Over 850 attendees at GPeC Summit May 2016 – The Most Important E-Commerce Event in CEE

Posted on 30/05/201630/05/2016 by Andrei Radu

GPeC Summit – the Spring edition of the Most Important E-Commerce Event in Central and Eastern Europe – happened in Bucharest on May 25-26-27, reuniting over 850 attendees for the 3 event days. 9 amazing international speakers were part of this edition’s lineup, together with representatives of the top local companies such as Altex, eMAG, Google, Netopia mobilPay, Orange, Oracle, Microsoft etc.

May 25 2016 was dedicated to the Conference and GPeC E-Commerce Expo where over 20 e-commerce services and solutions providers had the chance to meet and set partnerships with online shops present at the event.

The Conference started with the Romanian E-Commerce market overview moderated by Dorin Boerescu (CEO 2Parale). According to Marius Costin (PayU), amazing growth in online payments has been registered for the first quarter of 2016, a growth of over 60% YoY.

Antonio Eram (Netopia mobilPay) emphasized that Romanian people are not at all reluctant to modern payment methods such as mobile payments (through the eWallet app developed by mobilPay) and the general market trend is friendly for such convenient methods..

According to Adrian Urdă (Altex), the well-known Romanian IT&C retailer will focus on online in 2016 and especially on the improvement of the platform, logistics and call-center.

At the same time, eMAG focuses on the buying experience of the users updating its platform every day (2-3 updates per day) and on extending the product range. eMAG is also focused on improving its operations in order to improve the customer experience: logistics, transport, pickup points, according to Tudor Manea (General Manager eMag Romania).

From Elisabeta Moraru‘s point of view (Industry Manager Google România), the main trend that online retailers should pay attention to is video: “70-80% of all online content will be video in 2 years time”.

Brian Dean, one of the most well-known world-wide experts in SEO was present for the first time in Romania at GPeC Summit. According to Brian, any online retailer should focus on good quality content on its blog and promote this content in order to become an authority in its field. However, Brian also emphasised that purely commercial posts will not benefit a brand in any way.

Ana-Maria Ilie (Digital Marketing Manager Orange Romania) talked about the importance of mobile in e-commerce and presented case studies and tools that Orange uses in order to optimise its web presence – tools that are available to any online merchant, disregarding its business size.

Marie Polli (ConversionXL) explained the main pillars that any small traffic online shop should focus on in order to optimize its conversions: constant measurements, analysis, user testing and customer survey together with A/B testing are the main elements that any online merchant should be looking at.

Doina Vîlceanu (ContentSpeed) offered practical examples about the challenges that online shops have and recommendations according to the current user requests such as: the importance of the logistics automation process, the importance to integrate loyalty and retention programs, the importance of offering customers a wide variety of options for payment and delivery (including pick-up points).

David Darmanin, Founder & CEO Hotjar, focused on consumer behavior facts and figures that are useful to any e-commerce business: 71% of users make the buying decision based on social media feedback and over 90% say it is essential for the product they search for to have reviews and ratings.

Ștefan Bochiș (Product Manager Credius IFN) showed the audience how easy it can be to implement alternative payment solutions such as the online credit granting.

Karl Gilis (Co-Founder AGConsult) focused on 10 essential tips and tricks that online shops should take into account, building a parallel between the relationship online shops have with their customers and a dating relationship. Just to name a few examples: listen to your customer, don’t talk about yourself only, forget about the banners, know all elements of your website and make sure they are there for a reason.

The panel about the e-commerce courier services reunited high profile companies and market leaders such as FAN Courier, DPD România, Mediapost Hit Mail, Frisbo, Allpacka discussed topics such as the present market situation and its constant change and fast growth, the infrastructure issues and the legal regulations challenges that prevent the growth and development.

Felix Pătrășcanu (FAN Courier) also insisted on the importance of keeping the workforce in Romania, this being one of the major challenges courier companies face.

Adrian Ionescu (Microsoft România) presented the advantages online shops have by chosing Azure cloud solutions especially during Black Friday events when website traffic is really high.

Paul Rouke (CEO PRWD) talked about conversion optimization, offering recommendations and strategies to grow online sales. The focus was on data and their correct interpretation. This was also the focus of Daniel Waisberg and Alex Langshur.

Bogdan Manolea (TRUSTED.ro) explained the most important KPI to measure online shops’ performance – NPS (Net Promoter Score), focusing on the voice of the customers and the importance of ratings and comments. Feedback is extremely valuable and the validation of an online shop’s services quality can be dome through the feedback system Feedback.Trusted.ro.

GPeC Summit May 25 Conference day ended in a high note with an awesome e-commerce party in True Social Club. GPeC Party attendees could enjoy the performance of the live band The ROCK (an AC/DC tribute band).

GPeC Summit May 26 and 27 days were dedicated to practical workshops where topics like conversion rate optimization, split testing, marketing automation, management, social media, retenția clienților, branding were in focus.

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GPeC 2016, the 11th annual edition, is The Most Important E-Commerce Event in CEE powered by FAN Courier – leader of the Romanian courier services

Event sponsored by: Allpacka.ro, ALTEX, AVON, Competence Call Center, ContentSpeed, DPD, DWF, Frisbo, Garanti Bank, Mediapost Hit Mail, Microsoft, New Black, NewsMAN, Online-Online.ro by Credius, Orange, PayU, SALESmanago, Simartis, Retargeting.biz, Visa, Zitec