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12 Tips to Boost E-Commerce Customer Engagement

/ , , / Digital Marketing

The present generation prefers to spend their time only on projects that are purposeful. Starting from shopping for weekly groceries to everyday utilities and clothing, most things are purchased on the Internet. There is an increasing demand for e-commerce stores all across product categories and hence, the market is also becoming saturated with similar products. E-commerce sales are expected to grow 10.4% in 2023.

Factors such as product availability, quality, differentiation, and price are not so much of a primary consideration for standing out in the market. E-commerce brands should come up with new ways to gain recognition in the market and also gain customer interest. This is definitely a challenging task because online shopping behaviour and purchasing preferences change consistently.

It is important to stay updated on the present customer interests and needs so that the customers get the best possible experience. Improving e-commerce customer engagement is the only way a business can carve a strong spot in the market. 

In this blog, we will see the fundamentals of e-commerce customer engagement, effective customer engagement strategies that businesses can include, and how an e-commerce engagement platform can be of help in this way.

What is Customer Engagement and Why is it Important? 

E-commerce customer engagement is known as the emotional connection and interest in a brand that gets generated in the minds of customers. It is created with valuable, proactive, and timely messaging that happens between a business and a customer. This leads to exceptional customer experience.

Customer engagement holds great importance in e-commerce stores. Maintaining a strong relationship with the customers is completely dependent on how a business engages with customers, gets them to purchase from you, keeps them coming back, and also gets them to promote a business wherever they go. 

Customer expectations grow steadily with customer dependence on online stores while making customer engagement important in the present business scenario. There are many reasons why customer engagement is important. We will mention them below one by one.

1. Increased Sales

It is of absolute importance to ensure that customers can look for products that they need on a website or an application. The website should include comprehensive product details, product reviews, shipping details, and return information. All these things are extremely helpful in ensuring a decreased sales conversion time and improved sales.

2. Decreased Cart Abandonment Rate

You should give your customers instant support when they need comprehensive details or even have concerns so that they can go through the purchases right there and then.

3. Better Customer Experience

Most customers consider comfort, speed, knowledgeable support, and friendly service as some of the most important elements of ensuring a positive customer experience. 

4. Customer Loyalty

With customers having a strong assurance that purchasing from an e-commerce store is an easy online shopping experience, there are always high chances that they will come back again and again. All businesses should aim to assist their customers with purchases and post-purchase problems. This will help in coming back for future purchases.

5. Customer Advocacy

All delighted customers have an inclination to come back for leaving customer testimonials and sometimes, even free advertising through word of mouth. 

Tips to Boost E-Commerce Customer Engagement

1. Create a Purposeful Web and Mobile User Interface

It is of absolute importance to create a purposeful web and mobile user interface. Providing a good quality shopping experience to the customers must be the first priority on the list of e-commerce customer engagement strategies. 

If most visitors have to give you a chance, they should appreciate the overall look and feel of your e-commerce website or app while finding it simple to navigate, see what they want, and make final purchases. It is only then that they will keep trying and the e-commerce strategies will actually be of use. 

You can begin by carrying out user research to find what the target audience wants in the e-commerce app or the site and how it can be useful in navigating the web and mobile interfaces. 

After you understand what the users want, sort the expectations based on the most demanded along with ensuring that there is ease of implementation before you go ahead. When you successfully design an e-commerce website or a mobile app interface, make sure you test it with users to identify gaps and continue iterating on customer feedback. 

2. Creating Good Quality Content

Creating content on products that are sought after is important. Businesses should strive to come up with content on products that are actively searched for, visited, and even purchased. 

The content can be about usage, hacks, celebrity ads, how products are made and reach customers, CSR activities, and DIYs. Businesses can find which e-commerce website products are visited more and which products are the ones that customers would like to know more about. 

The Zoho SalesIQ has a website visitor tracking feature that works exceptionally to make this happen. It is capable of telling the visitors the pages that get viewed often, the overall time spent on all pages, the number of visits, where the visitors come from, and much more.

Related Read: Boost Your Sales Activities With Zoho SalesIQ

3. Improving Your Social Media

Billions of people across the world use social media as typical internet user spends most of their time online. Social media is a great platform for creating visibility for an e-commerce store and engaging more customers with purposeful social media content. 

Social media is an exceptional tool for engaging with prospects and customers and it can also be extremely helpful in increasing your sales. Most internet users visit social media to research more brands and products that they are thinking of purchasing.

4. Influencer Wishlists For Increasing Sales

Most influencer ads have more credibility these days than a brand’s advertisements. As a business that is looking to succeed, you can get more influencers in your domain to try more products, post more reviews, and create wishlists on e-commerce sites or apps that customers can buy from. 

If the influencer has a good reach then it is almost certain that your product will take off and its sales will increase tremendously. Influencer marketing is actually an exceptional method to get more customers. 

5. Running Driven Campaigns

As the popularity of e-commerce sales has grown over the years, more and more customers have started preferring to wait to make their purchases during special occasions. You can customize your campaign to a specific occasion and create content to give your customers better shopping ideas. 

For instance, if it is a Diwali campaign, you can consider publishing and promoting content around “Gifting ideas for your family and friends” almost a week before the sale is about to go live. The sale days come with urgency and give your customers a better look at all products on offer along with giving regular customers early access that makes them feel special.

6. Cross-selling On Customer Interest

On e-commerce platforms, there are sections such as “Frequently bought together” and “Customers who bought this also bought this” at the bottom of the pages. 

These sections are effective cross-selling strategies if they are done right because these sections allow customers to shop from a business repeatedly. There is no done to look for each item on the list repeatedly. 

7. Show Customer Reviews For Social Proof

With multiple options available in almost all product categories these days along with the quality of present customers, it is natural to compare prices, product details, and product reviews from various brands before choosing one. 

Most customers look at reviews at the time of shopping and even consider reviews extremely important before making a purchase. The customer shopping experience can become way simpler and the probability of instant purchase becomes higher in case one doesn’t browse different websites for product reviews before a purchase is made. 

So efforts must be made to collect more reviews and display them on product pages. You can increase your chance of getting more reviews from customers by asking them for testimonials each week after they receive a product, telling them how this helps your business, and if you can, you can also offer a discount or a free gift in exchange. 

8. Virtual Store Experience With Augmented Reality

Most shoppers prefer e-commerce stores as compared to travelling to a physical one but the truth is that they still want the physical store experience from the comfort of their homes. 

There is no better e-commerce customer engagement tip as compared to allow the shoppers to experience the products that they are purchasing. One of the brands that do this really well is IKEA. It has an AR app called IKEA Place that lets you plan the home furniture by showing an upscale model that you can choose for any corner of the house. 

Virtual store experience with AR offers an immersive shopping experience when compared with an in-store shopping experience where you can see and try products to get a real idea of how they can go ahead.

There are many e-commerce stores that use AR for selling different items such as clothing, jewellery, and eyeglasses. These stores allow you to try the items virtually by placing them on a 3D image of your face and even your body. 

9. Chatbots for Shopping Assistance

Yet another element from physical stores that most customers miss in online shopping is helpful store assistants for helping when a customer cannot find a product that he/she is looking for. You can leverage e-commerce engagement by bridging this gap effectively.

SalesIQ allows you to set up custom chatbots using an advanced chatbot builder called Zobot to help customers find the products they are looking for, more product details, and more shipping and payment information. 

There is no need to be a coder or even set up a functional chatbot using Zobot’s codeless bot builder. There are many ways in which chatbots can be used for boosting e-commerce customer engagement and they are all quite helpful.

10. Decrease Customer Risk Perception

The prospect and customer engagement strategies implemented by e-commerce companies will not be of any use when customers are not confident to purchase from them. A probable risk associated with online purchases is often proportional to the extent of uncertainties and lack of information. 

Customers are often more confident to buy when they have all the details that are needed about a product, its delivery, and possible replacements in case the product does not match the description or even meet their expectations. 

Other than finding all necessary product, shipping, and product return details on the page, customers must be able to reach out with their questions to get answers in real time. This can be done using the live chat software. 

With an influx of chat requests, each day can be challenging for a team so efforts must be made to lighten the process by showing chat knowledge based on the returns or shipping policy so that the customers can quickly refer before reaching out actually.

11. Setting Up Exit Pop-Ups

Exit pop-ups are useful for attracting the attention of visitors who are leaving a site without taking any purposeful action. An exit pop-up can be easily displayed when a visitor chooses to leave a site as this is something determined by tracking the mouse movement and scrolling action. 

A common reason why most prospects leave without making a purchase is that they want to check e-commerce sites and look for a good deal. Hence, when businesses show a time-bound and attractive offer, it can lead to instant conversion. 

Yet another reason for customers bouncing off a website is that they cannot find what they are looking for. In case this problem persists even after you fix a website layout then you can add a concise checkbox to gauge visitor interests and show useful products. 

12. Easy Checkout

One of the most common reasons for cart abandonment in e-commerce is facing problems at the time of checkout. There are many reasons why this can happen unexpected processing or shipping charges, complicated checkout navigation, lengthy forms, and payment errors are some of them.

You can reduce cart abandonment by reducing checkout friction due to these reasons. In addition, setting up a proactive live chat can trigger checkout and payment pages using an e-commerce engagement platform that ensures customers get the support they need. 

Read More: Build Your Own Online Storefront With Zoho Commerce

Your Next Steps in E-Commerce Success!

With relevant market conditions and the evolution of customer preferences, it can be challenging to get e-commerce customer engagement right. There are many stages that can be full of challenges so it is best to have a detailed and flexible e-commerce engagement strategy prepared for common missteps. 

Our consultants at Encaptechno can assist you in implementing the right customer engagement strategies that can boost your e-commerce reach. In case you run an e-commerce business and wish to grow your customer engagement then get in touch to know more. 

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Rising Customer Engagement Trends in the Market | Encaptechno

Rising Customer Engagement Trends in the Market

/ , , , , / CRM Services, Digital Marketing, Zoho CRM, Zoho Implementation

Rising Customer Engagement Trends in the Market | Encaptechno

 

Customer engagement has been an important concept in the market for quite some time now. However, when we come to really think about customer engagement, we also begin to understand why it has become important. The thing is that engaging with customers helps in adding value to the customer journey and also provides them with a personalised experience.

Designing a customer engagement strategy empowers a person to build a strong connection with customers and also allows interaction on the channels that are important. This is how you can gain an idea of how important it is to create an effective customer engagement strategy.

For so many years, businesses have only been focused on gaining market share and getting profit from it. However, the pandemic has pretty much changed everything. Consumer preferences have changed drastically now, and the way these preferences interact with businesses has changed as well.

The great consumer shift tried to impose a new shopping experience since Covid-19 started. This opened up many new opportunities for businesses to access new customers and also provide a delightful customer experience all through the buyer journey.

In this blog, we will see what customer engagement is and what is its importance?

What is Customer Engagement?


Customer engagement can be simply defined as the means by which an organisation creates a relationship with a wide customer base for the purpose of fostering brand loyalty and awareness. This can be easily accomplished by marketing campaigns, new content created for and posted to websites and outreach via social media and wearable devices among other methods.

Even though there can be many variations to this definition, the premise pretty much remains the same. A company aims to foster a positive relationship with the customers with an aim to promote the brand, generate more sales, and offer an amazing experience on a personal level.

Importance of Customer Engagement


Customer engagement is easily one of the most important aspects of a successful organisation. A customer who is engaged with a specific company is capable of generating more revenue than a customer who feels less connected to a company. Hence, customer engagement strategy means more profit for the company and almost everyone who runs a business wants that.

In case a company does not have a plan for improving customer engagement, you can miss out on a lot of money and opportunities to interact with valuable customers and even potential ones. Building a relationship with customers does not just make more, but it also helps in establishing trust and loyalty with the customers. Having customers who trust a business keeps them around for a long time while making them repeat customers.

Even the connection between customer engagement and customer loyalty is pretty profound. Someone who is a loyal customer is likely to show more loyalty by repeatedly purchasing from a company, spreading the word about a business by social sharing, and referring to other people like friends and family.

A present customer spreading the word to other people is perhaps an important tool in a company’s arsenal. Communicating with customers in a positive way encourages them to go out of their way for promote a business socially and by word of mouth. This communication helps in controlling what other people are saying about you all across the internet.

1. Insight Centric Customer Engagement


Data, personalization, and artificial intelligence have allowed marketing technology platforms to offer campaign analytics in times such as these. The insight led customer engagement platforms to allow marketers to mark the important moments in the journey of a buyer while charting a seamless customer experience.

The collaboration between marketing and insights helps both sides of the partnership make much better decisions while devising stronger and more customer-focused campaigns that drive businesses.

Data can be used for personalising the campaigns which is an essential step for customer engagement. A strategy such as this leaves almost no room for trial and error methodologies while leading to focused, and data-backed marketing campaigns.

2. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence| Importance of Customer Engagement:
Artificial Intelligence has added more of a personal touch to customer engagement trends and processes. In the past, marketers used to collect large amounts of consumer behaviour centric data.

However, the dearth of any tools for data analytics also meant the brands could not leverage data completely for strategy and decision making. At present, marketers have easy access to AI-based advanced tools in which the primary value is brought by the speed at which large sets of data can be analysed and used for generating predictive insights.

Focusing on how AI has lent a much more human-centric approach. Improved data analysis has offered the world an insight into the needs of customers who either lost their jobs or felt the need to upskill during the pandemic.  With the adoption of advanced data-based marketing automation, brands have been able to offer content and discounts that speak to diverse customers while focusing on a targeted marketing strategy.

Moreover, AI has also minimised manual efforts while offering a human touch to customer interactions with the personalization of campaigns. With machine learning becoming more mature, it is likely that we will see more customer-facing marketing automation capabilities.

Hence, with AI-powered channels, brands can effectively analyse data and also deliver relevant content based on the stage of the buyer’s journey. AI-enabled chatbots provide constant assistance to users as and when it is required. These AI assistants prove to be excellent tools for offering customer support and engagement.

3. Personalised Content

Personalised Content | Importance of Customer Engagement:
Customised communication when backed with suitable data points helps the organisations to break through the chain of generic messages while standing out in today’s market which is pretty saturated. Doing this is an important step in treating all your customers as an individual and offering services that are relevant. 

The reason for the popularity of brands has been a personalised experience that allows customers to place orders and pick them up in-store. Any marketing tactic that comes across as machine created and transactional does not prove successful in building customer loyalty and this is irrespective of how data is leveraged.

There must be a one size fits all approach that proves sufficient for attracting and even retaining customers. This is because this customer engagement strategy helps in offering the best customer experience and the greatest customer lifetime value.

Personalization has become an important investment with the economy recovering and consumers feeling safe to start spending again. All brands that personalise their approach to where and how they engage with customers can invest in paid media selectively. This helps in winning as a good share of sales makes its way back.

4. Single Interface


Another emerging trend in the market that is focused on customer engagement is easy access to all channels in just one place. A single interface is straightforward to allow any digital channel to be accessed easily and from one place.

With a single interface, a lot of time and money can be saved which also results in a hassle-free experience for the customers. In fact, the multi-channel approach helps in finding all touchpoints of the customer insights journey across all channels.

5. Cloud Platforms


Cloud Platforms| Importance of Customer Engagement:
The final goal of customer experience is always to create a satisfied consumer. There is no better way to get better customer satisfaction than by using cloud platforms.

The cloud does an excellent job of offering many benefits for businesses that are looking to improve their experience including an ability to personalise experiences, improve collaboration, offer better customer service, and undergo digital transformation. While this goes on, a business should also be able to offer user-friendly features that can keep the customers coming back for more.

Cloud platforms are perfect for managing customer engagement. They provide a safe and centralised location for customer management and interactions in just one place. This also makes it simple to track customer behaviour over time, find trends, and make better decisions about which products and services to offer customers.

It also helps in understanding how businesses are performing relative to competitors. Cloud platforms also make it simple to collect and analyse data while offering features that improve interactions and create better customer engagement. There are many solutions in the market and each of them has its own set of features.

6. Augmented Reality


Augmented Reality | Importance of Customer Engagement:
Another rising trend when it comes to customer engagement is augmented reality. It has offered a way for retailers to translate in-store visits into digital experiences. Customers always want to understand, see, and experience a product before they purchase it.

Since augmented reality offers a seamless customer experience, most customers expect retailers to provide an AR experience.  AR allows customers to browse 3D products from the comfort of their homes, try 3D products, gather information including reviews, pricing, and colour options, and use virtual trial rooms.

It should not come as a surprise that customers who use AR are more likely to purchase. In addition, AR provides retailers with the ability to overcome location barriers, and save costs on real estate, infrastructure, and other operational expenses while also boosting brand recognition and differentiating in the market.

7. Visual Engagement


Videos have proven to be a big winner for quite some time when it comes to a customer engagement strategy. Everything from team meetings to sales calls, everything has turned into video calls. In addition, more and more retail businesses have been able to make videos central to marketing strategies.

It is hard to argue when most millennials say they have purchased after seeing a video. Retailers are using many video types for engaging customers including explainer videos, promotional videos, testimonials, company culture videos, etc.

Many retailers also redefine the online shopping experience with the use of interactive shopping videos. These videos also empower consumers to instantly purchase a product directly from the content within a few clicks without leaving a video.

Another important area where visual engagement is seen is customer support and retailers do this by combining video chats and co-browsing. This is where agents see customer screens in real-time and guide them with forms, processes, transactions, and demos. For instance, retailers use co-browsing for e-commerce support for helping consumers find products that they want and reduce cart abandonment.

Conclusion


Zoho comes up with Zoho SalesIQ which helps in keeping up with the rising industry trends and taking your customer engagement strategy to another level. Moreover, Zoho also brings Zobot to the table which is an AI-powered chatbot used for screen sharing, voice calling, and chat routing.

Customers can have more than they need for proactively engaging with the brands if the brands use Zoho and the multiple features that it is capable of bringing to the forefront. At Encaptechno, we offer Zoho consultancy that can help your business meet the rising customer engagement trends in the market. 

 

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