Congratulations on successfully launching your e-commerce platform!
Now, you might be wondering, “What’s the next step?”. Here are some valuable insights to help you concentrate on the crucial aspect of your e-commerce business – expansion.
Remember, e-commerce is not a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor. It demands continuous effort and maintenance to ensure the success of your online store.
1. Create Opportunities For Users To Return
Creating avenues for your e-commerce customers to revisit your online store might seem daunting, but simplifying the process into manageable steps can be transformative.
Content is an excellent tool to not only draw in new customers to your e-commerce platform but also to sustain relationships with existing ones. Starting with unique and informative content is a smart move.
Providing customers with fresh insights through informative articles can foster trust and secure future e-commerce transactions.
Want to boost engagement on your social media platforms?
Contests are an exciting way for current or potential customers to engage with your e-commerce brand. Moreover, contests often yield a higher ROI compared to other marketing strategies.
Here are some best practices for e-commerce contests and content:
Ideal campaign duration ranges from 25 to 60 days.
June and November are the most effective months to launch contest campaigns.
Contest participation forms should ideally have around 10 fields.
Incorporating a social media auto-fill option in participation forms can boost conversion rates by nearly 189%.
Most social media contests for e-commerce platforms last less than 7 days.
Offering freebies is another strategy to reward your customers or attract new ones to your e-commerce store.
However, this should be executed with intention and care as it could potentially tarnish or devalue your brand’s image.
There’s a marketing tactic known as “freemium” where a company offers a customer a basic version of their product, hoping to convert this free user into a paying customer.
A straightforward example of a freebie is offering a phone case with the purchase of a new phone. This model can be applied to many different physical products, particularly those with an existing market for accessories and add-ons.
2. Automated Marketing
We all know “Time is Money” and when it comes to marketing this truth stands. Luckily, there are a lot of strategies you can build into your automation to help supercharge your efforts. At Command Center we use Keap internally and deploy Keap automations for our partners as well.
Keap is a CRM (customer relationships management) tool and in our opinion the BEST one. Check some of our KEAP marketing automation tips here: https://info.cmdcntr.io/3-essential-automations-every-company-should-run-using-keap/
These automation flows can also allow you to reuse content from Content and Giveaways discussed above.
Wanting to run a contest?
You can create an automation pipeline to automate most of the process.
3. Live Chat / Support Line
Live Chat can be an effective tool in your e-commerce platform to address pre-sale inquiries or provide a handy channel for post-sale interactions.
Approximately 73% of customers regard live chat as the most satisfying method of communication with a company.
If a visitor interacts with a live chat representative, their likelihood of making a purchase increases 2.8 times.
Indeed, 38% of customers have reported making a purchase following a positive live chat session. Incorporating a live chat feature on your e-commerce website typically results in a 20% surge in conversion rates.
4. Earn User's Trust
An impressive 90% of global consumers make it a point to read reviews before purchasing products (Trustpilot, 2020).
Undoubtedly, reviews play a significant role in your e-commerce business. It’s vital to ensure that these reviews are genuine and not manipulated or fabricated.
Customers are skilled at identifying counterfeit reviews. If all reviews are 5-star, posted on the same day, or bear the same tone, customers will spot the discrepancies. Such fake reviews can adversely affect your e-commerce product or service.
Nearly half (47%) of all internet users globally claim they post reviews about a product, company, or service each month (GlobalWebIndex, 2019).
Boost the number of reviews on your e-commerce products or services by incorporating it into your marketing automation strategy.
Customers shouldn’t have to revisit a product page to leave a review. They should be encouraged to share their feedback automatically via email and/or SMS.
5. Implement Operating Patterns
Shopify is a great platform and is generally easy to use, but requires a large upfront time investment.
A successful site demands great branding, updated content, eye-catching imagery, an effective sales pipeline, contact/support forms, business email, and the list can go on depending on your goals.
Finishing your site is just the beginning of the uphill climb web stores require. Having a flexible web solution that allows for quick pivoting can be what “makes or breaks” your business. Be sure that Shopify gives you the toolset you need to responsibly and effectively run your operation.
Did You Know...
- WordPress & WooCommerce are FREE
- Whitehouse.gov uses WordPress and is an essential piece of US infrastructure
- WordPress powers 39.6% of the internet in 2021
- WooCommerce has over 75 Million Downloads and 5 Million installs
- WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world
- Over 1.4 million live websites are using WooCommerce right now
