Kentico makes the list of UK government-approved e-commerce software in Help to Grow: Digital scheme

We are excited to be a part of the government-backed Help to Grow: Digital scheme that aims to help small and medium-sized businesses in the UK to choose, buy and adopt digital technologies that support business growth.
It goes to show how the UK government understands the importance of digital maturity in a company’s digital transformation efforts, and how they value Kentico and our digital experience platform by naming it to the list of government-recommended software for e-commerce!

What is the Help to Grow: Digital scheme?

According to the UK government, small and medium-sized businesses who adopt digital technologies can become up to 18% more productive, yet fewer than 50% are successful in their digital transformation efforts.

The key barriers to successful digital technology investment in this group are:

• Not understanding the practical benefits of adopting digital software
• Not feeling confident in choosing the right products or using them to best effect
• The cost of investing in new technologies (a significant barrier for 1/3 of this group) 

Part of its Plan for Jobs initiative, the aim of the Help to Grow: Digital scheme is to support UK businesses in leveraging the latest digital technologies to cut costs, save time, reach new customers and be more competitive by providing free, impartial information and advice in choosing the right technologies for their digital journey.

Designed using input from industry leaders and independent experts, the Help to Grow: Digital website provides tailored advice and tools that help you explore the huge potential digital technology brings to manage internal processes, increase sales, build customer relationships, and grow your business. And the impartial access guides help you identify the best digital software to achieve your specific business goals. With these resources, you’ll be in a better position to: 

• Identify the specific digital technology needs of your business  
• Make educated decisions as to which software best meets those needs  
• Successfully incorporate your chosen technologies into your business 

Targeted financial support offers eligible businesses discounts of up to 50% off the costs of buying approved software (up to the value of £5,000), to help overcome the cost barrier of getting started.  

“Through its expert guidance and targeted financial support, we can help you … harness the power of digital technology, so you’ll be spending less time on those draining admin tasks, and more time increasing sales.”  - GOV.UK

Recently, the category of e-commerce was added to the scheme and after a rigorous selection process, Kentico has been chosen as an approved digital technology for companies in the UK looking to boost the digital power of their business online! 

How can a digital experience platform with e-commerce help businesses to grow? 

GOV.UK says that “the right digital technology can take your business to the next level and boost your performance” and we couldn’t agree more. After all, this is exactly what we have created our technology to do.

Our digital experience platform has been specifically designed to help companies build, manage, and optimize their online presence across websites, online stores, mobile sites and apps, bringing the latest in e-commerce technology to companies of all sizes and wrapping it in an easy-to-use, intuitive package designed to support your every step, from building your online store to crafting incredible customer experiences. 

What can you do with Kentico?

With Kentico, you can customize and personalize every part of the digital experience throughout the customer journey, from awareness through to advocacy, resulting in higher conversion rates, increased basket sizes, and more returning customers.  

Showcase and sell your entire portfolio 

With Kentico, you get robust Product Information Management features and can create beautiful product pages with rich interactions, imagery, videos, and technical specifications that help customers make informed decisions about their purchase. You can even let customers customize products according to their needs, choosing from various product options and compound variants. Our solution also supports electronic product sales and membership subscriptions. You can literally sell any type of product or service, so if things change as you grow, your technology can stay the same.

Help customers find the right product

You can tailor the flexible design and navigation of your e-commerce store to suit your specific needs and portfolio. The advanced filtering and full-text search features help your customers find the products they’re looking for fast. And the AI-driven recommendations (powered by Recombee) help them discover more of what they love while helping enlarge shopping cart sizes.  

Reach more customers via multiple stores in multiple languages 

We make it easy to efficiently manage multiple e-commerce stores from one place, and you can share your products, payment methods, order statuses, invoices, and other settings among them for a cohesive, consistent brand presence. Not only does this speed up the deployment process for a faster time to market, but you can easily repurpose content, objects, data, and more across any number of websites to boost your productivity. What’s more, you can localize your various stores; offering your products in any language and automatically showing the appropriate language, currency, and time zone for your customers. 

Boost sales with promotions and discounts 

You’re able to apply all manner of discounts, gift cards and promotions in your digital stores to drive better sales and achieve larger order sizes. It’s simple to configure special offers using predefined or custom rules and to promote cross-selling, up-selling, and customer loyalty. 

Make prices and payments a breeze 

A good customer experience culminates in a friction-free checkout process, so our digital experience platform enables you to fully customize your shopping cart and process to meet your customers’ needs. Let your customers choose their payment method (card, PayPal, on delivery, or third-party payment service) in any chosen currency and leverage automated shipping cost and tax calculations so your customer has up-to-date price information at their fingertips.

Leveraging the integrated marketing automation tools built into the digital experience platform, you can boost revenue by nurturing cart-abandoners and reminding customers to re-order their favorite products. 

Integrate your online store with your existing systems 

Thanks to our flexible approach, you can extend your e-commerce functionality based on your own set of rules, using built-in tools or fully-fledged APIs in order to exchange product information, prices, orders, invoices, and delivery notes with your other systems and apps. By integrating with your entire technology stack, your data, while protected and secure, is never siloed, nor are you ever limited in how you sell or communicate with your customers. 

Raising the bar for commerce solutions 

Something kind of special about Kentico is that, although bursting with powerful features for your online store, our products are not just built with e-commerce in mind. We help companies manage all aspects of their online presence from one place and help you optimize the customer experiences.

A robust yet flexible solution, along with e-commerce, you can also leverage: 

• Content management: With full control over your content, you can design beautiful webpages and reuse content across your mobile app, email campaigns, social media, and other channels, ensuring consistency and compliance throughout the entire content lifecycle. 
• Customer data platform: By capturing crucial data about your visitors and customers as they progress down their multichannel customer journey, you gain actionable insights for delivering personalized experiences across any channel.
• Digital marketing features: Our digital experience platform offers a host of top-notch marketing tools that propel your marketing to the next level, including easy campaign management and email marketing tools, personas and segmentation, and content A/B testing. Add all this to your e-commerce efforts and you’ll be cooking on gas! 
• Automation tools: Marketing and commerce automation enable you to boost productivity by delivering the right content at the right time in a personalized way. The simple drag-and-drop interface helps you easily automate and optimize your workflows and campaigns across all your channels. 
• In-depth analytics: By better understanding your customers’ needs, you’re able to make smart business decisions. With Kentico, you can track and analyze audience engagement across touchpoints, assess campaigns, and gain deep insights about what your customers want. 

Supporting your business growth with commerce capabilities

We, along with many happy customers, believe Kentico is the perfect digital technology to help you grow your e-commerce business, and now even more industry leaders and independent experts agree.

As one of the technology solutions approved by the UK government for their Help to Grow: Digital scheme, Kentico is further recognized as a platform that can take small to medium businesses in the UK to the next level of digital maturity and online success.  

If you’d like to learn more about how our products can propel you on your own digital maturity path and support your specific e-commerce goals, check out the dedicated webpage for Help to Grow: Digital.