Kooomo 2021: A year in review

Without a doubt, 2021 has been quite the year for Kooomo! Rebranding, winning prestigious awards, launching successful webinars and brand new features... to name but a few of our biggest moments this year.   In this blog, we will take a look back at all the highs and how Kooomo has been making waves in the eCommerce industry.

New year, new look, new website

 First of all, we had a successful rebranding! In 2021, our focus was to combine the elements of eCommerce that improve the customer experience: omnichannel, packaging experience, shipping customer service, etc while at the same time, offering retailers the ability to adapt to trends quickly and effectively. For the first time, our customers had a platform that brings content and eCommerce together.

With the support of the Front-end agency On State, we redesigned the Kooomo website in only 3 months, using our own Content Management System. We improved the User Experience (UX) for visitors and showed how easy it is for retailers to update the content in their online stores. The Kooomo CMS was built to function together with the Kooomo eCommerce Platform, providing everything needed to operate an online store in one place. The final result was a more accessible and visually pleasing website for customers, where all content can be managed by content editors.

Furthermore, we have migrated our blog from WordPress to the Kooomo Content Management System, in only 3 months!

And the winner is...

     Secondly, we have been awarded “Best Omnichannel Solution” at the eCommerce Awards in London! The Kooomo team worked extremely hard this year, delivering a seamless experience across all sales channels for our retailers and their customers so it’s great to have this recognised. The annual UK eCommerce Awards reward and celebrate excellence across multiple online retail sectors, so this was a great win for our developers. Other accolades this year include a nomination for Software of the Year at the UK eCommerce awards.

eMmerced: Presented by Kooomo

    In 2021, we also launched our new Kooomo webinar series!  In the first episode of our new video series eMmerced: presented by Kooomo’, our Head of Client Services, James Foran interviewed Ben Ward, Head of Digital at Ireland's newest online baby, nursery and toy website, Kaliedy.       

Following its success, we launched other discussions including,  How to strike a balance when it comes to personalisation and eCommerce, in which Gary Hammond, formerly Head of Product was joined by Murat Soysal, Co-Founder of Segmentify to discuss personalisation and eCommerce. 

Elastic Search

     Moreover, we went live with many platform features, including ElasticSearch. More than 4.5 billion global internet users search for products and services online, with 87% of shoppers starting their customer journey online. As announced in one of our previous blogs, ElasticSearch is now available on the Kooomo platform.  You can find more information on ElasticSearch´s advantages here.

Marketplaces

    We also launched a Marketplace Business Unit with the help of our partner, Lengow. This way, we have implemented Marketplace activities and SEO Amazon services for our client Smemoranda, intending to improve Gross Merchandise Value and the visibility of the brand. Using Lengow for feed management, Smemoranda was able to import their orders easily from Amazon - expanding their sales channels just in time for the busy season.     This solution is now available to all of our merchants and quickly implements your product feed, without needing technical knowledge and can easily adapt to the requirements of various marketplaces (Amazon, Cdiscount, Wish, eBay etc).  In eCommerce, stats speak for themselves and since implementing Lengow on their website, Smemoranda increased its orders by 21%! For more information on the advantages of selling on marketplaces, follow this link.

Subscriptions

    Since general eCommerce experienced a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer habits have changed and people are more likely to make purchases online and sign up for subscription services. This led to the launch of subscriptions on the Kooomo platform in 2021.    Furthermore, we are currently working on bundles implementation, which will be live in early 2022. For eCommerce purposes, bundles are a key feature to have, as it increases the average order value, encourages cross-selling and it boosts the Gross Merchandise Value.

Black Friday 2021

    Black Friday 2021 was a great success for our retailers, with 100% uptime. In our Black Friday Guide, we shared valuable information, such as:

• New Consumer Habits 2021
• What we learned from 2020
•  New consumer advice
• Expert predictions for 2021  

In terms of sales, in 2021, the lockdown retail saw a continuous growth in what concerns the growth merchandise value and in particular, for our clients, this meant a 50% increase.