It takes an army to develop, launch, and scale a successful online retail store. Once your eCommerce website takes flight, you will need to build a detailed business strategy to support your company’s growth.
Here are four tried and tested practices that will help you scale your online store.
1. Personalize Customer Experiences
Personalization is the nerve center of your online store’s growth. Statics found that more than 63% of customers expect personalization as a standard of service.
Start by delivering targeted user experiences. Personalization engages users and encourages them to stay longer on your website and purchase faster. For instance, if you are running a designer clothing store, you could personalize product recommendations based on a customer’s gender, previous product previews or purchases, or product popularity. Suggesting complementary products is a common cross-selling technique, too.
You could also create a quiz to help customers find the right products. Swarovski, for example, offers a style finder, where a user can select their preferred style to receive relevant product recommendations.
2. Expand your Email List
Email marketing is essential for scaling your eCommerce business. It allows you to enhance brand awareness, engage subscribers, and build stronger relationships with them. Precisely because of that, you need to expand your email newsletter list strategically.
Start by offering relevant lead magnets that will give your prospects a reason to sign up for your email list. That could be a valuable piece of content, a VIP membership, a free trial, or a big discount. Choose the incentive that aligns with your company’s values and customers’ needs.
Now that you have generated a lot of qualified leads, it is time to start engaging them. Remember that not every offer is relevant to every subscriber. Their preferences vary based on a wide range of factors, from their age and location to their shopping habits.
Therefore, sending a generic email newsletter does not cut it anymore. Before you start building relationships with your target customers, you need to develop a segmentation strategy. The goal is to slice down your email list based on variables such as subscribers’ geolocation, age, gender, product needs, content preferences, previous purchases, etc.
3. Make your Products Shoppable on Social Networks
Your customers do not have a reason to google your website and navigate through it every day. Research says that 40% of online users purchase products multiple times per month, while only 20% of them make weekly purchases.
These statistics only prove that your eCommerce website is not enough anymore. To grow your sales, you need to make your products shoppable on other digital marketing platforms. One of the most effective ways to boost the visibility of your products and enhance purchases is to create shoppable posts on Instagram.
For starters, make sure your products can be turned into shoppable posts. You should also ask yourself whether your brand presence on Instagram is strong enough to start selling on this platform. If you are confident about incorporating shoppable Instagram posts, focus on making them high-quality. That means you should:
- Emphasize seasonal items.
- Invest in high-quality photography.
- Build gift guides for customers during the holiday season.
- Offer unique shopping ideas.
4. Leverage the Power of Social Proof
In today’s noisy digital marketing landscape, your audiences do not trust branded content anymore. Instead, they are looking for brand recommendations from their peers. Statistics say that 84% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
One of the most effective ways to use social proof in your eCommerce marketing strategy is to work with an influencer. An influencer does not have to be a social media celebrity. Micro-influencers are more relatable and trustworthy. By promoting your brand, they will increase the exposure of your products and show your company is legitimate. Find an influencer that is in the same industry and targets the same audiences.
Alternatively, encourage customers to spread the word about your eCommerce brand. Remember that your engaged and loyal customers are your most ardent brand advocates. Here is how to use their passion to promote your eCommerce business:
Get customers to review your products on your website and social networks.
Ask repeat customers to write testimonials and publish them on your homepage, checkout pages, and product pages.
Create a referral program. Inspire a repeat customer to refer a friend to your company in exchange for a valuable reward, such as discounts or free products.
Encourage customers to create user-generated content, such as photos of your products.
Conclusion
These tactics only prove that, in 2020, eCommerce businesses are highly user-centric. By delivering personalized user experiences and using the tips provided above, you will set your online store up for an upward trajectory.
Sure, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy to apply. Keep testing and tweaking different business growth tactics to find the practices that work for you.
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