A complete guide to E-commerce Strategies for Holidays 2019
We all are aware of the First Purchase we made if we compare the first purchase and now then you see a lot of changes. The perpetual advancement in the technology and changing phase in the Politics made e-commerce an analysis aspect for the customer as well as the seller. E-commerce came immediately and omnipresent. It can be shopped anywhere and everywhere. We can say that our digital shelves have become longer and larger, welcoming more e-commerce strategies for holidays.
What is E-commerce Strategies?
E-commerce Strategies is a buzzword, mostly the wholesale or the retail business that is traditional have faced this and depending on e-commerce. To many people, it is a simple process of establishing the offline business into the online platform.
Engaging people into your fancy Websites and creatively build e-commerce pages, that will allow the business person to sell all over the internet.
If we follow the recent Global Shopper Story that takes into account the opinion of 10,000 shoppers there are many key points found:
- Omnishoppers are very crucial for the market that includes
- Showrooming: here you see in the store and then buy from the online retailer
- Webrooming: here usually, people searching the online and buy in the showroom.
- Click and collect: people here buy online and go to the showroom to pick it up
- Scan and Scram: Check the product in-store but buy it online from another retailer
- Click and Ship: You check the product in the store but buy it on your mobile phone for your personal convenience
In today’s busy life both digital and retail world’s play a very vital role, while the omnishoppers may like to shop online in most of the time, but people also like to shop offline only when they have enough time. It is usually, about the experience and the discovery they can in the offline stores.
There is no less competition for the online sellers, because if we check the records then it is estimated that, 24 million e-commerce websites are there in the whole world. It seems like yesterday when the concept of e-commerce strategies blossomed in the business people’s mind.
As there are 24 million e-commerce website, out of which 650,000 stores are generating more than $1000 sales annually.
What is the current state of e-commerce?
The e-commerce state has shown an incredible growth curve if we check the last few years, the CAGR is even expected to grow to 11.1% from 2018 to 2025. One of the most popular activities in the whole worldwide includes Online Shopping. While the popularity may vary from region to region.
You can clearly see, the tremendous growth in the e-commerce marketing strategy that intensifies the competition in the business. If the competition intensifies this means that people are going to get more options to chose. It gives customers a chance to chose from even the niche categories and this can involve even both high and low level of purchase.
Increasing competition in e-commerce has led Brands attention predominantly towards user acquisition. Usually, innovative user acquisition strategies attract a number of people, however, this also requires a lot of sizeable investment. You may think, that once a customer comes up the battle is won. However, it is not, it involves post-acquisition work that has a different insight.
Once a customer comes on board, there is a high chance to drop off. Normally 70 percent of people drop off after a week and 96 percent of the users churn within 90 days.
We can surely say that if user acquisition is not coupled with successful user engagement and a perfect strategy, then there will be no results.
How can e-commerce attract new customers?
Nowadays, attracting customers is a huge task, and every e-commerce strategies involve these steps as every e-commerce business requires it. The first step to this is the having E-commerce automation checklist. Follow the below steps to have the best E-commerce strategies experience to your customers.
Ecommerce Automation
Ecommerce Automation helps you to automate your online store, similar to the supply chain, inventory management, and marketing automation systems. It includes only three simple workflow steps.
- Trigger: For the beginning of the workflow, select a trigger, like Order Creation
- condition: To keep the workflow going, set a condition, like Spend $500
- action: Set an action that needs to be taken place, like Tag the Customer
This includes a few checklists that the marketers should consider for automating the e-commerce store.
Increase the customer worth
It includes having a marketing strategy in communication with your targeted customer. Reward the customer if they make more sales, gives discounts occasionally, set geo-specific promotions.
- The first segment the audience according to their interest, and include personalized marketing communication. Segment the customer with the items they buy or add in the cart.
- Send small handwritten notes who spend the most time on your website
- Send a customized email, based on purchase history or when the items are in the cart are abandoned.
Increase average value with incentives
Always try to make the people stick to your site, and increase the time they spend on your e-commerce website
- For every individual customer calculate the average spend on order.
- Try to set threshold time, the time more than the average time they spend on the website. Offer the customers some gifts to add products to the cart and achieve the targeted time.
- Target the incentive to drive conversions
Occasional offers to the customers, mainly target the customer birthdays
- Send the customized Birthday mails, earn the customer loyalty that helps to make the customer stay with you longer.
- Geo-specific gift, filter the customer by region, place, and interest.
Decrease the cost of customer Acquisition
If you do e-commerce automation you will see a decrease in advertising spends, and reduce the customer churn, that will gradually increase the ROI of the campaigns
- Keep a check on the campaigns, and pause those which are not giving any results, order more inventory before you run out of it, pause the campaigns until you are restocked.
- Always keep in contact with your team, regarding every issue through channels such as Slack, Milanote, Trello, to avoid any miscommunication.
Deducing customer churning
- Have criteria to pull out the customer, like time each customer spends, and the time is taken since the last session, last login, last purchase.
- When a customer doesn’t show any action for some days, then start a win-back campaign for them.
Increase Conversions
You can boost your Conversions rates using this e-commerce strategies automation, make your site customized for your viewers, improve the search functionality of your website, add push notification to increase multiple purchases.
Increasing searching and merchandise the store
Give your customers a continuous merchandise shopping experience and make the shopping process easy and smooth
- Show the options which are of the same color, fit, brand to continue the continuous product discovery
- Add all those SKUs that have a similar description in the appropriate collection.
- Add the collections tags in your site search solution, as it will be easy for the customers to filter
Push Notifications to increase the purchase
Browser push notifications are the best if you want to increase the customer’s flow and encourage them to buy.
- Segment the customers according to their choices and purchase history.
- Target those, customer who is always looking for new products.
Easy Payment options
Check the currency your customer prefers and tailor it accordingly for them.
- Segment the customers according to their currency preference, based on their last purchase
- Add promotions while they checkout, and while coming to currency add currency based on the countries.
What is Customer Experience?
It is a long journey that we are experiencing, and no journey is the same. Some people like to shop online, while others like to take advice from their family, friends, peers and then act. It is like a big puzzle that has different channels, that has both online and offline shops. However, it is up to the brands how they will create the best brand experience that is frictionless, customized and provide the customer best experience as possible.
New channels keep on adding so that the older ones could be replaced and give a better experience to the people. The higher the consumers are more the interaction is, and more the competition for the brands. Ideal customer experience should contain:
- Customization
- Quality Content
- Omnichannel Experience
- Streamlines checkout
- Post-purchase experience
How can e-commerce strategies build a strong Customer Relationship?
According to some Consumer Survey’s, 48% of the consumers left the site and made a purchase in the competitor’s site just because consumers experience a poorly customized site.
The key for a personalized experience is segmentation, it helps to create distinct journeys for the customers based on their shopping behavior. Whether the customer is a visiting the site for the first time or is a frequent buyer, there are few data points upon which a person and choices can be assessed. All these things will help create a custom persona for the customer.
66.7% of the top brands have a visually attractive homepage.
Suppose you have 3 categories of people coming to your site,
- Let’s say the first category of customer to be “Type- A”, in this category, people are usually very busy and want to find the items quickly.
- Then, the second category of customer to be “Type- B”, in this type, people are limited to a budget and use the navigation to find the right product that fits their budget.
- The third and last category of customer, as “Type- C”, in this type, people are completely new and require a lot of information and content that will make them stick.
For Type-A category, you can add the “Add to Cart” button to all the products in the product listing page. Then for the second category “Type-B” have streamlined navigation and include more categories to the homepage. For the third category “Type- C” adding the user-generated content on the website, including all the how-to tutorials on the homepage.
You can for sure gain a good result, the conversion rate will increase to 10% and the revenue per visitor will increase to 14%
Strategy 1- Increase Loyalty by Personalized Promotions
The surveys say that 77% of consumers love discounts and encourage them to shop more. 48% of the people that discounts make them buy much faster and can take decision quicker.
Do’s and Don’ts of Customer Experience
Write Bewitching Content
- Do’s: Always have a variety of content, such as video, blogs, user-generated content, images, and infographics to make the people understand in details about your brand and the products that you are selling. There are a lot of infographic tools such as Visme are available which provide the best templates and tools to design amazing infographics.
- Don’t: Remove all the irrelevant content, because it is one of the biggest reason, where 41% of the consumer’s back out from your website.
Engage using emails
- Do’s: Post-purchasing sends the delivery updates and useful information related to the Purchase.
- Don’t: Never, attack the customer with a lot of promotional emails, before they buy their first product.
Have promotions
- Do’s: Place your promotions on the major locations on the homepage.
- Don’ts: Avoid having inconsistent, promotions over social media sites, marketing page, and e-commerce sites.
Add “Finder” to find the store
- Do’s: Include the detailed information such as the store hours, exact location, contact number, directions to store, in house services on the Store finder page.
- Don’t: never add the Store Finder in the footer
Make returns easy
- Do’s: Always have the return option in the product details page, so that it gives confidence that after buying a product, it turned out to be bad or wrong, they can return it anytime.
- Don’t: Never add the return policy in the footer of the page.
Path Navigation to purchase
- Do’s: The Purchasing path should be clear and easy for the customers to use, this encourages them to come back and buy again.
- Don’t: Never launch a new website without proper A/B testing of various designs.
Strategy 2- User Generated Content (UGC)
Engage your customer with high-quality images, videos and Infographics, in addition to this have engaging content. It is the best way to nurture and educate customers.
Usually, there are two types of content that help in brand leveraging: User Generated Content and Branded Content.
User Generated content are usually customer reviews, photos, videos, that allows the brands to share genuine and authentic content from the customers after they use the product.
Branded Content normally keeps the brands on the top when the brand is going through the down cycle, it tells about the lifestyle and story of the brand.
Not just the content, we can say an image speaks a thousand words than the content. If you have checked minutely then you must have noticed that the fashion-related people who are selling their products online, use a lot of images, in different angles, with some closeup image that showcases the type of stitches, color, type of fabric. The video included provides how to use the items, and how it is made.
21.4% of the consumers say that an appealing e-commerce strategies experience motivates them to come back again and again. While 85% of the customers said that Visual UGC that include images and videos are more influential than the branded content. As 95% of people believe in other consumers and their reviews who have already used it.
Leveraging a mixture of high-quality content that has images, videos, and user-generated on the homepage will let the people know about your brand and its products.
Strategy 3- Have the Right offer at the right time
These days people have stopped differentiating between online and offline shopping. The only thing that matters is the customer experience.
To avoid the channel conflicts, co-ordinate with all channels so that it doesn’t impact your physical location, be it with your retailers, or a seller or the brand stores those who are trying to sell at full price. In other words, you can say don’t cut down the brand store, by having a lesser price in the online store.
Check how the customer buys, track down his journey and identify at which point he is getting inspired. By using that inspiration deliver the same inspiration through the consumer-preferred channel.
According to one latest report, 74% of the people said they are more likely to make a purchase online if they can have easy returns and exchange in store.
Below you can find an optimal checklist if implemented will give customers the best experience:
- High-Quality Product Images
- A product description that is informative
- Informative Videos
- How to do- videos, tips
- Add to cart button
- Return Policies
- Clear Pricing and Promotions
- Customer Reviews
- Complementary or recommended products, while buying products
Provide an easy return option, never forget to include return instruction in the order. On the e-commerce site of the brand, mention clearly all the return policies. This will remove the need of the call to action or any further customer support.
Strategy 4- Provide a smooth checkout experience
How many times have you seen that people come to your site, and add items in carts and leave abruptly? I guess too many. This clearly states that your website lacks in providing flexible payment options.
75% of customers complain about the lack of flexible payment options. Usually, brands fall as a victim investing heavily on the website videos and images, but lack in providing a smooth functionality or checkout process.
When you are planning to have an e-commerce site, both website outlook and functionality are very important. Always keep in mind, once the consumer adds an item in the cart, then have a clear checkout button both above and below the order summary. It encourages people to complete the action and also makes it easy to have the next process.
Using Chatbots for conversation is also a good alternative, as using these will make the consumers feel someone is there listening. However, only 25% of the brands are only this Chats and Chatbot service on the checkout page.
Connecting the chat functionality to your website, most importantly to the Checkout Page, it provides the consumers an easy way to get clear their last-minute queries, before abandoning the cart page.
Strategy 5- Most Brands fail past checkout
The first action which most of the brands incorporate immediately after completing the check out process is sending the automated confirmation emails. Consumers read the confirmation emails, with outmost attention than that of the normal emails. It is a kind of habitual, as the email serves as a proof or a receipt.
On average, the consumers spend 4 seconds looking at a banner ad, then 7 seconds looking at a display ad, 14 seconds watching a commercial ad. While major time people spend watching unpacking their box which is estimated to be 45 seconds, in which people spend 22 seconds just removing the product from the box.
Strategy 6- Unboxing
If we follow the analysis of top e-commerce strategies of any website, then it has been seen that people get excited about the order delivery, unboxing experience, returning the item, and receiving refunds.
People are these days are too much interested in unboxing and check a lot of unboxing videos before they go to buy something. Before an item is bought, people go to the video and check the unboxing videos. So a well-designed unboxing video from the brand will increase the best unboxing experience creating an impact.
To give customers a better unboxing experience, do follow the below tips:
- Make the packaging attractive, so that people get excited while opening it. The excitement in people will increase, and the engagement will increase to 64%, and the chances of more positive customers increases.
- Always keep in mind, the size of the product you are sending, people usually complain that small products get big packaging. Due, to this one-fourth of the customers, think that the retailer is careless.
- Usually, people think that packaging showcase, how much interested and careful the retailer is about the product he is selling. If it is good, then people use the product for their unboxing video experience.
- Never do extensive packing, this frustrates the user. normally people want to reuse the packaging for future use. 95% of the people like to reuse the packaging if packing is good people tend to come back more.
How E-commerce Holiday Marketing Boost your sales?
Optimize your e-commerce website, at least 7 days before the D day. Start sending promotional emails, messages for the holiday. Have the influencers to promote it in social media channels. Holidays are the best time to
- Get the top ranking
- Increase your CTR
- Improve your position in Search Engine Page Ranking
Reset your whole Website and every detail page, with a holiday mood, that attracts consumers to buy from you. It is good to run some tests on the schema that will apply to the on-page SEO with good traffic.
As the holiday becomes a ritual for shopping, increasing sales during these times become important and bring a lot of loyal customers also. Take advantage of the holiday and attract new consumers, boost sales and increase brand visibility.
If you avoid having a holiday marketing campaign, then for sure you will be overshadowed by your competitors, who will, of course, promote during holidays. Gradually, you will vanish in the huge crowd.
The major, upcoming holidays this year, if targeted then it will help you in increasing your sales:
- 31st October 2019- Halloween
- 11th November 2019- Veteran’s day
- 11th November 2019- Remembrance Day
- 28th November 2019- Thanksgiving Day
- 29th November 2019- Black Friday Day
- 2nd December 2019- Cyber Monday
- 24th and 25th December 2019- Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
- 26th December 2019- Boxing day
- 31st December 2019- New Year’s Eve
Below you can read in details about some useful e-commerce holiday strategies that will help increase your sales.
Facebook Messenger Marketing
Up your holiday marketing strategy with Facebook messenger marketing. It’s currently one of the untapped channels that are truly a gem.
You can think of Messenger marketing as similar to email marketing.
But Messenger marketing’s engagement rate is 80% within the first hours, there are a lot of tools like Mobile Monkey, is available which will make your work easy.
The real benefits you can get from messenger marketing comes when you use Messenger chatbots, that allows you to send messages to your Facebook page fans.
Other than that, you can also:
- Build a contact list
- Nurture leads
- Send drip campaigns
- Segment your audience
- Schedule appointments
- Transition to a live operator on demand
- Remarket to contacts
- Perform e-commerce transactions
To create messenger chatbots, you’d need to build using an easy-to-use chatbot builder like MobileMonkey
Holidize your website
Converting your whole website to holiday mode triggers people’s holiday emotion that essential for that point of time. This makes visitors stay longer and spend more time with shopping enthusiasm.
It should be memorable, not just an ad in the product detail section or special offer sections. Bring the emotional context to your website and to the elements present in it like the header, footer, CTAs, and even in the payment page.
Discounts and Sales
People expect a lot of discounts and sales on every product they are going to buy. Make sure that it is the first thing you have on your website. As you can see Black Friday is just a few days away, it is best to start promoting for the black Friday eCommerce sales.
Showcase the shoppers what they really require, as soon as they log in to your e-commerce site. This keeps them engaged and stops them from going to a competitors site.
Email Campaigns
As Black Friday is on the door, start doing Black Friday Campaigning. Promote your brand, call out for your loyal customers, increase the customer experience by providing the best customer service.
- Have emails for the early birds, encourage people to buy, provide amazing discounts for the limited time.
- Send some exclusive discount codes, to avail the coupon.
- Provide a discount code, after a purchase is made, so that people keep on coming.
- Final email, send a greeting email for the Holiday.
Social Media Engaging
Use all the Social Media platform, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest to promote your Holiday Offers and deals in the social media platform. However, it is important to connect or communicate with the people in social media, because when a person watches it he becomes curious and has questions to ask.
Use the special Holiday Hashtags and encourages the Holiday atmosphere. Ask people to use the hashtags and gift them some giveaways, discount coupons or holiday offer.
Pinterest and Instagram work wonders for visual interactions. People mostly looking in both of there sites for gift inspiration, reviews, new ideas, best place to buy, greeting cards and entertainment.
If you want to keep following with the two channels then follow this:
Instagram Planner: It gives your complete year, holiday list, date and time, including the hashtags that you use.
Download the PDF here for Free: Instagram Planner for 2019
Pinterest Calendar: This will help you in sorting the year, with the holiday listing, date and time, with some marketing strategy ideas.
Download the PDF here for Free: Pinterest Planner for 2019
Conclusion
Usually, in all these implementations and improving the brand visibility somewhere, the Customer Experience Lags behind. While a lot of e-commerce companies have understood the importance of Consumer Experience and are looking for various options in which they can implement to increase the Customer Experience.
This is a complete guide for E-commerce Websites and the strategies that the companies can implement. Including the customer experience that most of the people forget, but is the key to keep your business going.
We hope that you like all these strategies and implement in your e-commerce site to increase the sales as well as the consumer experience.
If you want us to write, more about these different kinds of strategies to improves sales and experience, do write to us.
We will surely write more!