As technology advances, customer demands for the latest tech increase too. For businesses, keeping up with the latest tech trends ensures that you can give your customers what they want. It also help retain a competitive edge and embrace the fast-paced changes to stay relevant in the industry. If your business does not keep up with the changing technology, you face the risk of being left behind.

Here are a few ways in which you can keep your business up to date with the latest technology:

Be prepared

It is essential to offer you’re your customers with products and services built with the latest technology. Innovating and improving products and services with the latest technology prepares your business for the future. Web technology, Mobile applications and new features such as AI, VR and AR can dramatically add value to customer experiences.

Don’t forget to check: How To Bulletproof Your Digital Business With Technology

Follow trends

Technology update is not a one-time thing. It keeps evolving. New trends are constantly around the corner. Having all this information gives you an insight into what you should include in your business growth strategies. Following latest trends will ensure that you are ready for what the future may bring in terms of technology.

Check out the competition

With competition getting fiercer, it is getting more and more important to understand what technology are others in a similar business using. This will ensure that you and offering similar or better services to your customers with advanced technology solutions. Checking out the competitors will help you strategize better about your tech strategy.

Keeping your business updated with the latest technology is beneficial in many ways. It enables businesses to offer better services to their customers and stay relevant in a fiercely competitive business world. Latest technology will ensure that your business is future ready.

When the whole world literally came to a halt in 2020, but rather than causing any destruction in the retail world – it provided a boost to this industry in the online world. The entire volume of retail growth reallocated to the E-Commerce channels, which enjoyed an 18% bump in total growth. This growth cannot be accredited solely to the pandemic. The world has seen steady progress towards the online for well over a decade. In the aftermath of a year filled with social distancing and quarantines, the retail industry looks to emerge as a changed entity. Let’s look at what the future holds for the E-Commerce industry:

Voice commerce will catch on

Voice commerce uses voice assistants such as Alexa or Siri to give shoppers a hands-free shopping experience. In a world of contactless and social distancing, voice shopping will be a great addition to E-Commerce.

New demographics will embrace this trend

Voice commerce has enjoyed success in the E-Commerce industry. However, COVID-19 has disproportionately affected the older demographics, as they are required to adhere to strict quarantine measures. But they still need groceries and essential items. This will encourage the use of E-Commerce solutions and hence the use of voice commerce.

Increased socialization with E-Commerce experiences will be expected

E-Commerce has undoubtedly been a life raft for many who were stuck at home. It’s probably been the only surviving tool. Although it is very convenient and quick, – at its core it is a very impersonal experience. E-Commerce and voice commerce will find its applications for enhancing online shopping experiences.

AR shopping to emerge

E-Commerce has become a significant retail channel. Technology does not stay static for long. Modern devices with advanced capabilities will enable a lot more AR functions. AR is one of the technologies that will be a game-changer for the E-Commerce industry in 2022.

Predictions cannot be 100% accurate, but it’s true that 2022 with set the stage for new and advanced features that will take E-Commerce experiences to the next level.

One of the biggest decisions you will make for your business is the choice of the eCommerce platform that is scalable and will ensure long term growth. The platform should also help customers that are engaging with your brand to reduce friction while they’re getting the product they need. Ensuring employees have what they need to implement campaign strategies and at the same time be ready to use without add on cost for maintenance and installation.

Whether you are a brick and mortar store with a strong local presence or are looking for an enterprise eCommerce solution, building one from scratch is out of the question! The time frame and the cost is simply too high for such an endeavour.

The good news is that there are a number of ready to use eCommerce solutions such as Lokaly that enable you to go online instantly. These solutions are highly customisable too. Being white labelled, you need not worry about how it will ‘look’ for your brand.

Lokaly is ready to use, white labelled eCommerce solution. It enables local stores to quickly go online by quickly upload the products and begin selling.

Some of the features of this marketplace are:

  • Completely White-label solution
  • Customized & Branded Solution on App Store
  • Your own Marketplace subscription model
  • Customizable Features
  • Increase your revenue
  • Ensure your business continuity in the Lockdown or stay home period

Lokaly can be completely customised to suit your business requirements. It’s the easiest and fastest way to reach your customers where they are – online. It not only helps you keep up with the latest in the online world, but also helps keep in compliance with the latest no contact delivery policies for the covid 19 rules. With customisations, you can make the app look, feel and serve your customers as your business requirements.

Using the latest technology in e-commerce significantly boosts a company’s chances to become a market leader. The latest technology can offer innovative solutions for enticing customers online. One such technology is Flutter, which takes cross-platform app development to a new level. Some of the main benefits of selecting flutter for e-commerce mobile application development are:

Faster time to market

In today’s competitive business landscape, speed matters above all. The use of cross-platform app development allows reducing the time to market. The product can be released sooner and the app will be available on two devices – Android and iOS while performing like a native app – stable and reliable.

Easy maintenance

It’s known that the release of the application is just the beginning. Maintenance of the application is a large part of the process. It’s time consuming and it costs you too. Flutter’s apps solve these problems as well. In Flutter, adding new features and fixing bugs is easy. There are plugins and widgets available to accommodate any new features you want to.

Cost efficiency

This is one of the most important advantages of Flutter. Because it is cross-platform, two separate teams need not be hired to develop the e-commerce app. So, it saves costs. Developing an app on flutter requires less financial, human and material costs than developing a native application.

Customizable advanced UI

With the focus on the end user, many companies focus on immersive user experiences. Flutter has a wide range of tools and widgets to help design flexible and advanced UI features.

Easy integration with the existing apps

Many companies are apprehensive about creating new apps and discard the old ones. Flutter is flexible and enables you to embed code even in the native mode. Flutter has many more benefits. The transition to cross-platform development is gradual, but a less painful process for businesses.

Flutter is stable, reliable and definitely an option for businesses who wish to move to mobile e-commerce – soon!

Lokaly is an e-commerce app and built using Flutter technology.

Dashboards are essential admin tools that help you keep on top of everything that’s going on with your online store. They display all the data in a visual format that makes it easy to get a glimpse of everything that matters for your store.

Lokaly has an extensive dashboard with information on your orders, payments, overdue, customers, modes of payments and lots more.

Here are a few things you can check out instantly on the Lokaly dashboard:

Lokaly Statistics

This gives you the numbers that indicate the number of stores you have in this marketplace, the total items, and the earnings. At a glimpse information of all these give you as owners a good understanding of where you stand as far as your store is concerned.

Order statistics

The order statistics offers useful information about the total number of orders that are pending, those that are currently running, those that are completed, and even those that are cancelled.

Payment modes 

payment modes tells you which customers have paid by which methods. The methods available are:

  • Add to credit account
  • Cash on delivery
  • Online payment
  • Card on delivery

Order count by the hour 

This section offers you with the information such as the order count, amount and items count.

Credit account

A credit account can keep track of the store credits that have been offers and to whom and also tells you which payments are overdue.

Last orders

These statistics tells you the last few orders that were placed with your store.

With a dashboard, you can monitor and measure your business performance by tracking data points and gives you valuable insights into everything that you need to know. This gives you data to base your future business strategies on.

“Restaurants are Looking Beyond…”, says an article by The Economic Times. Restaurants are now adopting platforms that charge lesser commission fees compared to dominant food aggregators. Asking for high commission and masking consumers’ data, restaurants are moving to marketplace-based platforms. These changes (aka savings from hefty commission %) will be rewarded to consumers as discounts on their online orders. This is going to enable a more modest and effective model – Direct to Consumer (D2C).

When businesses opting for ready-made solutions, where they can save cost, get access to their consumers’ data and manage online business easily. Lokaly is a ready-made and transparent solution for small to large businesses. Lokaly has partnered with 30+ restaurants based in Ahmedabad. Also, Lokaly has developed solutions for some famous brands in the USA. Lokaly provides free trial and support to sellers to know the platform better.

When you are a local business, you have a regionally marked territory and seldom get customers beyond a certain point. Every store has one-time customers and then there are regulars – who order weekly or monthly. It’s a great business model and a very certain business strategy. But, with all that, there are still limitations on how you can retain customers as well as gain new ones. Local stores are rarely a monopoly – there is always competition in the vicinity. So, how do you ensure that your customers get the ‘delight’, the ‘ease’, and the ‘convenience’ that a local store can or must offer?

Well, Lokaly has the answer to this plea. Lokaly is an E-Commerce application for local departmental stores and businesses. Stores can easily create their account, and avail all the features – just like a mobile app would.

  • You just visit the webpage to Register as a Seller and get started once your Store is approved
  • Loyal Customers are your first bet and you can add them as per the plan chosen in the Registration
  • You are provided a standard list and you add or remove items at will from this list based on your offering
  • Choose to Approve the order or give an additional Discount to your Customers easily before delivery or pick-up.

Each sale is now on a digital platform. The seller can then introduce a khata system where loyal customers receive store credit. You can also check analytics to understand how your business is going. The app also has integrated features for payment reminders and ready for pickup notifications.

Once the decision is made – to move from bricks to clicks, it’s just about choosing the right platform for setting up your online or mobile store!

Lokaly’s multi-store feature enables local businesses to operate multiple stores within a single panel. Sellers can personalize many aspects of each of the stores and control the access for each of the websites separately. This feature allows you to publish multiple eCommerce stores from a single product database. Store owners can target niche markets, carve out special offerings from their products, and publish special products on each store.

Here are some of the ways in which Lokaly can offer multi-store configuration:

  • Single Dashboard: Store owners can manage multiple stores efficiently using a single dashboard. Use a single database to allocate products, deals, discounts, shipping, and payment gateways to multiple stores.
  • Store-specific catalogue: Store owners can store specific catalogues to target various customer segments. Users can allot different products to each storefront effortlessly.
  • Price Overrides by store: The price override functionality based on stores and list the same products at different prices depending on the location or the deal offered at each store.
  • Store Selection: The store selection feature is available based on customer preferences.
  • Store Specific Discounts: Owners can offer store specific discounts to attract more customers on each store separately. Set up and track different discounts for each of the stores.
  • Store specific coupon codes: Create unlimited coupon codes for each store using the coupon code generator. Store owners also get the ability to create flash sales.
  • B2B: You can add B2B features like multi-seller to create more flexibility.
  • Diverse currency and language: Owners also get the ability to select different languages and currencies for each store.
  • Different payment gateways: Store owners can offer multi-store shopping carts with different payment gateways based on the geographical location of customers.

If your business is ready – Lokaly offers a ready to go live solution to go mobile quickly!

The year 2020 saw unprecedented circumstances and businesses were forced to innovate or close down. Those who chose to innovate and keep up with the demands of the time – survived. Technology has always been an enabler for forward thinking businesses and in tough times technology enabled businesses to stay afloat. Well, Lokaly has been one such technology solution that enabled local businesses to keep going in times of crisis. It enabled them to keep in touch with their customers, engage with them and more importantly allow users to make purchases and place orders online. In a world where distancing has become a good thing, Lokaly managed to not only help businesses survive but some of them even thrived.

Lokaly keeps adding new and innovative features to help businesses further their goals. Here are some of the latest updates to the mobile app that stood by you when the world was locked down.

We are happy to announce some of the new features:

  • Add multiple store managers: Now, with Lokaly, you can add multiple store managers and assign them roles to manage the store more effectively. Any changes made by one manager can then be seen clearly.
  • Add delivery boy to a store: Businesses can assign separate delivery boys to different stores on the app. It just makes managing deliveries simpler.
  • Create a new combo for restaurants: New features have been added for restaurants who are on Lokaly. They can now create new combo offers and manage them within the app.
  • Schedule delivery for customers: The deliveries can be scheduled for customers according to the orders.
  • QR code feature: Users can quickly scan the QR code and need not have to remember details.
  • Customized dynamic offer creation: Restaurants or local businesses can create customized offers and improve their customer experiences.

With new features rolling in, businesses can upgrade their app and install the new updates and leverage from their benefits!

Lokaly is a solution for sellers and buyers. Sellers can register their stores and manage their accounts with various buyers online through the seller app. With the buyer’s app, users can order from their favourite store within their vicinity via the app. Lokaly acts as a gateway between you and the local stores.

How can users contact local stores?

Lokaly acts as a technology bridge between the sellers and buyers. Many local stores depend on the number of feet walking up to their storefront every day. Many times they lack in the extra efforts to reach out to a larger customer base. Lokaly offers local businesses with the opportunity to expand beyond their regular customers and look at a larger customer base. The buyers can conveniently place their orders from their favourite stores within their vicinity and within a few taps and swipes the job is done. Well, the stores can also offer regular customers with a ‘khata’ system of payment wherein the customer is offer a type of store credit which can be paid when the amount is due.

The good news is that buyers do not have to pay anything to use the Lokaly app. It is completely free and can be downloaded for free from Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

The app is pretty simple to use too. After logging in, users can see the local stores on a dashboard. Users can also see whether the seller has approved their khata. Everything is displayed on the dashboard so that users get direct access to the information they require. All payments for the orders placed are managed via a khata system and can be done directly via the app. This means that there is no need of separate apps for making payments too. All transactions are effectively managed within Lokaly.

With Lokaly, businesses get a wider reach and no longer have to be dependent on those customers who walk up to their stores!