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15 eCommerce Strategies to Grow Your Business

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The worldwide COVID-19 lockdown has helped turn online shopping from a luxury into a necessity. As more customers rely on eCommerce, retailers have had to meet the growing demand for online orders. The future of eCommerce looks remarkably bright. As of April of this year, according to a recent Australia Post eCommerce Industry report, more people have shopped online in Australia than ever before, up to 5.2 million—a 31 per cent increase compared to last year’s average. Keeping an ever-changing digital landscape in mind, the following are 15 eCommerce marketing strategies to put into practice if you want to boost your revenue significantly.

INCREASE VISUALISATION FOR PRODUCTS

Consumers want to be able to get all of the information they want about a product before making a purchase. This includes seeing data in a visual format that’s easy to digest and understand. Through the use of high-quality visualisation, you can present all the information people want in an attractive visual presentation, taking away the pain of reading long pieces of text.

MAKE USE OF VIDEO MARKETING

While some products or services may not benefit from videos, if you can use video to better showcase your offerings, do it. Recently, a HubSpot report revealed that around 50 per cent of people want to see video more than any other type of content. Video is an easy to digest format, with digital marketers using it to stay competitive, improve organic search rankings and boost conversions. Video can be a great way to demonstrate your products and concisely explain how your audience can benefit from buying them.

IMPLEMENT AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising digital marketing and can be a great asset to help boost eCommerce sales. You can use AI to gather data and utilise it to make more accurate predictions around customer decisions based on their purchase history and general behaviour. Using AI, you can generate new content for your SEO strategy and optimise the user experience on your website with personalised content, to give people what they want. Content creation and curation using AI will help increase satisfaction and sales. If you can leave people happy with your eCommerce platform and services in addition to the products they purchase, they’ll be more likely to come back to you and become loyal customers.

You can also use AI to target product ads that are relevant to your audience based on their purchase history and preferences, further increasing the likelihood that they’ll buy from you again. Google Ads and Facebook already use AI and machine learning to help advertisers find users who are more likely to convert based on the advertisers conversion goals.

OPTIMISE PRODUCT FILTERING

Product filtering may not be a top priority if you don’t offer a lot of products. Still, if your eCommerce store contains a wide variety of items that can be difficult to sift through, you’ll want to implement a sound product filtering system. Users should be able to find what they’re looking for easily, or it could deter them from purchasing. Advanced filtering will enable users to search for products based on specific features and attributes, along with product names and categories. Optimising the user experience (UX) in this way will ensure customers don’t struggle to find the right items.

ADD LIVE CHATBOTS TO YOUR SITE

Consider chatbots your online salespeople who are always there to help customers with what they need and to find what they want. Suppose you have chatbots that can answer specific questions, or lead them to another contact point for additional information. In that case, this could mean the difference between users converting to a sale or lead or leaving your site disappointed.

OFFER MULTIPLE DELIVERY OPTIONS

Consumers want to be able to get what they want when and how they want it. If your delivery options don’t enable customers to choose a specific delivery method and time frame, you could turn people away. For instance, you may offer next-day delivery if someone wants their products as soon as possible, while other options can provide lower price points if the customer doesn’t need the order immediately. Some studies indicate that offering free shipping can reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment and also increase average revenue per user.

MINIMISE THE ABANDONMENT OF SHOPPING CARTS

There can be some instances when a user is about to check out and buy a product online but then finds that the delivery options don’t accommodate their needs, leading them to abandon the cart before finalising their purchase. Over 69 per cent of instances of abandoned shopping carts result from encountering unexpected fees around shipping or other costs. Difficulty with the checkout process and other issues can also prevent people from completing purchases. Investing in user testing of your site’s cart and checkout process can identify any problems and allow you to address them and reduce cart abandonment.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF WISH LISTS

Not only can a wish list help a customer track what they want for later purchases or even gift ideas, but these lists can also provide you with plenty of information about what customers want but aren’t quite ready to buy. You can make use of wish lists through personalised emails and dynamic remarketing. Ensure you review the cookie window that has been set for your remarketing tag so that you can remind people of specific deals or the end of sales.

DRIVE USER-GENERATED CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Consumers want to see proof that products are worth their money, and there’s no better evidence than in the form of reviews from happy customers. Encouraging people to create user-generated content based on their experience with your offerings can help encourage more people to buy from you. A couple of ways to increase sales through user-generated content can include creating and spreading a trending relevant hashtag or making it easy for people to leave reviews on your site.

OPTIMISE CONTENT FOR MOBILE

As more consumers rely on smartphones and other mobile devices to make purchases, it’s necessary to have a mobile-friendly website if you want to keep it accessible to a majority of visitors. To emphasise the importance of mobile optimisation for eCommerce marketing, a Google report on Adweek found that around 73 per cent of consumers leave a mobile site without converting if the site is not mobile-optimised.

Aside from being mobile responsive, some additional mobile-friendly features for eCommerce sites include:

The ability to shop with a cart that stays on the customer’s screen while scrolling up or down a page
Quick-add buttons on a mobile website that enable people to add items to their carts as they shop quickly

CREATE PERSONALISED CONTENT

Not only can AI be used to personalise digital ads, but eCommerce sites can leverage AI to personalise website content to increase revenue. How? Personalising content can assist eCommerce businesses to cross-sell and up-sell, by predicting shopping patterns based on the products consumers buy and when they buy them, searched products and online browsing history. For example, you can promote products based on the customer’s location if the climate is relevant to how people might use your products.

INTEGRATE RE-TARGETING

Based on where a consumer is in the purchasing cycle, sometimes they may leave your website and forget about your products even if they might want them later. Through the use of re-targeting in your eCommerce marketing strategies, you can display ads on other sites and social media platforms that remind users of your products and business, which may inspire them to return to you when they’re ready to make a purchase. Using incentives, such as sales, free shipping or other offers, can also help to generate sales for your eCommerce business.

OPTIMISE THE CHECKOUT PROCESS

If it takes a while to finalise a purchase and the checkout process is time-consuming or otherwise unclear, this could lead people to stop buying altogether and abandon their carts. Ecommerce checkout page optimisation is sure to reduce the leakage. Try to keep the checkout process simple, without the need to enter too much information or go through too many pages to complete a purchase. You can further help shoppers along by including a progress bar that shows how close they are to finalising their purchase.

INSPIRE PEOPLE TO BUY ON SOCIAL MEDIA

You don’t have to rely on your website to drive eCommerce sales—you can also encourage shoppers to make purchases through your social media stores. Both Facebook and Instagram feeds allow you to promote products to your target audience and encourage social sharing to extend reach. Social channels enable eCommerce businesses to encourage reviews and other user-generated, authentic content to targeted audiences, reducing the pre-purchase research phase.

USE SOCIAL E-COMMERCE TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

A growing number of social media platforms are embracing eCommerce, including Snapchat and Instagram, in an attempt to keep up with the many apps out there. By utilising social media platforms’ built-in social eCommerce tools, you can extend your store to multiple apps and sites, while saving customers’ information for use in future purchases. Implementing these eCommerce marketing strategies will help you maximise revenue throughout 2020 and beyond, as you increase traffic, conversion rates, and sales. With the help of a complete eCommerce campaign, your business will be able to thrive.