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Are you looking to create an online store to grow your business, but you're not an expert in web design and development? You might think that setting up an online store involves complex tasks and steps, but in reality, this is not true. You can now easily open a professional online store in just a few minutes without the need to learn programming languages or rely on website designers. However, you need to have a basic understanding of e-commerce and know how to successfully manage an online store.
What is an online store?
An online store is an e-commerce platform through which products and services can be displayed and sold online, with various payment options available for customers who decide to purchase from anywhere in the world. Many startup owners and small to medium-sized business owners resort to creating online stores to grow their businesses and expand their customer base in the external market, thereby increasing sales and revenue.
An online store is considered one of the best e-commerce methods that help entrepreneurs and organizations manage business activities and easily reach their target audience. Therefore, establishing an online store for any business has become extremely important in recent years, especially with the increasing number of internet users worldwide and customers' desire to purchase through e-commerce platforms instead of traditional stores.
The difference between a website and an online store.
There is a fundamental difference between a website and an online store. Websites allow users to access the information they are interested in, read news, socialize with others, view images and videos, or browse the latest catalogs in a particular field, among other things. This means that every website has a specific purpose or provides a unique service that sets it apart from other websites.
On the other hand, an online store is a type of website that has different features and functions that support e-commerce and facilitate online shopping, sales, and payment transactions without human interaction. Simply put, if your goal is to sell products or services online, opening an online store is the best option. However, if you want to share your content to increase brand awareness, for example, you can create a regular website.
The importance of creating an online store for businesses
lies in increasing the demand for online shopping among consumers. Statistics indicate that e-commerce retail sales worldwide reached $4.28 trillion in 2020 and e-commerce revenue is expected to grow to $6.38 trillion by 2024. It is also expected that 95% of purchases will be made through e-commerce by 2040, indicating the success of the online shopping experience worldwide.
In a survey conducted by American financial and digital payment services company Squareup in collaboration with market research company Wakefield Research, it was found that 88% of retailers are interested in selling their products and services online and that 66% of retail revenue comes from online sales. Consumers also confirm that more than 42% of their monthly retail purchases are made through online shopping.
Therefore, integrating an online store creation strategy for your company into your successful marketing plan can be a highly effective tool in reaching potential and current customers at a lower cost, as well as its ability to achieve a positive return on investment, increase profitability, and reach global markets with minimal resources.
Advantages of creating an e-commerce store for your business
Although there are various digital marketing channels and virtual marketplaces through which you can promote your goods and services, establishing an e-commerce store for your company or business project is an important step that should be taken to benefit from its multiple advantages.
Some may wonder, why is everyone now turning to create an e-commerce store? And what is the necessity of opening an e-commerce store when the brand can be marketed to larger segments of customers on social media platforms? The secret lies in the following benefits of e-commerce stores:
1. Building and developing the brand
Often the goal of creating an e-commerce store is to build and manage the brand online and strengthen the relationship with the target audience. This sets you apart from your competitors who ignore the strategy of establishing an e-commerce store for their business and focus on other marketing methods. Moreover, e-commerce platforms give you the ability to control its management, update its structure, understand the customer journey, and identify its needs without hassle.
There are several factors to consider when building the brand for your e-commerce store, including choosing a unique and distinctive name for the store, ensuring that the brand logo is compatible with the store design, studying the competitive advantages of the products and services displayed on the e-commerce store, and comparing them with competitors' offerings.
2. Building customer loyalty
When creating an e-commerce store, you can choose a design that highlights your products and enables you to build trust and credibility with your target audience. The more the target audience's trust in your brand increases, the greater the chances of forming loyal customers who contribute to a large part of the revenue. Statistics show that 80% of profits are generated by loyal customers, while the remaining 20% are from regular customers.
E-commerce stores provide brand owners with a database for each customer that can be used to build loyal customers. Additionally, it includes various marketing methods such as email marketing tools that help attract customers again.
3. Collecting data on the target audience
If you display your products in an external market such as Amazon, and some customers see them but do not buy them, you will not be able to reach them again. However, if this happens during their visit to your online store, you will have the opportunity to know their email addresses by encouraging them to subscribe to newsletters or get them when purchasing products.
The amazing thing is that you can reach your online store visitors again at any time you want through social media marketing and SEM using retargeting strategies that allow marketers to launch advertising campaigns designed for customers who have previously visited your store. This way, you achieve more sales and attract new customers.
4. Tracking the customer and the purchase journey
It is difficult to know how many times a customer visits traditional stores before completing the purchase process, but if you have an online store, you can measure all results, track each customer, monitor their movements, and track their journey through the statistics and data provided by the online store. This provides insight and valuable evaluations of purchasing operations, helping you attract specific customers back to the store.
It is also possible to anticipate customer needs based on their previous purchasing operations, as many online stores suggest products and services related to their interests and purchasing behavior, often related to what they previously bought, in addition to knowing customer ratings and reviews for a specific product.
5. Shopping around the clock
The online store allows shoppers to view products and make purchases without being limited by a specific time. There are many digital stores available around the clock, making shopping seamless for customers and giving them great flexibility. They don't have to travel to make a purchase, which encourages them to get their purchases at any time they want. This also helps the store owner not to lose any customers, in addition to increasing...
6. Expand your business
Unlike traditional stores that sell their products to a target audience in a specific geographical area, opening an online store helps you expand your business to include reaching customer segments from all over the world or a specific country, which contributes to increasing the spread of your brand, expanding your customer base, and growing your sales at the global level. Global, and thus achieve the desired general objectives of the company.
What should I know before creating a store?
It is necessary to think deeply about many important basics about what to know about e-commerce before setting up an online store and how to plan to establish a successful e-commerce platform that enables its owner to sell products or services and helps him achieve his marketing goals.
First: planning to create an online store
Before making an online store, everything you intend to implement must be planned. It is necessary to collect the necessary information and data that may help you in building the store, in addition to defining goals, whether they are long, short, or medium term, and defining the target audience very carefully, in addition to studying and analyzing other online stores operating in the same business to be familiar with competitors and their product offerings and prices.
When establishing an online store, put the appropriate business plan together with the different marketing plans. It's okay for your plans to be approximate, and it's possible to make some mistakes at first. This requires you to plan flexibly, monitor your strengths and weaknesses, and be willing to make any adjustments or improvements along the way.
Second: Determine available resources and assets
As long as you decide to open an online store, be honest with yourself about the resources and assets available. Do not include in the list assets that you do not have, and think about how to invest the available resources and focus your efforts on them. So, determine the period that it takes to create and manage the online store, and set the appropriate budget for your business and its online platform, including start-up costs, maintenance of available assets, and shipping products to customers, in addition to the budget for digital marketing on social media or email marketing and Google Ads.
There are many questions to consider when considering available resources and assets. Ask yourself if you need employees or partners to help you run the online store or not? What mental and physical skills should your employees have? Where will you keep the products before selling them to your target customers? What direction do you want your business to go in in the future? Have you developed growth plans for your online store? How will you face recessions and what are the ways to overcome the challenges and threats that may threaten your store?
Third: What will you sell in your e-commerce?
The e-commerce market is very competitive. Therefore, you must identify the products, services, and areas that distinguish you from others, and plan how you can compete with other companies and markets via the Internet, especially those that may have the same type of products as your online store. This requires deep knowledge of your competitors and discovering ways in which you can highlight your brand to your target audience before creating an online store.
And if you haven't decided what products or services to offer on your online store or don't know what you want to sell? You can view the results and statistics of the Google Trends tool about the most important products and services that Internet users search for, or know the expectations of the trends of Etsy, which specializes in e-commerce. Next, identify trends in the market, and make sure your products align with what's being sold in the digital marketplace.
Fourth: Define your brand carefully
In the world of e-commerce, your brand must be defined very carefully and accurately, so that it is distinctive, unique, and in line with the products or services that you will sell, as many people think that the brand is just the name of the company, but its concept is much further than that. It includes many components such as the company's vision, mission, culture, goals, and core values. And all of this should be expressed in your company's slogan, your actions, and your messages to the target audience.
But, how can your brand be more distinctive? Here, you should think carefully about the reasons that prompted you to start a business and launch your online store. If the only goal of the online store is to collect money only, be sure that the fate of your experiment will be a complete failure and join the list of closed online stores in the future. But if you want a successful store, your goal should be to build a brand with strong and clear goals, and core values that align with your own and seek to help others through the value your products or services provide to customers.
Fifth: How to ship the products to the target audience
Before embarking on e-commerce, he likes to know the basics of shipping for online stores and ask himself if you are fully prepared to receive large orders from customers who want to buy your products after creating an online store. Do you have enough inventory or are you focused on limited orders to ship them to your customers yourself? Are you seeking to cooperate with shipping companies or do you want to hire some people for this task? Are you familiar with inventory management in online stores?
If you have the time to pack and ship the products yourself and transfer them to your customers on the appropriate dates, then this is a great option to serve your audience, but if you have hundreds of orders per week, it is more appropriate to cooperate with a shipping company that can deliver products to customers promptly and deal with them in the best way and deliver the product without any damages or fractures.
Sixth: Determine your position and the name of your business
E-commerce is like real markets, in which you must define your position among your competitors and ensure profitability and revenue growth; Because the position of your store affects many other factors such as sales volume and the chances of your brand spreading in the market. This requires you to know the characteristics of the target audience, carefully define the persona of the buyer, and understand your customers well.
Before creating an online store, you must choose a bright name for your business. It is important to select a name that is easy to understand, original, and concise and is not tied to a specific product or product line. The more these criteria are met in the name of your business, the more likely it is to be remembered and popular among the target audience.
Seventh: Determine the e-commerce website builder
Establishing electronic stores requires familiarity with the most prominent systems that help you create your store, known as (e-commerce website builder), which is a digital tool or program that allows users to create online stores without the need for web developers or advanced technical skills. All the user needs is to know the basics of creating a professional online store and a good internet connection to launch his store after choosing the appropriate e-commerce builder. Here are the most common ones:
- WordPress using the WooCommerce plugin
- Shopify
- Square Online
- Magento
- Squarespace
- BigCommerce
Some factors determine how to choose the right e-commerce platform for you, including the size of the company or business. If you intend to create an online store for a medium-sized project, you can use the WooCommerce plugin provided by the WordPress system. If your company is large, some experts recommend relying on the Shopify e-commerce website builder.
Also, the cost of setting up an online store is one of the factors that help you choose an e-commerce builder because some are expensive and some are cheap. Their advantages and tools for SEO, etc., are varied.
Therefore, it is important to test the e-commerce website builder during the beta period before launching it officially. For example, create two stores using the free version of two different programs and compare them to choose what works best for your business. During this experiment, consider how easy it is to use the e-commerce website builder and are the features it provides are enough for your business? Can you deal with it and make appropriate adjustments or not?
Why do many people turn to add WooCommerce to create stores?
WooCommerce is a basic program for creating online stores, which can be easily added and installed using the WordPress system, as it is one of the most important and most popular e-commerce platform builders in the world, and through it, you can create a professional online store at the lowest cost while maintaining full ownership of your store’s content and data.
The advantages of the WooCommerce plug-in are multiple, as it is characterized by great flexibility and can be used easily without the use of complex technologies, in addition to being supported by the global community and can be employed in e-commerce mixed with content, which enhances the spread of your online store in outer space and thus increases awareness of your brand.
And do not worry about the settings of your store, as you can set it yourself in the best way, as there are attractive templates suitable for your brand, which you can install in a few moments. It is not difficult to customize the store pages either, as you can customize them in a few minutes without hiring any developers. Add to this the possibility of enhancing your online store by installing the necessary SEO plugins and extensions.
How to create a professional online store
Whether you have an actual company and are looking to expand your business via the Internet or you are taking your first steps in the e-commerce market, know that the steps to create a professional online store are very easy than ever before, especially with the availability of content management systems that It has many advantages when creating e-commerce platforms. Now, you can start opening an effective online store using the WooCommerce plugin after creating your site on the WordPress platform.
First: Create a WordPress site and choose a domain name
It is necessary to launch a website using the WordPress platform to be able to install the WooCommerce plugin. If you do not have a website on this system, you can start creating it for free now, and you can upgrade your account later by subscribing to the paid versions.
Creating an online store requires purchasing a domain name. It is the key to success and the beginning of establishing the brand and increasing its popularity among the target audience and contributes to building trust with customers, especially since the domain name is seen by the customer in the URL address when entering the store or while searching on search engines such as Google. It appears to users and clients as follows:www.mywebStore.com
When choosing a domain name, it must be unique, distinctive, completely free of ambiguity, and suitable for SEO search engine optimization. Visits to the store. Hence, increased sales and profit growth.
You must check that the domain name you decide to buy is within your budget, and stay away from choosing commercial names that may cause legal problems in your country. If you already have a good domain name and don't want to change it, that's okay. You can cancel the agreement with the original provider and transfer the domain name to your chosen e-commerce builder.
Second: select an appropriate pricing plan
WordPress offers more than one pricing plan to suit all the needs of entrepreneurs. You can try the free version first, and then you need to select the pricing plan that suits your business and budget. Each plan has specific features, and the higher the price plan you get, the more features your online store will gain.
In any case, the cost of setting up an online store for your business depends on the size of your business, your ambitions for growth, and your desired goals. If the cost includes a high budget to purchase an advanced pricing plan, this will reflect positively on the store, especially if your business large.
For example, adding WooCommerce to the open-source WordPress system allows you to launch your online store for free. But you will pay some costs to buy the domain name and hosting service, and you can buy some basic features that the WooCommerce plugin needs to perform better in your online store.
WordPress provides the necessary extensions to create a professional online store, including free ones and those available in paid versions. For example, the Collect payments feature can be obtained through the free version. Whereas, you can track your store data and view important reports and analytics using the Google Analytics tool available in the paid plan.
Third: Building and securing the online store
At this stage, you are concerned with structuring and building your online store before launching it to the target audience. It includes several tasks, most notably choosing an attractive design that makes your store stand out from your competitors. And don't worry, you don't have to be an expert in designing and developing web stores, as the e-commerce website builder allows users to choose templates or themes in just a few seconds with amazing ease and smoothness.
Before choosing a template, it is important to understand the features that you want in your store and to define the style of the store’s home page, so that shoppers know your type of business from the first glance of browsing your site, in addition to planning the buyer’s path very carefully, as it is necessary that the path be clear and easy and aims to do more of purchases. This requires the optimal optimization of user experience and smooth customer navigation.
Another task that is no less important than choosing a template is to customize the store in terms of images, videos, text size, colors used, social media platforms on your store pages, and more. This can be done in minutes and modified later to your liking.
Then, you start adding the products or services that you want to sell to your shoppers. The e-store builder provides its users with a comprehensive control panel that enables them to display their products in an interesting, attractive, and consistent manner, where the product image, name, price, weight, and classification can be added to a specific category.
And do not ignore the importance of securing the online store and protecting it from cyber-attacks aimed at stealing customer data, because securing your store greatly affects your sales, so you can protect the store by purchasing a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security and protection certificate. Knowing that the WordPress system works to make websites and stores more secure and includes many additions to protect your store from hacking.
Fourth: Payment methods settings
E-commerce is basically based on making payments online. With the payment methods provided by the digital store builder, the average browser turns into a customer seconds after completing the purchase. Therefore, you will find the payment methods settings very easy when creating an online store, because the builders of e-commerce sites understand their importance, and seek to develop them and make the necessary improvements so that shoppers can purchase using the best and most effective payment options.
The online payment options offered by online store creators are varied, including Visa or Mastercard bank cards, as well as other payment methods such as PayPal, Apple Pay, Payoneer, fairy, etc. This multiplicity may cause you to be confused and wonder about how to choose the best payment methods, depending on the number of sales you seek to achieve and the characteristics of the target audience and their locations.
Therefore, it is important to answer many questions before choosing electronic payment methods. Do you have clients from different countries? So what is it? Is your store safe and hackable for your audience to rest assured? Is your budget sufficient to pay the fees and costs of the different payment methods? Is the payment method you decided to choose the best for your store?
Fifth: Set shipping options
Setting shipping options is one of the most important steps in creating a professional online store. After adding products and choosing the most appropriate online payment methods for your store, you now have to understand how to set shipping options. E-commerce website builders offer many shipping options, providing shipping management tools, pre-shipment preparation services, and printing labels on products.
This stage includes entering shipping data such as the product shipping address and determining the geographical areas in which your customers live. It is important to ascertain shipping rates and taxes that may be charged to customers based on their place of residence. You must know the basics of shipping, understand its types, and study ways to deliver your products to customers to choose what suits you best.
During the establishment of the online store, some entrepreneurs and owners of startups and small and medium enterprises often need help and support. If you are among these, which includes a group of professional designers and developers in creating and developing online stores in line with your target audience and the products you sell.
The skills needed to create an online store
As long as you decide to launch your business online, there are many skills needed to create an online store to be able to compete strongly in the e-commerce market. And don't worry, if you don't have all the skills right now, because after making an online store for your business, your performance will improve and you will gain more skills over time.
1. The ability to manage and plan
Management and planning are among the most important skills needed to create an online store. You must be aware of the basics of strategic planning and the rules of the art of successful management, especially project management in outer space, as this may help you to make appropriate decisions, manage risks and overcome potential challenges and threats facing commercial activity, in addition to the ability to define the general goals of your store through The Internet and work to achieve it successfully, and thus advance your business and be able to compete with others.
2. The ability to use social networks
With the launch of the online store, you will have an urgent need to use social networks to communicate with friends and family, some specialists in your business activity, or experts who preceded you in your field of work, to find out the most important information and activities that you may benefit from to develop the online store or to obtain support and encouragement and increase the sales. This calls for acquiring social media skills and how to manage store accounts across these networks.
3. Fundamentals of digital marketing
The goal of creating an online store is to sell services and products online, and this requires acquiring digital marketing skills. It makes no sense to launch a business in the virtual world without knowing the basics of digital marketing, understanding marketing and sales methods, and learning about digital marketing strategies and channels, such as content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO search engine marketing, and SEM.
4. Writing and composition skills
The skills needed to create an online store include the ability to write and compose, because the content is an essential and indispensable part of digital marketing, and online businesses need to write content to grow sales, conduct conversations with customers, or increase brand awareness. Therefore, it is necessary to have the skill of creating and marketing writing and to know how to craft content that is compatible with SEO, business correspondence, etc.
5. Quick wit and problem-solving
Intuition and problem-solving are among the most important skills that entrepreneurs need when creating online stores. It is normal for businesses to encounter some problems from time to time, and this requires that you be more prepared to face difficulties and solve problems before they escalate. Hence, you need to hone the skill of intuition and problem-solving, by studying any problem you encounter, analyzing its causes, knowing its aspects, adapting to it, dealing with it with a positive mindset and high morale, and thinking deeply about solutions, alternatives, and strategies that help you overcome it.
6. Leadership skills
If you work alone in your small online store now, in the future you will need a team to help you. You will likely need to hire human competencies to take on some tasks, especially as your business grows. Therefore, leadership and team management skills must be enjoyed. A successful leader creates leaders like himself and pushes the development wheel forward in business. So leadership is a skill that must be developed as your online business grows.
7. Effective communication and good negotiation
The communication and negotiation skills you will need in communicating with customers and employees and negotiating with merchants and suppliers as you grow your business online. So, hone your skills in this field through active listening, the ability to adapt to customer patterns, and speaking confidently to everyone, in addition to developing your negotiation skills such as persuasion, strategic thinking, and teamwork. Be sure to develop yourself because these simple skills affect the progress of your business, even if it is online.
8. Time management
Establishing an online store and growing your business takes a long time, and this requires time management and organization wisely and intelligently from the start. If you have many tasks that must be performed daily, put them in a list and then determine the most important tasks and set your priorities to start implementing them according to a specific work plan with a schedule, with the need to get rid of distractions, and use the best productive times to complete the most difficult tasks. It is also important to read about time management skills to invest in managing your business in the best way.
9. Customer service skill
In any case, you will need to serve your customers even if your products or services are perfect. It is possible that you will find a customer who is not satisfied with a product despite its quality. And this means that you need to serve him, help him, so as not to miss him, and keep him. A regular customer has a multiplier effect on the growth of your business. Therefore, you must understand your customers well, listen to their complaints and inquiries, respond to their concerns, and interact with them through social networking sites and various chat applications, in addition to the importance of providing after-sales services to increase their confidence in your brand.
10. Money management
The art of managing money is one of the most important aspects of running an online business because finances are the foundation of any business. Therefore, you must be able to manage the financial affairs of the online store, whether it is large or small. This calls for strengthening financial culture and developing financial intelligence by reading some books that help you achieve sales goals and increase revenues. It is necessary to know the basics of some of the programs that you will need in managing accounts and creating financial reports, such as Quick Books and Xero.
Important tips for creating an online store
Sometimes when starting an online business, online store owners don't know where to start and what to do to attract shoppers to their products, how to retain consumers, and turn them into brand-loyal customers. If you are among these, do not worry, this is normal at first and your experience will increase over time. Here are some important tips to consider when establishing an online store, especially as it is an effective strategy to increase sales and revenue:
1. Improved user experience UX
Improving user experience is of utmost importance to any successful online store. If the user experience in your online store is bad, don't wait for any sales growth. If it is smooth and enjoyable, it contributes to the completion of purchases and increases customer satisfaction with your products. So, you have to follow the best practices to improve the user experience of your online store.
2. Don't ignore the "About Us" page
The “About Us” page on your store helps you to introduce the target audience to your business, clarify your vision, message, and what you offer to your customers, and highlight your contact information, such as email, phone numbers, and social media accounts. Therefore, the “About Us” page must be professionally drafted as it increases the chances of acquiring customers and makes shoppers trust your products or services.
3. Partnership with various organizations
Building a brand needs to form a good mental image with the target audience. This requires partnering with other brands and working to expand the partner base as much as possible. Because this increases customer confidence in your brand, and strengthens the mental image of your brand. So, put the list of partners prominently on the home page of the online store for all customers to see as soon as they enter the store.
4. Attractive online store design
An attractive online store design is an essential part of the success of any online business. If you sell valuable and high-quality products, your goals will not be achieved if the online store design is poor and unattractive and does not take into account the effect of colors on customers. Statistics indicate that 93% of customers consider the visual appearance of products to be the most important factor, and 85% of buyers consider color to be one of the main factors that drive them to make a purchase decision. Good design often increases the credibility of the online store.
5. Customer reviews and responses
Online stores allow shoppers to evaluate products and put their comments on them. It is difficult for the customer to meet the owner of the online store, so they leave their comments on the products they buy for the benefit of the seller as well as potential customers. Marketing and sales experts recommend that customers should be encouraged to evaluate the product after purchase, especially those who feel satisfied with your brand. The higher the positive ratings, the stronger the confidence of shoppers in your products and the more purchases. Therefore, you must review reviews and respond to customers professionally.
6. Make your store SEO friendly
If your online store is not search engine friendly and is not indexed, you will not have any visitors to your store through organic traffic that comes from search engines. So, you must make your online store SEO friendly by crafting SEO-friendly content, choosing the perfect keywords that target your actual audience, writing an attractive title, in addition to putting a meta description for images and videos, and choosing a unique URL for each page in your store mail.
7. Online customer service and support
As long as you decide to make an online store for your business, you will need online customer service and support. Many shoppers like to ask questions about a specific service or product before completing the purchase process, and this contributes to enhancing the level of customer satisfaction to the maximum possible degree and increases the chances of expanding the base of loyal customers. Therefore, you must hire customer service personnel or provide this support yourself if requests are limited. And you can take advantage of the live chat tool that helps you with this task around the clock.
8. Add high-quality and attractive descriptions
The online store relies on adding product images and descriptions when presenting them to the target audience. Therefore, take good care of placing high-quality images that increase customers' desire to buy the product. Include product descriptions that are attractive, eye-catching, search engine friendly, and relevant to the product you're selling. It is important to use marketing writing that convinces potential customers of the product and urges them to buy the product.
9. Make the checkout process smoother
Your online store may have high-quality products that are better than competitors' products, but you haven't met your sales targets despite shoppers transferring large amounts of merchandise to the shopping cart on your store without completing the purchase. In this case, it may be because you included a complicated checkout process that causes shoppers to walk out of the store without completing the purchase. Therefore, it is necessary to make the payment process smoother, so that the purchase takes place in simple and easy steps that motivate customers to shop from your store.
10. Make your store safe and reliable
If potential customers find your online store unsafe and easy to hack, they won't risk entering their personal data or bank accounts into the store, which means losing customers and not growing sales. Therefore, it is important to protect shoppers' data from hacker attacks, and make your store safe and reliable by relying on the protocol (HTTP) instead of (HTTP), in addition to following best practices when implementing the encryption system (https) such as using strong security certificates.
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