As the ecommerce arena is rapidly changing due to the pandemic and many emerging trends, it’s vital for every brand in this industry to find new ways to grow and reach new heights of success amidst these changes.
Yes, online selling has grown substantially, but so has the competition for ecommerce brands, making it essential for each and every one of them to find ways to stand out and stay relevant. From evergreen methods that have stood the test of time, to a number of strategies specific to the current circumstances, let’s cover the most vital ideas to help your ecommerce brand thrive.
Customer-centric web design
With so many options online, customers are more likely to purchase (and come back for more) from online retailers that have intuitive, user-friendly sites. That means that you need to keep your load speed up to par, avoid spammy content like too many pop-ups, and always make sure all your content and pages load seamlessly on mobile.
Depending on your specific niche, of course, you’ll find that there are other, sector-specific ways you can use ecommerce web design to make your site as appealing as possible to your audience. For example, most modern customers want live chat support – and they don’t mind relying on chatbots, for that matter, as long as they get immediate assistance.
Branded app development for direct customer access
As we’ve mentioned previously, customers want to get help instantly, if they need it, but the same sentiment applies to all other interactions with your audience. The answer? A dedicated, branded app for your store. The trend of immediate gratification is inspiring more brands to work with an app development agency and create an app that will make your brand immediately available, at all times.
- You can create and personalise content depending on each user’s digital footprint and preferences.
- You will be able to offer increasingly accurate and meaningful purchase suggestions, together with customer reviews.
- Providing personalised alerts based on the user’s interest is easy with a branded app, too.
Social media engagement
Your success doesn’t end with a successful purchase. The more you interact and engage with your audience, the better your chances are to get them to come back, time and time again. The most effective way to elevate customer engagement and humanise your business is to use social media platforms.
- Narrow down your presence on social platforms where you can start and manage meaningful interactions, and where your customers like to spend their time.
- Start building long-lasting influencer relationships, to add more authority to your products and build customer trust.
- Interactive content in the form of questions, polls, stories, and even simply responding to comments helps you build a stronger presence.
- Keep an eye on emerging social media trends like short-form videos and stories.
Enabling m-commerce
If you’re enabling your own branded app, you’re on the right track. However, you also need to consider the natural progression of ecommerce into m-commerce, or the tendency of modern consumers to buy via their phones more frequently. That also means that you need to enable seamless and secure mobile banking transfers and payments.
Keep the experience consistent across all devices, but enable specific features available only via phones, to maximise the m-commerce experience.
Expand your digital marketing with SEM
As an ecommerce business, you most certainly already use a range of effective digital marketing strategies such as SEO to organically reach more people and grow brand awareness. In addition to your organic efforts, you should consider diversifying with paid forms of advertising your business online, or to be more specific, with search engine marketing, including Google Shopping advertising.
Working with a specialist ecommerce PPC agency to advertise on search engines such as Google, can help gain immediate traction with buyers at multiple stages of the sales funnel.
- Paid social ads can help you generate more revenue by offering specific products to your target audience in a highly targeted, specified manner.
- Combining ecommerce SEO and PPC helps you get the best of both worlds: immediate as well as long-term customer engagement, more purchases, as well as repeat business.
Trust-building through social proof
Social proof, or the customer-created content that vouches for your business, helps increase your relevance in the eyes of potential buyers, elevates trust, and boosts loyalty. From on-site reviews, third-party testimonials, all the way to ratings on social can serve as social proof that your brand delivers on its promise.
Considering the highly competitive nature of the industry, social proof is quickly becoming the most effective way to inspire trust among new visitors.
Diversify with niche products or services
The more the ecommerce industry becomes saturated with new brands, the more difficult it becomes for existing companies to genuinely differentiate themselves. Diversification through niche products can help your ecommerce brand gain more momentum and attract a specific, highly targeted subset of your audience.
Becoming an expert in a niche within ecommerce means that you’re narrowing down your customer pool, but you’re also effectively becoming more appealing to that specific group of people. As time goes by, more ecommerce brands will need to take a niche approach instead of aiming for a vast number of product categories.
Value-driven, versatile content
As one of the most ROI-friendly marketing strategies, ecommerce content creation should be a primary strategy for any ecommerce business, albeit a timeless one. In addition to reviews, social media posts, and ads (all of which constitute content), you should have a dedicated content strategy for your ecommerce brand.
- Regular, quality posts will impact your SEO and your audience engagement.
- Providing informative, helpful content makes you an industry expert and increases your potential to qualify more leads and land more buyers.
- Diverse content, from videos, blogs, to infographics will help you reach more people effectively and increase your sales.
Whether you focus on a handful of tactics or you choose to diversify with as many options as possible, you will stand a far better chance to retain and enhance your position in the ecommerce arena. Every brand needs a strong growth strategy to succeed, and the suggested methods are the most promising ones available to enable your ecommerce business to stand out.
