Top 10 Ecommerce Marketing Areas to Focus on in 2020

You may think running an ecommerce store is easy, as the number of online buyers is increasing. Because more people are buying online, the greater the possibility of you reaching potential customers. Statistics say that by 2021, 2.14 billion people will shop online for products and services.

What can you get by combining billions of online shoppers with millions of ecommerce sites? Many opportunities from many competitors. If you don’t have a solid strategy that directs all aspects of your ecommerce business, you might end up being on the wrong side of the business.

Understanding ecommerce marketing areas should top your priority list if you have an online store. Each trend, every statistic and report needs to be analyzed and adopted to drive your business in the right direction.

To make it easier, here is a list of the top 10 ecommerce marketing areas to focus on for 2020:

1. Homepage

Did you know that 25% of first-time buyers only look at the home page to know what type of products are getting sold on your website? A correctly implemented ecommerce website homepage can increase visitor engagement and increase conversion rates.

Speed

Page speed measures the time it takes to load content from a URL. On the other hand, the speed of the site indicates the overall impact of the website. Often, delays can also affect ecommerce sales for your website.

Navigation

Navigation for your ecommerce site should be designed in a manner that helps customers easily find what they are looking for, or redirect them to the relevant page.

Responsive design

Without a responsive website design, it’s possible that your users might not have a good experience.  Your web design needs to respond to the environment and user behavior, for example, desktop navigation would be very different from mobile navigation. It is important for website designing to be efficient in this aspect.

User experience

It’s easy to see why good UI / UX design is needed when it comes to driving traffic and increasing website engagement. Your website needs to function based on well-studied logic, with simple and clear micro-interactions, rapid system feedback, attractive products, and have an efficient payment process, as well as other information and functionalities that may pertain to your brand and industry.

Trustworthy design

Consumers will not automatically trust your business, regardless of whether you have the best product on the market or not. To convince them to buy, you have to earn their trust with better search functions, well-placed guarantees that are applicable, verified customer reviews, and well-structured product descriptions.

2. Categories Page

The category page and the product list page are the center attractions of your ecommerce website. These pages are the crux of any website since they help you organize your content for easy usability and also serve as an index for all other pages that fall under the specified category.

Segment relevant products

Segmentation is the grouping of certain products by their identifiable characteristics. This is very effective when it comes to marketing your site since segmentation helps customers find the correct products, and helps you deliver the right messaging.

Suggest related products

How does a customer find more products belonging to a certain category if he is not aware of product details? Product recommendations, or suggesting relevant products, are an integral part of your website, and are sure to increase your conversion rates.

Perfect images

When it comes to ecommerce, images play a significant role, all the more since the customer can only see the picture of a product and decide whether he wants it or not. To market your ecommerce site better, you need to take high-quality product images.

While good product images help customers gather instant information, understand more about the product, and even help with SEO, a bad product image can drive customers away.

3. Product Pages

If you don’t think your product pages are the best ecommerce marketing areas, think again. A product page has a significant impact on your business; to market your brand you can use high-quality images, detailed specifications, or video reviews as well. The product page of your website informs your customers about what they are buying and why the product is an absolute necessity. Good product pages also help in bring more customers.

Product description

The customer’s victory by finding your business is your victory. A creative product page description goes a long way in marketing your website accurately and ensuring it engages the correct customers.

Product videos

Utilize product videos for products that benefit from added clarification, like electronic gadgets. Ensure that your product video is informative and helpful for the customer, and also gives them an idea about the dimensions of the product.

Social proof

The overall rating of the product as well as the product’s reviews should be visible to make your customers feel more confident.

4. Collections Page

When creating the collection page on ecommerce websites, ensure that the collection page contains the best product or product designs. Do not fill the collection page with a lot of products.

Mention any coupons

If users can apply a coupon on your website, make sure you add it on the collections page since this is where it garners maximum attention.

Show on sale badges

Product badges (also called product labels or stickers) are an effective way to showcase products in your store that are on sale. You can make the product badge stand out by using a design style that is different from your existing brand style.

5. Check-out Page

You don’t want to make the same mistake on your ecommerce site that so many other brands do. On the payment page, this is where you finally convert visitors to customers. The check-out page is one that should be easily understandable and have a good interface.

Simple and easy

On the cart page, it’s essential to keep things as simple as possible. This area should only contains fields that are necessary.

Including guest payment

When developing an ecommerce site, you must decide whether or not to require visitors to create buyer accounts. Customer payment and mandatory account information require the buyer to provide the shipping information (name, delivery address, phone number) and payment information upon purchase.

Forcing them to then also create an account may cause them to leave. Offer a guest check out option so that users can finish their order as quickly as possible, only providing necessary information.

Payment processing

The payment gateway is the process that a customer must follow when buying an item from his or her cart. The user will see it at the front end. The payment process begins when a customer clicks on the order now or preview basket or buy now button. Glitch free payment processing involves a couple of other factors like:

 Simplicity

Customers generally prefer a non-complicated payment channel, often complicated and tiresome payment gateways can drive traffic away from the website.

Security

It is advisable to have your site backed up with an SSL certificate. This means if your website address starts with “https” instead of “http,” your site is protected by an SSL certificate (S stands for secure). The SSL certificate securely transmits all data from the browser to the web server. Enabling the SSL certificate adds a factor of credibility to the website.

Easy

Online payment gateways should be easy; a customer should be able to make payments in a couple of clicks and not be confused about where to input information.

6. Email Marketing

New customer email flows

Email marketing involves going beyond a customer visiting your website and spending money to buy your products or services. Email continues to be a widely used medium to promote repeat purchases.

It involves a couple of steps:

Browsing follow-up flows

Tracking is a timeless sales technique that informs customers that you are grateful for their business, and also to remind them about what items they were looking at at your website.

Abandoned cart emails

Emails regarding un-purchased products in the shopping cart is the backbone of ecommerce. It is a follow-up letter sent to a person who adds an item to the basket, partially checks out, and leaves the site without making a purchase.

Targeted offers

This is a strategy adopted by many ecommerce websites. By providing great targeted deals and discounts, you make it difficult for customers to say no!

7. Paid Advertising

Influencer marketing

You can partner with influencers for product advertisements on their blogs or social media. This can bring in a lot of customers, depending on their reach or follower count, just be sure to find influencers who have a similar audience to your own.

There are also a couple of other ways in which you can use paid advertising to your advantage:

Google Shopping ads

On browsing different websites, customers will see the shopping ads of your products related to their recent search. This helps in reminding prospective customers about the product they were earlier interested in.

Display advertising

Display advertising is an important digital medium that can be helpful in promoting your ecommerce store. Make sure your ads are well-designed and with good copy that will encourage customers to click.

Retargeting ads

This is another great way of reaching the visitors who left your ecommerce website without making a purchase. Remind them why they visited you in the first place and encourage them to come back!

8. Social Media

Networking helps in increasing sales, and what better place is there than social media to do that? Social media platforms have evolved into live markets for ecommerce websites.

Social selling

This is one of the best ecommerce marketing strategies, as it doesn’t just focus on the product’s promotion. It also targets the right prospects and focuses on building trust in customers. It helps to engage your audience, hopefully turning them into repeat customers.

User-generated content

Many users or influencers on social media generate content that promotes the use of particular brands or products. You can collaborate with them to get your products promoted. Re-share their posts on your own social channels.

Social proof

People providing reviews about the product on social media or tagging a brand on their pictures often helps in building brand and product awareness.

Community building

Building a community of like-minded people will help promote sales. For example, if your ecommerce store deals in apparel, you can collaborate with fashion bloggers or influencers on Instagram to build a community where they promote their favorite brands while also discussing topics that are important to them and their audience.

9. Web Push Notifications

In an era where most products are available online, there are several ways to communicate with a customer. While you may be used to focusing on social media strategizing or email automation marketing, one important tool to engage customers with is web push notifications.

What are web push notifications?

These are messages that come from a website and deliver directly and immediately to a customer on desktop or mobile devices. Even if the user is not at your website or even using a browser, your web push notification will still send.

As a seller, you can use this as a strategy to market your products without knowing the contact details of customers- they do not have to provide any personal information like their email to opt-in. They just have to press one button to become a subscriber.

Why does your business need to send push notifications?

With web push notifications, businesses can ensure effective communication with customers. As a seller you can reach out to a larger section of your audience base, while also gathering customer behavioral data to send more relevant and personalized notifications that will increase conversion rates.

The dos and don’ts of push notifications

There are a couple of dos and don’ts when it comes to sending push notifications:

Dos: 

• Be clear with your objective and include a CTA
• Be creative
• When possible, incorporate images
• Personalize your campaigns as much as possible

Don’ts

• Don’t send messages that are too long
• Don’t send too many messages where you may come across as spammy
• Don’t send broad messages to your entire audience, instead, use segmentation

10. Unboxing Experience

Just delivering the right product to the customer may not be enough to turn them into repeat customers. Make sure that the packaging is such that they have an amazing unboxing experience. A couple of ways in which you can go about it are:

Coupon codes inside the box

Providing surprise elements inside the packaging box, such as a coupon code, adds customer satisfaction and liking towards the brand.

Unboxing experience videos

Ecommerce websites often send free products to influencers and celebrities, and ask them to share their unboxing video. This is one of the greatest ecommerce marketing areas to focus on since it can drive traffic and increase sales. Include links to these unboxing videos (and also share them on social media!)

Conclusion

By now you know the importance of marketing to drive conversions and sales. The aim of any ecommerce store is an influx of relevant traffic that eventually brings in revenue. In addition to sales, it’s also important to touch base with your customers and engage them to build a loyal following, as well as to see if there are any areas for improvement.

Hopefully this list of ecommerce marketing areas to focus on this year has been helpful to you. Additionally, don’t forget to keep up with continual website optimization and to check your analytics. You are sure to have a great year with many sales!

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