As published on Brands Journal
Driven by the pandemic, global eCommerce is now a whopping $26.7 trillion business and in the UK alone, online sales nearly doubled, rising from 14.9% in 2018 to 23.2% in 2020. With the adoption of online shopping continuing to soar, eCommerce brands are scurrying to optimise their webstores to reach and engage existing customers, attract new shoppers and convert them to buyers.
Attracting consumers to your webstore and turning browsers into loyal customers requires a strategy that improves your online appeal, attracts shoppers, helps them find what they need and ultimately gets that sale. This article features the top tactics every brand should embrace for online sales success.
Be clever with advertising: Be sure you’re putting your brand’s money where it will do the most good. It’s important to have a clear understanding of your target audience and their online shopping behaviours in order to attract the right buyers and achieve maximum conversions. The recent past has seen shifts in buyer behaviour and it’s important you have the right performance marketing tech and expertise to stay ahead of the curve.
The first step is to have a clear plan with set goals and targets. The most obvious goal is conversions, but other types of goals include email sign-ups, average session duration and life-time value (LTV). Keep in mind that not every shopper is on every platform, and not every eCommerce brand will have the budget to win on every channel. Determining the right channels to suit your business goals and allocating budget effectively is key. Start with average customer acquisition cost (CAC). Once you determine how much it costs before a customer pays you, you have a better understanding of required spend. Performance marketing means meeting your ideal customer on their platform of choice. Do the research on what kind of buyer is found on each channel, then you can choose the ones that best align with your ideal target customer.
Keep your brand top of mind: When a customer makes a purchase, your brand is fresh in their mind, however, this can fade quickly. Once a purchase is made, it’s important to follow up with personalised and targeted offers. Using targeted emails that speak directly to the buyer after they purchase makes them feel appreciated as a customer and can help to cross-sell other items Every brand has experience with reactive one-time buyers. In order to turn these buyers into loyal brand advocates, you need to implement strategies that will encourage repeat purchases.
Stay in touch to increase customer lifetime value: After the initial sale and follow-up, it’s so important to keep communicating with your buyers. Email drip campaigns enable you to nurture relationships with special offers, such as a VIP discount code that offers additional savings on their next purchase. Everyone likes to feel like they are getting a good deal. A lucrative bottom of the funnel marketing tactic is the use of digital coupons. Our digital world has made it second nature for shoppers to preload coupons on their device and search for deals at the checkout. Drive repeat business by rewarding returning customers with unique or one-time use codes.
Reduce shopping cart abandonment: Typically, buyers with low-value orders are more likely to abandon their cart. The most common reasons for cart abandonment include high shipping costs, complicated ordering and checkout processes, long delivery times, and poor cart design. In addition, websites that function poorly are abandoned by shoppers at a faster rate.
Based on industry benchmarks, shopping cart abandonment rates continue to be high with an average between 68.8% and 74.5%. Although the figures look bleak, brands can decrease the number of abandoned carts by simply informing customers at the start of their shopping journey of shipping costs and other associated fees. In addition, you can reduce lost sales by harnessing the power of data analysis to explore why buyers may not be reaching the end of the checkout process. Tracking the abandonment process and then benchmarking these figures is a good starting point to experiment with A/B or split testing.
Provide frictionless product delivery: Slow or fragmented product delivery can have a negative effect on the entire purchasing experience – eroding trust and resulting in customer frustration. To provide online shoppers with the experience they expect, brands are moving from traditional warehouse fulfilment models to re-modelling supply chains. By using drop-shipping, brands no longer need to manage inventory. Instead, they pass the sales order to a third party for fulfilment and shipment.
Consider back-end technology: The front-end (customer interface) is essential to attract and retain online shoppers, however, your back-end (underlying) technology is equally as important. Known as ‘headless commerce’, the decoupling of the front-end presentation layer of a website from the back-end eCommerce functionality is much more than just the shopping trolley. Monitoring sales and competitor performance requires a technology that is supported by effective analytics. Brands also need to understand who their customers are and how they like to shop. Using shopper behaviour data provides brands with the ability to better understand their customers’ digital footprints and improve their selling strategy.
Put your digital store on the path to long-term success
Developing and implementing an eCommerce branded store that drives sales requires a strategy with proven tactics to attract, convert and retain customers. Getting the fundamentals right is your first step.