Most eCommerce entrepreneurs and marketing gurus concentrate on driving more site visitors and getting new customers. When you’re always in “hustle” mode, it can be tough to step back and gain the perspective necessary to understand that repeat visitors and repeat customers are far more valuable than new ones.
How do you increase customer retention? By getting those customers and leads to engaging with your business actively. Customer engagement helps you to increase onsite conversions, boost brand advocacy, and grow your business.
In this article, we will explore a few fundamental ways of increasing customer engagement. Before we delve into this topic, let’s first take a look at a question that many people new to the e-Commerce industry may be asking themselves:
What Exactly Is Customer Engagement? (And Why Does it Matter?)
Wikipedia defines customer engagement as
“A business communication connection between an external stakeholder (consumer) and an organization (company or brand) through various channels of correspondence. This connection can be a reaction, interaction, effect or overall customer experience, which takes place online and offline.”
This explanation is accurate — but it’s also excruciatingly dry! Luckily, you don’t need a PhD. in marketing to grasp the basic concept. In simple terms, customer engagement is any online interaction between consumers and the brands they buy. Customer engagement can happen on your website, on social media, via email, or even through snail mail! The important thing is, you are building a relationship with your customers, which can work wonders for loyalty.
It’s no accident that brands with more customer engagement tend to be more successful. So, without further ado, let’s explore four ways of encouraging customers to engage with your brand so that you can work your way towards long-term success in the e-Commerce world.
Don’t Be Boring
Or, at the very least, don’t be boring and expect sales. Good websites find ways to be creative and to push the envelope regarding exceeding customer expectation. Eye-catching copy, exceptional design, and a seamless online experience form the foundation of any robust e-Commerce store.
Go above and beyond by investing in your website, and closing sales will be infinitely more comfortable.
Rise Of Chatbots
Nowadays, a tremendous amount of people prefer communicating via text and instant messaging rather than by picking up the phone and calling. So it’s natural for brands to serve consumers through the medium that so many prefer. Chatbots are new age salespeople, without the used-car-guy sleaze. Chatbots can learn buyers requirements, understand preferences, and recommend relevant products based on that input.
The best part of all? e-Commerce stores don’t need to spend jaw-dropping amounts of resources to build their chatbots. There are numerous platforms like Chatfuel and Recast allow customers to make easy customization to pre-built chatbots for an extremely reasonable price.
Quite a few well known online stores have already utilized chatbots to build stronger relationships with their audience and they are witnessing high rise in open and click-through rates, in addition to other striking benefits.
Lego, for example, has successfully used chatbots to reduce their cost per conversion by 31%.
Create Product Quiz
Product quizzes are a powerful tool that e-Commerce companies can use to remove the guesswork from online buying. Conducting product quizzes can help you educate your target audience about what products best suit their needs — while also educating yourself about the preferences and opinions of your target audience!
On completion of the quiz, online stores can showcase highly curated products which are more likely to be purchased. Topshop.com serves as an excellent example of how such a process can work.
Let Customers Design Their Own Products
While industrialization certainly worked wonders in terms of productivity, reduced product cost, high volume production, etc., But it also left many people longing for more personalized and unique experiences and belongings. That’s precisely why so much new technology and innovation goes into product customization.
One of the most potent tools for product customization on the market today? Productimize. Designed to make the customer an integral part of product creations, Productimize helps brands tailor their products to each individual customer, generating positive PR and fostering brand ambassadors for every company that uses it.
Closing Thoughts
Every online retailer wants more sales and the fastest way to achieve this goal is by closing the gap between the product and the end consumer. By concentrating on customer engagement, sellers can overgrow without expending resources or taking on additional investment.
Keep browsing the Productimize blog for more insights on how you can increase customer engagement and grow in every aspect of your organization.
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