Did you know that seven in ten Americans have shopped online? Also, 25% of Americans shop online monthly. E-commerce is growing at a tremendous rate. The global e-commerce market is forecasted to hit 6 trillion in 2022. Among the reasons for the growth of e-commerce include the rise in mobile phone usage, omnichannel retailing, convenience, and a greater range of offerings. In addition to these long-term trends, the e-commerce industry is seeing huge boosts due to COVID-19. E-commerce revenue in the Americas has seen a 180% growth YoY and is not showing signs of slowing down.
The extensive growth in e-commerce means massive competition for consumer brands. As such, enterprises are looking for ways to stand out and attain a competitive advantage over competitors. Not only is it crucial for brands to follow industry best practices, but it is more important than ever to employ more advanced tactics to ensure your business’ success and survival.
E-commerce Best Practices
1. Catalogue Optimization
Therefore, it is a best practice for online businesses to optimize their catalogues. Catalogue optimization ensures that it is easy and intuitive to find products in an ocean of merchandise and improves user experience. Ways to optimize your catalogue include:
- Display products in an organized and informative manner that is visually appealing.
- Streamline browsing and search experiences by ensuring easy product discovery with recommended similar products, which can reduce bounce rates and loss of sales.
- Offer consistent product data that allows comparisons between products so customers can choose the one that best suits their needs.
- Make it easy for customers to find the most relevant products by creating personalized guided shopping experiences with quiz chatbots and dynamic product feed integrations.
- Enable conversational search of your product catalogue.
- Optimize your product descriptions and titles to improve your rankings in Google Shopping. Now that Google allows products to be listed organically in addition to paid listings, this is more important than ever.
2. Invest in Social Selling
In the current digital age, your e-commerce marketing strategy must include social selling. Currently, consumers spend more time on social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter than ever before. According to Statista, in 2019, internet users spent 144 minutes daily on social media.
Social networks offer massive social selling opportunities for your business. You can use social media to find, connect with, and nurture prospects. And, with billions of people on social media, your brand and products can reach a much larger audience. Utilizing conversational marketing on social media can take your social selling to the best level by personalizing customers’ shopping experience.
3. Improve Customer Experience
In the increasingly competitive e-commerce market, it is crucial that companies improve their user experience. A good user experience establishes trust, increases customer satisfaction, and improves conversion rates. A proven way of enhancing customer experience is using guided shopping bots. Guided shopping bots improve user experience by:
- Creating personalized brand experiences based on customer needs and intents.
- Engaging users when they show buying intent. Social messaging bots can suggest products to drive purchases.
- Guiding users through multiple or large catalogues to help find the perfect item.
- Reaching out to customers to re-engage them once they have engaged with the brand.
4. Retargeting
What is declared data?
Declared data is information that is explicitly volunteered by consumers in a direct interaction with your business. It can be used to validate demographic data. But it also enables marketers to identify the needs, wants and desires of a customer. It is data most marketers can only assume about their audience unless they explicitly collect it.
5. Engage Customers with Chat
One of the upcoming trends in e-commerce is using conversational chatbots to convert customers on Facebook or through Google Display Ads. These marketing chatbots can recommend products and gain valuable customer insights without the user ever visiting the website. This personalization improves the shopping experience and increases customer satisfaction while driving sales and improving ROI.
Don't Survive –Thrive
It is no secret that the e-commerce industry is exceptionally competitive and is growing faster than ever. Adopting these advanced practices and new technology, like e-commerce chatbots, will help your brand pull ahead of the competition.
Still Not Convinced?
- Messaging apps have overtaken social media platforms in the number of active monthly users by 20%.
- Businesses and users exchange 20 billion messages on Facebook Messenger monthly.
- 35% of consumers would like more enterprises to use chatbots.
- 60% of consumers have used a chatbot for their queries in the last 12 months.
- By 2020, 80% of companies will have a chatbot on their site.
- By 2021, 85% of customer interactions will take place without human agents.
- Chatbots will cut business expenses by $8 billion.
- Consumers want 24-hour service that chatbots provide, according to 64% of internet users.
- Reduce acquisition costs by up to nine times.
- Achieve a higher ROI. Happy Socks attained a 20% revenue lift after adopting conversational marketing powered by Spectrm.
- Beat ad fatigue by personalizing customer experiences in high intent moments.
- Increase conversations. Telekom reported a 60% conversion completion rate with Spectrm.
The Bottom Line
It is no longer enough to follow traditional basic best practices to help your enterprise compete when it comes to digital marketing. E-commerce chatbots are not just a “nice to have” when it comes to your eCommerce strategy. They’re essential to position your business ahead of the competition. Take your e-commerce marketing to the next level with a shopping bot built with Spectrm. Book a demo today.