Top 7 Ways to Improve Customer Engagement and Increase eCommerce Sales
Customer engagement is to eCommerce is what cheese is to wine. If you find yourself struggling to meet your targets, increase eCommerce sales, or drive revenues, it might be because you aren’t driving sufficient efforts in engaging your customers.
In a world where it has become so easy for customers to move from one online brand to another, customer engagement is central to digital success and must be a constant priority for businesses.
Customer engagement is a critical aspect of any eCommerce strategy , as it helps organizations deliver better experiences and foster stronger (and longer) relationships with customers.
Here are the 7 top ways to improve customer engagement and increase eCommerce sales:
Opt for a content-first strategy : In the eCommerce era, product content is the driving force of successful digital commerce. Since today’s customers always expect useful, accessible, and high-quality content across all channels, organizations need to work towards creating, publishing, and distributing content efficiently and effectively.
Opting for a content-first strategy means accurate, enriched, and consistent product content lies at the foundation of your business.
Since customers need to be able to easily find (and trust) your products, a content-first strategy provides all the information your customers need to make quick and easy purchasing decisions.
Provide rich (and right) details :Â Unlike in a brick-and-mortar setup where it is fairly easy for customers to reach out to a retail worker to have their query answered, in eCommerce, you must provide rich and accurate details to customers at every touchpoint of the buying journey: beginning from awareness to consideration, purchase, and support.
By providing detailed product information, technical specifications, instruction manuals, product comparison charts, buyer guides, product reviews, and FAQs at the right place and the right time, you can drive exceptional engagement led by your content and experience goals.
Strengthen your Product Experience : Today’s tech-savvy and context-aware customers reach out to brands not just to buy products, but also to seek expertise.
Another way to strengthen customer engagement is by creating a powerful customer-centric experience w.r.t the products, i.e., a Product Experience for the ages.
Modern cloud-based platforms like Amaze can enable seamless and efficient management of products, data, and experiences – in a single location, allowing you to easily manage all your product information and unlock your product’s potential via rich content and a meaningful, well-designed interface.
Make sure to provide an experience that gives all the answers to customer questions as they navigate through your digital portfolio.
From robust search engine performance to seamless discovery and objection handling – a rich and curated product experience is a great way to align customer needs to brand offerings and establish a trustworthy and efficient journey that fortifies loyalty and advocacy.
Enable personalization : When customers engage with a business, they don’t want to be just one among many; they want to feel special and cared for. They want the business to understand their needs and offer products that best fit them – even if it comes at a cost! Do you know?
Customers are ready to spend 17% more for a good experience! Leveraging data and insights to enable personalization is a great way to drive engagement and capture an increasing share of the customer’s wallet while efficiently growing average order values.
With the right data, you can clearly gauge current (and future needs), buying behavior, and preferences and deliver the right assortment of products, bundles, and accessories while creating optimum cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
Seek feedback and reviews :Â Rich customer engagement is not just about providing products that customers desire; it is also about giving them a platform where they can voice their thoughts, views, and opinions.
Such feedback can allow you to feel the pulse of your customers while helping you stay a step ahead in the market; it can help you in measuring customer satisfaction as well as in making better business decisions.
Seeking ratings, feedback, and reviews from your customers can not only help in creating a sense of “being heard”; it also allows you to incorporate their feedback into your products – to continuously improve customer experience and engagement.
Build on loyalty programs :Â For customers who are loyal to your brand, offering the best and most lucrative loyalty programs can help in boosting ongoing engagement.
Offering uber-curated offers and discounts is a great way of rewarding and incentivizing your loyal customers. If customers feel good about purchasing products from you, they will most likely keep coming back to you for their product needs – giving your business an edge against your competitors.
With the right offers, you can improve customer loyalty and retention while boosting sales and organizational growth.
Get mobile (and social) :Â As buyers become savvy, they are increasingly using their smartphones to conduct search across multiple screens. To keep up with the growing expectations of customers and drive engagement, organizations must operate with a mobile-first strategy that makes content accessible at the right time and in a manner that the buyer expects.
Offering mobile-specific features like geotagging, AR, push notifications, beacons, and NFC is certain to pave the way for a seamless and trustworthy buying experience that translates into revenue goals.
At the same time, it also makes sense to strengthen your social media presence; this includes regularly posting about new products and features on different channels, promptly responding to concerns and queries, and engaging via contests and events.
Given that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable, organizations need to constantly up their digital commerce game.
Opting for a content-first strategy, providing rich details, strengthening product UX, enabling personalization, seeking feedback, building on loyalty programs and improving mobile, and social capabilities are great ways to improve engagement, boost, revenue, and transform your digital future.