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8 Ways You Can Attract New Customers to Your E-commerce website

Tag: customers

8 Ways You Can Attract New Customers to Your E-commerce website
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

8 Ways You Can Attract New Customers to Your E-commerce website

Over the last few years, online retail sales have continued growing at an incredible rate proving that this is not a fad. According to projections,   online retail sales will reach 8.8% of total retail spending in 2018. According to TechCrunch, 79% of U.S consumers now shop online which highlights the huge opportunities in the e-commerce industry. If your business is not already online, it is time to make the big move. However, you should expect stiff competition as more online businesses set up shop and target the same market. To survive in this volatile business landscape, you need smart strategies to attract new customers to your ecommerce website.

This guide explores the best approaches for customer acquisition in the online ecosystem such as secure online payment systems, SEO, call-to-action (CTA), social media, and leveraging visual content, among others. Keep reading to learn more.

  1. Social Media Buttons

Most internet users converge on social media. If you want to attract new customers, you should target social media users by including social media buttons on your content. However great the content on your e-commerce website is, you will not attract new customers if your existing ones don’t share. If you have an amazing holiday offer on your products, make sure the content is easy to share on social media.  Sharing content on social media not only drives traffic to your e-commerce business but also increases brand visibility.

  1. Provide Flexible Payment Options

User experience is one of the biggest aspects of successful online marketing. If you want to attract new customers, you must offer an excellent user experience. One way of doing this is through flexible online payments. You should integrate the best payment gateway on your site to start accepting payments without much hassle.

  1. Focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The competition in the internet market is stiff and to get an edge over the competition, your website must rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs) for your target keywords.  You have to implement a smart search engine optimization (SEO) campaign for better ranking as this not only increases visibility but also builds the credibility of your online store and drives traffic to your site.

  1. Buy Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

PPC is a premier online marketing tool to attract new customers. It is easy to target potential customers who are more likely to shop from your store. PPC campaigns have high ROI and you can use credible PPC platforms including Google, Bing and Facebook for targeted marketing with good results.

  1. Invest in a Professional Web Design

Many online businesses fail because they don’t make a good first impression. Web design is an essential part of any SEO campaign and it helps attract new customers. By investing in responsive web design (RWD), your target customers can reach you on any device. Good web design also reduces churn rates and increases conversion rates.

  1. Use a Powerful Call To Action (CTA)

On each page of your e-commerce website, you should have a call to action (CTA) which directs visitors as to what to do. A good CTA is short and concise and should lead to higher conversion rates. The idea is to convert a website visitor into a buyer and avoid high churn rates.

  1. Leverage the Power of Visuals

Visual content is the future of business marketing and internet users love it. If you want to attract new customers to your website, you have to invest in high-quality videos, images and animations with informative content, for your marketing campaigns. Videos and images have a high ROI and internet users share them rapidly. You will not only enjoy higher conversion rates but also create brand awareness when you invest in the best visuals.

  1. Invest in Fresh and Relevant Content

Internet users are highly conscious of what they need. They are always on the lookout for something that adds value to their lives and they want it instantly. If you can’t captivate your target customers with good content, they will quickly look for an alternative. For this reason, you should invest in fresh, relevant and interesting content.

These are only a few of the techniques you can use to attract new customers to your e-commerce website. You should also invest in creative marketing such as competitions, keep your website updated, and use referrals and membership programs, among other techniques. The ultimate goal is to grow your e-commerce business’s customer and get the best ROI out of the methods you use.

5 years ago
9 ways To Earn a Customer’s Trust
Mohab Growth Hacks 0

9 ways To Earn a Customer’s Trust

Online shopping is the norm today, rather than the exception, owing to the convenience and flexibility it offers. However, remember that before you can start to take payments online, you need to earn your customers’ trust. If you are an online merchant, those who wish to shop for your products, cannot see you or meet you physically. All they can see is how you present your online store, how securely you enable transactions and how transparent your processes are. Wondering if this is going to be difficult?

Contrary to what you might think, it is quite easy to build your customers’ trust in your business if you follow certain rules. Here are the rules if you want to win at earning the trust of your customers:

  1. Be yourself

Everyone living on this planet has had scenarios where they had undesirable experiences with sales people. Needless to say, many of us have also felt manipulated by salespersons and hence walked away. So, it is suggested that rather than acting like someone trying to sell, just try to act the way you would when you are meeting a colleague. In simpler terms, try to be yourself and you will be headed to a good start.

  1. Value the relationships

If you want the customers to trust you and value you, it is important that you first believe that building relationships with your customers is important. Try and understand what is it that they need or what their problems are, and come up with products that solve such problems accordingly. This way, you will be adding value to the association you have with the shopper.

  1. Be curious about your customers

Online shoppers in general are drawn to those who show a keen interest in knowing them more. So, if you are curious, you will be able to build a better relationship. A great way to go about this is by asking questions or requesting your customers to participate in polls. This will give you greater insight about their purchase behaviour too.

  1. Be consistent

A customer will trust you only when he/she know that your behaviour is not temporary. Building trust is not an overnight task, it takes time. So, it is important that you show consistency and persistence over time. When the customer is able to predict your behaviour, he/she is more likely to trust you and your product.

  1. Always choose to be true

Trust is built when you approach your selling as a means to help the customer – so, try to find out the real areas where you can work together. This makes it more important for you to spend time in actually knowing your customers. Also, never be shy of pointing out that your company or product may not be the right choice for a particular customer.

  1. Open-mindedness is important

If you are excessively convinced that the customer needs only your product and nothing else, you might come across as a close-minded business. So, avoid pushing your products too much on social media or blogs, and rather incorporate them subtly into the solutions that you present to your customers in answer to their problems. This way, they will know that you are open-minded and that you realise that the customer might shop from somewhere else if that suits them better. If your customers know that you have their best interests at heart, they will trust you more.

  1. Go for a real dialog

It is important that your meeting is not just a sales pitch but a real conversation. So spend more time listening rather than speaking. While you do that, also make sure than the conversation is not just chit chat but related to your business.

  1. Think and act professionally

People tend to trust people who are serious and professional in their attitude. So, take time to learn more about your company, your customers, their challenges and their respective industry.

  1. Express genuine integrity

It is important that you take a stand when required. You should have the ability to make decision based on your understanding of what is right. The stand may not be a common norm, but it’s ok. While we are at it, it is also important that you refrain from making false promises or committing something that you cannot deliver.

Always remember, gaining the trust of your customers is only a fraction of the entire equation. It is also important that you have a product that the customer wants and needs and you possess an ability to add value and solve problems.

6 years ago
The importance of knowing your customer
Mohab Customer Experience 0

The importance of knowing your customer

Whenever we are given a chance to describe our customer, the first thing we think of is demographic traits. 22 – 55, single, female living in a particular location. But is a statistical summation good enough to make business decisions? While this was true for the early days of eCommerce, things are different today.

Thanks to social networking sites, we are also privy to behavioral trails like their interests, hobbies and shopping patterns. That’s as far as the data available goes. But what about interpreting that data? How can we understand what is driving this person behind the computer to buy or not buy our products?

Several companies create an inside-out customer-first culture for their business. It’s a difficult trait but here are some points to help you get started:

  1. Map your customer’s journey

Your customer may visit your store and buy the product online or shop from your app. To do this, they may have either watched your TV commercial, heard about you on the radio, read about you in the papers or seen a social recommendation from a friend. In the era of omni-channel marketing, you’ll have to cross align channels with the phase your customer is in to see if each channel is working optimally.

The steps in the sales funnel for eCommerce include Discover, Explore, Gain Interest, Purchase intent, actual purchase and after sales support. When a customer reads about you on social media, they could be any one of the above phases. You’ll have to step back to see if your social messages are catering to customers in each segment equally.

  1. Listen to uncover insights

Survey tools have evolved over the years to go beyond the simple Google form. Instead, they now pop up at the right stage in a customer’s journey to gather valuable feedback. The only caveat is that you need to be able to ask the right questions.

If you ask your customer what they think of a new product line you’ve launched, you’ll probably get many answers that you want to hear depending on how you’ve framed the question. Instead, if you actually look for purchase patterns and interpret analytical data, you’ll get to know what your customers are actually doing. Listening to these patterns will allow you to tweak your product offering.

  1. Leave assumptions in the hallway

Even if your eCommerce business is successful, there is always room for improvement. There is always the issue of cart abandonment. You’ll still have to figure why only a fraction of your traffic goes on to become your customer and what happens to the rest.

The only real way to get your answers is to speak to the customer. You’ll have to zero in on a group, go in without fixed questions and let them do the talking while you walk away with insights that can be converted into action points.

  1. Go beyond heat maps

The analytics heat maps from your eCommerce website tends to show you a rough picture of where your customers are looking. But what does it tell you about their real time navigational choices? How are they examining products and charting their decision making journey. Which part of the cart is throwing people off? Are the taxes or shipping charges coming as a surprise? Are people unable to use their coupon code? Is your payment gateway (link) working as it promised?

To know answers to such questions observe how customers work in a focus group rather than just historic data.

Conclusion: After connecting data points with individual behaviour, the ongoing thing that you need to do is keep talking to your customers and check for feedback. The proactive approach to understanding your customer will be the difference between you and your nearest competitor.

6 years ago