Electronic commerce has significantly changed the landscape of retail industry. The increasing digital penetration demands significant changes. One subtle reference will be how the virtual space has forced business entities to craft a customer-oriented strategy rather to head on with the traditional product oriented strategy.
The increasing demand for online commerce has lured a bunch of newbie entrepreneurs to kick-start their digital venture. As the no: of virtual stores start to pop, there happens to be a linear increase in the online competition.
As an eCommerce entrepreneur, you need to make sure that a creative strategy is set aside to commercialize your digital venture. Now let’s jump into a few eCommerce strategies that will help you build a spiffy online presence.
Identify And Understand Your Target Customers
As a business, your primary objective will be to reduce the cost per customer acquisition and increase the revenue. Not that everyone who dwells in the virtual world is your customer. Creating a buyer’s persona help you identify your ideal customer. A clear understanding of the target customers will help plot cost effective strategies that predominantly address the customer pain-points.
Importance Of Creating a Buyer’s Persona
The activity will help identify the target customers and then dissect into their pain points. Once you have a solid knowledge about the preferences and concerns of the target customers then it gets easier to position the product/service and penetrate the niche market.
The customer persona should act as the baseline for every marketing activity. Every marketing strategy should be designed with an intent to provide a solution to the end customer.
Create a customer persona and try to plot the buyer’s journey. Make sure to develop a keyword matrix and segregate the same with the buyer’s position on the customer journey. In future, this activity will help synergize compelling strategies that could address the specific concerns of target customers who are on multiple stages of the buyer’s journey.
Customer Experience – Select The Right Platform For Your Online Business
Technology help streamline the whole process of setting up an online store. One small signup with a pre-built E-commerce platform provider, Alas you start your digital journey. At the same time as an entrepreneur, you need to consider the limitations that comes with the platform. Most people believe that when compared to a brick and mortar business model the risk factor dramatically decreases with an E-commerce business model. At the same time, people absolutely fail to consider the fact that their entire business is synergized around a third party platform.
Every platform has its own pros and cons. As a digital entrepreneur, you need to keep yourself aware of the limitations. So in future, the limitation will not obscure you from growing. If you decide to skim a platform for the sake of saving a few extra bucks, I suggest you think twice. The platform is your base. Better invest the right sum to root a strong base. Down the line moving from one platform to another could end up as a costly mistake.
With a plethora of pre-built E-commerce platform providers are out there, you get an option to select the right platform that suits your requirement. Make sure that you practice a customer oriented strategy. So, when creating the E-commerce store you could put that into practice. Make sure that the online store resonates the best possible customer experience. Inspiring the online visitor to navigate with ease and move down the customer journey.
Optimize Your E-commerce Store
The transition was swift, and we have way passed the epoch of delivering a quotidian experience to customers. E-commerce entities have started to leverage the power of data and prudently use it to provide a complete solution to the end user.
Use data to provide a personalized buying experience. With a lot of E-commerce platforms leveraging this opportunity, this is one strategy you need to integrate.
Make use of algorithms that analyze your customer’s past buying behaviour, products views, etc and recommends the same within the e-commerce store. Providing a personalized experience will help increase the online conversion. Amazon, the E-commerce giant has done an amazing job in providing a personalized experience to the end users. Starting from an email strategy to providing a holistic experience to the customer.
Tips To Draft a Creative Email Campaign
Emails are widely used by marketers as part of their push marketing strategy. Emails are one of the most cost effective channels used to build a long lasting relationship with customers. The statistics published on DMA.org.uk clearly indicates that the return on investment for email campaigns are as high as £32.28 for every £1 spent. When the figure highlights a significant opportunity it also welcomes great challenges that need to be managed brilliantly (since most marketers started to implement lame business strategies that often annoys the recipient).
Let’s consider it like this. On an average how many emails hit your inbox and how may do you open. A lethargic email strategy will only end up in the spam folder. Every email campaign you create should have a definite objective. If it’s a welcome email then make sure that the email is drafted around that objective to reflect your gratitude in having them on your platform. If the customer is in the trial period then send him a coupon code along with the welcome email (the offer/discount could persuade the prospect to move down the customer cycle).
A hyper personalised email strategy is the best way to instill confidence among the customers. People tend to value an idea when it is cordially addressed to them. A lame email blast may not be enough to compel the prospect to take action.
Running an E-commerce business is not an easy task, nor a daunting experience. Hope you remember the phase where I mentioned the importance of segregating customers based on their position on the buyer’s journey. You can integrate this with your overall email strategy. Draft few email templates addressing the concerns of people on the buyer’s journey (don’t copy paste a template, instead be authentic and create a template of your own). So, instead of sending the same email to the entire database you could curate and send specific emails to a custom segment.
Before you hit the send button, make sure that the email is well addressed to the target segment and is optimized to perform well on multiple displays.
A Mobile First Strategy
Portable devices are revolutionising the digital world. Be it a wearable device that monitors your heartbeat or a smart phone that gives you real time access to day to day business operations. Smart phones are the closest friend a millennial has. The best example will be, when in doubt who will you first turn towards. Exactly, your mobile phone. One small search and you get a plethora of options to look into.
In the current trend, mobile marketing has gained significant momentum. People are more active on mobile phones than ever. Optimize your website and digital strategies around mobile. Even we need to consider the fact that Google started to prioritize a mobile first strategy to provide the best user experience to customers.
With an increasing number of people searching for your products via mobile, don’t let that opportunity dissipate. Look out for a mobile responsive theme, do a trial run, make sure that customers will find it with ease to navigate through the website. Make sure that the theme offers a streamlined flow, right from selecting the product to purchase.
Design Spiffy Product Pages
As an E-commerce company, you may often look into the possibility of making use of PLA’s (Product Listing Ads). The best part of a product listing ad is that you will be able to bid for specific keywords and display your products on SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Yes! This campaign allows you to display your product images on Google.
With a PLA campaign, you could drive relevant traffic to your individual product pages. Driving traffic to individual product page comes with certain challenges. For example, if a visitor lands on a product page and is not interested in the product. What should the visitor do? Click on the small red button at the corner of the browser or hunt for a similar/ better product.
Keep in mind, up front, you have incentivized the customer. Every time someone visits your website through a PLA ad, based on your bid strategy Google will debit your Ads account. So, your product page should be designed in such a way that it should inspire the customer to look for multiple products. One great strategy will be to make use of pre-historic data to show products that are already viewed by the customer.
Make sure all costs are mentioned upfront. Confusions in the buying process can inadvertently increase cart abandoners.
Few pointers to consider;
- Write a detailed product description.
- Make use of high quality images, you can also try adding a video.
- Rather than adding 6 images with a plain background. Add one or two with a context to it. (Eg; Rather than a handbag with plain background, use a girl holding a handbag).
- If needed, make sure that a size chart is integrated (Important for apparel stores).
- Try to up sell/cross-sell your products.
- If free shipping is not available, better mention it upfront.
Leverage the Power of User Generated Content
User generated content comes with a lot of intrinsic values. First and foremost is that a user generated content can be perceived with the value of a user’s testimonial.
Guess What? What else reason could you come up with? The customer was extremely happy with the offer/deal and finds it irresistible to share it with her social followers. If word of mouth is the best promotional strategy in the physical world then a user generated content carries the same value in the virtual space.
User generated content such as Facebook/Google reviews, ratings, social engagements can boost an entities E-commerce sales.
Create a Loyalty Program
So as to ensure repeat sales it’s better you create a loyalty program. A loyalty program makes the customer feel special. Special discounts and offers are sent to these customers so that the customer stay loyal to the brand.
If you are operating in a price sensitive market then you need to make use of discounts, rebates, coupons, rewards, etc to increase the sales volume.
Parting Note:- There is no doubt that e-Commerce has revolutionised the retail industry. When planning to start an E-commerce business better understand customer expectation. In a dynamic world where the customer preferences are swayed with alluring brand propositions, you may need to revisit your E-commerce marketing strategies to promise a complete solution to end customer. After all, with increasing internet penetration brands are obliged to provide an exquisite customer experience.
[Images – Main Pixabay; Phone Photo by Jaelynn Castillo on Unsplash; other images from their respective websites and/or social platforms]
A dreamer with a penchant for outdoor running, content creation is one of Nishant‘s forte. He thrives in challenging environments and is adroit in inbound marketing. His technical education and experience have enabled him to turn creative thoughts into written reality.
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