E-commerce is coming up with innovations every day to save cost and time, boost sales and improve customer experiences. With newer technologies, rising competition, and changing customer expectations, the customers will see businesses going out of their way to capture and engage audiences. Getting potential customers to your B2C e-commerce store is not the only challenge, but the real challenge is to keep them engaged and gain customer loyalty. The engaged customer is the most important resource for online businesses because it not only drives consistent revenues but also recommends your store to other customers.
In the present competitive landscape of online business, the e-commerce stores need to match the dynamic needs of customers, market, keep learning and growing in the industry. Well, it is easy to say and hard to implement because B2C e-commerce requires very thoughtful planning and strategizing to reap the benefits of sustainability.
Online Trends: Learning From The Bigwigs
Looking at the giants of B2C ecommerce, you can also get to know about the next likely marketing trends in the online industry. One of the best examples is Amazon as we can learn ultimate lessons from the brand.
Amazon
Undoubtedly, it is one of the biggest giants in online industry and strategized many marketing techniques to gain the top market position. We will focus on the online marketing of Prime video through the power of memberships.
Amazon Prime is a subscription-based revenue model and charges a minimal amount for monthly and annual fees. The comprehensive benefits of Amazon Prime are very attractive for customers and some of them are:
- Online streaming of movies and TV shows
- Two-day shipping for millions of prime items and overnight shipping on selected items
- Access to thousands of books on Kindle and songs on Prime music
- Additional perks and discounts
The existing Amazon Prime members spend around $600 more every year when compared to non-members. It shows that the power of membership and loyalty programs is huge and an excellent way of establishing customer relationships.
Another learning from the B2C e-commerce giant is free and quick shipping. Many consumers accept that free shipping and same-day shipping are some of the top reasons for them to shop online. It is an added incentive for consumers and would give them more reasons to shop online.
Amazon is also among the first users of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning in its business operations and driven state-of-the-art personalization. The company has got tremendous benefits through cutting-edge technology and made Amazon a leader in the industry.
If you need help in strategizing your marketing techniques you need advanced yet easy to use tools. StoreHippo , the top ecommerce platform provides you with a fully-featured e-commerce platform that takes the pains of your online business. Now, you can easily provide a robust, feature-rich and personalized experience to your customers.
Today, saying "no" to technology and modernization is not an option, especially in the ecommerce sector. In today's competitive scenario, beating the competition is not only about having good products, but you also need to focus on a lot more things like innovation, customer experience, sustainable business process, and a lot more.
Many online retail companies are capturing their target audience, engaging them, and retaining them in a financially sustainable manner.
Table of Contents
Let's have a look at some of the most successful strategies followed by B2C e-commerce giants
1. Avoid static content
The online business world is meant to be dynamic so that the visitors see a new thing every time. The online store is a much wider concept than the stock of photos and descriptions. It is very important to keep the store lively and follow the mixed content format strategy like animated pages, videos, browsing and navigation effects, interactive features like 360-degree product views, etc. It improves customer experiences and conversions too.
2. Social proofs for enhanced customer trust
Customers always seek reassurance for their purchasing decision, especially when it is online. B2C e-commerce can leverage social proofs to convert the maximum number of prospects and provide a positive reaffirmation to the existing customers. The customer reviews on the website can also add up to the benefits of social proof. The advanced social plugins and social media marketing provided by StoreHippo can help in streamlining your social presence.
3. Site performance and usability
The good website experience is a MUST for a B2C e-commerce store, that includes load time of web pages, easy navigation, and overall usability of the website. The site experience means the complete structure of a website like finding relevant products to the placement of orders on the store. Some of the excellent examples of site usage and experience are the one-click ordering process, customized product recommendations for users.
4. User suggestions
Netflix has given one of the biggest marketing lessons to the online business and industry in context to user suggestions and personalization. They know the importance of providing suggested content based on the data to boost the experience of users. The online business is all about understanding your audience and matching their requirements, StoreHippo helps you start, build, and maintain your business with state-of-the-art features to achieve higher rates of customer satisfaction.
5. Mobile e-commerce marketing
M-commerce is the most trending thing in today's e-commerce world. Creating the desired experience for consumers requires mobile-first strategy because most of the consumers visit the website on mobile. You can also engage and convert more online shoppers with excellent mobile marketing efforts of StoreHippo. This touchpoint is the biggest opportunity for B2C e-commerce to drive the best customer experience.
6. Track your marketing efforts
Most successful online stores prefer to analyze their marketing efforts in every possible manner. They are just obsessed with the data and metrics. Every marketing and promotional decision is driven by data and some of the most important components of the metrics are:
- Segmentation of conversion rate as it is a key success indicator
- Segmentation of revenues because it gives an overview of the impactful pages that are boosting the bottom line of business
- Measurement of funnel abandonment is a very important factor for online stores as it can make or break the business. The top e-commerce platforms like StoreHippo can help you with the follow-ups of cart abandonment with built-in features to win the lost customers
- Customer lifetime value is also very important metrics to measure the overall revenue that a customer brings during their time as your customer
7. Community power
The utmost power is indeed in the hands of customers. The users can create or respond to the communications, ask questions, get help from the community. For example, the forum or community discussion points is a good idea to bring repeat customers, give a brand recall, and keep the customers motivated to continue their journey.
8. Omni-channel customer experience
This experience is a combination of different customer touchpoints with seamless integration, that allows customers to pick up where they left off last time. Today, customers use multiple engagement channels to access B2C e-commerce platforms like email, web, voice, social, etc. All these channels need to be linked with each other to achieve streamlined customer services, engaged loyal customers, improved competitive advantage, and customized interaction at different touchpoints.
9. Loyalty and Rewards program
The acquisition of new customers is just a part of marketing efforts, the real effort lies in engaging existing customers and converting them into loyal customers. In B2C e-commerce, keeping the customers and their conversion rate for a long time counts a lot because the trust of customers earns you more customers and ultimately, more revenue.
10. Advanced personalization tools
The power of personalization cannot be underestimated in e-commerce. According to Gartner (source), smart personalization enables online businesses to increase their profitability by 15%. It clarifies that it makes a lot of difference to your business, helps you create a unique shopping experience for customers and also boost your sales.
Wrap-up
There is a lot more to learn from B2C e-commerce giants other than these key things like memberships, marketing campaigns, community, user suggestions, omnichannel experience, customer lifetime value. Setting up an online store and preparing yourself for better is not easy but StoreHippo can make it a cakewalk for you and allow you to innovate different ways to beat your competitors in the dynamic industry.Sign up for a 14 days free trial and start your ecommerce journey with us TODAY.
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