The days of hitting the shopping centres to browse for bargains are few and far between. Consumers are flocking online, and spending more time browsing and buying digitally rather than on the aisles of their favourite brick and mortar stores.
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, online shopping has seen massive growth, with no signs of slowing. Research by Statista revealed that eCommerce sales worldwide are expected to grow to 6.54 trillion US dollars by 2022 (up from 3.53 trillion US dollars in 2019). The figures speak for themselves – an increasing number of consumers are making purchases digitally, providing brands with the opportunity to reach a much larger audience than brick and mortar could ever afford.
To attract consumers to your webstore and turn browsers into customers, brands need an eCommerce strategy that will grasp this unparalleled opportunity to attract shoppers and boost online sales.
Here are 7 must-have strategies for success:
- Create personalised and exclusive offers – Serve targeted product offerings with relevant content, personalized discounts and promotions, creating a personal customer journey for your most valued customers.
- Stay top of mind with follow up – When a customer makes a purchase, the brand is fresh in their mind. It’s important to reach out to recent buyers and offer them personalised and targeted offers. Speak directly to your customers with targeted emails that offer exclusive promotions. You can educate, up-sell and cross-sell with relevant and timely offers and promotions; which leads to the next point:
- Contact previous customers: Just as important as quickly communicating with recent buyers, brands should nurture former customers with special offers, such as a VIP discount code that offers additional savings on their next purchase.
- Reward loyal customers: Recognising and rewarding loyal customers will help to increase customer lifetime value (CLV). It’s also important to implement solutions for reactive one-time buyers and encourage repeat purchases. To ensure that customers return to your digital store, deliver a frictionless experience – one that goes beyond the front-end design of your site.
- Use digital coupons: Everyone loves a good deal! Shoppers are typically more comfortable entering a code, rather than using a blanket deal that is made available to everyone. To drive repeat business and foster brand loyalty, reward customers with unique or one-time-use codes that can be pre-loaded on their device.
- Be smart about ad spend: When increasing budgets to drive traffic, it’s important to pay close attention to bottom of the funnel tactics. For example, when selling products on Amazon, be sure to spend money carefully at the SKU level to drive conversions.
- Improve cart abandonment strategies: To reduce lost sales, brands can use a proven approach to cart abandonment: the delivery of friendly reminders and timely prompts to ensure that no sale is left behind. General industry consensus suggests that the top reason for cart abandonment is unexpectedly high shipping costs. Buyers with lower value orders are more likely to abandon their carts if shipping is high. The lower the order value the higher the shipping fee can seem in comparison. Taking this into account, brands should take steps to be clear about the full price (including shipping and any other fees) as early as possible in the buying process.
Regardless of where a brand is on the eCommerce sales journey, these proven marketing strategies will help to develop an online strategy that will drive customers to your digital store, improve online conversions, and turn occasional shoppers into loyal customers.
By Alan Wyley, CCO, Luzern eCommerce
