Ecommerce is not only revolutionizing retail, but it has also been redefining the way it conducts its affairs. Businesses are developing intense eCommerce marketing strategies to take their stores to the next level.
Even smaller businesses and physical stores are getting into eCommerce, mostly because of its benefits. However, these businesses still find it challenging to settle in a fast-growing and highly competitive market.
In this article, we go over some of the most effective eCommerce marketing strategies and metrics that your business can implement today.
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Ecommerce Marketing Strategies
Earlier, when the trend came into existence, you could only access the stores when you were logged onto your computer. However, with mobile commerce gaining momentum, you can shop while on-the-go.
eCommerce is becoming an integral part of customer experience. It is said that by 2019 eCommerce would account for an excellent 13.7% of the global retail sales, and it will increase to 17.5% by 2021.
It has been seen that 85% of shoppers begin their purchase journey on one device and move on to complete it on another device.
At least a good 57% of online shoppers have purchased from overseas retailers. In fact, with the boost eCommerce has received, it has become easier for the customers to forget the geographical boundaries.
With such impressive statistics, your mom and pop store ought to turn towards eCommerce and offer a 360-degree experience that can fill in the gaps.
This is a straightforward process as they can use an easy to use eCommerce website builder to build an online store within a day.
The growing need to become an e-retailer has also given rise to newer and improved trends, which will enhance the customer experience.
The evolving nature of commerce needs some add-ons that can fill in the experiential gaps that exist in this niche.
We will talk about some of the trends that you need to incorporate at the earliest if you want to boost your business.
1. Personalize Your Business
Remember the times when you walked into a brick and mortar store, and the attendant used to ask you what you want before showing you things that might interest you?
Well, your e-store has to travel that route now! It would be best if you asked people what they want to buy, what their interests are, and even how they would conduct the purchase, before showing them the recommendations.
For instance, if the person has come to buy a TV, then make sure you ask them their preferences, before bombarding them with emails and recommendations. The biggest mistake that eCommerce stores make is offer products or product recommendations that are entirely useless to the person.
Imagine getting baby products in the recommendation, when you don’t have a baby. That kind of marketing will not get conversions for your business.
Apart from understanding the preferences, you need to understand what stage of the buyer journey they are in at the moment. This will help you dive into personalization techniques better.
Let’s say you are a fashion retailer and want to offer a personalized experience to the customer. What is that one thing you need to provide that experience?
An understanding of what the customer is looking for, and the size that they find comfortable.
So, ask them via your app what their size preferences are. In case they are not aware, let your app to find out the best fit size for them. You can even use certain technologies that will help them choose the right type of clothes, and access the size that fits them.
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2. Integration of AR and VR
What is that one thing that attracts you when you go to a brick and mortar shop? The ability to try the products before purchasing them. You are satisfied with your touch and try abilities, which helps you know that the product is worth the investment.
However, eCommerce stores had been missing this point for a while now. However, with the introduction of AR and VR technologies, it has become easier for eCommerce stores to introduce the feature of trying the product before buying.
So, fashion retailers can allow the users to try the clothes and accessories before they purchase so that the customers know how the clothes would look on them. Similarly, you can try homeware and jewelry before you buy it.
You can use the camera and other hardware as needed to check if the product you are planning will fit the surface you want to keep it on. This kind of experience is sure to boost sales for your business.
With AR and VR experiences, your customers don’t need to move out of the comfort of their homes to get an idea regarding the product and completing the purchase.
3. Boost Your Checkout Process
58.6% of the shoppers in the U.S. claim that they abandoned the cart as they were not ready to make a purchase, and here top reasons for it.
In short, a lot of cart abandonments occur when you have designed a checkout process that comes with a steep learning curve.
Apart from going with a single-click checkout process, it would be best if you also introduced varied payment options that can attract the users towards your business site, and increase the conversions for you.
Flexible payment options are one such way to increase sales. You can allow people to buy on credit, with the pay later facility, which will enable them to purchase and pay the amount later.
Apart from this flexibility, you can also introduce various payment methods that include wallets, credit/debit cards as well as coupons. The idea is to make people use all the currencies that they possess and boost purchases.
Registration is one such aspect that pushes the visitor away from your site. Instead of having a registration process, you can make your visitor sign up using their social channels. Social sign-ups not only help you get the user engaged to your site but also increase the conversions.
With fewer complications, the person who was just visiting your site might get converted.
Use this free ecom audit calculator to see how your store metrics stack up.
4. Incorporate Voice Search Abilities
If you have been in the business for a long time, you would realize that offering convenience to the customers is the most important thing. You cannot justify your engagement if you have not provided them with the comfort that they long for.
Voice search is one such trend that you cannot ignore when redefining your eCommerce store. With Alexa and other assistants gaining importance, and people having them in their homes, you must integrate their assistants to your shopping website to increase the experience.
Apart from being comfortable, voice searches allow people to look for things when their hands are busy. For instance, they want to buy a product while cooking.
Then the voice assistants can help them complete the purchase. Let’s say they are working on something, and suddenly they need to place an order on your shop, the voice search makes it immediate.
Along with a good integration of the voice commands, you also need to ensure optimization for long-tail keywords, which will help boost the search experience.
5. Opt for AI and Machine Learning
Netflix is our favorite example of how Machine Learning can be contextual for eCommerce marketing. You will notice that based on your browsing behavior, the algorithms within Netflix allows the app to recommend series to the customer.
Amazon has always been one-up with recommendations and shopping experiences. In fact, they have used machine learning for better recommendations and personalization. The gap in the experiences has reduced as a result of the use of machine learning.
AI, on the other hand, has made customer support, which is an integral part of customer experience, thorough and immediate. So, the chatbot assistants that have been derived from AI allow the business to hold real-time and realistic conversations with people visiting their websites.
Right from addressing their problem to identifying a solution, the chatbots seem to have set the stage for the customer’s expectations.
In fact, when you check machine learning applications, eCommerce tops it.
The businesses get smarter and more proactive due to incorporating these trends.
Apart from bringing in a resolution to the concerned issues, AI and ML also help personalize the overall experience and boost customer support for the business.
It is, however, important that you choose the algorithm that helps you redefine your business.
ML and AI also help with understanding how to improve your products, whether they are in demand or not, and even improve your inventory management. Eventually, eCommerce stores are able to improve their abilities to transact better and improve product quality with the integration of these two technologies.
6. Competitive Pricing
Regarding e-commerce marketing strategies, there are a few key things you should consider implementing to skyrocket your store. Competitive pricing is one of the most effective tools for driving sales and revenue.
By monitoring the prices of similar products on other sites on an ongoing basis and ensuring yours remains competitive, you can attract more customers and increase revenues.
Moreover, to keep track of your products and understand whether you can clear anything out, consider using inventory management software for more professionalism.
A great tool to use is Dealavo, which helps you closely monitor your competitors’ pricing tactics. With this tool, you get visibility into competitor product changes and price updates, allowing you to quickly adjust your own prices accordingly so that yours remains the most attractive option for consumers in the marketplace.
The platform also provides a host of analytics for understanding customer behavior when it comes to shopping online – giving insight into what incentives they respond best to and customer preferences strategically influencing their decisions – all with objective real-time data visualizations & insights at hand.
When planning your e-commerce strategy, it’s important that every aspect aligns together – incorporating competitive pricing with tools like Dealavo just makes sense as part of this.
It will help give complete control over your market presence by keeping track of what competitors are doing without having to spend time manually checking prices – freeing up resources instead for optimizing other aspects such as user experience or promotional activities that drive traffic & conversion rates across different channels.
Bonus: Upscaling An Online Store With Jay Crew
Jay Crew built a niche fitness brand into a multi-million dollar online brand. His strategies included influencers, referral programs, and affiliate marketing.
Jack had the pleasure of speaking to Jay who was more than happy to share his e-comm strategies with us.
Summing Up
The burgeoning eCommerce niche is looking for the right opportunities to convert and improve the overall experiences for the customers. Personalization and customer support are two aspects that can increase conversions and improve the customer experience for the business, thus giving wings to their customer satisfaction results.
To sum up experiences, you need to watch out the market for the trends and keep incorporating the ones that match your needs into your eCommerce marketing strategies.
It has become important for businesses to integrate AI as well as AR for the best results. You should also create customized ML models that can help validate the experiences you are offering.
Don’t forget to increase the speed of checkout by using a single-step and comfortable checkout process.
What is your most effective way of marketing your eCommerce store? Let us know in the comments below.
Author
Sourodip Biswas works with an expert team of web and mobile app developers at Space-O Canada, a leading web development company. He spends his time researching technologies and mobile apps. His work has been published on various distinguished blogs across the web.
Jack Paxton is the co-founder of VYPER, a marketing tool that helps brands build email lists, social followings, and revenue using viral giveaways, referral, and reward programs. After millions of dollars spent testing different marketing strategies at his marketing agency. He then also co-founded Hyax a fast, conversion & design-focused course and funnel builder for creators.