When it comes to e-commerce, standing out from the crowd is less about dollars spent and more about having the right strategy. Here are our top 10 tips.
If you’ve been on the internet lately, you will have noticed that there are a lot of people selling a lot of stuff – it’s great for customers, but potentially challenging for businesses competing against each other.
The wonderful thing about e-commerce, though, is that standing out from the crowd is less about dollars spent and more about having the right strategy.
E-commerce is the process of creating online sales and returning customers, and covers every layer of the buying cycle from awareness to point of sale.
Of course, companies and industries differ in their product and audience, but here are 10 key strategies for boosting your e-commerce bottom line:
1. Optimise product pages
Every e-commerce marketing strategy must include search engine optimisation (SEO) that includes keywords, alt text and other strategies. Yet e-commerce marketing strategies can also be optimised by enabling reviews, adding video, and regularly updating information via regular articles.
2. Automate email marketing
It may come as a surprise in this era of social media influence to learn that email is still one of the most effective ways to convert sales. Automated email marketing can entice a customer to complete their purchase, offer an incentive to buy, and add an imperative such as a discount for a limited time.
3. Retarget users
Studies tell us that about 98 per cent of customers do not buy on their first visit, so retargeting potential customers is vital. There are a few strategies you can employ to get customers back to your site to pick up where they left off, including paid ads on other websites and social media, abandoned cart emails, and exit intent pop-ups where you can offer an incentive to users who are about to leave the website without checking out items in their cart.
4. Optimise for mobile
The number of customers who purchase using a mobile device increases every year, so e-commerce experiences need to be designed with mobile in mind. That can mean including strategies such as increasing the size of the purchase button, so customers don’t have to zoom in, and adding it to the bottom of the page as well as top so users don’t have to scroll back up.
5. Invest in content marketing
E-commerce content marketing can include blogs, video tutorials, infographics, and product guides. They don’t advertise or hard sell, rather they inspire and educate potential customers. Content marketing in e-commerce integration has the added benefit of building trust and brand recognition.
RELATED: How to enhance your e-commerce offering
6. Integrate social media
An e-commerce social media strategy will use videos, images, and explainer articles to highlight products and services. Different social media platforms should have strategies tailored to how they are consumed and by whom.
7. Install live chat
Live chat can take the form of either human or robot, but they both serve the purpose of being available to answer questions and massage the customer down the purchasing funnel.
8. Use personalisation
Collecting and leveraging personal details of customers, such as gender, age, and location, can enable an e-commerce strategy to best target customers’ needs and conversion points. The added bonus is that using this data can also unveil what your customers want and help inform future marketing campaigns.
9. Leverage user-generated content
According to global CRM company Salesforce, 54 per cent of consumers trust online reviews, compared to the 20 per cent who trust the brand itself – so it just makes sense to encourage customers to spread the word. A great e-commerce marketing strategy will look at creative ways to encourage users to share their experiences, such as posting photos of themselves using the product and a certain hashtag.
10. Implement a loyalty program
The only thing better than a customer who makes a sale, is a customer who comes back and makes repeat purchases. An e-commerce loyalty program incentivises customers to come back for more, and can include discount codes, points to collect, or exclusive offers.
Need to level up your e-commerce?
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, and we can help grow your business with an e-commerce marketing plan that features the most effective conversion strategies.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.