10 Vital Lessons on Ecommerce Marketing

If you run an ecommerce site, just pay attention to these lessons. They are mostly customer based and the persistent search for ways to improve on how to serve them better. For very huge ecommerce marketing platforms like Amazon, what drives their marketing efforts is their deep understanding of the customer and their relentless search for self-improvement. If you run an ecommerce site and you want to compete with giants like Amazon, study these lessons very carefully.

These here 10 lessons if faithfully applied can help any ecommerce site better serve its customers.

1. Seamless and Pain-free Transactions
 
Because of habitual constraints in online transactions, ecommerce by nature may engender a lot of customer constraints and pains. Shipping costs, damaged or missing products and return of unsatisfactory products are usually areas of concerns. You can mitigate some of these constraints by way of free shipping, free return-shipping of damaged and unsatisfactory products, money-back guarantees and convenience to drop-off returns at designated/convenient collection centres.


 
2. Know Your Customers Closely
 
To be able to deliver personalized service which many customers really like, you can get to know them deep enough by way of their behavioral data from your ecommerce site. This data is not too complicated to collect. With it, you can help to ease a customer’s shopping experience by way of suggestions and tips to help them make a buying decision seamlessly. That way, it is easy for you to position yourself to the customer as a sympathetic partner in his otherwise complicated shopping forays.

3. Leverage Your Customers to Get More Customers
 
“Word-of-mouth” remains a very powerful customer referral effort in aid of marketers. It usually comes from satisfied customers who are easily believed by other people. On your ecommerce platform, if you manage to make customer experiences unique and positive, such customers willingly and happily tell others. Before too long, the word gets around that you are the best there is in the business and many other people will be looking out to do business with you. The force multiplier from the “word-of-mouth” of your satisfied customers can do amazing things for your ecommerce business.

4. Allow Buyers a Wish-List Store

Habitually, many online shoppers do spend a lot of time researching products before making the decision to buy. By allowing them an onsite wish-list store, buyers can store in a list items they like, but are not yet ready to buy. That list simply means they have a deep interest in such items which maybe for lack of sufficient money or time not yet due to buy them, they are earmarked for purchase at a later date. Such list usually gives them the impetus to return to your site to do business at some later dates of their choosing instead of going elsewhere to shop.

5. Have a Membership Rewards Program in Place

Membership rewards have many variants such as paid subscription for prime membership, free and priority shipping or access to special discounted products. It is a good way to retain loyal customers. Rewards programs may cost the ecommerce site some money which is recoverable from the increased patronage from Prime members. It has been established that Prime members on average usually spend much more shopping than non-Prime members. That is a win-win situation for all parties.


 
6. Make Testing and Innovation a Priority

Out there on the internet, the competition is always very fierce for ecommerce marketers. The reason you must be really proactive if you want to remain relevant in ecommerce business. You must always think ahead, innovate and stay at least one step ahead your competitors. That is proactive competition which is a credible survival strategy in ecommerce business.

7. Use Mixed Personalized Recommendations

Every customer likes to feel important. Nothing boosts that feeling more than the ecommerce platform taking personalized interest in serving its customers. With customer behavioral and purchases data at the disposal of the ecommerce site, it is easy to make targeted recommendations to customers to help their buying decisions. You can make personalized recommendations not only based on recent purchases, but also for your next buy including a variety. This variety usually derives from your wish list, past browsing sessions, or recent buys encapsulated in your behavioral data. The ecommerce site can also entice you by showing you other products that could go with your past purchases or some new pieces in the same range you like to buy. That way, a customer may end up at times buying more than she earlier intended.

8. Simplify Regular Repeat Buys for Customers

If you want to retain customer delight and loyalty you must find ways to simplify repeat buys. Because of the many easily exhaustible household items needed month after month, you can encourage customers to have “standing orders” for some purchases. This gives these customers the advantage of buying these products at discounted prices and having them automatically delivered up at given times of the month without them having to make any fresh orders. That way, such customers don’t necessarily have to remember to stock up on such regular items. That is one great value-added service to customers and guaranteed purchases from the ecommerce marketer. 


 
9. Give Customers Wider Products’ Insights

Characteristically, one of the major drawbacks of buying online is that we cannot touch, feel, turn, or hold products. We can only see virtual images of such products. This limitation tends to slow down buying decisions. Many ecommerce sites are now providing for better and more detailed examination of products by using near 3-D images, image guidelines to sellers on close-ups and image insets by way of more robust literature and brochures which are very vivid in virtual space. All these tend to make online buying more distrust-free.

10. Deploy User Reviews Very Generously

There is research evidence that about 85% of online customers trust online reviews of peers. This is the reason why many people usually rely on the opinions of their peers and even social media influencers before making their buying decisions. Many marketers now regard customer testimonials as hugely important for any online marketing business. For effects, these testimonials are usually genuine and truthful and are neither coerced nor induced. The reason they’re easily believable. When these testimonials are made available right below each product on display for sale, they help to make customer buying decisions faster.