You have made it this far and are now post launch for your e-commerce store, Congrats!
The question now becomes, “what is next?”. The following are some helpful tips to keep you focused on the most important part of your nusiness.. growth.
E-commrece is not a one and done venture and requires constant upkeep and work to make your store a success.
1. Create Opportunities For Users To Return
Creating opportunities for your customers to return to your store can seem like a challenge but breaking the process down into simple steps can make all the difference.
Content is one of the best ways to not only attract new customers but continue your relationship with existing customers. Unique and educational content are a great place to start.
Giving customers new information from educational articles can help build trust and solidify future sales.
Looking for a way to increase engagement on your social media channels?
Giveaways are a fun way for existing or future customers to interact with your brand. Giveaways also provide a higher ROI than other types of marketing campaigns.
Here are a few best practices for giveaways and content:
- The best duration for your campaign is 25 days to 60 days.
- The best time of the year to launch contest campaigns is in June and in November.
- Contests should have an average of 10 fields in their participation forms.
- The social media auto-fill option in participation forms can increase conversion rates by almost 189%.
- The majority of social media giveaways run for less than 7 days.
Another way to give back to your customers or attract new ones is freebies.
This must be done with purpose and sensitivity because it could negatively impact or devalue your brand’s perception.
There is a marketing strategy called “freemium” where a copy will give a customer a pared down version of their product in hopes that they can convert a free customer to a paid service.
A simple example of a freebie is a phone case after purchasing a new phone. This example can be used for a lot of different physical goods, especially those where there is already an existing market for accessories and peripherals.
2. Automated Marketing
We all know “Time is Money” and when it comes to marketing this truth stands. Luckily, there are a lot of strategies you can build into your automation to help supercharge your efforts. At Command Center we use Keap internally and deploy Keap automations for our partners as well.
Keap is a CRM (customer relationships management) tool and in our opinion the BEST one. Check some of our KEAP marketing automation tips here: https://cmdcntr.io/3-essential-automations-every-company-should-run-using-keap/
These automation flows can also allow you to reuse content from Content and Giveaways discussed above.
Wanting to run a contest?
You can create an automation pipeline to automate most of the process.
3. Live Chat / Support Line
Live Chat can help assist your customers with pre-sale questions or serve as a convenient way for them to connect with you after the sale.
Around 73% of customers find live chat the most satisfactory form of communication with a company.
If a visitor engages with a live chat agent, they’re 2.8 times more likely to end up purchasing a product.
In fact, 38% of customers reported making a purchase after having a good session with a live chat agent. Adding a live chat feature on a website will typically lead to a 20% increase in conversion rates.
4. Earn User's Trust
Nine out of ten (90%) consumers worldwide make the effort to read reviews before buying products (Trustpilot, 2020).
Clearly, reviews are a very important part of your e-commerce store. It is crucial to make sure the reviews are not “stuffed” or faked.
When assessing the authenticity of reviews customers are adept at spotting the fakes. When all the reviews are 5 star, posted on the same day or written in the same voice, customers will notice and those fake reviews will have a negative impact on your product or service.
Almost half (47 percent) of all internet users worldwide say they post reviews about a product, company, or service each month (GlobalWebIndex, 2019).
Increase the number of reviews you get on your products or service by including it as part of your marketing automation strategy.
Customers should not have to return to a product page to leave a review. They should be prompted to leave their review automatically over email and/or SMS.
5. Implement Operating Patterns
Shopify is a great platform and is generally easy to use, but requires a large upfront time investment.
A successful site demands great branding, updated content, eye-catching imagery, an effective sales pipeline, contact/support forms, business email, and the list can go on depending on your goals.
Finishing your site is just the beginning of the uphill climb web stores require. Having a flexible web solution that allows for quick pivoting can be what “makes or breaks” your business. Be sure that Shopify gives you the toolset you need to responsibly and effectively run your operation.
Did You Know...
- WordPress & WooCommerce are FREE
- Whitehouse.gov uses WordPress and is an essential piece of US infrastructure
- WordPress powers 39.6% of the internet in 2021
- WooCommerce has over 75 Million Downloads and 5 Million installs
- WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world
- Over 1.4 million live websites are using WooCommerce right now
