Viewpoints heart Ecommerce Success

Deploying the right ecommerce tactics can boost revenue growth.

The difference between ecommerce success and what may be mediocre performance typically lies in the planning, setup and ongoing management.

Are you using all of the best tactics to optimize ecommerce performance?

Managed effectively, your ecommerce platform can be an absolute powerhouse to support your revenue growth objectives and optimize your marketing efforts.

“Communication is at the heart of ecommerce and community.”
-Meg Whitman

High quality online buying options are available across all industries and all business models — B2B, B2C and C2C. Offering a superior product alone is simply not enough to win, and grow, in a competitive market. You must equally ensure that you offer a variety of options for customers to tailor the buying experience.

Additionally, you must also create a smart channel strategy to be all the places your customers are, online.

These two tactics, combined effectively together, can help your ecommerce business succeed.

Optimize the experience.

Let’s make sure that your ecommerce site is optimized for every aspect, and preference, of your customers' experience. Deploy the best and most effective features of your ecommerce platform.

Your initial planning and set-up should outline an extremely wide swath of customer expectations and buying preferences — mapping ideal personas and expectations, overlaid with your specific business objectives at large. Then, set about deploying all possible functions and technical features to facilitate those outcomes - for your customers, and your business.

Remember, the right strategies will help increase cart size, improve profitability with the right-timed promotions and boost the loyalty of your customer community at large.

Depending upon your platform options, offer and goals, ensure you activate all functions and features that will support a variety of customer preferences.

These can include a series of user experience functionality as well as marketing automation features.

Feature Considerations

Feature considerations.

 
  • Abandoned cart functionality
  • One-click & guest checkout
  • Cross sell / upsell items
  • Referral rewards
  • Free shipping on minimum order value
  • Gift cards
  • Detailed order tracking
  • Recurring orders / subscriptions
  • Push notifications
  • Gift registry when applicable
  • Loyalty programs
  • Wholesale programs where applicable
  • Shipping and fulfillment automation

There are also a variety of important content considerations which may be pertinent to your product/offer.

Content Considerations

Content considerations.

 
  • Mobile optimized UI
  • Smart search functionality
  • Product facets and filtering
  • Quick access to customer service
  • High quality FAQs and policies
  • Product reviews
  • Customized special offers
  • Optimize menu and footer content

We recommend that you extensively utilize all of the appropriate solutions and tools available within your ecommerce platform. Remember, different customers have different preferences and you need to accommodate them all.Your goal should be to support a variety of users expectations as well as provide both operational and marketing efficiency for your business.

Utilizing a wide variety of features will also facilitate the capture of detailed sales information, purchasing behavior and key performance indicator (KPI) trends which are critical to operations and decision making. This information will provide you a far deeper understanding of the buying behaviors which are the most successful. When you analyze your actual customer data — first party data — you’ll be positioned to make more effective decisions based on what’s working and what’s not.

There are a variety of ways to utilize your first party data to drive marketing efficacy —

  • Evolve email marketing tactics - segment your audience and create effective custom messages relevant to each group to garner repeat purchases with an effective, low cost marketing channel
  • Drive higher cart value - understanding each customer’s specific buying patterns, interest and profile will allow you to personalize offers to them, optimizing their experience and loyalty while increasing your sales
  • Bolster social media engagement - create highly tailored content in a variety of formats (content, video) that will speak directly to your audience segments in both organic and paid social
  • Create more relevant landing pages - use your evolving customer insights to refresh tailored messaging on your landing pages, increasing efficacy and conversion
  • Increase efficacy of your paid ads - use modern customer insights to effectively target distinct personas in your paid advertising efforts, boosting marketing spend ROI
The takeaway.

Planning, preparation and optimization of your ecommerce platform is a vital strategy to succeed and grow. There are many features, functions and tactics that work together to get it right. Devoting resources to your ecommerce strategy in order to deploy the right tactics to achieve the best outcome for your business is so worth the effort.

Lovely People helps our clients select, implement and optimize highly effective ecommerce solutions. Let’s talk.