Your ecommerce site could do with a few optimization marketing strategies. Obviously digital marketing strategy for ecommerce and getting buyers over the final line requires a distinctive approach. Following are some strategies that can tip the conversion rates in your favor.
Gamification
Using a game like feature like completing a task or taking a quiz is a popular strategy. All online users like a fun and games. When you use a game like feature it can push the visitors to buy or engage with your content more. All your processes, tools, micro-sites, services can be made more game-like where you encourage the consumers to attempt certain challenges. Upon completion of that challenge you could reward them thereby you build a lot more engagement than done without it. For example, in a fitness site, you could offer goal setting, and tracking options to help visitors lose weight. Another example is to play with pop-ups. Whenever a first time consumer reaches your site a little spinning wheel can pop-up and say “spin the wheel to earn discounts on your first purchase”. There is a psychology behind this. Such an action gives the visitors a sense of control over what they get to take away. This also gives us a good signal that the visitor is preparing to make a buy. This makes the pop-up wheel so important in the gamification strategy. It can convert a casually browsing user or window shopper to a customer.
Upsell, Cross sell and Bundling
By using the strategies of bundling, upsell, cross sell it serves the purpose of increasing the visitors average order value. Increasing a visitor’s average order value should be one of the primary objective of your ecommerce site.
The strategy to be used are just straightforward suggestions to the visitor like:
- These products are often bought together
- Customers have purchased this product combination 5 times in last hour
- The next size of the product is available only for an increment of X dollars
Here it is a win-win situation for both sides since you are adding value to the visitor and your average order value increases. To arrive at the best bundling strategy, you should use data of past purchases which means it should be based on real facts of past purchases. Creating bundles based on your expectations, what you want sold, dead stock, biggest profit margins will not get the desired result. Data of past transactions should be the only criteria for creating bundles.
Partner Programs
This is a strategy where you partner with other ecommerce site thereby giving your customer a discount on the other ecommerce site and vice versa too. A purchase on one site is good for a discount on the other. The products to be chosen to partner with should be complimentary. When someone tries to buys from you tell them that you are associated with the partner companies where they can get X discount from the discount code you give them. This strategy can also be used for long term subscriptions where you offer a discount for a twelve-month period subscription compared to a monthly subscription.
Re-targeting
It is also known as remarketing. It is a form of online advertising that ensures that your brand is displayed in front of bounced traffic after they leave you site. As per surveys only 2% of traffic converts on first visit. This is useful when the visitor has come close to making a buy but had a last minute change of heart. Usually the number of touchpoints in a conversion process is between six and eight. Retargeting is a great way to stay on top of the mind of the lost visitor.
Rewards
Consumers really love it when they see an email after their purchase which offers a 10% discount on their next purchase. Rewards strategy acts as a psychological pep to encourage the visitors for repeat purchases and build brand loyalty. This strategy works well when the purchase is small and repeat.
There are many ways to implement this strategy. You could offer the following:
- Offer free products with repeat sales
- Implement a points system where the more they buy the larger the discounts they get
- You could offer a tenth purchase free after they had made nine purchases of the same product
Reduce Cart Abandonment
Here you need to first understand why visitors are abandoning carts to start with. It could be price. Or they could be just window shopping. Or they were looking for products from which they could get a discount in another site. It could be also the lack of trust factor in your payment gateway. Once the problem is identified the plan is to counter that objection by a pre-emptive action ie you do an action before the rejection happens. Once you have set the right pre-emptive actions for each and all type of rejections you are in the best position to tackle the problem and increase conversion rates.
Some of the pre-emptive actions include:
- Real time chat supported by a human. This allays the fears of the visitor
- Trustworthiness in payment gateway: increase the feeling of security in the visitor by displaying the service provider logos, security stamps, privacy protection etc.
- High quality images of products: having good quality images of your products increases the brand factor
- Reconnect with email: After finding out where they dropped out in the conversion funnel you can mail them to entice them back.
- Retargeting: this was dealt with earlier. You could use facebook ads, google ads to ensure you remarket to them again
- Delivery discounts: Offer whatever possible delivery discounts, express delivery options.
- Create a safety net for returns: Add value and make the customers feel protection with money back guarantees within 30 days.
The above marketing strategies for ecommerce should ensure a significant increase in your conversion rates.
