Sashank Ravindranath, Raksna Anand, Author at Lateshipment.com

BFCM 2024: How E-commerce Businesses Can Prepare for Success

Raksna Anand — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 14:01:38 +0000

Just like how the Super Bowl is a day for sports enthusiasts or the re-release of a famous franchise movie is a treat for the fans, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) is a tailor-made event for e-commerce businesses to boost revenue, attract new customers, and build brand loyalty.

As BFCM 2024 approaches in less than two months, it’s time for you to be well-prepared to capitalize on the opportunities and stand out from the competition. To help you do that, we’ve come up with this BFCM special where we’ll explore preparation strategies and provide tips for a successful 2024 season, using insights from previous years and evolving trends.

What is BFCM and Why is it Special for E-commerce Businesses?

BFCM is a two–way street, customers have been following the tradition of shopping more than usual for Thanksgiving gifts from the brick-and-mortar days, and with the rise of e-commerce, customers who wanted to get their shopping done ASAP to prevent their favorite products from going out of stock, began shopping for Christmas right at the end of Thanksgiving. Businesses too saw this as an opportunity to spur them to spend more via sweet deals.

Technically BFCM is just Black Friday and Cyber Monday (the Friday and Monday following Thursday’s Thanksgiving). However, in the recent past, due to increased shopping sprees and businesses’ efforts to capture more sales, BFCM has become much more than just two days of deals and is now Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Businesses Saturday, and Cyber Monday, also dubbed as the Thanksgiving Weekend or Cyber Five.

There’s usually high demand for items such as toys, home furnishings, mattresses, and apparel on Black Friday. At the same time, Cyber Monday is known for low prices on tech-related merchandise, like smartphones, laptops, TVs, gaming consoles, and VR devices.

BFCM also marks the unofficial start of the peak holiday shopping season, where you have to come up with effective strategies to increase sales and prevent issues that might affect your goals.

Why BFCM stands out for e-commerce businesses

Largest shopping event of the year – BFCM has evolved into the biggest shopping event, generating billions of dollars in sales over a few days. Consumers actively seek deals, and businesses see record-breaking sales, often surpassing the entire quarter.
High customer acquisition potential – BFCM is synonymous with deep discounts and exclusive offers. Shoppers expect lucrative deals and are prepared to make more and more purchases during this time. For you, this is a prime time to reach a broader audience and acquire new customers.
Increase sales revenue – For many e-commerce businesses, BFCM accounts for a large portion of their annual sales. Some businesses say as much as 20-30% of their annual sales volume is generated during this short period. This makes it a crucial event for you to maximize revenue and meet your sales goals.
Boost brand awareness – With customers actively looking for deals, BFCM creates the opportunity for you to dramatically boost your brand’s visibility by running well-targeted marketing campaigns and increasing your share of voice in a competitive market.
Increased customer retention opportunities – If your retention game is as strong as your acquisition, then BFCM is the best time to build long-term relationships (through exceptional post-purchase experiences) and convert one-time holiday shoppers into repeat customers.

In summary, BFCM is special because it is a short window of opportunity to access a large pool of potential customers and set the tone for long-term business growth. It’s a crucial moment, where you need to capitalize on consumer demand and cement your presence in a crowded marketplace.

Key Preparation Strategies for BFCM 2024

Here are some tips and tricks for you to make the best out of BFCM 2024:

1. Start early: create buzz and build anticipation

The BFCM hype doesn’t start on the day — it builds over weeks or even months. Most customers have their top pick of purchase in mind as early as July while looking for the best deal to get them. If you’d like to make the most of this, you should begin teasing deals and promotions to build excitement. For starters, you can offer early access deals to create a sense of urgency or exclusive offers for loyal customers.

64% of consumers surveyed plan to take advantage of early promotions and discounts.

2. Optimize your website for traffic surges

BFCM attracts a massive influx of visitors, so it’s essential to ensure your website can handle the increased traffic without crashing or slowing down. Test your website’s performance and optimize page speed. Also, make sure that your store offers the same level of seamless experience on both desktop and mobile, as a large portion of BFCM shopping happens on mobile devices.

In 2023, a record 79% of Cyber Week e-commerce traffic originated from mobile phones.

3. Fine-tune your inventory and delivery processes

One of the worst things that can happen during BFCM is running out of stock or delayed orders. To avoid this, plan your inventory well in advance by analyzing data such as last year’s sales data and anticipated demand or predictions based on carrier delay rates. You can also consider strengthening your supply chain by coordinating with suppliers to have an accurate inventory or shipping with multiple carriers to ensure on-time deliveries.

4. Offer competitive promotions and deals

Discounts are the main attraction during BFCM, everybody’s doing it. So, how can you do things differently to beat the competition? The answer: think beyond basic percentage cuts. Offer bundles, free shipping, and limited-time flash sales to entice customers. A good ploy is to implement tiered discounts to increase the average order value, such as “Spend $100, save 20%.”

With the checklist or ‘must-haves’ for BFCM covered, we’ll move on to the next section: the list of items that will be the ‘talk of the town’ for this year’s BFCM.

E-commerce Trends for BFCM 2024

As mentioned, for e-commerce businesses, BFCM is a golden opportunity to boost sales and acquire new customers. It’s that time of the year when people have their wallets readily open.

Over the years, there’s been a lot of innovative trends and campaigns driving sales. Let’s look at some unique strategies that e-commerce brands must incorporate to stand out during BFCM 2024.

1. Personalization will be at the forefront

In 2024, customers expect more personalized shopping experiences. AI-powered personalization tools have become more accessible, allowing e-commerce businesses to tailor product recommendations and promotions based on individual customer behavior. By using data from previous interactions based on customer preferences or shopping history, you can create highly targeted email campaigns, show personalized offers on their website, and offer custom discount codes.

2. Omnichannel shopping experience

With shoppers engaging across multiple platforms (websites, apps, social media, and even physical stores), providing a seamless omnichannel experience is paramount. You need to leverage tools that unify customer data across channels and allow you to offer consistent and personalized experiences, regardless of how customers engage. For instance, promotions or items added to a cart on social media should sync with the e-commerce website or app for a smoother shopping journey.

3. Video commerce and live-streaming shopping

Video commerce has been on the rise, with platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube enabling brands to showcase their products through short-form videos or live shopping events. Integrating shoppable video content or hosting livestream events with exclusive BFCM deals and real-time discounts can help create a sense of urgency.

4. Social commerce

Social commerce has continued to grow in 2024, with platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook offering native shopping features. Brands should focus on creating direct shopping experiences within social platforms, making it easier for customers to purchase products without leaving the app. Using BFCM-specific hashtags, promoting exclusive deals, and leveraging user-generated content are some strategies that can enhance your reach and boost conversions.

Over 73% of people actively shop on social media for Black Friday in 2024.

5. Influencer and affiliate partnerships

In 2024, influencer and affiliate marketing remain powerful channels for BFCM promotions. Partnering with influencers who align with your brand allows you to tap into their engaged audiences, while affiliate programs can amplify your reach. Both approaches can help you reach new customers who might not have discovered your brand through traditional advertising.

Most businesses who give their all to implement the aforementioned strategies miss out on putting the same effort to optimize their post-purchase. One of the primary reasons behind this disparity is that businesses often assume that a BFCM sale ends with the customer’s purchase. While that’s partly true, your after-sale efforts such as offering a seamless post-purchase experience can improve repeat purchases and turn one-time BFCM shoppers into regular customers.

Here are some strategies to optimize your post-purchase right on time for this year’s BFCM.

Post-Purchase Strategies for BFCM 2024 Success

1.Handle WISMO (Where Is My Order) inquiries in advance

The surge in orders during BFCM inevitably leads to an increase in customer inquiries around order status. Implementing proactive communication with customers about their order status can drastically reduce these WISMO inquiries and improve customer satisfaction. For starters, you can automate shipping updates through email or SMS by using real-time tracking tools to keep customers informed of their orders at all times.

2. Automate post-purchase customer service for delivery issues

Delivery issues are frequent during times like BFCM due to high shipping volumes. In order to minimize their effect, you need to stay on top of them instead of relying on the carrier to take action. You can make use of automation to enable proactive customer service — such as notifying customers of potential delays. This can help prevent your support reps from getting overwhelmed while reducing frustrations by providing your customers with immediate assistance.

3. Ensure a seamless returns process

With higher order volumes comes the likelihood of more returns. Offering a clear, easy-to-navigate returns process can encourage hesitant customers to buy with confidence, knowing they can return or exchange items if necessary. Also, customers might already feel frustrated having to return their holiday purchases. So, make returns as easy as possible to mitigate their dissonance. Here’s how you can do it — provide a self-service returns portal that automates the entire process to streamline the experience.

4. Create loyalty programs and VIP access

Customer loyalty has become a top priority in 2024, and leveraging exclusive VIP programs or early access for your most loyal customers can significantly boost sales during BFCM. Offering special deals to existing customers before BFCM begins, along with reward points or exclusive perks, helps strengthen customer relationships and encourages repeat purchases. Additionally, VIP access can create a sense of exclusivity, driving early sales.

Think you’ve got it all figured out? We’ve got more. Here are some last-minute tips and tricks that can help you with your whole BFCM strategy.

Last-Minute Tips to Maximize BFCM 2024 Sales

Leverage Social Proof: Showcase customer reviews, testimonials, and user-generated content across your website and social platforms to build trust with new shoppers.
Ramp Up Customer Support: Prepare your customer support team for increased inquiries by adding extra hands or using automated tools to handle common questions. Ensure live chat options are readily available for quick assistance.
Abandoned Cart Recovery: Set up email reminders or retargeting ads for customers who leave items in their carts. Use incentives like free shipping or additional discounts to encourage them to complete their purchase.
Use Countdown Timers: Add urgency to your offers with countdown timers for flash sales, limited-time deals, or when stock is running low. This drives conversions and reduces cart abandonment.

BFCM can be one of the most profitable weekends you can have if you have the proper strategies in place. If the customer is impressed with your BFCM, if the customer is comfortable with the BFCM experience, they might revisit your website to buy something else for the holidays.

In the moments leading up to BFCM 2024, take a deep breath and trust in your thorough preparation. The potential for growth and success is significant, and your dedication to serving your customers and delivering value will be the foundation of your achievements.

Here’s to a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday, filled with joy, growth, and memorable customer experiences.

Happy Holidays!

The post BFCM 2024: How E-commerce Businesses Can Prepare for Success appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

LoveNspire: A Journey of Pandemic Generosity to Global Success – Nidhi’s Story

Raksna Anand — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 15:13:08 +0000

Nidhi is the face of LoveNspire. LoveNspire is a thriving D2C store specializing in culturally rich, ethnic products that include over 2500 products. They sell handcrafted gift items, jewelry, home and festive decor. Born during the pandemic, they’ve grown from a one person operation to a global store, catering to customers all over US, Europe and Canada.

That’s a huge leap in four years. And not only that, the brand has over 3000+ 5-star reviews. We eagerly listened as Nidhi Spilled the Tea on How LoveNspire racked up these awesome reviews.

Would you like to throw some light on what happened in those early days and how the brand started out?

It all started during the pandemic, which was 2020. There was a scarcity of masks in the United States, during COVID. Hospitals and first responders were urging people around to make masks and help people out. I had a sewing machine at home. I have never sewn masks, but I thought that I could try it out. I watched some tutorials and I started making masks. I gave them out for free. Some people refused to take them for free and they wanted to pay me. Slowly through word of mouth and social media, many of my friends and neighbors started approaching me, asking for masks and within two, three months, I made more than 50 designs of masks, helped more than 500 people, made more than 2000 masks. It never stopped there. I think LoveNspire started out like that.

After that, some of my customers approached me and wanted me to make Rakhis (Rakhi is a bracelet gifted to siblings – an Indian tradition). Logistics was a problem from India to the United States. People wanted Rakhi to celebrate the Raksha Bandhan festival. (it is a celebration of sister and brother bond).

Many Indians from India started asking me if they can send a rakhi to their siblings in the US. That’s when we again started making DIY rakhis. Within like a span of one month, we helped out more than 1000 customers and made more than 25 designs of Rakhis. We got a very good response and it was rewarding. That’s when we realized that there’s a gap which we can try to fill in. There was this next festival which was Diwali (Diwali is the Indian festival of lights). I made DIY stuff at home.

Slowly, we started collaborating with some of the women artisans back in India. At that time, logistics started opening up, internationally. That was a good time to pitch in and start collaborating. For Diwali, we got a huge response, we launched more than 50 products. We got amazing five star reviews. And from there, we never looked back. Today, we have more than 2500 products, and we have more than 2500 positive reviews from our customers.

Wow, that’s truly inspirational. There are four and a half million Indians in the United States and there are many ethnic brands out there. How do you really make your brand stand out and appeal to this crowd?

There are many things to add on, but I will just highlight four important things.

First and foremost, is that we have a very wide portfolio of our products. We have all kinds of products for Indian festivals. They are handmade Indian ethnic products made by Indian artisans. Not only that, but we are very accommodating for everybody. Pricing is very good. We can cater to all kinds of customers internationally.

Second is, Quality of our products. We take quality very seriously. We make sure that we provide the best quality.

Thirdly, Customer service is very important for us. We are available to our customers by email, chat or by call. If there is anything, any queries or questions, we answer them immediately.

Last but not the least, is shipping. We ship out items from our warehouse in Michigan within, one business day, we try to ship our products out ASAP.

These are the four most important things for us.

That’s indeed true. Businesses cannot compromise on the above stated factors. You have more than 3000+ positive reviews. How did you achieve that?

We are reachable to customers by email or by text or by call or Zoom calls. This is how we are trying to make ourselves available and put them at ease. Even in our listings, our products have good product descriptions and images. This helps the customers make the buying decision. We provide them with a lot of information before they buy. We try to make ourselves available through any and every means to the customer before and after they make the purchase.

Products are categorized under festivals and the events, which makes it easy for customers to navigate through our online store. The whole experience for them is really easy and convenient. Everything is done keeping customers in mind and their convenience.

Customer feedback is taken seriously. If we get to know that there’s anything we can do to make our customer experience better, we do it right away. If there’s any problem, we make sure that at the end of the day, it’s resolved and the customer is happy. It’s all about retaining your customer and becoming a family. We don’t want to work with a customer for one time, We want to give them an experience. We want them to become lifelong customers. That’s what we believe in, strongly.

That’s very impressive. In terms of shipping, do you face any challenges?

The biggest challenge in shipping would be the timing. We try to resolve this by providing multiple shipping options.

We have standard shipping. Above $35, we have free shipping. Depending on the geographic location; it reaches them within one business day to five business days.

The second is premium shipping, where the products reach customers in two to three business days.

If people have emergencies and they need the product ASAP, we have Next day shipping too.

It depends upon the customer’s requirement, they can choose the shipping options.

We’re sure that this helps you build trust and credibility for many first time shoppers as well as repeat customers that you get. We know that you put a lot of focus on your post-purchase customer experience. Why so?

Everybody wants to keep themselves updated on what’s going on with their shipments. Because the timeline is everything. Timely delivery is very important for the customer. Once the customer is placing an order, we make sure they immediately get a notification, by email or by chat, that they’re order has been received and that it will be shipped within the next few hours or one business day.

That’s the first thing we do and after that, we’ve been working with LateShipment.com for quite some time and they have really helped us out to keep our customers updated. Once we ship out the order to the customer, LateShipment.com comes into the picture where they keep the customer updated about the whole journey of their package, and this just keeps the customer at ease. They are informed on where the package is and if there are any discrepancies, the customer gets to know, if there are any timeline issues, even as a business owner, we get to know and this is such an amazing thing.

Sometimes, we have to take action immediately, call the customer or immediately get in touch with them and tell them this is what is going on. We ask how we can make it better and then come up with a solution and make things right. Thank you LateShipment.com for that. It’s really amazing. This enables us to proactively communicate as a business, where we are reaching out to our customers, informing them that this is what is happening before they come out to us. Customer Experience is everything to us, this has tremendously helped us out as a business.

Thank you, These are words that really fuel us and keep us going. As a woman leader, we’re all truly inspired from what you’ve created at LoveNspire. What advice would you give all the women entrepreneurs out there who are probably just starting out?

As a woman entrepreneur, you have to wear different hats; as an entrepreneur, as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter. It’s really challenging, and I must say that work-life balance is very important. One needs to have a strong support mechanism in your family, where, if you need something, somebody is there to help you out, and time management is very important. You need to have priorities, what are you going to do in a day, because you cannot do everything, you need to have great time management, and you need to prioritize what you have to do. If my glass is full, I can help out others. I think that all of us need to do that as business entrepreneurs.

Second is that when we started this business, we never knew how this journey was going to be. One needs to be very consistent in one’s efforts, and one needs to have a lot of persistence because failures are a part of business.

Trust me, you are falling every other moment. If you think that you’re gonna be good after one year, two years, NO, every moment, you’re having failures, but you have to get up because that’s where you learn, and you can learn from your mistakes, and you get up and you get better and better every day,

You need to have the right partners and collaborate with the right vendors because you’re not gonna do it alone. You need to have people around you, your success depends upon how good they are. You need to be very creative and innovative in your business, you need to bring in new technologies and test new products, you need to understand what customers are looking for and it keeps on changing too. Your business needs to keep changing to the customer’s tastes and customers’ expectations and keep bringing something new and creative.

Be hungry for more and more, and keep working towards it. Never get settled for less, just be hungry.

That’s very inspiring. The main takeaway is to stay humble and stay grounded. Thank you, Nidhi.

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The importance of Estimated Delivery Date during the holidays

Raksna Anand — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 10:56:14 +0000

Do you know what customers search for in the checkout page? It’s the estimated delivery date. Yes

45% of customers abandon their carts because of unsatisfactory delivery options.(shipbob)

It is important to provide your customers with accurate shipping information including estimated delivery date.

What is estimated delivery date?

46% of e-commerce customers prefer to know the ETA of their package before they place their order (timesofIndia)

An estimated delivery date is the exact date on which the package the customer has ordered would reach their doorstep. It depends on various factors such as the time taken for the product to be shipped, distance, preferred shipping method and transit time.

Imagine that a customer is shopping last minute for Christmas gifts for their loved one. In this case, the accurate delivery date plays an important role because the customer wants to know if the product will reach them on time. Hence, we recommend all e-commerce businesses to include estimated delivery dates in their product page and checkout page.

Why is estimated delivery date important?

1. Builds trust and authority

The primary goal of establishing the estimated delivery date is to build a trust and authority factor over the brand. Especially when the customer receives the product on time, it fosters a good customer experience. Estimated delivery date not only provides accurate information but also encloses professionalism. When all the satisfactions are met in terms of the product and when the product arrives on time, it sets the stage for retention.

2. Increases sales

When the customer sees the accurate delivery date and if it aligns with their timeline, it would definitely be a huge factor to nudge them to click that buy button. During the holiday season, especially when time is everything, an accurate delivery date could give them a picture of what they can expect. This also reduces the cart abandonment rate. The customer would be very excited, especially when there are faster shipping options. They will anticipate more to receive the order.

3. Reduce WISMO enquiries

An average customer visits the branded tracking page 6-8 times while the shipment is in transit. Customer anxiety runs high, especially during the holiday season. Providing an accurate delivery date can drastically reduce WISMO enquiries. It is not only about specifying an accurate delivery date, it is important that you mention the date on the branded tracking page.

Near-accurate EDD results in a 76% drop in WISMO calls, even in case of delayed deliveries. (Australiapost)

This way, customer support representatives can handle more pressing queries rather than focusing on WISMO enquiries.

4. Setting customer expectations right

A. Managing Anticipation: Customers will know when they will receive the order and when they can anticipate receiving their orders This sets clear expectations and rules against any uncertainties Especially during the holiday season when supply chain disruptions are really high, an estimated delivery date could be a game changer leading to customer satisfaction

B. Avoiding unpleasant surprises: Without the accurate delivery date, the customer would imagine that a certain product could be shipped in a certain date and if that doesn’t happen, it leads to frustration which in turn gives a very bad delivery experience affecting the brand’s perception. The customer will have a completely different perception of the brand from here on

C. Gift of Giving: Usually during the holiday season, customers plan on gifting their loved ones and if they do not know the estimated delivery date of when this would happen then they wouldn’t be able to make a certain plan leaving them hanging.

5. Reduces Porch piracy

Porch-piracy is an epidemic. With the explosive growing of e-commerce sales, package theft has become more prevalent, relevant than ever.

One in two Americans have had their package stolen. Now, in some states, package theft has moved from a conviction to a felony. Providing accurate delivery date and time can allow the customers to accommodate a specific time during the date collected packages from the delivery partner. Thus, accurate delivery date and time can save you a lot of money and prevent your customers from experiencing a bad moment.

Where to display the estimated delivery date?

Product page
Checkout page
Shopping cart page
Order confirmation page
Order confirmation email
Branded tracking page
Customer Account dashboard
Customer service page

Wrapping Up

In this ever-bustling world, brands need to adapt to certain strategies to stay relevant. Including estimated delivery dates is an important feature which plays a major role in pushing the customer towards clicking the buy button.

Most of the customers want their order to be delivered yesterday. In such cases, it is better to provide customers with shipping optionality. Shipping optionality is the feature to provide customers with multiple shipping options, varying from expedited shipping to eco-friendly shipping to standard shipping options. This way the customer has the freedom to choose when they want their product to be delivered. Most of the customers who choose expedited shipping options often are willing to pay extra to get the product shipped and delivered soon. Try conveying as much information and provide customers with as much shipping options as you can for a better customer experience.

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16 ways to improve Average Order Value during the holidays

Raksna Anand — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 07:38:38 +0000

Is average order value important? Of course, it’s a key metric that e-commerce brands should focus on during this holiday season. Increasing the average order value directly boosts your store’s revenue, increases customer loyalty, and retention and reduces churn rate.

How Does Average Order Value Influence Customer retention?

If a customer spends a lot on your website, it means that the customer trusts you, believes in your brand, and enjoys the experience that they’ve been receiving from the brand. When they’re satisfied with the post-purchase journey, and if they’re satisfied with the product that they have received, this will play a huge role in retention. Higher the average order value, better the customer experience and post-purchase journey, more would be the customer retention rate.

16 ways to improve Average Order value during the holidays

1. Offer product bundles

Product bundling is a well-known strategy used during the holiday season. Often complementary products are bundled together. Bundle the products that are often bought by your customers and present the bundle in a discounted price to increase the average order value of your cart. A popular type of bundling during the holiday season is the gift set.

2. Add gifting options

Customers are shopping at your site often looking to buy gifts for their loved ones. Save them some time by offering gifting options. This gifting option can be a great way to save time for your customers, adding to a positive customer experience. You also get to brand all your products with your gift-wrapping techniques.

3. Try to upsell your products

Upselling is usually recommending a higher priced or a better version of the product that the customer is currently viewing. This can be achieved by comparing a product with its high featured model and rating them. .

4. Add-on options

Offering complementary products that would go with the original product that the customer is viewing, can be a great way to present an opportunity to increase the average order value of the cart. For example, for a customer who is purchasing a moisturizer from a beauty brand, the same beauty brand can recommend face wash and serum before the application of the moisturizer to get a clearer skin. Clothing brands often do this by a ‘buy-the-look’ option while shopping.

5. Influence through Post - purchase journey

An average customer visits the order tracking page 6 to 8 times during delivery. This rate could be significantly increased during the holiday season owing to higher customer anxiety. Use the post-purchase communication channel to offer coupon codes, offers and discounts on products that are personally recommended for the customer. This has proven to be a very great marketing opportunity.

We’re seeing customers increase their revenue by an average of 12% through post-purchase promotions. (Fanx)

6. Suggestions in Checkout

The last touchpoint a customer can be influenced before the sale happens is the checkout page. The checkout page is when impulse decisions take place. E-commerce brands can suggest personalized recommendations or complementary products during checkout. Customers are more likely to add those products to their cart.

7. Try cross-selling

Cross-selling is the strategy through which an e-commerce brand recommends complementary products that go along with the product that the customer has chosen. This way, the customer feels very convenient and has a positive impression on the brand for recommending those products to them. Often customers might have forgotten to buy those complementary products and as a way of reminding that cross-selling acts as a way of reminding to the customers. Which also increasing the average order value.

8. Customise coupon codes

Customize and personalize the coupon codes according to an individual customer. Offer separate coupon codes for your loyalty members and first-time shoppers. Present thresholds for free shipping through customized coupon codes. For example, orders above $60 get free shipping with this ‘X’ coupon code. Present limited-time offers that last only for a few hours, to FOMO the customer into adding more items to the cart.

9. Incentivise customers as soon as they enter your shop

Offer discounts and collect emails from the customers as soon as they enter the shop. SpinTheWheel is one good tool which would help you do that. It offers a gamified experience and also offers coupon codes. Collecting emails from customers if you want the tool to do so.

10. Discounts with Loyalty programs

Loyal customers are a gold mine and don’t ever go cold on them. Always send frequent emails and SMSs to keep your loyal customers in the loop of what’s going on in your e-commerce space. A customer who has shopped from you before has a high probability of buying high valued items from you. Frequent communication with them about new product launches and offers that are going on in your store would be a great way to make them shop with you again.

11. Show how much they’ve saved through your offers

This might sound weird. Remind your customers that they have saved X amount of dollars by using coupon codes and offers from the brand. This would reduce cart abandonment rates. If the customer knows that they still have budget to purchase another item, they will do so knowing that they have saved so much.

12. Offer Tiered discounts

Offer a tired discount. For example: .20% offer on 2 products, 40% offer on 5 products, 50% offer on 10 products. Such a tiered discount would make the customer add more items into your cart, increasing the average order value.

13. Offer Buy Now, Pay Later Option

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is a popular payment method that’s been used by millennials and Gen Zs over the past few months. Your customers are shopping for their loved ones, and amidst inflation, they’re still willing to spend a lot on gifts. Offering multiple payment methods, especially Buy Now Pay Later, would give them the privilege to shop for products right now and not worry about exceeding their budget. This could give them a great customer experience also.

14. Display Social proof

When the customer has doubts about buying a certain product from you, social proof can be a great way to nudge them further into buying your product. This sets the customer expectation right and reduces the number of returns.

15. Levarage Personalised product recommendations

Personalized product recommendations are a great way to increase the amount of time, customers spend on your website. This promotes user engagement and customer retention. Customers often tend to discover new products on your website if they do so. This would significantly increase the average order value.

16. Show Abundance scarcity

Have you seen many websites showing data on ‘X number of people have viewed this product in the last two hours’ or ‘only four or five stocks left’ for you to purchase? This is the use of fear of scarcity to lure customers into buying a product from the brand.

Final Word

There are many ways with which you can increase your average order value. But some techniques work only at some point. If the customer clearly has a budget, then any number of tricks wouldn’t encourage them to add more things to the cart. They’d be more focused on saving money during this expensive season of the year. Strategize your pricing, keeping both the luxury shoppers and budget savers in mind. Of course, ‘one size fits all’ doesn’t also apply to increasing the average order value of every customer’s cart.

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8 Branding Storytelling ideas during the holiday season

Raksna Anand — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 06:54:19 +0000

Brand storytelling is a relatively less used term. E-commerce sales have been explosively growing. There’s a reason why people prefer to shop online. Correction, there’s not one reason, there are so many reasons. Starting with convenience, people can shop whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want, in any device they want. You know what I mean, right?

And second, there are so many coupon codes, discount codes, special offers online, and exclusive online products. Other reasons include reviews, people can meticulously read what others think about a particular product and make an informed decision. This way customers know what they can expect. There is a free returns option also. In a world full of amazing brands, how can your brand stand out? That’s through Brand storytelling.

Branding VS Storytelling

Brand storytelling is very different from branding. For starters, branding focuses on very materialistic things like color, theme, logo, aesthetics, and creates an image of how a particular brand should be perceived by a customer.

But brand storytelling is different. Brand storytelling is how you emotionally connect to a customer by being your authentic self and what purpose you serve for the customer. The main goal of brand storytelling is an excellent relationship marketing tool.

Why is Storytelling important during the holiday season?

This is one question which always arises from a customer. Why should I buy from you? As an e-commerce brand, what values do you stand by? What do you provide for me other than the product, is what the customer in 2023 wants to know? Brand storytelling plays an important role here. Brand storytelling makes you:

Establish emotional connection
Stand out from the crowd
Build trust and authority
Make them feel included in your community

8 Branding storytelling ideas during the holiday season

1. Website design

Your website or your social media may be the first thing that a customer sees which sets a definitive image in the customer’s mind. Make sure that you say something that truly defines what you are and what you stand for. Your website homepage or your website design doesn’t just have to be about what you represent. Even very minimalistic touches can be very influential on your customer. For example, take a look at the micro animation below which sets the holiday mood even with a very micro interaction. This contributes to one of the elements of storytelling – Attention-grabbing.

2. Streamline the checkout process

Streamlining the checkout process is one small gesture from an e-commerce brand that you show on your site that you really want to make your customers feel convenient. Especially during the holiday season when the customers are in a rush? This not only increases conversion rates but also establishes a good customer experience.

3. Be your authentic self

Brand Storytelling is establishing that your brand stands for something. Don’t force your brand to be something that it’s not. Stand for what it really means, even if it means something really small. Take Patagonia, even on Black Friday, they stood by their values and boycotted the huge sale of the year opportunity. They opposed mass consumption during the holidays and their brand advocates even grew fond of what this brand did.

4. Unified messaging in all channels

All the channels through which you communicate, be it social media, be it your website, be it your brand tracking page, be it your holiday packaging, be it your emails or SMS, be it your customer support representatives, set the tone right. All these touchpoints revert back to your emotional connection.This unified messaging not only creates consistency but also builds trust and credibility.

Your brand, when it has a unified strategy, represents one thing and one thing only – your brand’s value, which is conveyed more and more to the customer once they get to experience all your touchpoints.

5. Customer testimonial

Customer testimonials are the social proof of what your brand stands for. This assures customers that you deliver what you say, leads to more conversions, and increases trust.

6. Showcase your CSR value

If you’re doing something that’s good for the environment and the people around you and your customers, then you should definitely take the liberty of showing that off to your customers. Not to sound very salesy, but good deeds are not meant to be kept a secret.

7. Holiday Packaging

Holiday packaging is one exciting touch point that you can use to further establish an emotional connection. You can customize your packaging, opt for eco-friendly gift options, add gifting options, do personalization, allow customers to add personalized notes, make interactive QR codes. This can lead to a very exciting unboxing experience.

8. Branded tracking page

Brands often think that nothing much could be established on branded tracking pages. But we are here to say that it’s not the case. You can add a number of content to your branded tracking page. You can add videos saying what your brand does and how the product that is being shipped to the customer can be used. This promotes customer education also, which reduces the number of returns. Branded tracking page is a great way to interact with your customers post-purchase.

Bonus Tip: Build a memorable customer experience

Building a memorable customer experience ties several knots to the relationship that you already have with your customer.

40% of shoppers do not come back to you after a poor delivery experience.

So, in any part of the customer journey, be it pre-purchase or post-purchase, there cannot be any compromise in what you offer. If the customer is not satisfied with the experience, this creates a negative brand image which cuts all the ties that you’ve tried so hard to establish.

Final Word

We live in an economy where relationships hold the primary power. Establishing an emotional connection with your customers is very important as we state again and again and again. E-commerce is not just about convenience and variety of products anymore, it’s more than that. It’s a good strategy to include brand storytelling in your marketing in order to convert customers. This increases customer retention when a customer feels connected to the brand.

Good luck!

The post 8 Branding Storytelling ideas during the holiday season appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success this Holiday Season

Raksna Anand — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 17:59:24 +0000

Did you know that 7 in 10 customers abandon their cart?(statista). The number one reason for cart abandonment is the additional charges levied during checkout. Streamlining your checkout processes and making sure that your checkout page provides as much information as it can,is a key factor to turning a potential customer into an actual customer. Especially with the holiday rush coming in, you need to optimize every single page.

Why Optimizing a Checkout Page is Important this Holiday Season?

The holiday season is when the cart abandonment rate is really high compared to the normal days. We have already established the fact that additional charges levied during payment is the number reason for this to happen.

Reasons to streamline your checkout page

Reduce cart abandonment rate
Increase transactions speed
Provide personalization
Offer convenience
Minimizing errors

The holiday season is when you receive a lot of traffic. Imagine converting all abandoned cart with a streamlined checkout page and we’ll show you how.

Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success

1. Provide Multiple Payment Options

Add multiple payment options during the checkout. For example, Visa, MasterCard, AMX, PayPal are some of the popular payment options that merchants offer. But Buy now, Pay Later (BNPL) payment model is now becoming increasingly popular among the Gen Z and the Millennials. During the holidays is when customers tend to spend a lot even over their budget. But brands should understand this and facilitate customers into buying products using the Buy Now Pay Later platform.

2. Display Accurate Shipping info

Presenting the shipping information again would allow customers to once again go through all the information that they’ve entered to avoid any mistakes. Mentioning the estimated delivery date also sets the delivery expectations right. This also can lead to higher conversion rates since the customer knows that their package would arrive within the timeline that they want. Specifying the shipping cost or free shipping would also be very helpful to customers into deciding if they should buy from you. Offering shipping optionally also gives the customer the freedom to choose when they want their product to be delivered. Usually a customer who wants the order to arrive early, would probably pay more for shipping. Specifying those details would be convenient for decision making.

3. Add Gifting Options

Enable gifting options for your customers, this is a very big boon in disguise. This allows you to offer gifting options to save time for customers, but at the same time it offers you a unique opportunity to enforce your branding elements into the wrapping papers as well, once again opening a channel for communication with the customers.

4. Add a ‘Personalized Notes’ option

Personalization is key, but personalization can also be established on checkout pages by allowing the customers to add personalized moods for their loved ones. This provides a positive customer experience for the customer.

5. Collect necessary information for retargeting

Make sure that you get all the key data that you need during checkout, like the email addresses, first name, last name, and the shipping address, the billing address, and contact information. Save the information and allow the customers to autofill the next time, making the checkout experience even more convenients . This saves time for your customers. This information that you get, make sure that you can use it for promotional purposes. Of course, it’s not right to use a customer’s information without their permission, but with their permission, you can use their contact information to send them targeted personalized emails and SMSs.

6. Add Gift card option in your checkout page

Adding a gift card option leans more towards profiting the brand rather than the customer. It’s about selling gift cards and setting the stage for customer retention. Speaking from the customer’s side, gift cards are an easy way to purchase a certain value of credits from your store to give them to allowed ones. This is a free word-of-mouth promotion for your brand as well.

7. Display Shopping cart summary with discounts

Cart abandonment rates are really high, especially during the checkout phase, when customers see additional charges when they make the way to pay for the order. It’s imperative that you show the summary of your shopping cart along with the items that they’ve ordered with all the shipping charges and the taxes and any other extra charge that you’re going to levy on your customers. This sets the customer expectations right and avoids unnecessary cart abandonment. It also reduces the number of returns if you specify precisely the items that the customer has added in the cart.

Anatomy of a Checkout Page

A checkout page should contain the following

Cart summary
Addiptnap chagers levered
Gift card options
Gift wrapping options
Refund and return policy link
Total amount saved on coupons and discounts
Shipping details – Estimated delivery date, shipping charges
Multiple payment options
Personalized recommendations
Trust badges from various card providers
Customer support information
Shipping optionality

Final Word

Make sure that you streamline the checkout process and make it really convenient for your customers. Provide as many options that you can in that single page. Ensure that it is optimized to mobiles since most payments are made through mobiles. that they are compatible with wallet payment methods also. But remember that the customer journey does not end with the sale button. That’s when the post-purchase customer journey starts. Optimize your post-purchase customer journey for maximum impact on retention.

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7 Quirky Social Media handles to get inspired from

Raksna Anand — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 11:20:03 +0000

As a brand, do you have social media handles? Of course, you do. Every brand has a social media handle which establishes its presence online and communicates with its customers from a social standpoint. Posting regularly on social media also informs the customer about what the brand has been doing. Many customers often search for a brand on social media platforms first, before they go to their official website. For many brands, social media provides a first impression of the brand for the customers.

Have you been posting constantly and catching up with the current trends? Don’t get us started about the difficulties of staying on top of the ever-changing trends, the words that you shouldn’t use to get canceled, following bizzare rules levied by the social media platform, having a social voice without offending anyone while also promoting your brand. It can be overwhelming. Even if you do all this, you can go unnoticed. Because every other brand does it!

Ever thought of taking the quirky unconventional path? No, no, we know what you’re thinking. Quirkiness also gets you noticed on social media. Here is a list of a few brands (well-known brands, actually), that use savageness, quirkiness, dark humour and crude humour in their social media. You won’t believe us, but their strategy has got them a devoted follower base.

Quirky Social Media handles to get inspired from

1. Zomato

Zomato is a food delivery app in India. Zomato uses a combination of fun, sarcasm, comparison, current affairs, and trendy topics to engage with their customers.

Play Video

Recently they used their own brand’s name pronunciation as a social media trend whether to pronounce their name as ‘Zomaito or Zomato’. Zomato featured a series of celebrities in their ads to endorse Zomato. None of these videos actually declared the right pronunciation of Zomato but ended up in a quirky way promoting Zomato itself.

This Instagram pos below is another example of how Zomato uses humor in their social media handles.

2. Croma

Croma uses moment marketing and meme marketing to drive engagement on its social media handles.

3. Ryan air

Ryanair uses dark humor and savageness in their social media handles. So, below is an example, a classic example of how Ryanair promotes its brand.

Play Video

Ryanair is a budget-friendly airline operated in the European Union. It offers cheap flight rates but amenities aren’t so sophisticated compared to the normal typical flights. Even though people know that Ryanair is very basic, they still choose this airline owing to its cheaper rates. Ryanair uses this consumer behaviour and strategizes its online presence on social media.

Ryanair also engages with the audience in the comments section. Ryanair responds to any negative comments with a very savage approach and it still has a very huge customer base and social media following.

4. Swiggy

Swiggy is also a food technology company in India, which uses relatable posts and witty one-liners in meme marketing to advertise on social media. The below post, which translates to, “Who googled this”, is one example of how Swiggy poses itself on social media. Swiggy also uses its employees to make memes.

5. Aviation gin

Have you seen Deadpool? Well, Ryan Reynolds is the owner of Aviation Gin and he mimics the same swag that he had in the scenes of Deadpool to promote his brand Aviation Gin. He also does eyeball hijacking.

Eyeball hijacking is leveraging current trends and adapting them quickly to catch the eyeballs of the audience and engage with the brand. Ryan isn’t afraid to break the walls of social media with his witty banter and self-deprecating humour.

Play Video

6. Duolingo

Many followers call Duolingo’s mascot cute. Duolingo uses its mascot to promote its social media strategy. It even collaborates with celebrities with the social media mascot present. This mascot isn’t not popular. This Owl even got invited to Barbie’s premiere. Duolingo uses entrainment to teach stuff.

7. Dunzo

Dunzo is a hyperlocal delivery service which uses meme marketing and moment marketing to approach its audience in social media along with consumable comics. Dunzo’s mascot is even a comic.

Social Media Trends in 2023

Do you still think collaborating with influencers is the trend? Nah! It’s the norm. Find out some of the social media trends of 2023

ASMR: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, that’s ASMR. ASMR is a social media trend that’s been going viral for the past few months. It’s nothing but someone whispering into the mic very closely, giving a chill down the spine for the viewers watching. It doesn’t involve a lot of music or any audio-visual effects. It’s just someone really amplifying the sound of the task that is being carried out by the person in front of the camera.
Subscription-only content basis: Using Instagram’s new feature of subscription-only channels, brands can grant exclusive access to those audiences who have subscribed. They can offer exclusive access, early product releases, member-only discounts, and post educational content, which builds the community.
Broadcast channels: Broadcast channels are one way to keep in constant touch with your audience. You don’t have to post salesy stuff through your broadcast channels. You can give quick tips and tricks on what’s happening in your business’s realm, to update your customers. This is one way to engage with your customers by adding them to your broadcast channel.

Wrapping Up

If one had told us that ASMR would be so trending right now, I wouldn’t be able to believe you in the past. Social media trends can change rapidly overnight, and one strategy that you’re doing can go out of the trend just like that. It’s important to keep up with what your customers want to see. There are millions of other brands which catch up with these trends, and if you don’t do so, you might be considered irrelevant.

But sometimes that irrelevancy is also what customers expect. In a world where everyone follows the same sheep, your brand could be one black sheep which stands out of the crowd with your unconventional ways. The only way to know what strategy works for you is by testing, testing, and testing.

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7 festive packaging ideas to drive up the holiday sales

Raksna Anand — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 11:02:14 +0000

Have you come up with creative holiday packaging ideas? Holiday packaging is essential to bring a festive mood to the customers.

The sole purpose of a package is to protect the shipment of the product from being damaged while in transit. But, a package can also be used as a marketing tool. Find out how.

Why do you need holiday packaging?

Great Unboxing experience: There are various social media trends out there, but one trend that’s still existing. It is the unboxing experience. When a customer receives a very great package from any brand, they tend to make Social Media videos of them unboxing the package. This could spread your brand awareness and improve a positive customer experience. The customer also gets to be curious and delighted to open the package.
Bringing in the holiday mood: Your site is going to be decorated with festive elements, you will have seasonal products marketed into your strategy, why not enforce the festive touch in your package by adding colourful elements to the whole unboxing experience? This would make it visually appealing and also holiday-themed.
Time-saving for your customers: Often products are purchased to be gifted to someone else during the holiday season. While your customer would be busy during the holiday season spending their time with their loved ones, they’d have to go to an extra length to package the gifts themselves. If you as a brand go the extra mile to do this for your customers, the customer will have an everlasting impression on you that you saved time during the holidays for them. In fact, time is everything during the holiday season.
Free marketing and promotion: This packaging would definitely be branded and holiday-themed. What more can you do for free margarine promotion among your audience?

Here’s a checklist of packaging to-dos.

7 festive packaging ideas to drive up the holiday sales

1. Wax seals

Wax seals are one unique way to seal your packages during the holiday season. Wax seals can be easily customized to match your brand’s theme and the holiday theme, creating a good memory for the customers, which also creates a very great unboxing experience. There is elegance and tradition in wax seals.

2. Personalized note

Personalization is very important, especially during the holiday season. It contributes to retention. You can add the feature of customers writing personalized notes for their loved ones to be gifted during the holiday season. You can add handwritten notes from the brand also wish your customer very happy holidays. A handwritten note would be a nice personal touch and the customer would also recognize your efforts to engage with them, turning them into loyal customers.

3. Interactive Unboxing

Interactive Unboxing would be a very delightful surprise for your customers. On top of not only receiving gifts, they will also have an additional element of surprise in their gifting, which is Interactive Unboxing. Below is a video of an example of Interactive Unboxing.

This increases social sharing, sales and engagement, enhances customer experience, builds brand loyalty, generates buzz and anticipation, and provides customer satisfaction.

4. Eco-friendly packaging

Your product might be sustainable. Make your packaging also sustainable to entice your customers into buying from you.

66% of customers would pay more for sustainable products. (Statista)

This is one trend that is here to stay. Who said that eco-friendly packages aren’t cute? Look at the inspiration below.

5. Creative packaging

Start to get creative with your holiday packaging. Most of the brands would go for the red and white traditional packaging and also establish their branding elements onto the package. You don’t have to necessarily follow that. You can go with different packaging ideas that don’t resemble traditional holiday season vibes but bring an entirely different vibe. That is one perfect way to stand out from the crowd.

6. Adding festive elements inside the package

While you concentrate on the product and the outer surface of what the package looks like, it is important to create a very good unboxing experience too by adding festive elements inside the package also. You can add snowflakes or glitters or dried flowers inside your package so that it falls on to the customer when they open, bringing in a magical spirit to your product.

7. Interactive QR code

Every single area of your package can be utilized to bring in a festive mood. One such creative idea is a QR code. You can leverage AR and VR for the unboxing experience of your customer. You can create interactive QR codes that would take your customers to your holiday content, products on sale, or holiday-themed videos to entertain your customers. Customize your QR code for easy returns and exchanges. Another way to creatively use these QR codes is to enroll your customers automatically for holiday contest entries.

Protect your packages

An e-commerce brand goes to a great extent to give a positive customer experience, starting from luring the customers into their store through various promotional activities, up until the time when they send shipping and tracking notifications to their customers to keep them in the loop. But what if your high-value product or your limited-edition product gets lost or damaged during transit? As an e-commerce brand, you can do many things to protect your package and one such thing is shipping insurance.

Shipping insurance is a great way to get your product insured and if anything goes wrong, you can always file claims with your shipping insurance provider to get back the money that you have invested in the product. While supply chain disruptions are very common during the holiday season, we recommend that you protect your packages with shipping insurance.

Wrapping Up

Remember that you do all these activities to retain a lifetime customer. Giving a positive experience to your customer by concentrating on every single touch, including holiday packaging ideas is a great way to show your dedication towards keeping your customers satisfied. Keep in touch with them by collecting their feedback and making them feel valuable. Send out frequent communications regarding your offer and discounts. Reach out to your customers during their important dates and make them feel satisfied.

Good Luck with the Holidays!

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Shipping as a marketing tool: Drive delight this holiday season

Raksna Anand — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 10:30:55 +0000

Ever thought of ecommerce shipping as a marketing tool? E-commerce brands often focus on various channels during the holiday season like marketing, website design, product variations, emails and social media. We’re here to say that e-commerce shipping is also a great marketing tool that e-commerce brands should consider.

E-commerce shipping is the last part of the pre-purchase customer journey before the buy button is clicked. Holiday buyers look at the shipping options and buy their gifts. Entice buyers with shipping and we’ll teach you how.

Ecommerce Shipping: The Ultimate Marketing tool

1. Free shipping, duh

90% of customers would shop online more often if free shipping is offered. (savemycent.com)

Free shipping would

Improve conversion rate,

Reduce cart abatement rates,
Positive customer experience.

We understand that every business cannot offer free shipping. In that case, we suggest that you do the following

Offer free shipping above a certain value,

Offer free shipping on certain products only
Offer free shipping only to members or email subscribers to make them feel exclusive

2. Ecommerce Shipping optionality

With shipping optionality in the play, brands offer freedom to customers to choose what they want in terms of shipping. There are many types of ecommerce shipping options that are trending right now.

Expedited shipping – Expedited shipping is an umbrella term which has many options, which are two-day delivery, same-day delivery, and overnight shipping. 54% of consumers under the age of 25 state that same-day shipping is crucial when shopping online. (Walker Sanders)

Many customers who opt for expedited shipping often are willing to pay extra for faster shipping options. These expedited shipping solutions are practically a way to reduce cart abandonment rates and increase conversion rates.

Local delivery – Local delivery is when a product is delivered from your local store to the customer’s doorstep. It is a great option for brands to acquire local customers.

International shipping

Eco-friendly shipping options – Gen Z and the millennials are obsessed with sustainability and knowing good for the earth. Eco-friendly shipping options opt for biodegradable packaging, carbon offset programs, and recyclable packages. Often, these eco-friendly shipping methods take much time to reach the customer as they opt for ground shipping. But customers are still considering eco-friendly shipping in order to save the world.

A Statista study says that product packaging accounts for the greatest portion of greenhouse gas emissions in the e-commerce industry. There are options to increase shipping efficiency and reduce unwanted packaging boxes,

Pack orders efficiently,

Let customers know that you are practicing sustainable shipping methods,

Allow customers to offset carbon at checkout,

Consolidate orders,

Promote the use of reusing and recycling packages,

Opt for eco-friendly shipping and fulfillment partners,
Reduce returns.

3. Gifting options

With the holiday season, festive cheers would be everywhere. Even the brand’s website would be decorated with festive elements to set the holiday mood. Why not offer that gift-wrapping option in your e-commerce shipping as well? This saves enormous time for your customers and time is everything during the holiday season. Your customers or people in general would want to spend their time with their loved ones. You are supporting that by reducing the time for them to wrap gifts. Provide multiple gift-wrapping options in your ecommerce shipping.

4. Personalized notes

A personalized note is also a time-saving element which you can use as a part of your shipping process. Gifts are often bought from e-commerce brands and this customizable personal note when given as an option would add a personal touch to your entire product and improve customer satisfaction.

5. Estimated delivery date

8 out of 10 shoppers agree that the more valuable their package, the more important it is to have an accurate EDD. (Forbes)

Customers are often anxious about their products being delivered on time. Especially during the holiday season, the anxiety peaks. In order to alleviate this anxiety, estimated delivery dates should be specified.

Mentioning the holiday shipping deadlines would also be helpful in this case, as it gives a real-time scenario of what’s going on in the shipping industry as well. Shipping deadline is the latest date in which you can ship your packages and send them their way to the customers to reach them on time. In order to reduce anxiety or obliviousness, brands can offer shipping.

6. Shipping cost calculator

Factors to consider:

Dimension

Weight

Destination

Type of shipping
Supply chain disruptions
Shipping deadlines

Various shipping costs for various types of shipping services could be displayed in order to give a real-time image of how much shipping costs for the customer. A customer on a budget would be able to get a clear idea of what type of service he or she wants.

7. Customisable packaging

Oreo’s ColorFilled campaign is the best example to depict how important customizable packaging is. Oreo ran a campaign called the ColorFilled campaign where customers had the liberty to choose packaging of their own and they even designed packaging of their own. Oreo announced that this would be a limited edition. Oreo being Oreo, their fan base felt crazy and ordered a lot of products from Oreo. This campaign was a huge hit. Customizable packaging is one competitive advantage you can use in terms of ecommerce shipping to further nudge customers into converting.

Customer journey after the buy button

The customer journey does not end after the buy button. The phase after the ‘buy button click’ is called the post-purchase phase. Brands often overlook the post-purchase part. Right from the mail which says ‘your order has been placed’ to delivering the product, sets the stage for retention.

Retaining old customers costs less than acquiring new ones. Shipping happens through 3rd party logistics partners. Brands should assume responsibility for any shipping mishaps even though they’re not responsible for anything which happens after the product has been shipped. Taking up responsibility offers a very big competitive advantage in terms of offering last-minute delivery delight.

Final word

While e-commerce brands do a lot of things to drive traffic to their website, the elements in the website clearly play an important role in pushing the customers towards converting. E-commerce brands often offer discounts, spin-the-wheel offers, customized coupons, and gift bundles in order to lure customers to convert. But shipping is the last touch point or the last element that you can add to further improve the conversion rate. When customers find the shipping Options they want and when the package arrives the way they want, customers click the buy button.

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Holiday Website Design Ideas to bring in the Festive Joy

Raksna Anand — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:40:57 +0000

The holiday season is just around the corner and we’re starting to see festive cheers everywhere. The streets are going to be decorated with lights and chandeliers. The mall is going to have Christmas trees and the houses would have wreaths in front of them. But have you ever thought of this? A person who’s walking around all these festive cheers would expect those festive cheers to follow them everywhere. With ‘ecommerce delivery here to replace chimney delivery’, most people would visit Ecommerce sites to do their holiday shopping. It would only do justice for them if they are greeted by the brands with the same holiday mood. Yes, we’re talking about Holiday Website Designs.

It’s not just enough to promote your special holiday offers, gifts, bundles and discounts without the holiday vibe. ( vibe – we’re adapting the Gen Z vocabulary now). Bring in that fun, excitement, and job and make the users get indulged with your brand by creating some awesome holiday website. Here are some inspirations website design ideas for you.

Best Practices for Holiday Website Design

Typography, iconography, imagery, and the animated elements should align with your brand’s guidelines.
The Holiday Website design shouldn’t be a hindrance to the overall user experience
Research Current trends and stay on top of them
Do highlight your best moving products on your website
Dont Use Cliché Imageries

Holiday Website Design Ideas to bring in the Festive Joy

1. Homepage Design Inpiration

The Homepage is the first page your visitor is going to see. The first impression should always be the best impression. Brands need to make the homepage visually appealing and at the same time convey all the ongoing offers. Here’s when Bold CTA’s, Interactive elements and countdowns play a major role. Here are some website design ideas for your website.

2. Timer - Creating a sense of Urgency

A timer constantly running as a floater on top of the website is an effective strategy, constantly reminding the users that the offer is going to expire. This creates a sense of FOMO and nudges them to take action. These critical timers can improve conversion rates.

3. Gamification through Spin-the-wheel

The holiday season is a time when a brand gets a lot of new visitors to their website. A gamified pop-up is said to improve the engagement rates.

Benefits of using a gamification strategy

Grabs attention
Offers a variety of offers in one single pop-up
Reduced abandonment cart rate

A gamification element can also be easily installed on popular website creation platforms.

4. Custom animations

There are various types of animations that you can include in your website. Some of the animations that are used in general include hero animation, loading animation, accent animation, interactive animation, scroll animation, hover animation, and hover animation. These animations can very well be changed to look like Santa or any other holiday element to bring in joy and enthusiasm. This exerts playful energy and festive joy from the e-commerce brand. These types of animations offer a unique user experience which could be a great holiday website design idea.

5. Use Micro-interactions on your holiday website design

Microinteractions are audio or video-visual cues that respond to a visitor’s action. Microinteractions can be beneficial in various ways. It improves customer experience. It brings fun and excitement. It boosts user satisfaction. It creates a brand identity.

There’s micro-interactions can be used on

CTAs
Simple Swipes and Transactions
Form submissions

Get your Website ready for the Holiday Season

While it is important to get your website look holiday ready, it’s equally important to note that your website is ready to handle all the incoming holiday rush. Some tips for handling the holiday rush and to convert them.

Optimise your website speed: “A slow website is a lost opportunity”. Users expect a website to get loaded in just 2 seconds (pagespeedinsights). A slow website risks losing visitors, customers and conversions. Create a smooth engaging experience with a faster website. Know how.

And it’s not just about the users. A slower-loading website can affect your Google SERP ranking.

Site-search optimisation: Up to 30% of users use the site search option when one is provided and these 30% are the highest converting user segments. During the holiday season, customers have a lot on the list to tick off from and some of these customers might know what they want or they might even know the category in which they want to shop from. A simple site search optimization could do the magic. It is important that you optimize the product pages also for maximum conversion. Don’t lose customers over simple site search optimisation.

Quick tip: Display social proof to nudge customers into buying your product

Prioritize mobile-first optimisation: With billions of smartphone users, it important to optimize your mobile site. Remember to always keep it mobile first. people get influenced by social media and actively search for gift inspirations on those platforms.. Since social media is widely used on mobile phones, users tend to directly click on links provided on social media to go to the website. It makes absolutely no sense to not prioritize your mobile optimization, especially product display pages.

Final Word

Relationship marketing is an important factor in the e-commerce world now. There are many ways you can do relationship marketing. It could be done by offering seamless customer support, awesome post-purchase journey and a hassle free returns experience. But bringing this holiday touch to your website is a very micro touch point which would have a very big impact on your user experience. Even minor changes to the website design, adding festive elements would provoke joy and enthusiasm among the audience. Embrace the holiday spirit and convert as many customers as you can with a visually aesthetic and seamless website.

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Unique Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce brands with Examples

Raksna Anand — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:30:32 +0000

Ho Ho Ho! The holiday season is upon us and it’s time for brands to wipe the dust off the box, get in it and think outside of that box to bring in some quality holiday traffic. Holiday marketing could be very different from marketing throughout the year. Brands need to get all in with their tricks and tactics to pull off a successful and profitable holiday season.

And this season, we come bearing holiday marketing ideas.

Why should brands focus on their Holiday Marketing this season?

This year, the global e-commerce holiday sales is set to hit 1.2 trillion dollars. (Salesforce)
The holiday season is one of the most profitable seasons for any business. This year, the global retail spending will rise by 4.5% during the holiday season. (Deloitte)
An average consumer is set to hit $1,430 on an average during the holidays. (Salesforce)

If consumers are ready to open their wallets and splurge admist inflation, e-commerce brands should use this opportunity to make the most of it.

Holiday Marketing Ideas brands should focus on

1. Spreading the spirit of Hope - Sephora

Sephora, the universal beauty brand, decided to spread ambition and joy in its holiday marketing campaign. This ad ‘Believe in your wish’ features people who are courageous enough to wish and say it out loud. It encourages people to be bold and positive. Brands that use the power of emotion in their ads seem to establish a unique connection with their audience.

2. Giving back to the Community - M&S

M&S launched the campaign “Gift of Giving” for the holiday season. M&S partnered with a giving back platform called Neighborly, which supports local community groups. As you can see in the video below, the ad features different ethnicities and races, and the importance of giving back during the holiday season. M&S, partnered with Neighborly, donated one million pounds to 1,000 local community groups during the holiday season. They announced that a chunk of the profits from the holiday sale would contribute to the one million that is being donated to the local community groups.

People often want to give back during these festive seasons, and M&S understood the assignment.

Anna Braithwaite, M&S Clothing & Home Marketing Director, said: “Through our campaign and product ranges we want to help make that possible; providing much needed funds to the incredible groups that light up our local communities and by doubling down to deliver the exceptional trusted value our customers want – as they seek out more considered, stylish and thoughtful gifts. There’a really is no better feeling than giving – and we hope this feel-good campaign puts a smile on our customers’ faces this festive season.” (Industry fashion)

3. Gamify the Shopping Experience - Target

Gamification is a strategy through which a brand can increase customer engagement and loyalty. The concept of gamification is to influence human behavior through games. Target leveraged this particular strategy in their holiday marketing, to drive traffic to their website. The strategy targeted millennial moms who are digitally connected and kids.

Target used Augmented Reality to further influence children to get involved in this game. When a kid adds a product to the wish list, the wish list is virtually sucked into a tube which is portrayed to be sent to Santa’s headquarters. This was a huge hit. The brand saw 75,000 installations of the app and 100,000 wish lists being created. The wish list was directly connected to the moms and they can be collaborated with the relatives. This particular campaign led to the creation of 9,200 new Target.com accounts. The average wish list consisted of 30 items worth $1,500. (adforce)

4. Hyper-personalise your products - Oreo

Oreo decided to bring in personalization by customizing their package. This allows users to go online and choose various colors that they want to be included in the package. Based on the colors they’ve selected, Oreo comes up with a suggestion of designs inspired by the graphic artists, Jeremyville and Timothy Goodman. Or the customers have the liberty to pick up the brush and design their own package.

Oreo also allowed customers to mix in the seasonal elements, such as a waving snowman, singing patridges, hugging penguins, and mustache presents donning bowler hats. This colorful experience could be ordered online. Oreo has a very large fan base and this particular campaign was a huge success among their audience. This was available only for a limited period of time during the holiday season. This created a sense of FOMO among the customers.

Customers also had the option to personalize heartfelt notes along with the packages. Some cliche Christmas phrases such as “joy” and “ho-ho” were also included in the elemental designs.This campaign was a huge hit.

5. Bringing in Excitement through Staged Techniques - Costco

Brands always face heavy competition during the holiday season. Bizarre techniques would be adopted by brands to gather the attention of the audience and convert. One such hilarious strategy used in holiday marketing by Costco was the “staged email leak”. Yes, that’s right. You heard it right. Costco actually staged an email leak where they sent Black Friday deals one month before Black Friday to their customer list through email. It was made obvious that it was staged and not an actual email. This still instilled a lot of curiosity and excitement among the customers.

Additional Holiday Marketing Ideas

Dress up your Homepage.
Offer Holiday special bundles and product variants.
Improve site search optimisation and product recommendations for the holidays.
Curate a personalized gift guide for your customers
Bring up products on sale front and up in the site search bar.
Gamify the experience with spin-the-wheel, floaters.
Retargeting with social media and email with special personalised coupon codes.
Provide personalisation on gift wrap options.
Display shipping countdown for the last date to be shipped.
Hyper-personalisation is the norm.
Show that you care about your customers and your community.
Provide shipping optionality.
Try to offer free shipping.
Cross-sell and Upsell through a branded tracking page.
Make returns policy easy and clear.

Wrapping Up

There’s no one strategy that fits everyone when it comes to holiday marketing. As a brand, you have to stand out of the crowd and know what works for you. Try analyzing data from the past. Try collecting data from five years back and create a sheet of what’s working for you and what isn’t working for you.

Consumer trends keep changing and it is important that brands adapt to those changes in order to survive in this heavily competitive space. There are so many new things that brands can do which include hyper-personalization, optimizing the post-purchase customer journey, providing an excellent customer support interface and so on. Identify the gaps in the customer journey that your brand needs to concentrate on and provide a full-on experience for the customers. Set the stage for retention by providing a seamless customer journey.

The holiday season is one of the seasons through which you can experience a lot of new traffic. Don’t go cold on your customers. Loop them in via loyalty programs or retention programs and turn them into lifetime customers.

The post Unique Holiday Marketing Ideas for Ecommerce brands with Examples appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Key Ecommerce Personalization areas to focus on

Raksna Anand — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 04:21:50 +0000

Personalization has become a norm rather than just being something that e-commerce brands do to just sway customers. Ecommerce Personalization has become just more than that in this bustling world.

66% of consumers want businesses to understand their specific requirements and expectations. (Salesforce).

77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized experience (Forrester).

Why is Ecommerce personalization important?

Better user experience: More and more relevance your customer finds in your brand and in your products through personalization, stronger the relationship you can cement with your customers.

Increase AOV: The holiday season is one period in which customers keep their wallet open and they would want to spend on their gifts. Even though inflation is a major factor this year and that it’s been influencing people spending their money on products, people are still ready to spend a lot on holidays this year what more ways do you need to increase your average order value rather than personalizing?

Competitive advantage: Personalization could be a key differentiator in setting you apart from the crowd. Through Enhanced Customer Satisfaction and Customer Engagement with your website, lets you collect a lot of data from what the pattern of the customer. This gives you uninterrupted access to data that you can use on customers to re-target them.

Upselling and cross-selling opportunity: Personalization is a great way to upsell and cross-sell products from your website to a customer who is just browsing through your website.

Given the importance of personalization, just personalizing doesn’t cut it anymore. Hyper-personalization is the way. And let’s take a look at how you can create a seamless but exceptional e-commerce personalization by hyper-personalization.

Key Ecommerce Personalization areas to focus on:

Search personalization

Site search is 1.8x more effective at producing conversions. Why not personalize your site search property?

You can start by doing the following things. (Most of these techniques work better if you have a good customer segmentation game).

Boost popular brands and items.
Tailor results by gender-based categories.
Highlight high-value items.
Customize results by user preferences.
Display popular gift ideas or gift guides

Recommended products personalization

Personalization is hard, especially during the holiday season. The customer might have a big list of gifts that has to be shopped on your website. Say for example, if a customer is browsing a hoodie to be gifted during the holiday season and that they found the hoodie after various personal recommendations. But what if the customer has moved to another product which is in their long list of gifts and is searching for a different product now? In this case, the e-commerce brand must use various indicators to change the personalized product recommendations in this case. This in turn makes it very convenient for customers to browse through your website and this will help with your conversion rate.

A Branded tracking page could be a game-changer. On an average, a person visits a tracking page six to eight times in order to track their package. If your brand offers a branded tracking page, this improves brand recall and produces an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell your products. With personalization in the picture of upselling and cross-selling products based on previous customer history, it creates a separate revenue channel.

Quick tip: Try prioritizing products in the recommendations that have offers or products that are on sale to increase the conversion rate.

Ways to present personalized recommendations: Best sellers, trending, bundles offered with the product being viewed, what’s new, recently viewed.

Nearly 70% of customers revisit a website several times before they make their purchase decision. (Forbes) In this case, if you offer a tab that says recently viewed, this influences the customer to recall the product and this in turn will help in conversion.

Personalized marketing

Social media is one of the top channels through which people search for holiday gift ideas. Now with the advent of Meta Custom Audience and E-mail marketing custom audiences, you can create different customer segments and target them through personalized ads. This remains a great advantage for brands to target different audiences with different products, different messages and different creatives too.

Retargeting through personalization: 97% of people who visit your website do not buy anything from you the first time. Retargeting is a good way to bring in those customers who left after one session. Retargeting can also be personalized by leveraging data and analyzing what the customer viewed. This can be done through social media, emails and SMS marketing. when you retarget a customer, it is not only essential that you personalize the recommendations for them, but it is also important to personalize the coupons in order to get them back to your website. You should know what trigger works for a particular segment of customers. If a customer knows that the particular product they viewed is on a limited offer deal or is now offered with a coupon they can redeem it and buy the product. These customers will be more interested in coming back to your website and converting.

Quick tip: Include social proof in product pages to decrease the bounce rates.

Final word

The more personalized your website, the more impact it will have on the conversion rate. One size fits all personalization technique doesn’t work out anymore. Many brands really go out there and put so much effort into converting their customers and giving them a very good experience and you cannot compromise on personalizing the customer experience. Personalization is the future.

We live in a relationship economy rather than a transactional economy. Customers expect a brand to establish a relationship with them and personalization is one good way to appeal to the customers, not only increasing sales but leaving a remarkable image on the consumer’s mind.

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Pinterest-Worthy Corporate Gift Ideas

Raksna Anand — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 03:42:25 +0000

Ah, the art of gift-giving. Who doesn’t like gifts? Especially when the gift comes from the company that you are working for, or if you are giving gifts to your co-workers, colleagues, or employees, it definitely has a personal touch to it. Corporate Gifts are one way to foster a good relationship with people around you or the people you do your business with. Wondering what you should give your colleagues, co-workers or employees. Don’t worry, we come with Pinterest-worthy corporate gift ideas

Things to be considered when you buy corporate gifts:

Keep your Budget in mind

Consider Personal preference’s of the receiver

Do Not make it sell your gift. Make it a nice gesture

Give gifts that add value and meaning

Personalisation would be a nice touch
Think out of the box

Pinterest-worthy corporate gift ideas

1. Customisable Christmas box from Ellar boutique

This customizable Christmas gift box contains a selection of gourmet cookies and chocolates along with a soft sealed insulated water bottle and a luxurious soy candle. You can customize this gift hamper’s color and ribbons and you can even write a personalized message on each hamper. On top of that, they offer free delivery.

2. Locally sourced gifts from white source market

82% people try to support local businesses (score.org)

This incredible organization called the White Spruce Market sources all its products from local artisans and businesses. They do a range of customization and they have a wide variety of gift boxes and gift hampers according to the theme you select. Check them out!

3. Yum bites from Blondery, the cloud kitchen

Blondery is a black woman-owned cloud kitchen which sells brownies, blondies, doggy treats, birthday cakes, cinnamon sugar, and more. They have been featured on various magazines for their exceptional taste in these pastries. They have a longer shelf life, so don’t worry about the blondies getting ruined while in transit.

4. Vahdam - Premium tea from India

“The most flavorful teas” – Forbes. “Carbon neutral and ethically sourced teas from India” – New York Times. Vahdam is one of the most sought-after tea brands in India which has reinvented the way tea was sourced. Their unique flavors ( which aren’t available easily even in India) are exceptional. Even Oprah loved the tea and left an overwhelming comment after getting tea from this brand. This brand exports tea globally to more than 10 countries. Add a tasteful flavour to your corporate gift giving by adding these VAHDAM teas.

5. Wellness diffuser to spread the cheer in the air

One most awesome out of the box corporate gift ideas – diffusers.

Appellation is a niche well-being and fragrance brand that fuses scent, wellness, and science. This brand uses science-backed ingredients to create therapeutic scents in order to make the user feel calm and balanced mentally. The products offered in this brand are free of synthetic phthalates or petroleum-derived ingredients. The holiday could be one stressful time or the holiday could be one time where people unwind from all the stress and burnout caused during their work time. And this scent is one of the fastest ways to alter one’s mood. This particular science in the scent is said to alter the emotional center of your brain bringing positivity. It’s not just for smell but it makes you feel good also.

6. Stylish paws for the small hoomans

The old saying is that the way to a human’s heart is through their stomach. The new saying is that the way to a human’s heart is through their pens. You cannot overlook the small humans that make the big humans happy. Acknowledging and gifting one’s pet is a nice touch and also is very personal. Check out the cool collection from this brand and their holiday gift guide for pets.

7. Wine/alcohol gift box from Yorkville’s

Um, we’re not going to explain why a wine/alcohol box is a great corporate gift idea.

8. Soothe massage - Uber for massage

Who said that gifts couldn’t be a service. Soothe brings massages to your home, work, or office. Buy Soothe massage cards for your colleagues and let them schedule a call with the masseuse and rewind from stress. The therapeutic massages at Soothe have over 50 years of experience. This couldn’t go wrong.

9. AirTags - for those who have the knack for losing things

AirTags For those who have an eye for losing things in work or at home, AirTags could be really useful. AirTags could be customized and a personalized AirTag would be a great public gift idea.

10. Plantable seed cards

Giving plantable seed options is not only a budget-friendly idea, it is a sustainable idea as well. It’s an eco-friendly gesture. Usually, planting seeds and watching them grow simulates growth and new beginnings. And this metaphor is highly relevant in the corporate world. Plantable seeds also have a long-lasting impact on the recipient.

Selecting a perfect memento to give out this holiday season just got easier for you. Personalization could be one aspect that could touch the heart of your recipient. But remember that a thoughtful gift is not just a gesture but it’s the art that fosters positive relationships and leaves a memorable mark. Make your recipient feel valued and give them joy this holiday season.

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7 Quick and Effective ways to increase holiday sales

Raksna Anand — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 16:22:58 +0000

Tis’ the season for cheer and joy not only for consumers but also for merchants due to the surge in holiday sales. Tis’ the season where e-commerce brands face a lot of competition and unprecedented challenges. Tis’ the same season when the business becomes very lucrative. Tis’ the reason why you want to concentrate on handling the holiday rush and increasing sales.

Here are 7 ways in which you can increase sales.

7 Quick and Effective ways to increase holiday sales

1. Get your website holiday ready

The holiday season is when people open their wallets and they are ready to make purchases. Normally, e-commerce brands would experience a surge in orders during the holiday season. It is essential that you keep your site ready for that spike in order volumes and traffic volumes. The streets are going to have festive cheers during the holiday season, the physical retail stores will be decorated, and even the USPS delivery office will be decorated with Christmas trees. Why not add festive cheers to your site to encourage customers to bring in joy?

Create a sense of urgency: You can add various limited-time offers and create floaters for those deals creating a sense of urgency.

Add customized holiday pop-ups: You can customize pop-ups or spin-the-wheel elements representing the holiday season and can offer special coupon codes to encourage purchases and increase holiday sales.

Test your site speed: As mentioned earlier, more traffic can be expected and it’s important that your website loads quickly in order to not lose your customers.

2. Improve SEO for holiday traffic

Optimize your product pages descriptions and copies and create holiday specific landing pages. Include more holiday specific keywords. Get found when people are searching.

It takes time for the SEO to actually drive results. If you haven’t started yet, it is high time that you start improving your ranking now and drive holiday sales.

Bonus tip: If you can offer express delivery to the customer;’s location, target them through local SEO. This would very much appeal to the last minute shoppers.

3. Optimize your website for mobile to increase holiday sales

Experts always recommend e-commerce websites to optimize for mobile, keeping it mobile first. This is stated while keeping several reasons in mind.

One, with the rise of social commerce, people tend to find stores through social platforms. Right from the discovery phase to the checkout phase, everything is taken care of on the social media platform itself. In this case, social media is mostly viewed through the mobile device and it’s better if your website gets optimized first on a mobile device.

With 6.4 billion users using a smartphone and the internet to discover various e-commerce brands, it would be a shame not to optimize for your mobile and convert most of the customers coming to your website.

Second, Google has created a mobile-first indexing policy, where the mobile version of the website is first crawled and ranked in Google. And Google being google, it’s vital that you optimize for mobile and get ranked in Google first. Here are some tips to improve mobile conversion rates

4. Display UGC

UGC is HIGHLY STILL RELEVANT. And it’s going nowhere. During the holiday season, people trust the opinions of others. Online reviews are as good as personal recommendations. Websites displaying UGC content have resulted in 29% high conversion rates. [websell.io]

Be transparent, display honest reviews and set the customer expectations right so that you don’t experience a lot of returns post holiday season.

5. Concentrate on Abandoned cart recovery

Statistics show that only 3 out of 10 people who add products to their cart actually checkout.

You can employ various techniques to re-market to these people, to those who have abandoned carts. You can send gentle reminders through email notifications, SMS and push notifications, urging them to finish their transaction. Sometimes a special coupon code can be sent to encourage those customers to convert them. Again, this creates a sense of urgency. You can enhance the urgency by saying

That only one product is left in the category that they were browsing
That ‘X’ many people have viewed this product recently

This would also create a sense of FOMO in them and encourage them to convert.

6. Offer multiple shipping options

It is always a good option to offer diversified shipping options to customers who are checking out. The customers get to choose when they want this product to be delivered. You can expect people to shop earlier during the holiday season and you can expect last-minute shoppers as well browsing through your website. You can’t take the risk of offering very limited shipping options that might potentially affect the bottom line of your store. By offering shipping optionality, your brand can cater to a diverse range of customer needs and preferences.

For example, when a last-minute shopper is looking for same-day delivery, shipping optionality would be the differentiator here. It might be easier for the customer to choose your website to buy their holiday gifts from. Multiple shipping options that people expect e-commerce brands to have are as follows:

Same day delivery
Free shipping
Expedited shipping
Overnight delivery
Overnight delivery,
Two-day delivery, and
International shipping.

A survey says that most people who opt for same-day delivery and two-day delivery often choose to pay more for shipping. This might be a relevant choice to consider. Amazon has set the bar very high for delivery and brands need to come up with a variety of options to meet customer expectations.

7. Turn your post-purchase customer journey into a holiday sales channel

The buy button is not the end of the customer journey, it’s rather the beginning of a relationship with a brand. It’s important for brands to acknowledge that the post-purchase customer journey plays a very big part in determining whether the customer returns back to the brand or not.

91% of customers say that they won’t return to a brand after a poor shipping experience and return experience.

The order tracking page is one of the most viewed pages. An average person visits the order tracking page 6-8 times after purchase. There are a number of ways with which you can turn your post-purchase customer journey into a sales funnel and increase your holiday sales.

Display personalized product recommendations: Leverage user data and provide personalized product recommendations to convert them again into a repeat user.
Cross-sell and Upsell:When people visit the order tracking pages, you can show them the related products or products that are of high value, which people might convert for and they might get to know that this particular product is available.

Display product reviews:Product reviews are a great social proof of showing that your brand and the products that you offer are very reliable. So it is always advisable to display relevant reviews of your products.

Bring in the holiday cheers to your tracking page: Why shouldn’t your order tracking page have a little holiday touch to it? People get in the holiday mood and the brand should also hop in with them to bring in the mood
Build trust and confidence through proactive communication: . The holiday season is known for its notorious shipping delays. Customers tend to get anxious and they might not shop with you again. By proactively communicating the status of their order, you can assure them that their package would reach them on time.

The post-purchase part of the custom journey is often overlooked. You can kill two birds with one stone by displaying a branded tracking page increasing brand recall and communicating the order status proactively, thus promoting holiday sales.

Final word

High Holiday Traffic Volume = High Holiday sales = Possible increase in the return rate.

As an e-commerce business, you should prepare for the holiday surge in sales and the post-holiday surge in returns. Don’t look at returns as a burden for your business, look at it as an additional opportunity to build a relationship with your customers. Turn your return process also into a sales funnel by giving a great customer experience.

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How to increase mobile conversion rate: 7 proven tips

Raksna Anand — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:48:22 +0000

You can define the mobile conversion rate as the number of visitors who visit the website on their mobile devices and the number of visitors who convert during these sessions.. So, it can be calculated with the below formula. A mobile conversion rate is a very important factor since most of the customers now browse products through your mobile. Mobile commerce has risen so much over the years.

People now use mobile a lot. They order food, they order groceries, and they order from Amazon. There are a million apps which have emerged in this bustling digital world.

Mobile conversion rate vs Desktop conversion rate

It is a fact that the mobile conversion rate always lags behind the desktop conversion rate.

The mobile conversion rate according to Salescycle is said to be 45% which lags behind desktop conversion which is up to 55 percent.

A survey found that most people browse through their phones but complete their transactions on desktop computers. In 2020, the mobile conversion rate reached 67%, but in 2022, it fell to 55.25%.

Do you experience this? Do you experience a drop in mobile conversion rates? Imagine 6.7 billion smartphone users regularly using their mobile to browse through products but they often abandon carts and just don’t convert at all. Imagine how much you can earn by converting those customers. Here are seven proven tips to help you convert customers through the mobile experience.

7 tips to increase mobile conversion rate

1. Optimize your site speed

Your mobile site speed plays a very important role in determining whether a customer stays and browses on your website or just leaves. Site speed can be defined as how quickly your web pages load when a particular page on your website is clicked or redirected. In a world where human attention has shortened less compared to a goldfish. Social media platforms like Instagram and Tiktok understood this behavior in humans and designed bite-sized content to keep them engaged. As an e-commerce business, it is your job to always take care of your site speed and get it optimized. Faster site speeds always support keeping the customers browsing through the website for a really long time.

And on top of that, site speed is also very important to get ranked on Google. This ensures good user experience. More like slaying two birds with one stone, of course.

Here’s how you can test your site speed

Need insights on more free tools like these? Click here

2. Optimize your site search

Users being able to navigate around your website is an important part of the conversion process. The churn rate appears to be very high if not for the search option and the navigational elements present in your website. Help your customers find products through a variety of options like breadcrumbs, menu bars, hamburger menus, filtering options, sorting options, and such.

Did you know that search contributes to at least 50% of the mobile conversion rates experienced in a website? (Contlo)

It is quite important that you include all the typo corrections in a search bar. People tend to search for particular things and if they, by mistake type a wrong spelling and if you’re able to give suggestions around what they’re looking for, then it’d be better for the conversion rate.

3. Use e-wallet payment methods

Surveys show that 53% of Americans now use digital wallets more than ever. This is a very drastic shift towards greater digitalization in the economy, according to Forbes. Enabling e-wallet payments like Apple Pay or Google Wallet allows customers to complete transactions in a single click, which is very convenient. The whole point of e-commerce being convenient is the main unique selling point behind its success. Be sure to include convenient payment methods for a better mobile conversion rate.

In fact, 19 percent of customers abandon their carts because of security concerns over giving out their payment information.

Ease this problem out for your customers.

4. On-page product recommendations

The mobile device is a very small device so that the information that you provide or the images that you place while displaying a product, is very crucial and plays a very important role. Make sure that it’s optimized for a very great mobile experience . It is vital that you provide very short and precise information that is needed and when you display on-page product recommendations. This would in turn, make it easy for the customers who are browsing to skip to similar products or related products that they are browsing for. Since the amount of content being displayed on product pages is really, really minimum, it is essential that you display social proof like customer reviews, in order to build trust and credibility among your customers.

5. Provide autofill forms

A lengthy checkout process can often overwhelm customers and lead to cart abandonment. If convenience is the key point driving mobile commerce, don’t you think auto-fill forms are the way to do so? Enable customers to automatically fill their names, addresses, contact numbers, and email address. This would be the most useful tool that can help ease conversion in a mobile website.

This feature streamlines the whole checkout process

Anatomy of a Product Page

We rely on product pages for conversion. On one hand, it is hard to design a one-size-fits-all product page, but on the other, there are key website features and functionalities that are always relevant, no matter how attribute-rich a product is, whether it has variants or plenty of configuration and customization.

A product page should always have the following information

Product name
Product description
Product attributes and specifications
Product variants
Product recommendations
Breadcrumb path
High-quality product images and video
Documentation
Wishlists
Chatbot and FAQ

Final Word

There is a rise in social commerce, voice commerce [it is the voice search people use to buy products], VR and AR replacing the traditional discovery methods. It is vital that you focus on mobile commerce and increase the conversion rates. IF you keep your mobile commerce very flexible with all these options, it is possible that you can convert a lot and convert high quality customers compared to the desktop conversion.

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How to increase conversion rates on the ecommerce store using site search?

Raksna Anand — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 13:33:11 +0000

Did you know that, Nearly 84% of e-commerce brands don’t actively optimize or measure their on-site search. (adsearch.com)

Site search is a very important feature of an e-commerce store. It helps customers find the products that they are looking for efficiently and quickly. Site search should be a feature that suits all the customers who visit the website. It leads to higher conversion rates and helps extend the longevity of the time spent on the website by an average customer.

Site search can be used to determine a number of business analytics.

Businesses can know what their customers are frequently searching for: The customers might search for products that are provided by this e-commerce store. When they find it, they are directed to that specific product page. When customers search for products that aren’t sold by the e-com store, businesses might take that chance to identify the gap in their product range and realize what customers want to see the brand sell.
Content and product optimisation: When businesses gain insights on what customers are frequently searching for, they can know which product is popular among the consumers, and optimize those product pages. Matching your customers’ search terms with the language you use is crucial for your search engine optimisation strategy.
Providing Personalized experience: Personalization is a very important aspect in e-commerce businesses right now. When shoppers search for a particular product on the search bar, personalized recommendations can be displayed, based on their previous shopping journey with the brand

Some Stats on Site Search

How to increase conversion rates on the ecommerce store using site search?

1. Make sure your search bar is visible, Duh!

We know, we know. It sounds redundant to even say it out loud! But imagine, if the site visitors have to search for the search bar, it doesn’t really make any sense. :/ Enusre that its prominent and noticeable.

Best practices for a search bar design:

Place it in a very predictable place.
Include the search icon and the word search in the search bar.
Add a camera icon on the search bar to make it easier for the customers to browse a product through the image they already have.
Choose an appropriate size.
Enable the auto correct and auto complete features.
Place your search bar on each page.
Include all the most recent searches made by the user.
Clarify what users can search for

2. Allow to search with images

As we all know, social commerce has been a very big influence on making a purchase or decision in the last few years. Influencers, people tend to adapt to the influencer lifestyle and they want to buy things that celebrities use. So they take inspiration from social media and they want to search such images on the e-commerce brand that they want to purchase from. This is where the search with images option comes in handy. If you can include such an option if possible, then it would result in a very high conversion rate. This can benefit you in the following ways:

Enhanced customer experience
Visual inspiration
Higher conversion rates
Competitive advantage
Improved product discovery

3. Allow typo corrections in your site search

Typo occurs when a customer searches for a particular term but misspells it. Let’s agree that many of us tend to type a word quickly and end up making a typo. But an e-commerce business cannot display no results for such typos. They should actually employ a number of techniques and make a typo correction. The number of techniques include a dictionary lookup, n-gram analysis, similarity keys, rule-based, probabilistic, neural-based, edit distance, etc.

Why do you need this typo correction in your site search? It is for the following reasons:

To enhance users’ search experience,
To reduce the number of bounces from the website
To save time

4. Customize your 404 page

You can expect customers to search for products that aren’t actually present in the website. In those times, the website will typically display a 404 page where it says that the particular product is not found. But don’t let that 404 page be the deadline for your website. Because the next solution people think of is to jump to your competitor’s website and look for products they want. In such a case, you can customize your 404 page to suggest a few relevant products to the search term in order to reduce the bounce rate.

5. Optimize for mobile search

There’s no doubt that mobile usage has been increasing over the years and it would be a healthy option to optimize for your mobile as well.

The less number of typing and less number of browsing leads to more number of navigation to product pages and ultimately to more number of conversions . Make sure that the filtering options conforms to the size of your mobile device.

6. Cater to customers who know what they want

Spearfish users are the users who come to a website knowing what they want, exactly what they want. These users, when they come into a website, according to a Forrester research, 43% of them search for a search bar and enter their query, and most of them come with the intention of shopping in the website. Help those your Spearfish customers, include a predictive search and autocomplete to make them search for their products easily.

7. Display product image in search

Displaying product images when a site search is done is a very helpful feature. It enhances the visual experience. It promotes cross-selling as well because the user will be exposed to a number of variety of options available on the e-commerce site. It would be better for the product identification since the image itself is displayed and it would aid in better decision making.

8. Use filters and sorting in site search

Don’t overwhelm the users with your site search result displays.

Adding the filtering and sorting feature to your search option is just one step closer to conversion. When people directly filter out options based on what they need, it’s just easy for them to navigate themselves to that particular product page.

Some best practices for these filtering and sort options are as follows.

Do not display a very big list of filtering and sorting options. Just hide them and make these options drop-down menu accessible.
Make sure that the filtering and sorting options that are selected are displayed on top of the page.
According to your users’ needs, prioritize which option you display first in the filtering and sorting options.

Final Word

As stated above, most brands do not concentrate on their site search optimization. Imagine that you type something on Google and you’re unable to find it. It’s the same case when it comes to your e-commerce business. A good site search bar is the fine line between a happy customer and a frustrated customer. Don’t let your customers leave your site with a bad experience.

Besides, site search optimization further helps you understand your target audience better. It would be a waste of time and energy and money if all the customers brought into your website through immense marketing efforts just convert less!

The post How to increase conversion rates on the ecommerce store using site search? appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Relationship marketing and its benefits with examples

Raksna Anand — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 12:36:56 +0000

We now live in a relationship economy rather than a transactional economy. What is relationship marketing? Relationship marketing is the kind of marketing in which you work to retain customers and maintain long-term relationships with them.

It is a well-known fact that returning customers spend a lot more than your new customers. This is because the returning customers have already experienced the true essence of your brand through your pre-purchase and post-purchase journey. They know what values your brand holds. This trust that you install in those customers, makes them spend a lot when returning.

And you should have known by now that acquiring new customers is a lot more challenging than retaining the existing ones. And moreover, these existing ones drive revenue, so why not build a strong relationship with them?

Steps in relationship building

Omnichannel messaging

With the rise of the digital presence, there are so many channels in which customers prefer to browse. Even TikTok has this new feature through which you can purchase products through the platform itself. It is always necessary to analyze which channels your customers are predominantly on and leverage those channels to efficiently reach your customers and provide tailored messaging or tailored ads according to their preferences. Even some brands do omni-channel customer support through these platforms. Have an integrated customer support system and target all channels.

Post-purchase Customer service

Brands often think that the customer journey ends with the buy button, but the post-purchase customer journey is a very important journey that cannot be compromised and sets the entire stage for retention. Customers could have a number of questions about the order, Make them self-serviceable so that the customer’s general questions are answered right then and there. Beyond that, if the customer has any questions, arm your customer service team with the necessary information required to fulfill the customer’s needs. Set the tone right for your customer service so that the customers aren’t disappointed with the answers they receive, even if things go wrong. Don’t forget to set up FAQ pages!

Collecting their feedback

Customer feedback can be a powerful way of knowing what the customer wants. Give your customer a voice and listen to them. If things go wrong and if an experience was particularly bad for your customer, you can always reach out to them and make them feel valued or listen to them by knowing what went wrong. And often offering them coupon codes or discounts or special codes would at least help them feel better about the brand. And providing a voice to the customer can go a long way.

Customer retention activities

Customer retention activities could be a number of activities with which you can stay in constant touch with your customers and build a relationship with them. Brands can leverage personalization to achieve this. Messaging or emailing during the customer’s birthday and giving them special offers, letting them know if there’s a special discount going on, if there’s an annual sale going on, exclusive access to loyal customers who’ve already purchased from you. At this moment, you can cross-sell and up-sell. There’s a lot of things with which you can do this. Brands often can create an exclusive customer club in which they can gather all the customers and host exclusive events for them, which could mean something to them, which could add value to them. Making the customer feel special is one of the customer retention activities that you can do to build a relationship.

Loyalty programs

Many customers go back to a brand because of their excellent loyalty programs. For example, take Starbucks. You often get a free drink when you get consecutive 4-5 drinks from the vendor. This is an excellent opportunity to make your customers come back to you and providing exclusive access to your high-value customers could increase your loyalty.

Benefits of relationship marketing

Increased customer lifetime value
Increased loyalty
Raise in brand awareness
Reduced marketing costs
Word of mouth marketing
Cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
Long term growth

Examples of relationship marketing

Made in - relationship building through educational content in branded tracking pages

Made in is a cookware brand in the US. This brand realized that they had a gap in the post-purchase experience. The brand started posting educational content in their branded tracking pages. Educational content like how to wash their pots and pand, quick recipes from renowned chefs, and easy how-to videos. This helped them drive a lot of engagement in the branded tracking pages and they recorded a lot of click-through rates also. This traffic was tracked back to their website.

In just one month, Made In saw 16.2% of customers who visited the tracking page click through to the Made In website, driving highly qualified traffic back to its store. They also saw 8.1% of customers click through on product care-specific marketing assets as customers continued to indulge in content that elevated their experience. (Forbes)

Peloton and it’s excellent relationship building activities

Peloton is an equipment and media-based company. The whole concept of Peloton is to sell their exercise equipment to the customers and build a relationship with them by engaging with them through media.

As soon as a customer purchases a product from Peloton, Peloton usually sends out an email to the customer urging them to join their Facebook group or other social media groups. Customers can keep score of what they achieve through these Facebook boards. They can even compete with other players through these Facebook leaderboards which encourages customers to participate more in the activity. When a customer participates in live workouts with an instructor and when this customer achieves a specific milestone like the 100th ride or 50th ride, this customer is often given a shoutout from the instructor and Peloton sends a free t-shirt to the customer acknowledging them for their achievement. This creates an emotional connection between the customer and the brand, humanizing the brand and creating a very positive image about the brand. This is how Peloton builds its relationship with its customers.

Final word

Gone are the days when customers went back to brands just because they have a lot of variety and very low prices. Still, variety and price remain a factor which is considered by most customers, but customers expect brands to build a long-lasting relationship with them. Customers expect brands to send them personalized messaging and many brands out there have set the bar high for other brands in creating a relationship with the customers. It is vital that you, as a brand, stay ahead of the curve by building a relationship with your audience. Remember that returning customers are the revenue builders for your brand, so don’t go cold on your customers. Relationship marketing is the way!

The post Relationship marketing and its benefits with examples appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Sashank Ravindranath, Raksna Anand, Author at Lateshipment.com

BFCM 2024: How E-commerce Businesses Can Prepare for Success

What is BFCM and Why is it Special for E-commerce Businesses?

Why BFCM stands out for e-commerce businesses

Key Preparation Strategies for BFCM 2024

1. Start early: create buzz and build anticipation

2. Optimize your website for traffic surges

3. Fine-tune your inventory and delivery processes

4. Offer competitive promotions and deals

E-commerce Trends for BFCM 2024

1. Personalization will be at the forefront

2. Omnichannel shopping experience

3. Video commerce and live-streaming shopping

4. Social commerce

5. Influencer and affiliate partnerships

Post-Purchase Strategies for BFCM 2024 Success

1.Handle WISMO (Where Is My Order) inquiries in advance

2. Automate post-purchase customer service for delivery issues

3. Ensure a seamless returns process

4. Create loyalty programs and VIP access

Last-Minute Tips to Maximize BFCM 2024 Sales

LoveNspire: A Journey of Pandemic Generosity to Global Success – Nidhi’s Story

The importance of Estimated Delivery Date during the holidays

What is estimated delivery date?

Why is estimated delivery date important?

1. Builds trust and authority

2. Increases sales

3. Reduce WISMO enquiries

4. Setting customer expectations right

5. Reduces Porch piracy

Where to display the estimated delivery date?

Wrapping Up

16 ways to improve Average Order Value during the holidays

How Does Average Order Value Influence Customer retention?

16 ways to improve Average Order value during the holidays

1. Offer product bundles

2. Add gifting options

3. Try to upsell your products

4. Add-on options

5. Influence through Post - purchase journey

6. Suggestions in Checkout

7. Try cross-selling

8. Customise coupon codes

9. Incentivise customers as soon as they enter your shop

10. Discounts with Loyalty programs

11. Show how much they’ve saved through your offers

12. Offer Tiered discounts

13. Offer Buy Now, Pay Later Option

14. Display Social proof

15. Levarage Personalised product recommendations

16. Show Abundance scarcity

Final Word

8 Branding Storytelling ideas during the holiday season

Branding VS Storytelling

Why is Storytelling important during the holiday season?

8 Branding storytelling ideas during the holiday season

1. Website design

2. Streamline the checkout process

3. Be your authentic self

4. Unified messaging in all channels

5. Customer testimonial

6. Showcase your CSR value

7. Holiday Packaging

8. Branded tracking page

Bonus Tip: Build a memorable customer experience

Final Word

Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success this Holiday Season

Why Optimizing a Checkout Page is Important this Holiday Season?

Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success

1. Provide Multiple Payment Options

2. Display Accurate Shipping info

3. Add Gifting Options

4. Add a ‘Personalized Notes’ option

5. Collect necessary information for retargeting

6. Add Gift card option in your checkout page

7. Display Shopping cart summary with discounts ​

Anatomy of a Checkout Page

Final Word

7 Quirky Social Media handles to get inspired from

Quirky Social Media handles to get inspired from

7. Display Shopping cart summary with discounts