10 eCommerce Strategies to Reach More Customers [Infographic]

If your business is an online store selling products or services, you might be interested in helpful advice on the best eCommerce strategy to help you reach more customers.

A good eCommerce marketing strategy is a summary of how your store is planning to achieve its goals and improve its position in the market.

The types of eCommerce strategy you choose would depend on the goals you wish to achieve. In this case, we will focus on how to generate more leads and convert them into customers.

Here is a summary of this article by an infographic. Scroll down to read the rest. You may embed this infographic with the code underneath it.

But first, make sure your online store is capable of the following:

• Accessible from every type of device (PC, laptop, phone etc.).
• Readable with a clear design and ample information on it.
• Optimized for search engines.
• Focused on providing great customer experience.
• Safe and secure. 

For this purpose, two of the main components of your eCommerce digital strategy should be a responsive web design and a mobile-friendly theme. Customers do so much on their phones, including product research and shopping, which is why they favor content that meets their on-the-go needs.

A mobile-friendly website can make a huge difference in your mobile conversion rates. In fact, a mobile-friendly site makes it 67% more likely that a customer will buy a product or service online. On the flip side, if a website is not friendly from mobile devices, there is a 61% higher chance that the customer will leave and go to another,It’s therefore safe to say that businesses with a mobile-friendly website will make more sales than those which do not have one.

Furthermore, statistics show that mobile searches make up about 60% of all search volumes.

Web store home page, product pages, and product categories are the most visited places in an online store. How are they designed and how to be understood as well as possible? These questions may be answered by UX Design strategies.

But, what else can be done in order to strengthen your eCommerce strategy?

10 eCommerce Strategies to Help You Reach More Customers

1. Increase eCommerce Search Usability
2. Use High-Quality Photographs and Good Product Descriptions
3. Personalize the Home Page
4. Focus on Consistent and Unique Content
5. Optimize Shopping Cart Functionality
6. Build Email Lists
7. Improve Your Social Media Strategy
8. Create Landing Pages
9. Build Advertising Strategies
10. Implement User-Generated Content

1. Increase eCommerce Search Usability

Does your eCommerce platform record or analyze what customers are searching for? If your online store system is able to track this, you are probably having effective navigation and search capability.  

To optimize the UX of your online store even more, organize your web store for these two main groups of potential customers:

• Visitors who know what they want to buy.
• Visitors who only want to browse.

Customers who know exactly what they are looking for want to find the right information as quickly as possible. Designing a high-performing search experience is a key feature for your users because if users can’t find what they are looking for, they will buy it from another store.

The second category is potential customers who just want to browse through the online store and compare items.

They will use navigation menus and move between product categories and pages. To make their experience smooth, organize the menu bar and categories in intuitive, easy-to-use sections.

Your website’s search and navigation functions need to be well-designed and user-oriented in order to be effective and help improve the overall experience customers have on your eCommerce site.

To boost conversions as part of your eCommerce strategy, you can improve the search usability in the following fields:

• Design and behavior of the search field.
• Search scope selection.
• Autocomplete design.
• Results layout and features.
• Filtering and sorting the search results on the results page.

2. Use High-Quality Photographs and Good Product Descriptions

High-quality product images and photos are an essential part of your eCommerce digital strategy and necessary for attracting the attention of potential eCommerce customers.

Outside the brick-and-mortar world, buyers can’t touch the product and are making their buying decisions entirely dependent on product imagery and feedback.

Showing good viewable thumbnails in the search results page will help users find the desired product in one click and get a better idea of what you are offering.

Additionally, make your product descriptions concise and straight to the point. Avoid fluff and create a comprehensive list of features and benefits.

Your target customers want to know everything about a potential purchase and how this product would help them and improve their everyday life, and keep this a consistent theme in your eCommerce digital strategy.

Consider these tips when writing eCommerce product descriptions:

1. Create proper subheadings.
2. Use bullet points to attract attention.
3. Improve readability with larger font sizes.
4. Provide video and real photographs to your product.
5. Pay attention to white spaces through the content to make the copy more readable.

Website design and content creation should work together for optimal results. Make your website copy part of your whole UX experience and enjoy higher conversion rates right away.

3. Personalize the Home Page

Personalization is a technique that records what customers viewed or visited on their last session on your eCommerce website and makes new buying suggestions on every following visit based on past experience in the store.

This can be a personalization based on previous behavior such as previous purchases, or based on real-time data such as a location or time – (which means marketing segmentation).

59% of online shoppers believe that it is easier to find more interesting products on personalized online retail stores”, invespcro.com, Online Shopping Personalization – Statistics and Trends

Amazon is the pioneer of the user-centric shopping experience. Their homepage helps people easily find the right product in the personalized block in the first section when you log in under the “related to items you’ve viewed” tag.

This allows visitors to concentrate on the category that they are most interested in and shop without any distractions, which means a better customer experience for them and an improved conversion rate for you. 

4. Focus on Consistent and Unique Content

Why? Because content marketing is still the most effective eCommerce business strategy you can apply today. The world of advertising is constantly changing, consumers are trying to avoid ads in many ways.

With a strong eCommerce content marketing strategy implemented the right way, you can provide more value to your customers.

To do this, you first need to understand your customers – their wants, needs, and pain points as well as their customer journey.

It’s essential that you know your target market well, and in particular how they consume content and what kind of information they require, depending on each stage of their journey. 

Once you’ve gathered these insights, the next step is to make a plan for your posts. Publish relevant, valuable articles with good and easy-to-share options.

Some of the best tips for good-looking content is to include:

• Lists. They are more readable and probably the most popular content type.
  
• Advice headlines. With “How to”, “What is” related to your reader’s problems.
  
• Topical posts. Which are relevant to something trendy and popular.
• Infographics. Present complex ideas in an easy-to-understand format.
• Checklists. Break down the steps of a lengthy process.
• GIFs and Memes. Make communication more fun.

To ensure you focus your strategy for your eCommerce business on the right areas, do tests with headlines, measure how well different types of content work, which posts generate the most traffic to your online store, and which of them led to most sales.

If your target audience are millennials, we have great ideas on how you can attract them to your eCommerce website.

5. Optimize Shopping Cart Functionality

To prevent customers from abandoning their shopping carts, you should ensure that your shopping cart functions well and is easy to navigate. The way to understand weaknesses is to analyze the performance frequently.

Evaluate your analytics data to see at which stages customers tend to drop off, and brainstorm ideas on how to improve them. Then, use A/B testing to determine which solution has the highest potential to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

During the optimization process, pay attention to the user journey. Clear the checkout page and remove distractions and/or possible places to exit.

This will prevent any confusion during the checkout process. Plenty of conversion studies have shown that the fewer clicks during checkout, the higher your conversion rate will be.

Here’s a little bonus for readers that own a WooCommerce shop – check Tyche Softwares’ Abandoned Cart Pro Plugin for minimizing cart abandonment rates.

6. Build Email Lists

If your eCommerce business strategy doesn’t include email marketing as a communication channel, you are missing out on huge sales.

Use sign-up forms, give something in exchange for an e-mail address, like a discount code or even a small present.

Make sure you win the customer’s trust and never send out emails without the user’s consent, otherwise, you risk winding up in the SPAM folder, and no one wants to ruin their brand like that.

Include sign-up fields at the end of your blog posts or buying guides. If the visitors enjoyed the content you provided them, they will be happy to keep in touch and get information about news, discounts, and promotions and thus be willing to leave their email. 

Pro Tip: Include an option, where the customer is able to join your mailing list as part of the checkout process.

An email list can never be “full” or ready, but as soon as your first customers start to opt-in for your newsletter, you can use their emails to:

• Promote new or upcoming products.
• Offer promotions or discounts.
• Send relevant and helpful blog posts.
• Ask for feedback.
• Create special newsletter-only campaigns and discount codes.

7. Improve Your Social Media Strategy

The social media strategy your eCommerce marketing team prepares should be connected with your content strategy. This means repurposing your website content across your social media channels, as it will guarantee you a larger audience and boost your visibility.

Social networks such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are usually best for an eCommerce marketing strategy focused on selling products, however, don’t underestimate the power of Facebook, as the social media giant has over 3.03 billion monthly active users.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but here is a basic list of general guidelines you can check to follow in order to create the best customer experience on social media:

• Post daily and consistently.
• Consider an automated tool to make sure your posts are on track.
• Always use images when posting, even on Twitter.
• Leverage video.
• Do not spam.
• Do not use social media for promotions only, engage with your customers.
• Use analytics to track your audience’s engagement.
• Test multiple social media strategies before picking the right one for your overall eCommerce marketing strategy.

Related: How to Drive Traffic to Your Website Using Social Media [11 Tips] – DevriX

But how are we so sure social media marketing can strengthen your eCommerce business strategy? Check some benefits that come with a well-tailored social media campaign:

• Gathering information about your customer’s online behavior allows for the creation of targeted ads.
• Building strong relationships with people. Daily communication with your customers helps any business to answer the buyer’s needs and provide a better user experience.
• Unique and high-quality posts on social media expand brand awareness and convert people to brand ambassadors.
• Better customer support. According to reviewtrackers, about 51.7% of online shoppers expect brands to reply to their negative reviews on social media within the course of seven days.
• Cost-efficiency. Social media is the fastest and cheapest way of connecting with your customers.
• Higher conversion rates. In 2019, social networks influenced 74% of shoppers for their purchasing decisions.

Implementing a social media plan as part of your eCommerce marketing strategy is obligatory. But after that, you need to analyze how your social media channels are performing – your posts engagements, reach, and campaign outcomes. In this tutorial, you can learn how to improve your social media campaign using data visualization.

8. Create Landing Pages

With the development of personalized landing pages with a unique copy, your eCommerce business strategy will successfully increase the chance of attracting more customers who are willing to buy your products.

A great eCommerce strategy is to create specific landing pages for the different groups in your target audience. Outline your buyer personas and use analytics to determine the general demographic segments you are catering to.

How to build high-converting landing pages that drive sales, sign-ups or subscriptions?

Here are some suggestions:

• A landing page should have only one single purpose and only one CTA (Call to Action) button. This doesn’t mean you can’t have multiple buttons, but they should all lead to the same conversion goal. Conversion rates decrease if the buyer’s attention isn’t focused well enough.
• Create clear, user-friendly designs for all of your landing pages. Only the clickable elements should guide the visitor to the desired goal. It is a good idea to hide the navigation bar at the top, as well as social media icons or elements that can distract the visitors.
• Focus the content around the main conversion goal. Make sure that it has a seamless flow, is related to your target audience, and that it includes relevant keywords for SEO purposes.

The one thing you want your visitor to do should be the only thing they can do – Unbounce.

9. Build Advertising Strategies

Another great way to improve your eCommerce digital strategy is by creating advertisements. These will help improve your online visibility and boost sales. Before starting an ad campaign, you should answer three questions:

• How many visitors does your business’ website need for a successful conversion?
• How much is the budget you can safely allocate and for what period of time?
• What is the best advertisement outlet for your products?

These answers will help you make some calculations and predictions and will narrow your advertisement options.

Most people choose to start with Facebook Ads or Google Ads – The most popular and user-friendly platforms for advertising.

Whatever you choose, the most important part is to analyze and track the traffic to your website. Google Analytics, for example, shows where visitors are coming from, and what they are doing on your website.

Retargeting methods to reach visitors and potential customers is also a smart move to increase ads effect. Facebook pixel is a tool that can keep a record of all the FB visitors on your website and help create targeted campaigns.

Then, you can set up preferences based on where your visitors spent their time on-site – product page, blog, testimonials etc. Collecting information takes time and patience, but expanding your audience allows for a detailed analysis that gives better results.

10. Implement User-Generated Content

The UGC (User Generated Content) idea is simple: consumers post content (video clips, pictures, testimonials, reviews, and blogs) that is publicly available online through social media and other sites, regarding your store, brand, or product.

Generated organic content can be either a positive or negative experience with an online store or products.

As part of your smart eCommerce strategy, UGS can help you gain more leads to your website.According to a recent report by Stackla, 79% of users said that user-generated content (UGC) highly impacts their purchasing decisions, while only 12% said branded content and 9% said influencer content is impactful.

How can consumers generate content for you?

Here are some helpful ideas:

• Organize product contests on social media and encourage people to share how they are using your products; you can also enable voting rules.
• Ask customers how they think you can make your product better.
• Include branded company hashtags in social media campaigns to encourage customers who love your brand to post images and tag you.
• Try reaching new potential customers and check if there are viral social channels you are not already using.
• Use real-time interactions with Facebook Live videos, Twitter’s Periscope app, YouTube Live or other live stream platforms and services.
• Feature customer photos and quotes on your website. This way, you will give your customers great social recognition and build brand loyalty and trust.

Conclusion

These eCommerce strategies that we listed are a small part of the opportunities your business can use to reach more customers online. Every point of this article shows ideas which can be developed into working sales.

Analyze your webpage, test some of the patterns we have outlined, and give us feedback on what works well for your business and what you need to improve.

You can always contact DevriX and schedule a call with one of our marketing specialists for in-depth analysis and any kind of marketing tips and tricks that can successfully improve your eCommerce strategy.

As a leading WordPress Agency, we have tons of experience in building and scaling eCommerce stores, so do not hesitate to reach out.