ShareYourCart.com: A Social Marketing Tool that Offers Small Incentives to Stimulate the User Engagement

ShareYourCart.com

ShareYourCart is an innovative and clever social marketing tool that focuses on increasing the number of customers as well as consumer loyalty by offering small incentives to stimulate user engagement.

   

We had an in-depth and lengthy interview with Mr. “Andrei Barabas”; Product Manager at the Romania-based start-up “http://www.ShareYourCart.com” about his Company.

As per Mr. Barabas; ShareYourCart is an innovative and clever social marketing tool that focuses on increasing the number of customers as well as consumer loyalty by offering small incentives to stimulate user engagement.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. Barabas regarding his start-up “ShareYourCart.com”;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what “ShareYourCart” is all about?

Share Your Cart is a platform that enables e-Commerce websites to offer incentives to their buyers in return for social sharing, thus increasing conversion rates and decreasing cart abandonment rate.

2. When has “ShareYourCart” been founded? And what stage is “ShareYourCart” currently at?

The project was launched in May 2011 in BETA version. At the moment the ShareYourCart button is helping hundreds of e-Shops increase their sales and reach their clients’ social networks. We are working on spreading the word and reaching a wider market.

3. What is “ShareYourCart” business model and how does it work?

The Lite version of ShareYourCart is free for life, with unlimited number of coupons. For the first 14 days, the coupons are even automatically applied to the cart. After that period of time, they are sent by email to the e-Shop so that they can manually give it to their users. The e-Shop can, at any time, purchase one of the three paid plans that apply coupons automatically, to see analytics data and a fully branded version of the application. 

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

The project  is being developed by the Software as a Service development company Barandi Solutions. I am the one responsible for the product management and I do my best to move this project forward. Catalin, Cristian and Vlad are the wizards who make the product so easy to use and efficient and Adela is the girl with the creative ideas.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

ShareYourCart is not the first SaaS that uses incentives to determine social sharing, but the focus on increasing conversion rates and decreasing cart abandonment rate, thus maximizing eShops’ gain, as well as the unique approach to reaching a vast market, will make the difference.

The business model is transparent and fair, our purpose is to make sure everybody wins – our clients, their clients and of course our project.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has “ShareYourCart” achieved so far?

We’ve seen the interest for ShareYourCart increase on a daily basis. As for milestones, we’ve been perfecting the business plan and are now focusing on increasing the marketing reach.

7. Who are your competitors?

Curebit & ShopSocially are our main competitors, but there are a few other smaller projects that we are keeping an eye on.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

As in any other start-up, the main roadblock is getting users to sign-in when you don’t have a notorious brand, when nobody else has used your product before. It’s what people call “critical mass”.

I’m not saying we have reached “critical mass”, not yet, but we did push things forward and started making people interested in our product.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

E-commerce today faces a huge cart abandonment rate (over 70%). People are already very familiar with social sharing, so rewarding them with incentives will convert many undecided customers and convince them not only to finish the purchase from the store using ShareYourCart, but also to tell their network of friends about your shop . It is a very simple process, with huge gain for everybody involved.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

Because we think out of the box and have everybody’s interest in mind. We want to achieve success for the project by making e-Buyers as well as e-Shops happy.

11. If “ShareYourCart” succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

All the plans ShareYourCart has in store for the future are connected to e-Commerce and social sharing.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build “ShareYourCart” based on?

e-Commerce websites encouraged social sharing and wanted to reach social networks with little or no effect on the actual conversion rate. Connecting social sharing with coupons that drive sales is the tool e-Commerce marketers missed in their social strategy until  now. 

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

That we were right. 

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

We will need to make sure that the logistical aspects are solid when the product will be used at a greater scale.

15. What’s the benefit for the user?

The end user, who is used to sharing his favorite products with social networks anyways, will now be able to buy them cheaper, too, using the ShareYourCart coupons received in return.

e-Shops will convince visitors to buy from them (and not just window shop or go to the competition) by offering special discounts or free shipping.

16. How did customers and/or users find out about you?

Mostly through our www.shareyourcart.com website, online posts as well as from those who used it before them.

17. Who are your current users? Who are your target users?

Current users are various small to medium e-Commerce websites, selling from baby stuff to pieces of furniture. This is also the public that we target for our critical mass. Aside from this, our targeting is more complex because we try to offer the right features for covering the needs of every eCommerce business.

18. Where do new users come from and what makes new users try you?

We are working hard to make sure that a constantly growing number of e-Shops find out about our product. After getting acquainted, we trust that our approach to connect social media with e-commerce will resonate with their needs and that marketing professionals will see the benefits of finally introducing measurability in their social campaigns.

19. What do your users say about your product and/or service?

Users are excited about the product. See here what they say, in their own words:

http://www.shareyourcart.com/testimonials

20. How are you going to scale?

Being a Software as a Service product, the main scalability issue consists in our infrastructure, which is the servers. We are planning on using the cloud, and luckily we are backed up by the SaaS development team of Barandi Solutions, so this move should not be a roadblock.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers keep asking for?

Integration with Google Analytics so that shop owners can better track their conversion rate and funnel flow.

22. Are you going to internationalize?

ShareYourCart is being used in many different parts of the world as we speak, and we currently offer it in:  English, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Romanian, Etc.

23. How big do you think you can get?

Sky is the limit.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

We are looking to hire more PHP and Javascript Developers in our area. Interested professionals may contact us through the contact form on the www.shareyourcart.com website.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

For the product to reach its full potential, funding will be necessary. Until this point, though, we managed to grow on our own resources and we trust that we can continue our growth by self-sustainable means. If VCs or other funding sources are interested in joining in to reach the sky together, they can contact us at investors@shareyourcart.com. 

26. Finally, what advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

Focus on what you want to do, and don’t let others tell you that you can’t do it. 

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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