You have the freedom to purchase anything you want whenever you want as a customer. However, some consumer trends undergo transformative or revolutionary changes while others do not, so not all consumers adapt.
For instance, Kodak was the first to develop the digital camera but shelved the product out of concern that it would compete with film. In the end, businesses like Fuji Film used digital to undermine film’s pedestal position in the year their patent expired. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in the same year.
Ironically, profitable e-commerce companies are utilizing the very asset that set them apart from their brick and mortar rivals in the first place: individualized customer service.
Businesses cannot avoid the necessity of exceeding the incredibly high new standard of customer service and interactive expectations, whether their operations are online or offline. Online shopping experiences now need to be given the same level of customer-focused care as a traditional brick and mortar store.
Client engagement is essential not only for getting your brand in front of potential customers, but it should also be used at every stage of the customer purchasing process to increase sales conversions.
Customer engagement should be a top priority for e-commerce businesses at each logical stage of the customer’s interaction with the business from beginning to end.
Build Successfull Ecommerce Website
In this article, we will advise 7 best and effective ways to build engagement with your ecommerce websites
1. Social Media
A successful e-commerce business must have active social media channels because they are your first line of attack for attracting new customers and your last line of defense for keeping existing ones.
Due to the lack of window shopping and foot traffic that physical stores enjoy, e-commerce businesses must rely on social media visibility through content, shares, and hashtags to attract customers.
Social media’s interactive features offer opportunities to strengthen your brand and cultivate customer loyalty by building an online community.
In fact, the cult-like following and community that many e-commerce-based companies have created through their social media interactions with customers directly contribute to their success.
The following are few tips to build customer engagement using social media:
- Consistently feature customers across social accounts
- Produce interactive content
- Sponsor challenges and giveaways programs
- Create opportunities for consumer input and feedback
2. Website User Experience
Every feature of your website MUST put the user experience first, in addition to being visually appealing and a true representation of your business. The high customer expectations brought on by digital hyperconnectivity must be met by your page speed. In fact, if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, it will lose more than half of its initial audience.
User experience (UX) is crucial to an e-commerce company’s survival and, ultimately, success. When it comes to maintaining on-page metrics like bounce rate, visit duration, and pageviews, website UX is crucial. Metrics that are taken into account by Google’s ranking algorithms will improve and search visibility will rise with good on-page UX.
The average human attention span has decreased to eight seconds as a result of social digitization and screen addiction. In light of this, users will look elsewhere if they can’t quickly and easily find what they’re looking for on your website. Your website should not only be user-friendly and intuitive, but it should also provide useful user tools like a clear navigation bar, breadcrumb links, and a straightforward subfolder hierarchy.
Less is more when it comes to website design. Ensure simplicity. Expensive website designs that are overloaded with text, images, and links frequently confuse the user.
3. Mobile Friendly
Compatibility with mobile commerce websites is essential because consumers are increasingly using mobile devices for searches instead of desktop computers.
According to statistics, users are more likely to use a smartphone or tablet than a desktop computer to interact with your e-commerce website. In fact, 27% of all e-commerce sales in the US were made through mobile devices.
Your e-commerce website must be simple to use on all devices in order to provide great user experience. Make sure your mobile site loads quickly, offers straightforward, responsive Call-To-Action buttons, and stays clear of pop-ups and sidebars, at the very least.
4. Effective Product Page
Your most powerful tool for increasing conversion is your product pages. They offer a great way to eliminate the unavoidable physical barrier that exists between customers and your goods.
Therefore, you should include a lot of information in your product descriptions, such as:
- multiple high resolution photos of the product
- detailed sizing information (if applicable)
- product materials
- product use instructions
5. Product Review Page
In addition to enabling your customers to provide valuable feedback, product reviews are crucial in assisting potential customers in making more informed decisions.
It is impossible to overstate the influence that product reviews have on an e-commerce website. In fact, 91% of shoppers aged 19 to 34 concur that personal reviews and online reviews are equally trustworthy.
6. Simple Checkout Process
Users frequently choose to abandon their shopping carts during the checkout process for a variety of reasons, which is known as shopping cart abandonment. Because the average person’s attention span continuously decreases to eight seconds, a difficult or lengthy check-out process will put off customers. The first step in increasing sales is to streamline the purchasing process and improve the checkout flow.
The majority of the most prevalent ones can be avoided by involving customers.
The most frequent cause of cart abandonment is a consumer’s lack of confidence in the website or concern that their payment information may have been compromised. Despite the popularity of e-commerce, people still hesitate to make purchases online more than they do in person.
Your website needs to do the following to help:
- During the checkout process, present social proof or secure payment verifications. Secure and verified payment gateways are essential for customer trust, especially for companies that offer international sales.
- Emphasize simple and adaptable purchasing incentives, such as free shipping or free returns. Users stated that free shipping (80%) and quick shipping (54%) are the top motivators to make more online purchases in Walker Sands’ 2017 study, The Future of Retail. Furthermore, according to recent studies, 90% of customers would be willing to accept a later delivery date in exchange for free shipping.
- To ensure that as many buyers as possible are satisfied, offer flexible payment options (many credit card issuers, PayPal, Google Pay, etc.).
7. After Sales Evaluation
While ensuring a simple, stress-free delivery process and customer satisfaction with the product are obvious ways to attract repeat customers, e-commerce businesses can also go above and beyond to wow clients with delivery and service.
Customers may respond well to using custom packaging or including small bonus “gifts” with orders, for instance. Customers are aware of attention to detail, and small touches can have a big impact on keeping customers around for additional purchases.
Even something as simple as a thank-you note for a customer’s purchase can go a long way toward establishing your business as one that genuinely cares. Any business can automate a “thanks for your purchase” email, but a brief note of appreciation written by hand can forge a lasting connection with the customer and, more importantly, encourage them to make another purchase.
Last but not least, you can continue using the standard post-purchase discount incentive. Special promotional offers can be distributed in packages or through emails that are collected at the time of payment. Take the stance that “nobody likes too much of a good thing” if communicating via email. Meaning that while providing customers with discounts is great, nobody enjoys being bombarded with sales messages, which could cause them to unsubscribe.
Final Verdicts
Any shift in consumer behavior will eventually lead to a growth curve, both in terms of business expansion and the growing pains associated with meeting increasingly demanding customer demands. Convenience is now the measure of a customer’s loyalty in e-commerce.
In today’s consumer-first society, having a distinctive product-driven value proposition along with a straightforward user experience and strong customer engagement goes a long way.
