Finances & Money

Entrepreneurship and innovation

The internet has come with a myriad of e-commerce opportunities for a business to thrive. This business format is based broadly on two platforms; selling to other businesses and selling directly to consumers. Just as brick and motor businesses, e-commerce enterprises require well thought out marketing strategies to increase conversion rates, sales and subsequently, revenues. Here are some of the 5 top strategies for e-businesses to employ.

1. Reward customer loyalty

While new business is good, you want loyal repeat clients. It costs five times more to get a new customer than it does to keep old customers. This underscores the importance of customer retention.

Customer loyalty reward points are an excellent way of achieving this. These allow your customers to buy, earn and redeem points. You can extend your customer loyalty programs to include free merchandise, advance release items and coupons. Here are a few things to consider when creating a customer loyalty program for your ecommerce business.

• Choose a simple reward system. You could choose a simple conversion scale. For example, $10 to equal one point. Then communicate on how many points can purchase which specific items.
• Use a tier system to reward initial customers, and to encourage more purchases. By having small rewards at the beginning, your customers will be encouraged to increase purchases. Similarly, they will not forget to redeem their points which happens when the duration between purchase and reward is too long. This further increases engagement. The goal is to have your customers purchasing and redeeming points rather than forgetting all about your reward system.
• Have a non-monetary reward system. Depending on who your customers are, they might appreciate nonmonetary rewards more than direct benefits to themselves. One way you can use loyalty reward points by using them to support your CSR efforts. For example per $10 spent at your store, 1 dollar goes to a social cause. As with any marketing strategy, ensure to constantly measure your metrics and tweak your methods when need be.

2. Social media marketing

Going by recent surveys, an astounding 77% of the US population has a social networking profile. For an ecommerce business, social media gives an affordable, quick way to have more personal communication with your audience. You can use social media to humanize your business, increase visibility and brand awareness.

For your social media, craft an overall tone and stick to it. While social media is a bit more laid back, you still have to showcase yourself as an authority in your niche. As a rule of thumb, steer clear of religious, political and other highly emotive topics in your discussions. You do not want to alienate a section of your customers on these lines.

3. Optimize for mobile devices

This is huge and has been further propelled by Google’s mobile-first indexing roll out. In 2018, 52.2% of all web traffic globally was done via a mobile device. Further, 51% of adults in the U.S have made online purchases via their mobile devices.

For your business, this underscores the need for a mobile device friendly layout. Customers should be able to access and easily navigate (UX) your content via a mobile device just as easily as they do on standard desktop devices.

In short, each action clients do from viewing your site, to adding items on their shopping carts to payments and checking out should be easy to do. The reverse will give you high churn rates and lower sales.

4. Virtual reality technology

This is a major differentiator for online stores. For traditional stores, a customer gets to engage with products beforehand. Say for example a make-up store. There are samples which a customer can try out then settle on a color. Online stores do not offer this benefit. The next best thing is virtual reality, more so for stores whose main target are millennials.

Imagine a space where customers can virtually try on lingerie or lipstick. Expand this to a space where tourists can view and take a tour of vacation spots before making online bookings. This is what virtual reality and augmented reality presents for online shoppers. For some industries where shopping online comes with a level of uncertainty, virtual reality is indeed closing that gap.

5. Manage your online reputation

Online reviews are quickly becoming the go-to for people who are considering making purchases. 91% of consumers say they trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations. This tells you how important it is to Google yourself and see what information is out there.

However, it does not end there. This is yet another avenue for you to market yourself and connect with consumers. For your online business, this is an opportunity for a one on one interaction with your audience. When it comes to reviews, you have to be ready to see and manage both ends of the spectrum- good and the bad.

The main thing is:

• Acknowledge any reviews that mention, or that are about your business.
• Seek clarification into the negative reviews and request for further information and offline resolution.
• Constantly seek out more reviews. You can request this from happy customers to ensure you maximize on getting positive reviews. Further, this action helps with your SEO optimization, increases your visibility and conversion rates.
• Continually engage in social listening so that you are aware of negative undercurrents before they blow up into the public domain.

When you match great products with these strategies, you will see more sales and more repeat clients. With a sound loyalty reward system in place, you do not have to worry about losing your customers, and you will see more referrals from your customer base. At Magento, we know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to loyalty programs. We can extend our knowledge to help you design a suitable system that will be beneficial to your customers, and in turn, you can expect to see a significant increase in your sales revenues.