlights Users can carve the grocery store according to his product and service as the platform is 100% customizable. The efficient product search of this grocery software will simplify the shopping experience of your customers. Users can gain greater reputation in the digital market by launching Zielcommerce as their renowned grocery platform. The notable features of this online grocery store software: A reliable financial accounting system than can keep a perfect track on store earnings The real-time tracking feature will facilitate the customers to track their product easily. Customized menus for various grocery franchises. Please contact IONWE grocery ecommerce solution for custom plan pricing. 6. Essitco – A Reputed Online Grocery Store Software Essitco is backed by robust and scalable tech-architecture. The deployment of this grocery eCommerce website is faster compared to other online grocery store software. PCI compliance is quite assured with this online grocery platform so there will not be any issues on security. Platform Highlights Essitco is a challenging ecommerce grocery store to all competitors who are in this field. The platform never fails to impress the visitors with its advanced features that makes the ecommerce grocery store more lively and helps in easy order conversion. One can get more returns by installing Essitco as their ecommerce grocery software. The advance features of this online grocery ecommerce platform: The whole grocery store software is developed by keeping the best SEO optimization for apps in mind. Scheduling, payment and live tracking are added features. Can easily manage various grocery delivery operators and drivers through the app. Can run referral campaigns on both the grocery ecommerce website as well as on apps. Contact Customizable plans for enterprise users with greater needs Essitco 7. Mycloud Grocer – A Renowned Grocery Ecommerce Website Mycloud Grocer provides you with an effortless storefront administration and management. The effective delivery management of this grocery eCommerce website allows the customers to select their convenient time for delivering the grocery items. You can harness the power of product ratings and reviews mainly to redefine the online shopping experience. Platform Highlights Mycloud Grocer is a versatile ecommerce grocery store that can easily get adapted to your business model and business style. You need not worry about getting traffic to your ecommerce grocery website. The platform comes with complete SEO and social media integration that can easily get you more traffic to your website. The extraordinary features of this online grocery platform: With dedicated mobile apps, you can have a mobile presence. Through retail management system, you can easily organize your orders This grocery eCommerce platform is well integrated with payment gateways. Admin can push messages to store owners, drivers and customers. Please contact their mycloud grocer sales team for custom pricing. 8. Shophero – A Robust Online Grocery Platform Shophero is well optimized for the web and mobile grocery ecommerce platform and comes with free installation and setup. Customers will experience a user-friendly front-end and the admin enjoys a perfect back-end. Vendors can have both web and mobile apps for their processing. Platform Highlights Shophero has attracted numerous users with its salient features. The users so far have never faced any complaints while using this ecommerce grocery software. No technical knowledge is needed to use this platform and it is easy to customize and can fit it into your theme and style. The unique features of this online grocery store software: Customers can avail a convenient payment experience. Admin can manage SMS gateway from back-end and can send SMS to the customers as well as to the vendors. Customers can call and place orders with their favorite grocery store software. Admin can manage the complete activity log. Please contact shophero directly for a more information 9. Mobicommerce – An Incrediable Grocery Ecommerce Website Mobicommerce is one of the most famed grocery ecommerce platform that can build your brand and let you reach your target audience. The store owners can make profitable decisions by quickly analyzing the web analytics data of the online grocery store software. Customers can easily detect the delivery person’s movement through real-time tracking. Platform Highlights Mobicommerce is one of the trustable grocery ecommerce platform that has a separate customer base. The platform is highly secured with proper SSL certificate configuration. This makes users feel safe to purchase with your platform. So you can expect good conversion and can also acquire more new customers to your business. The remarkable features of this grocery eCommerce platform: Gain multiple location access through this online grocery store software. Vendors can earn commission that mutually benefits the store owner and the vendors. Delight your customers with fast delivery time with the help of delivery management systems. Mobicommerce plans include all the basics for starting your web-based grocery ecommerce software 10. Ecommercesite – An Ultimate Online Grocery Platform Ecommercesite provides a one-step solution for all your grocery demands. This grocery ecommerce platform is designed and developed to assist the commoners. Ecommerce site gives you the grocery ecommerce website that can help you to handle the stock and will take care of the delivery of the products. This online grocery platform gives you the ease of managing the accounts and can have a hassle-free transaction. The demanded features of this grocery ecommerce platform Well-integrated payment gateways that facilitate the customers to buy the products 24/7 customer support that can simply delight your customers. Real-time tracking feature to keep your customers at ease. An exclusive dashboard is given for each grocer. Contact custom grocery solutions for yokart team 11. Shipt – An Outstanding Online Grocery Store Software Shipt comes with all advanced features that are essential for grocery store software. This online grocery platform meets all the latest technology demands in the field. You can enjoy the scalability and the flexibility and can make your grocery software to give an ultimate shopping experience to the users. The true features of this grocery ecommerce platform You can customize the online grocery platform as per your business requirements. By paying a one-time payment you can own this grocery ecommerce platform. Enhanced payment options in this grocery ecommerce store software can provide a secured payment transaction Shipt could be an option for your grocery ecommerce platform 12. Mercatus – An Integrated Online Grocery Platform Mercatus Online grocery store software gives you a unified shopping experience. This  platform has user-centric UI that supports better customer engagement when compared with other online grocery stores. The responsive design of this grocery platform never fails to attract and impress the audience. Platform Highlights Mercatus allows you to deliver your grocery products with the reliable online grocery platform that can fit in all market size. The grocery ecommerce website holds a unique potential user interface and ensures the users to get a seamless shopping experience and can get you good returns in sales and revenue. The real features of this grocery eCommerce website: Avail 24/7 technical support that can back your online grocery store software and its functions. The platform is highly configurable and also scalable. Gain operational efficiencies in all the back-end processes of your grocery eCommerce platform. Mercatus is completely secured and fully PCI compliant. Contact Mercatus directly for custom pricing. 13. OurHarvest – A Supreme Online Grocery Platform OurHarvest is a single solutions that can give all grocery ecommerce platform. You can easily turn your offline grocery store software and can enter the online grocery ecommerce platform by trusting OurHarvest grocery ecommerce software. This online grocery platform is rich in all features that are needed and demanded by the buyers and the grocers. The salient features of this grocery ecommerce website The excellent admin dashboard makes this online grocery platform more reliable and helps to enhance the business. Dedicated apps for admin, delivery agent and the buyers will delight the grocers as well as the buyers. Flexible order management will let you to manage your orders efficiently. 14.	DelivX – a multivendor online grocery platform DelivX allows you to explore the new dimensions of the grocery store software. You can give a contactless delivery and can build your customers’ support through this online grocery platform. The unique UI and UX give the customers a seamless grocery shopping experience. The significant features of this grocery ecommerce website: The advanced search option will let the buyer to search product-wise and also store-wise. The scheduling and payment feature of this online grocery store software will let the buyer to schedule their delivery time and can pay with the available payment options. In-app wallet is well-integrated with this online grocery platform. 15. ShopurGrocery – A Remarkable Grocery Ecommerce Platform ShopurGrocery will help you to create your own personalized cloud platform. You can use this grocery ecommerce platform in both web and as an app. This online grocery platform provides high accessibility to the users. The grocery software is well-integrated with finest delivery management system and gives an awesome shopping experience. The intense features of this grocery ecommerce website: Customize the way you like the grocery ecommerce software to be. The mobile app will give customers a personal shopping experience. This online grocery platform is completely device compatible and can be used well in both IOS and android platforms. Must Have Features for a Profitable Grocery eCommerce Platform – narrow down the options that your customers are searching for with advanced searching and filtering options built in your grocery platform. Easy search – let your customers and vendors know about the order status in your online grocery store and allow them to easily track their orders and get status. Order tracking – delight your customers by providing special discount and coupons that will make them buy again and again through your grocery ecommerce platform Coupons and discounts – facilitate your audience to utilize your payment option to buy products from your and ensure them that your grocery platform is a highly secured one. Secured multiple payment option ecommerce software – never miss an opportunity to get your customers’ feedback about your grocery platform service and product quality. This will enhance your online credibility. Reviews & rating Conclusion The global online grocery platform is facing healthy growth. You may have realized the importance and now know what the leading grocery ecommerce platform is that you can rely on for your business. Check what features that are essential to run your online grocery store software and listed above. Good luck! choose the best grocery ecommerce platform suited to your needs from the options

15 Best Grocery Ecommerce Platforms to Build Your Grocery Website & Apps

As the owner of My Small Store, I receive many requests to dropship our luxury handbags. I feel honored, yet, I decline all of the requests. Let me explain the risks associated with E-Commerce Dropshipping. What is dropshipping? Dropshipping is an easy way to start an eCommerce site - there is no stock to manage, orders are sent to a third party (wholesaler) who pack and ship orders. Keeping stock is an expensive operation with huge upfront cost to buy the products, recurring costs to store and manage it, plus insurance in case of fire, flooding, theft, riots, etc. Most eCommerce platforms have tools to synchronize stock levels, prices, and orders. The " " thing the eCommerce has to do is to bring buyers. only We do use dropshipping to test new products or the ones we have but we barely sell. Dropshipping is a risky business Risks are at multiple levels and I'll show a few. Low Ethics Dropship Wholesalers These have strictly no problem adding their own advertisement in packages - we tested several using employees as customers. They received a note in their package saying "Next time save more by buying directly from us @ abc.com with an example of prices." If these were real customers... they would never come back! Pricey wholesalers These have "wholesale prices" identical to retail. One we liked to use had over 1,600,000 SKU in stock but their prices are now so high, it is impossible to sell a single item. Some items are "well priced" but we can't find any of them at a higher price on marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, etc.) Some call themselves aggregators. They come with a high subscription fee, some are not ashamed to charge $1,000 to set up, then up to $225 per month per brand and/or channel. If you sell 5 brands on a website and Amazon it's a monthly $225*2*5 or . $2,250 per month We compared their "wholesale" prices and we felt that on top of the monthly fee they also increase the price by a notch or two. But . they are convenient and reliable Example of overpriced "aggregator" Juicy Couture Perfume Spray  - 3.4 oz at $29.99 vs. the exact same product at FraganceNet for $29.24. Even without adding a margin your will be already overpriced. The Drone Nerf DR-265 at $89.35 + shipping vs. the exact same drone on Google Shopping for $79,99 free shipping!etc. etc. Sub-wholesalers or multi-layer dropshipping What?  yes, these are "wholesalers" who resell from wholesalers or other sellers. My lovely wife bought from an Amazon seller a big box of Belgian chocolates (my favorite) - it arrived after over 2 weeks. The first package had a packing slip from a Walmart seller, the final packaging has a packing slip from a company in our hometown! Guess who will buy chocolate from Amazon :) - that was a 3 level dropshipping! NEVER Funky "wholesalers" Funky? yes, these people "omit" to specify that the products they resale are in fact AliExpress, Amazon, Walmart products. We have many names of those guys as they often contact us to allow them to resell "bulk dropship." A very nasty story - a young single mom used one of them who had no problem paying the Amazon orders with stolen credit cards using HER address as a billing address. When the fraud was discovered, guess which door the FBI knocked at? Not-fully Dropship Wholesalers These are smaller manufacturers who dropship but do not have any integration with eCommerce platforms - they often provide a monthly spreadsheet to upload, orders are through email. The danger is that within the 30 days between spreadsheets, stock and price variation can be huge on popular products leading to over-selling or losing money on each sale. One we used and loved manufactures organic baby products. We developed a tool (cost over $10,000) to grab their spreadsheet daily to update our store and to push orders. We and others helped them grow until they decided to have their own eCommerce. We "dropped" them when they started behaving like "Low ethics Dropship wholesalers." Complete lack of control For me, it's the worse part as you have no idea: what is shipped - one customer returned a brand new rucksack which had a "customer return" sticker on it when it ships - they may say 1 business day but they don't specify which week :) how it's packed - I think we saw everything from re-used cartons to damaged envelops! where it shipped - we had a few mishaps with shipping to the wrong address. These always mean refunds and very unhappy customers. Dropshipper/Aggregator failures Often, you rely on your service provider, publish and sell products they "manage." Until one day, an email shows up saying "Due to unforeseen events, we are shutting down our dropshipping services." How many products did you import? Thousands? They have to be removed, all that work done for nothing. Finding another aggregator for the same products helps but all the great product descriptions have to be redone or manually copied keeping the same product URL - . we have been there and it's not pleasant work Product description risks Often, dropshippers brag about what you have to do: Select products Publish products Sell products Get the money They take care of everything else. Unfortunately many eCommerces do that and it is a crowded nightmare. For example, you sell drones, try to Google a part of your dropshipper description like - "ALTITUDE HOLD: When you focus on shooting images" - add the quotes to tell Google to look for the exact same sentence - the result is ! about 4,230 pages with the exact same words Products with the exact same description as all your dropshipper's customers is a idea. bad To avoid drowning in the sea, you need to rephrase - No results found for "altitude hold: great to focus while taking pictures" - making your description way more interesting for Google thus more interesting for potential buyers. This will be the subject of another article. Product volume risks Dropshippers recommend publishing as many products as possible. Another big mistake - Google hates it. Imagine you push 1,000 products in one day... Google will ignore most of them! A store I tried to help but didn't listen, published in 2017, 1,500 drone-related products in a few days - , only 30 of his products are cached by Google, meaning the search engine doesn't know about most of what the store sells and in fact, the owner is still trying to figure out why! three years later , yet, we still use dropshipping for some of our products because it's the only viable solution. Lots of risks I looked at one particular handbag we dropship. We sold 4 in the last 2 years. The minimum wholesale order is 10 bags to meet the manufacturer's $7,500 minimum order per bag - meaning we would have today $4,500 stuck in very slow-selling stock - not a good business practice. , dropshipping does work but there are risks attached to it and it must be done very carefully with real wholesalers. In Conclusion

E-Commerce Dropshipping: The Risks

Chicisimo for iOS. Download or iOS Android Three years ago we launched , our goal was to . Today, with over 4 million women on the app, we want to share how our data and machine learning approach helped us grow. It’s been chaotic but it is now under control. Chicisimo offer automated outfit advice Our thesis: Outfits are the best asset to understand people’s taste. Understanding taste will transform online fashion If we wanted to build a human-level tool to offer automated outfit advice, we needed to understand people’s fashion taste. A friend can give us outfit advice because after seeing what we normally wear, she’s learnt our style. How could we build a system that learns fashion taste? We had previous experience with taste-based projects and a background in machine learning applied to and . We saw how a collaborative filtering tool transformed the music industry from blindness to totally understanding people (check out the story). It also made life better for those who love music, and created several unicorns along the way. music other sectors Audioscrobbler With this background, we built the following thesis: online fashion will be transformed by a tool that understands taste. Because if you understand taste, you can delight people with relevant content and a meaningful experience. We also thought that “o_utfits_” were the asset that would allow taste to be understood, to learn what people wear or have in their closet, and what style each of us like. Online fashion will be transformed by a tool that understands taste. Because if you understand taste, you can delight people. “O_utfits_” are the asset that allows taste to be understood We decided we were going to build that tool to understand taste. We ended building the infrastructure to automate outfit advice: (i) a consumer app with an interface focused on capturing the right input and providing the right output; (ii) a data platform that automates the jobs of interpreting incoming data and providing the correct output to the delivery mechanisms; (iii) a dataset that reflects what people wear, what people own in their closet, and how people think, when they think about clothes; (iv) and an IP portfolio protecting all of the above. are going to make people’s lives better Machine learning and deep learning in fashion 1st Step: Building the app for people to express their needs From previous experience building mobile products, even in back then, we knew it was easy to bring people to an app but difficult to retain them. So we focused on small iterations to learn as fast as possible. Symbian We launched an extremely early alpha of Chicisimo with one key functionality. We launched under another name and in another country. You couldn’t even upload photos… but it allowed us to iterate with real data and get a lot of qualitative input. At some point, we launched the Chicisimo, and removed this alpha from the App Store. real We spent a long time trying to understand what our true levers of retention were, and what algorithms we needed in order to match content and people. Three things helped with retention: Releasing changes into the app. (we use for this). We run cohorts not only over the actions that people performed, but also over the value they received. This was hard to conceptualize for an app such as Chicisimo*. We thought in terms of what specific and measurable value people received, measured it, and run cohorts over those events, and then we were able to iterate over value received, not only over actions people performed. We also defined and removed (all those noisy things that distract from the main value) and got all the relevant metrics for different time periods: first session, first day, first week, etc. These super specific metrics allowed us to iterate (* book discusses a framework to create habits that helped us build our model); (a) identify retention levers using behavioral cohorts Mixpanel anti-levers Nir Eyal’s Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products . We define it as the process by which new signups find the value of the app as soon as possible, and before we lose them. We clearly articulated to ourselves what needed to happen (what and when). It went something like this: We also run tons of user-tests with different types of people, and observed how they perceived (or mostly didn’t) the retention lever; (b) re-think the onboarding process, once we knew the levers of retention If people don’t do [action] during their first 7 minutes in their first session, they will not come back. So we need to change the experience to make that happen. The data approach described above is key, but there is much more than data when building a product people love. In our case, first of all, we think that the is a very important one to solve, and we truly respect it. We obsess over understanding the problem, and over understanding how our solution is helping, or not. It’s our way of showing respect. (c) define how we learn. what-to-wear problem This leads me to one of the most surprising aspects IMO of building a product: the fact that, regularly, we access new corpuses of knowledge that we did not have before, which help us improve the product significantly. When we’ve obtained these game-changing learnings, it’s been by focusing on two aspects: how people relate to the problem, and how people relate to the product (the red arrows in the image below). There are a million subtleties that happen in these two relations, and we are building Chicisimo by trying to understand them. Now, we know that at any point there is something important that we don’t know and therefore the question always is: how can we learn… sooner? always This model helps us think. I understand that there are other models and this one might be controversial. Talking with one of my colleagues, she once told me, ”. And the truth is, from day one we’ve learnt significantly by having conversations with women about how they relate with the problem, and with solutions. We use several mechanisms: having face to face conversations, reading the emails we get from women without predefined questions, or asking for feedback around specific topics (we now use and its a great tool for product insight). And then we talk among ourselves and try to articulate the learnings. We also seek external references: we talk with other product people, we play with inspiring apps, and we that help us think. This process is what allows us to learn, and then build product and develop technology. “this is not about data, this is about people Typeform re-read articles At some point, we were lucky to get noticed by the App Store team, and we’ve been featured as App of the Day throughout the world (view Apple’s description of Chicisimo, ). On December 31st, Chicisimo was in a summary of apps the App Store team did, we are the pink “C.” in the left image below 😀. here featured The app got by 957,437 uniques thanks to this feature, for a total of 1.3M times. In our case, app features have a 0,5% conversion rate from impression to app install (normally: impression > product page view > install); ASO has a 3% conversion, and referrers 45%. viewed fashion needs 2nd step: Building the data platform to learn people’s The app aims at understanding taste so we can do a better job at suggesting outfit ideas. The simple act of delivering the right content at the right time can absolutely people, although it is an extremely difficult utility to build. wow Chicisimo content is 100% user-generated, and this poses some challenges: the system needs to classify different types of content automatically, build the right incentives, and understand how to match content and needs. We soon saw that there was a lot of data coming in. After thinking “ ”, we realized it was actually a nightmare because, being chaotic, the data wasn’t actionable. This wasn’t cool at all. But then we decided to start giving some structure to parts of the data, and we ended inventing what we called the Social Fashion Graph. The graph is a compact representation of how needs, outfits and people interrelate, a concept that helped us build the data platform. The data platform creates a high-quality dataset linked to a learning and training world, our app, which therefore improves with each new expression of taste. We believe that taste graphs are going to transform fashion, and . hey, how cool we are, look at all this data we have we’ve written about it here We thought of outfits as playlists: an outfit is a combination of items that makes sense to consume together. Using collaborative filtering, the relations captured here allow us to offer recommendations in different areas of the app. Screenshots of one of our patents. Chicisimo’s first source of data relations, and first representation of the Social Fashion Graph. There was still a lot of noise in the data, and one of the hardest things was to understand how people were expressing the same fashion need in different ways, which made matching content and needs even more difficult. Lots of people might need ideas to go to school, and express that specific need in a hundred different ways. How do you capture this diversity, and how do you provide structure to it? We built a system to collect concepts (we call them ) and captured equivalences among different ways to express the same need. We ended up building a list of the world’s what-to-wear needs, which we call our ontology. This really cleaned up the dataset and helped us understand what we had. This understanding led to better product decisions. needs We now understand that an outfit, a need or a person, can have a lot of understandable , if you allow people to express freely (the app) while having the right system behind (the platform). Structuring data gave us control, while encouraging unstructured data gave us knowledge and flexibility. data attached Chicisimo The end result is our current system. A system that learns the meaning of an outfit, how to respond to a need, or the taste of an individual. And I wouldn’t even dare saying that this is Day 1 for us. Screenshot of an internal tool. Each Need has different data attached to it. It belongs to a certain category; it is correlated to other needs; it is attached to different types of outfits and shoppable products; it plays a certain role in the ontology… The amount of work we have in front of us is immense, but we feel things are now under control. One of the new areas we’ve been working on is adding a fourth element to the Social Fashion Graph: shoppable products. A system to match outfits to products automatically, and to help people decide what to buy next. This is pretty exciting. Shoppable sweaters currently available via a ShopStyle integration 3rd Step: Algorithms Back when we built recommender systems for music and other products, it was pretty (that’s what we think now, we obviously didn’t think that at the time:). First, it was to capture that you liked a given song. Then, it was to capture the sequence in which you and others would listen to that song, and therefore you could capture the correlations. With this data, you could do a lot. easy easy easy However, as we soon found out, fashion has its own challenges. There is not an easy way to match an outfit to a shoppable product (think about most garments in your wardrobe, most likely you won’t find a link to view/buy those garments online, something you can do for many other products you have at home). Another challenge: the industry is not capturing how people describe clothes or outfits, so there is a strong disconnect between many ecommerces and its shoppers (we think we’ve solved that problem. Also and are working on it). Another challenge: style is complex to capture and classify by a machine. Similar.ai Twiggle Now, deep learning brings a new tool to add to other mechanisms, and changes everything. Owning the correct data set allows us to focus on the specific narrow use cases related to outfit recommendations, and to focus on delivering value through the algorithms instead of spending time collecting and cleaning data. 👉 . People’s can become as actionable as metadata and possibly as transparent as well (?), and I think we can see the path to get there. As we have a consumer product that people already love, we can ship early results of these algorithms partially hidden, and increase their presence as feedback improves results. Now comes the fun and rewarding part, so please email us if you want to join the team and help build algorithms that have real impact on people — we are 100% remote, Slack based 👈 -😂😂😉 😉 😉 very personal style What type of looks should we suggest someone? There are more and more researchers working of these areas, you can read Tangseng’s on recommending outfits from personal closet or clothing parsing , or how defines similarity between images using user-provided metadata. paper project Edgar Simo-Serra Why are Google, Amazon and Alibaba getting into outfits? There is a race to capture a $123b market Outfits are a key asset in the race to capture the US apparel market. Data is also the reason many players are taking to the forefront of technology: outfits are a daily habit, and have proven to be great assets to attract and retain shoppers, and capture their data. Many players are introducing a section with outfits from real people: , or are a few examples. $123 billion outfits Shop the Look Amazon Zalando Google Google recently introduced a new feature called showing how a “ . Same month Amazon its Alexa Echo Look to help you with your outfit, and helped them achieve record sales during Singles Day. Style Ideas product can be worn in real life” launched Alibaba’s artificial intelligence personal stylist Apparel, footwear and accessories retail e-commerce revenue in the US ( ). “Clothing and shoes“ is the largest product category in the US ( ). source source 10 years from now Some people think that fashion data is in the same place as music data was in 2003: ready to play a very relevant role. The good news is: the daily habit of deciding what to wear will not change. The need to buy new clothes won’t disappear, either. So, what do you think? Where will we be 10 years from now? Will taste data build unique online experiences? What role will outfits play? How will machine learning change fashion ecommerce? Will everything change, 10 years from now? This sentence is just a test ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ related to our for iOS, which is both an and that women use as an to combine the clothes in their outfit maker app outfits app closet app outfit planner app wardrobe Learn more about Chicisimo We are a small team of eight, four on product and four engineers. We believe in focusing on our very specific problem, no one on earth can understand the problem better than us. Our thesis: closets will soon be digitized, people will have more control over their clothes, and deciding your outfit will not be a pain. Making people feel great and confident by helping them choose the “right” outfit, that’s the goal. We also believe on building the complete solution ourselves while doing as few things as possible. We work 100% remote and live in Slack + GitHub. You can learn more about our machine learning approach, . here If you are a deep learning engineer or a product manager in the fashion space, and want to chat & temporarily access our Social Fashion Graph, please email us describing your work. You can also download our and apps, or simply say hi: iOS Android hi at chicisimo.com. 💖 Thanks for reading!

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