Tag: ecommerce website

ecommerce-trends

10 Ecommerce Trends You Need to Know in 2023

Posted on | by devops

The internet has transformed the way we shop. In fact, you may already shop online for most of your needs. But as an eCommerce entrepreneur, knowing the latest trends coming down the pipeline is essential to staying competitive and offering excellent customer experiences. Here are 10 eCommerce trends that will have a significant impact on your business by 2023: 

  1. Omnichannel Retailing

Omnichannel is the integration of online and offline channels. It’s about creating a seamless experience for customers, who are increasingly expecting to pick up where they left off across devices and platforms. As omnichannel becomes more critical in eCommerce strategy, the customer experience has become more relevant than ever—and it’s here that you can make your mark on the industry. 

The future of eCommerce will be shaped by how well companies deliver on a streamlined shopping journey that provides convenience, speed, and personalization at every turn—not only when you’re making a purchase but also before it occurs. The key factor in this future? The customer experience. 

  1. Social Commerce

Social commerce is the new customer experience. With 153 million people engaging in social media daily, it’s no surprise that social media has become a lucrative marketing channel for brands. When you consider how many people share their shopping experiences on social media, it’s easy to see why social commerce is quickly becoming an essential part of any eCommerce strategy.

This trend will only grow as more consumers use social platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok to discover products they want to buy – sometimes before they ever walk through your doors or visit your website! Social commerce is also becoming increasingly important because consumers are influenced by what other shoppers say about products or services before making purchases themselves. 

  1. Customer Service

Customer service is one of the most important aspects of online retail. It’s not just about providing a good experience; it’s about being able to do so in multiple languages and ensuring you can handle customer inquiries, returns, and other issues quickly and efficiently. 

The more automated your customer service is, the better. You don’t want to spend time manually responding to every single customer inquiry. This type of automation can be implemented through chatbots on your website or social media channels. 

  1. Mobile Shopping

Mobile shopping is on the rise, and it’s here to stay. According to a recent study from Google, more than 55% of people say they frequently browse products on their phones when in-store. If you’re not using mobile technology to sell your product, you’re likely missing out on a major opportunity. 

Mobile shopping can be convenient for customers because it allows them to shop anywhere at any time without waiting in line. It also provides an opportunity for greater personalization: your customers are more likely to spend more money with companies that cater specifically to their needs as individuals. 

  1. Subscription-Based Shopping

Subscription-based shopping is another trend that you should familiarize yourself with, as it’s a growing part of eCommerce. Subscription services are predicted to account for $904.28 billion in sales by 2026. 

With this model, customers pay a monthly fee for ongoing service and get access to products or services without having to pay extra each time they want something new.  

  1. Visual Search

Visual search is a hot topic in eCommerce, with an increasing number of retailers using it to improve their search engine results. It’s easy to see why: visual search allows consumers to find products based on the image they provide, rather than having them type keywords or use other traditional search features. 

In the past year or so, we’ve seen this technology from brands like Amazon and Pinterest, where you can use pictures of items to find similar ones that might fit into your life seamlessly.  

  1. Live Shopping in Augmented Reality

In the past, augmented reality (AR) was primarily used for gaming. But now, live shopping in AR is becoming a reality. 

AR allows consumers to experience products and services in their environment using digital graphics overlaid on top of real-world images captured by a camera. With AR technology, customers can see how your product or service will look in their home before they purchase it. 

  1. Contactless Payment

Contactless payment is the future of payment processing. In fact, contactless payments are growing faster than any other type of financial technology in the market today. 

If you’re not familiar with contactless payments, they allow you to pay using your phone or other NFC-enabled device without having to use cash or credit cards. Contactless payments are easy to use and convenient, making them ideal for today’s mobile-first world where time is money. 

  1. Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS)

BOPIS allows customers to choose between having their products shipped directly to them or picking them up in person from a nearby retail location. This option gives shoppers greater convenience and control over their purchases. They can decide whether they want the product immediately or later. In some cases, BOPIS also allows retailers to offer additional discounts for products picked up at physical locations instead of purchasing online only; this encourages a higher rate of foot traffic into stores while still providing easy access for those who prefer online shopping. 

  1. Curbside Pickup

Curbside pickup involves face-to-face interactions between customers and sales staff but doesn’t require shoppers’ physical presence inside an actual store. It simply requires that they notify the store via app or online that they’ve arrived, and staff members will bring items out to the customer and place it in their vehicle. This option stuck around after COVID-19, and we see it becoming even more popular in the future! 

Agency Partner Interactive  

The COVID-19 pandemic spearheaded the global eCommerce surge out of necessity, and since then, it has continued to evolve to meet the needs of modern consumers. While these eCommerce trends are critical to know for any online business, they’re just the beginning. If you need help developing a compelling, conversion-driven eCommerce marketing strategy, Agency Partner is here to help. Our internet marketing team has worked with brands of all sizes and industries to drive engagement, web traffic, customer loyalty, and revenue. Ready to optimize and future-proof your eCommerce business? Schedule your consultation today! 

email-marketing

E-Commerce Email Marketing 101: 11 Must-Have Emails (2021)

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For E-Commerce Email Marketing 101: 11 Must-Have Emails (2021)

 

Marketing campaigns are essential for attracting customers for every business, and it’s not always easy to get it right. You need to make sure you’re properly appealing to your customers if you want them to be interested in what you’re selling, and a marketing campaign that falls flat can be a huge waste of your money and time. It’s a little different when it comes to email marketing, but you should still make sure you understand what it takes to make for an effective marketing Email. 

Your welcome Email

If you’ve just had a customer subscribe to your eCommerce Email service, then you want to make sure that you’re able to impress them from the beginning. Whether they’ve applied to have the latest news or the latest promotions, you want to ensure that it’s something they don’t regret. Subscribing to these Emails can sometimes come across as spam, so you want to make sure the content within your welcome Email provides something to the customer and will make them want to read the content of your next ones! 

Sending curated content

When you’re trying to sell products to people, they want to know what it is that makes it worth their while. When it comes to pushing out a list of products, your customer will likely be interested in what’s best from that list. Sending out a curated list of products to a customer is interesting for multiple reasons. Not only does it display the price and functionality of those products, but it’s set out appealingly to let them know which product is the best one for them and how much they’re gaining by buying what it is that you’re selling!

Whether it’s a service or a product, doing a little research into those kinds of specifications can make a convincing Email. Content marketing is essential for grabbing customer attention, and curated content is one of the best forms of that! 

Engaging Emails

If you’re going to have your customers open the emails, you send them. It would be best if you let them know that it’s worth their while. Having something with the Email that’s directly offering them something. You don’t have to give anything away for free, but you could offer them something in exchange for shopping with your right now. It could be a discount. It could be a promotion – so long as it grabs their attention and doesn’t cost you too much; it’s an effective way to have someone open your Email to learn more. 

A referral Email

Much like the engaging Email format, a referral Email can be another way for you to get your customer’s interest in what you’re sending. Except for this time, they’re not gaining something specifically from shopping with you but instead from referring a friend to your business. It could be a free giveaway when a friend uses their personal code included in the Email. You win. Your customer wins. It’s beneficial for everyone! It’s an essential piece of eCommerce email marketing. 

Discount Emails

When someone signs up to be a subscriber of your Emails, it’s likely because they’re looking to benefit from it. They want to know what you’re selling and when it’s on sale. Sending out Emails to your customers to let them know when you have discounts can be a great way to grab their attention. Not only will they be interested in this Email, but they’ll be looking for discounts within your upcoming ones too! It’s a great way to hold your customers’ interest. 

Cart reminder Emails

If you’ve spent much time shopping online, then you’ve likely at some point forgotten about something that you were going to buy. When a customer is interested enough to put something in their cart, they likely would like to purchase it. You can have an automatic Email set up to remind your customer if they’ve forgotten about their cart and still have items there that are unpurchased. It’s a great way to remind them, and they will surely appreciate it. 

Order Confirmation Emails

This is essential for any eCommerce site. It lets your customer know that you’ve received their order and that it is, in fact, on the way to them. Your customer needs this as it helps them form trust with you as a business. They want to know that you’ve gotten their money and that they can expect the product that they paid for. 

Upsell Emails

An upsell Email is when you offer your customer something extra for a bit more to increase the price that they’re spending with you. While it might sound like you’re just trying to sell them extras that they don’t need, this can be a helpful tip for them to enrich their experience with what they just bought! It’s usually something that improves their purchase while also increases the price of their total order. 

Redemption Emails

In this day and age, it’s far too easy to lose your customers to your competitors, and it could be for several reasons. Maybe your customers have found another site with better prices and discounts, or they didn’t have the money to invest in you anymore. An Email to remind them that you’re a service worth their time can be a great way to help with this! Usually, a special discount is applied with the Email to win their attention back to you, redeeming your business in their eyes! 

A survey Email

Getting customer feedback is a valuable process, and you should always be looking for ways to get it. You can send surveys to your customers in exchange for a product, discount, or another form of promotion to help incentivize them into completing the survey. This information can be a great way to improve your business model and appeal to more customers. Furthermore, your eCommerce Email marketing will benefit from your customers’ input, as they can help you make more appealing Emails. 

A thank you Email

While your customers might appreciate the deals and products that you have on offer, you should make sure you take the time to appreciate your customers. If you want to encourage a loyal customer base, sending an email thanking them for their patronage can be a great way to bring them back. 

online-store-tips

5 Essential Ways To Attract Customers to Your Online Store

Posted on | by Agency Partner
Expert Tips For 5 Essential Ways To Attract Customers to Your Online Store

Whether selling digital items or a brick-and-mortar store, every business requires a website to reach increasingly digital customers. When customers search for your business online, the first thing they find is your ecommerce website. But they cannot come to your website if you do not attract them there. 

And even if they find your website, they won’t convert to leads or buying customers if the store isn’t of the right quality. This guide by ecommerce marketing experts discusses actionable ways to attract your customers to your online store. 

  1. Make Your Store Beautiful

If you have an online shopping agency, you should work on making your website attractive. That boils down to ecommerce web development and implementing fundamentals like making it beautiful, professional, and aesthetic appeal. There is no need to offer great products on an ugly website. 

With thousands of online stores to choose from, customers can go virtually anywhere and get similar products on a beautiful website. That’s why your website design should stand out from the rest. After all, customers consider a beautiful store to be more trustworthy and reliable. 

Things to consider may include attractive colors, images, and layout. When a potential customer reaches your website, they should stay for long enough to make a purchasing decision. Therefore, the photos you use should meet the visitor’s expectations, especially images of products. 

Remember, first impressions are critical. If you are selling female clothes, ask your ecommerce web design solutions provider to use sharp colors like pink, red, and so on. For technology-based items like laptops, light blue or black would do just fine. 

  1. Increase Activity on Social Media

Would you please not buy the lies that good products sell on their own? You have to put your products in front of potential customers for them to purchase them. The best place to do that is on social media. 

It would help if you sign-up on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so on with your company’s name. Here, you will meet millions of potential customers both from near you and internationally. You can reach them via specific advertisements or by posting relevant information through your company’s accounts. 

Given the many companies vying for potential customers on social media, you cannot afford to stay out of it. Each one of these businesses is fighting for a share of more than 3.6 billion social media users, according to Statista. 

Success on social media is only possible with great content. So you have to infuse elements of entertainment, uniqueness, and information. All you need is time and effort to turn social media into an effective marketing channel at no extra cost. Here are social media tips to get you started: 

  • Regular Posting: An effective social media presence requires posting content at least once a day. That way, potential customers will always have you in mind. 
  • Engage Your Users: Social media is an interactive space where you can engage with customers by asking questions, replying to their comments, liking their posts, and live to chat. It’s all about trying to catch their attention. 
  • Use Graphics: With images and other graphics, you are likely to get 50% more engagement. Therefore, select attractive images to pull in potential customers, even those who were passing by. 
  • Choose Appropriate Channels: On which social media sites are you likely to find potential customers? The top five social media sites for an ecommerce store include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. You can start by having a presence on these sites before considering the rest. 
  1. Effective Customer Care

If you have an online shopping agency, you should use outstanding customer care always. In business, a satisfied customer is the best promotion you can have. You can make the customer experience of your store remarkable by attending to all customer complaints on time. 

If you are wondering why customer care is essential, this report on Hubspot.com provides data-backed evidence. Besides, when you fail to address customer concerns and questions on time, you may end up not selling anything. 

Therefore, you should seek to attract customers by replying to their inquiries and comments within the shortest time possible. If you cannot do it yourself, then hire personnel to operate your social media accounts 24/7. 

Customer service can drive your sales better than advertisements and the product itself. So, you should be ready to reply to all the customer inquiries and positively react to negative comments for customer satisfaction. While at it, remember to be competent, friendly, and helpful. 

  1. Use Promos

Who doesn’t love discounts and promos? It might not be about the $10 you save but about the psychology of getting a deal. Using the word “free” can give your customers an irrational excitement, creating positive emotions. 

For example, an agency partner could promise to provide your customers with free shipping when they buy products. That is likely to increase purchases since customers do not have to worry about the shipping costs. Customers will buy more because you promise something of value, leading to more sales. 

You could also distribute discount coupons to new or repeat clients to encourage them to purchase products during special occasions like a holiday. That could be a percentage of the price or “a buy three get one free” offer. 

  1. Email Marketing

After collecting visitor contacts through your lead form, it is essential to build an email list. If you consider that email users could reach 4.3 billion by 2021, this is a strategy you cannot afford to neglect. Assuming that 75% of customers who receive emails from ecommerce sites always remember them when shopping online, you know what to do. 

When email marketing is about: 

  • Your new products 
  • After-sales promos 
  • Recommended products immediately after purchase 
  • Reminders to inactive customers 
  • Tips and style concerning your products 

It would help if you purposed to put your customers consistently in the loop about new happenings in your business. It is all about making them an integral part of your company. 

Conclusion

Attracting customers to your online store doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Simple strategies such as making your website attractive, using social media, customer care, promos, and email marketing can take you a long way. If you have questions, contact ecommerce marketing experts to help you get started. 

ecommerce-store-blog

Adding E-Commerce to a Brick-and-Mortar Store

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For Adding E-Commerce to a Brick-and-Mortar Store

Increasingly, brick-and-mortar retailers incorporate an e-commerce component into their businesses – in today’s digital age, this step is crucial. Not only to capitalize on the opportunity for growth and increased productivity but to remain relevant.

As retailers embark on this digital expansion, they will probably have questions about web design, which platforms to use, and themes. As important as all of these aspects are from a traditional perspective, e-commerce products and marketing are the most important, especially in the beginning.

E-commerce vs. Brick-and-Mortar Retailers

Marketing and selling an item inside a brick-and-mortar store is fundamentally different than doing so online.

With in-person shopping, a customer can physically handle an item before buying. Take, for example, a pair of shoes; with a brick-and-mortar store, you can go inside, look at the shoes, sit down, and try them on. If they don’t fit, you can ask a clerk to bring you a different size or try on another pair – or both.

Also, a physical location does its marketing. Thousands of customers pass brick-and-mortar stores daily. Subconsciously, those physical locations stick in customers’ brains, and when they need products, those physical locations may come to mind.

Conversely, selling anything on the Internet is different.

Photos and Product Descriptions

Product images, product descriptions, and inventory management are critical for e-commerce but may be challenging for brick-and-mortar businesses selling online for the first time.

A thorough and detailed product description helps give shoppers a sense of what they’re buying. A good rule of thumb is the more detail you can add, the better.

The same thought process applies to photos.

As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” In e-commerce, this saying is 100% true. Well-done photos give customers a sense of what they are buying, make them comfortable, and adds to the feeling that they are making an informed purchase.

Know Your Customers

building an e-commerce presence is exciting. It can be tempting to jump right into the revenue side of things and start focusing on what products to sell. But before you get there, it’s essential to check and update customer formation, look at competitors and figure out if online shoppers are or will be different from those in your traditional brick-and-mortar location.

Remember, in e-commerce; geography is no longer a restriction. While looking at data, don’t be afraid to broaden your perspective. Just be mindful that the way people shop online may be different.

What Products to Sell?

While you may sell hundreds or even thousands of items in your brick-and-mortar retail store, it’s a good idea to start with a small number of things when you begin selling online. A good rule of thumb is to only consider including your best-selling items online while you get started.

Ask yourself: What do my current customers who look similar to this online audience buy? What do they ask for in my stores?

If you’re unsure of how to round out your offering, look at your most popular items. Add products that go well with them. As a bonus, this practice could save you money on inventory and promos because you can use things you already have on hand.

Don’t Forget Where You Started.

As you go through building out your e-commerce platform, it is essential to keep your brick-and-mortar customer base in mind and engaged when they are not with you by offering incentives in-store and online to visit your e-commerce store or share it and their purchases online.

The Importance of Marketing

There are tons of little things to be mindful of when expanding into e-commerce: what payment type to use? Contact information, shipping, and return policies and procedures, and much more.

But as I said earlier, nothing is more important than marketing. You need to know who your audience will be, their preferences, and their buying habits among online shoppers. Above all else, you need to be keenly aware of the vastness of an online customer base, separate and apart from the foot traffic you may be used to in your physical location.

As a retailer, you need to be able to speak directly to your online customers. It would help if you had custom campaigns based on hard data that speak to prospective customers’ wants and needs individually.

Your campaigns need to be tailored enough to reach each customer in a way that compels them to convert when visiting your site. But also, your marketing campaign is to be multifaceted enough not to exclude potential customers.

The only way you can truly get the individualized and customized e-commerce platform your business needs is to go with professionals.

At Agency Partner, we understand the intricacies of building a seamless, intuitive, and flat-out sexy e-commerce platform.

Click here now and let Agency Partner aid you in your digital transformation.

Not big on reading? That’s okay. Watch “Adding E-Commerce to a Brick-and-Mortar Store” instead. Using the power of Artificial Intelligence, we turned this blog into a video for you. Check it out below!