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- Consumer shopping habits have transformed over the years
with more shoppers going online to buy.
I mean, I know I am personally all the time,
to a fault maybe, but with the way things are looking,
there's no likelihood of ecommerce sales declining soon.
So once shoppers develop these new habits,
they're more likely to stick to them rather than go back
to the traditional brick and mortar shopping.
- And even with an uncertain economy,
opportunities to grow your business are everywhere.
Trust me.
And if you currently don't have an online presence
this could be the right time
to get your ecommerce site established.
Now, if you already have an ecommerce site, cool,
you might want to optimize the service
you offer your buyers.
Though your technology needs, they'll vary,
but there's definitely some basics out there
that every ecommerce owner could benefit from.
Starting with, Personalization of your Ecommerce Strategy.
While some online stores attempt to just compete on price,
this doesn't always make financial sense, right?
And you might be thinking of a time you even did that
at your business itself, but if you really wanna stand out,
one of my favorite ways is to do this
through personalization.
- Survey after survey highlights the importance
of personalization in ecommerce.
And one study shows
that it actually increases conversion rates
by nearly 8%, and about 75% of shoppers say
they appreciate that personal touch.
And if that's not enough to convince you, let's look
at some of the other benefits of personalization.
For one, it encourages loyalty and increases your sales,
similar to that stat I just shared.
It enhances customer communication
and makes them feel valued.
It improves consumer recommendation and conversions.
And it ultimately reduces your bounce rates.
- And take a minute to think of any large ecommerce stores
that you buy from, chances are they use personalization,
which means you get sent content
about products that you are interested in,
products that you're most likely to respond to,
and also anything that's newly released
or relevant to your purchase that you made recently.
Happens to me all the time.
- But this personal touch doesn't need
to just apply to larger brands,
there are several simple tools that you can use
to tailor your offerings.
Google Optimize 360 is a fantastic resource
because it lets you create A/B testing.
So A/B testing is where you have,
say your landing page and it's running fine,
but you wanna do an alternate version
of that landing page and change the button text
or change the real main call-to-action or persuasive,
and you can compare those side-by-side
to see which one performs the best.
And then there's also Optimizely, and Adobe Target.
These are some great resources to really start
to tailor your offerings to your customers.
- Let's talk about Newsletter Management.
Do you currently have a newsletter?
If not, maybe now's the time.
I mean, this is a great way to reach your customers.
And while there are plenty
of other marketing methods available, research demonstrates
that most consumers do in fact want promotional emails
and coming from you, the brands that they like
and that they wanna buy from.
Not only that, but there's enough research out there
to show that email newsletters can be more effective
than social media, yeah.
- So what makes newsletter marketing so effective?
Well, newsletters offer an affordable way to create
and nurture those brand new leads
and also helps you establish your company as an authority
by sending out that awesome content that you do.
And it also allows you to highlight your new products.
But you can start to tailor them to individual customers
to also bolster your conversions.
And if you think
of the prospect of setting up a newsletter sounds daunting,
don't worry, it actually is pretty simple.
With GoDaddy, you can create a newsletter
in just a couple of minutes.
- Now we're gonna get into Analytics and Inventory Trackers.
And this is where data comes in.
Think about it,
if you wanna better understand consumer behavior,
then you'll need to do some digging into your data.
And this is one approach that many companies are turning to,
to enhance not only their online success
but also their offline success,
as well as providing an increasingly personalized approach
to marketing.
Businesses are also using data to do a few things,
starting with, respond to changing needs,
measure their marketing efforts,
also manage inventory and predict future trends,
which is pretty cool.
Increase conversions, determine product strategy,
the list goes on, and also improve customer service.
Now, once you have access
to all the detailed data here, you guessed it,
you can make better informed decisions about your direction
as well as, you could possibly reduce costs
and then totally maximize your earnings.
- Exactly.
And now let's talk about some Social Media Tools.
So as we all know, social media enables you
to really engage with customers and answer their questions,
but there are plenty of other ways it can help
you grow your ecommerce site.
So you can do things
like send out promotional offers like pre-orders and sales.
You can also allow your customers to share their recent buys
with their followers
and get that user-generated content that we all love.
You can also start to develop targeted efficient campaigns
to reach a wider audience,
so not just the people that follow you.
And then, one of my personal favorites
here is hosting contests.
I love entering those contests with the ability
to potentially win some awesome swag
or your product or service,
but it helps encourage that user-generated content,
really getting your name out there.
But not every ecommerce owner has the resources
to take on a full social media manager.
You're already wearing a ton of hats
but is where some essential tech tools can prove invaluable.
- You know what else is out there?
Customer Service Management Tools, which are great.
There's no getting away from it.
Good consumer relations are essential to your growth,
you know that, and most consumers when interviewed
and asked about poor customer service,
they said it absolutely influenced their buying behaviors.
The survey revealed, the one that I read recently,
revealed that 67% of the shoppers expect customer service
to be efficient.
- And with ecommerce tech, you can automate many
of your usual processes and optimize service level.
And as a small to medium-sized business
you can't always be there for your customers,
but you can use ecommerce tech to automate many
of your usual processes and optimize those service levels.
For instance, you can use analytics tools
to improve response times or you can use specific
customer relationship management software or CRMs,
and there's plenty to choose from,
including HubSpot's free CRM for sales leaders,
Zoho's CRM which has several paid membership levels,
to name a few.
- The shift to ecommerce shows zero signs of slowing down,
I'm sure you can relate.
And also global events have even pushed us
and consumers towards online shopping even further.
And many experts state that once consumers have changed
their shopping habits, guess what?
They're not likely to go back to their old ways of buying.
So, in with the new, out with the old.
- You've got that right.
And if you haven't made the move to ecommerce
or if your store is lacking the tools that you need
to make it a success, now might be a good time
to optimize your online offerings,
But that's all I've got for you.
We definitely hope this video helped you
with your ecommerce success,
and if you've learned anything in this video,
let us know in the comments below.
And while you're there,
make sure you smash that like button.
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This is The Journey.