The future of online shopping – Q&A with BrilliantRetail -

1. What is the #1 advantage you have over your competitors?
BrilliantRetail offers a product that is easy to use while offering consumers the ability to customize every aspect to make their own unique site.

2. From your experience, should a merchant run a small shop with limited number of items, or rather a big one with many items for sale?
Companies who have a large product line tend to lower prices and focus on selling to the mass market. This strategy works very well for companies who do not know exactly what their target audience wants, or even if their audience knows what they want. On the other hand, a company that has a limited number of product categories tends to sell their items to a smaller number of people. This allows them to have the ability to create a product speciﬁcally tailored to their target audience.

In today’s constantly changing online environment, having small and large e-commerce stores allows consumers to browse from a large number of items. Then they can narrow their search and ﬁnd the exact item they are looking for.

3. Please give us one example to a successful creative move of one of your merchants.
MikkatMarket.com has built an entire online business based on the relationship with their client through a fashion blog. Original content established a large following for Katherine, the site’s owner, and that content grew into features in prominent online fashion websites.

4. Do many of your merchants run a brick and stone store as well?
There are, but on average I would say that we see more online only e- commerce stores.

5. Can you share any interesting plans for your platform in the near future?
With BrilliantRetail we are looking to educate our consumers in the future about useful e-commerce integrations. Thats why we have decided to create a marketplace to introduce our clients into new and interesting products that can enhance the functionality and bring added value to any e-commerce site. Our clients have enough to deal with in running their business and we would like to take some of the difﬁculties out of the equation. Our goal is not to bombard our users with second hand products, but to offer interesting integrations that can add a more personable/proﬁtable experience for our clients and ultimately their online customers.

6. How do you cope with the high pace of changes in the eCommerce arena and specifically in the social commerce world?
Many people fear change; especially how fast social commerce has change in the past 4 years. We at Codesly, love the change. Social commerce has allowed consumers to have a more personable shopping experience online. Prior to social commerce, if a customer bought a product online they never could get input from friends and family. Now, social commerce has opened the doors to sharing across the web and getting input from friends and family. Consumers can ﬁnd products they like and announce it to friends to get their input before purchasing.

This has allowed e-commerce sites to have a more personalized presence on their sites as well as add a great way to advertise their products through Word Of Mouth. The number one way to get a site/product trusted is through word of mouth, especially when it comes to friends and family. Now you can see why we here at Codesly love how social commerce has shaped the online marketplace.

7. Which big brand names are using your service?
There are a number of companies and brands featured in our showcase. We recently launched Lifefactory.com with BrilliantRetail and EllisLab.com, the developers of ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter, run their store on our product. Checkout our showcase (https://www.brilliantretail.com/showcase) for more examples!

8. Do you believe that in 10 years, shopping will be done mostly online?
I believe that online shopping will continue to grow, but it will never fully eliminate the brick and stone stores. Online stores allows consumers to shop wherever and whenever they want. This allows companies to proﬁt from impulse purchases that were not available to consumers before the advent of online shopping. On the other hand, physical locations allow consumers the social interaction between retailer and buyer that online shopping sites cannot currently offer.

Take for instance Macy’s and Nordstrom’s. Macy’s specializes in selling high end items for a lower costs while Nordstrom’s offer the same items for a higher price. Macy’s is able to achieve their business success by cutting costs in customer service. Nordstrom’s is able to do this by devoting their time in offering the best customer care available making each experience different from the last. Even though online shopping will continue to rise and ﬂourish, the brick and stone location will not become obsolete as long as these stores offer the social experience that online sites lack today.

9. From your experience, what is the first thing a merchant should pay attention to when opening a web store?
Ease of use is vital in creating the right ﬁrst impression. A site that is difﬁcult to navigate can deter any merchant from making a purchase. No consumer wants to work hard to spend their hard earned money.

10. Tell us something about your platform that would make our readers remember it.
BrilliantRetail allows consumers to create an online store extremely easy to use while offering developers the ability to customize and personalize their store. We want our product to be easy to use because business owners don’t have 8-10 hours a day ﬁxing their sites. Our goal is to make the e-commerce store plausible for every company whether its a mom and pop shop that wants to take a shot at an online store to a multinational company who sells millions each year.

If you are a BrilliantRetail merchant, import your BrilliantRetail store to Facebook now!

I want to thank David and Kevin from BrilliantRetail who took the time to answer the above Q&A.
We highly recommend you all to check out this amazing platform: https://www.brilliantretail.com/

Eyal Reich - StoreYa, COO

Eyal is the co-founder of StoreYa and a leader in social commerce. He has extensive experience in online marketing and project management. He is passionate about building amazing products that will grow your business!