Whether you are new to eCommerce or at the point of expanding your market reach, you should keep yourself updated on the newest trends. This includes learning and re-learning actionable tips on how you can find and acquire more customers. If having an eCommerce site is new to you, keep reading.
Have an Effective Search Capability
Does your eCommerce platform record and analyze what prospects are looking for when they land on the site? If your online store can track users, where they are going, and what they are clicking on on the website, you will be able to optimize the navigation and search so that it’s built to convert prospects into customers.
You can also organize your eCommerce store into two primary groups of prospective customers:
- People who knew they wanted to buy your SaaS or digital products
- People who are only there to browse your SaaS or digital products
Your site should also have well-defined search and navigation functions.
To improve conversions, you can enhance search usability in the following fields:
- Search scope selection
- Result layout and features
- Filtering and sorting search results on the results page
- Autocomplete features
- Design and behavior of the search field
Provide Customers with Useful Content
One way to boost your eCommerce conversions is to publish useful content. Creating original, high-quality content will set you up for success because it will resonate with your audience and keep them wanting more information. It will also compel them to want to engage with you, buy from you, and maintain a following as a loyal customer.
So, put in the effort to make something compelling. This strategy will have a more lasting effect in the long run.
A well-written, informative piece about your digital product in the form of a blog, for example, will be driving revenue for you in the years to come, and it will be worth it!
Focus on Product Quality
It isn’t difficult for people to stay loyal to a product they know they can rely on. Hence, we emphasize the importance of quality control.
This is essential if you manufacture or source various products. And if it isn’t quite up to your standards, then you might risk losing customer loyalty and sales. When starting out, it’s best to narrow your focus to a single product. Doing so makes it easier for you to focus on the overall quality. Once you’ve mastered a specific product, it’s alright to venture out to other products tailored to your target market.
Offer Subscriptions
Through email subscriptions you’ll have plenty of opportunities to scale your business. As a result, you get to multiply and create better revenue streams for your business.
The good thing about a subscription model is that it offers benefits to customers and eCommerce businesses. To implement this eCommerce strategy in your business, think about what you can provide your customers regularly.
Use Urgency to Encourage Action
Scarcity is a real thing. Do you know that it has the power to boost your sales to up to 226%?
A classic example is Amazon’s 36-hour sale every July. By offering a limited time, and limited offer, Amazon was able to sell over 100 million products, reaching $1 billion in sales.
The good news is that special event sales aren’t the only opportunities you have to boost your sales throughout the year. At any time, you can offer digital products on clearance that you would like to move and tell users that these are available for a limited time. Chances are, they’ll be snatched up in no time!
Optimize Shopping Cart Functionality
Did you know that the average cart abandonment rate is 70%?
Meaning, a lot of people leave eCommerce sites without purchasing anything from you.
To understand why this happens, you need to test it out frequently:
- Do you have unclear shipping fees?
- Are the forms too long?
- Is your website distracting?
- Is the call-to-action unclear?
The key to boosting your conversions is to have a straightforward checkout process.
Improve Customer Experience
Web design is critical if you want to improve the overall customer experience.
No, we don’t mean that you should focus on creating a good design. It will help if you develop a site layout that will maximize your conversions.
After all, converting site visitors into paying ones is what keeps your eCommerce business up and running.
To boost conversion rates, here are some tips that you can use to your advantage:
- Simplify your site navigation
- Improve color and contrast
- Utilize a responsive design
- Compress images
- Add breadcrumbs
- Create highly distinctive landing pages
- Optimize your site for mobile
You can utilize split testing to find out what works for you and what doesn’t. Also, offering excellent customer support plays a vital role in a satisfying user experience.
How you treat people whenever they’re unhappy with a specific product or service can make a difference. So, make sure that you reply to your customers immediately and in a polite and friendly tone.
Provide Several Payment Options
Offering your customers various payment options such as ApplePay allows you to expand your market reach. The more payment options you have, the more customers can buy from you.
Offering customers multiple payment options can also decrease cart abandonment rates. Again, this is a positive user experience because it makes it easy and is frictionless for the consumer.
Provide Discounts or Free Shipping
Offering discounts or perks is also one of the best ways to motivate consumers to purchase your products.
Providing discounts can also work wonders when it comes to acquiring new customers. That’s because deals are meant to make your customers take action and feel good about their purchase because they received a discount.
Let’s say that you’re running a discount along with other types of marketing strategies. Timing is another thing you should pay attention to. With the right offer, timing, and strategy, your conversion rates will likely increase.
Build a Community Around Your Brand
To boost customer retention and loyalty, eCommerce brands should build a community.
To start, build social media accounts that resonate with your audience’s values and interests and post interesting content regularly. Engagement is another key factor to building a community online. It’s important you are taking time to engage with people liking, sharing and commenting on your photos and videos.
Tip: If you’re promoting a SaaS product, user-generated content performs well from our experience.
Build Email Lists
You may think that email marketing is old news, but it is actually one of the most effective tactics you can leverage to expand your market reach.
Segmentation is the secret sauce here, but use email marketing to engage your audience, and provide them with interesting, unique content, promotions, etc. that are central to your brand.
Be open and transparent. Provide company updates, share upcoming events and tease new features and products. In short, try to relate to them so that it captures their interest and keeps them engaged.
Email marketing solutions like Mailchimp are free (up to a certain audience size), easy to use and provide valuable analytics and insights that will help you understand your audience and the content they like most.
Leverage User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) refers to content that your customers post online. It can be a product review, an unboxing video, or an image post of them bragging about their new loot.
Usually, UGCs increase leads to your eCommerce site. Here are some ways users can create content for you:
- Organize contests on social media that encourage people to use your products.
- Ask your customers for suggestions on how they think you can improve your product or service
- Run campaigns on Instagram using branded hashtags to encourage people who love your brand to post images on social media and tag you.
- Use real-time interaction videos such as Facebook Live, Youtube Live, LinkedIn Live, etc.
Improve Your Social Media Strategy
Highly visual platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat are great for online shops. But you shouldn’t underestimate platforms like Facebook and Twitter since 75% of users are still there, too.
Generally, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution when creating a robust social media strategy. Still, there are basic guidelines you might want to follow so that you can make the best customer experience:
- Post regularly and consistently.
- You might try an automated tool like Hootsuite so your posts are always on track.
- Don’t spam.
- Don’t utilize social media for promotions only. You should engage with your customers and build a loyal online community.
- Utilize analytics to keep track of audience engagement.
- Test multiple social media strategies before settling with what works for your business.
Build Strong Advertising Strategies
E-commerce ads allow you to improve your visibility online and boost your sales.
However, before starting your ad campaign, you should answer a couple of critical questions:
- How many visitors will your website need for successful conversions?
- How much budget can you allocate, and for what period?
- What is the best ad platform for your products?
Usually, the answers you’ll come up with allow you to develop predictions and narrow down your options.
Some people start with more well-known platforms like Facebook Ads or Google AdWords. Whatever medium you choose, you should analyze and track down your site traffic.
Google Analytics, for instance, is a great platform that allows you to learn a lot about your website visitors. This includes the keywords they used, pages they visited, and their demographics.
Similarly, you can also use retargeting methods to reach visitors and prospective customers to increase the ad effect.
Facebook pixel is a great tool that lets you record all FB visitors on your site and helps you create highly targeted campaigns.
Start Your Own Podcast
In case you do not know, you can also drive customers to your online store by starting a podcast. You can do this by sponsoring an episode or promoting your products in one of your episodes.
The best part? There are now a plethora of podcast tools for beginners that you can use to start your own channel. Plus, starting a podcast allows you to expand your market reach as it allows you to tap an untouched sector of your target customers.
Over to You
The eCommerce landscape is constantly evolving. This industry will keep innovating to cater to expanding market demand.
That’s why it’s your job as a business owner to keep track of these strategies and look for ways to leverage them. Doing so will make your eCommerce business successful in 2022 and beyond.
The opinions expressed here by Guest Contributors are their own, not those of Rise Marketing.