8 Areas Every Ecommerce Website Should Watch
8 min read
As e-Commerce is making its grip tighter on the commerce-world, it is also evolving into many complex and proficient ways to serve the sellers and customers.
Every after a while, there comes some big trends in the market which takes the process to a whole new level, making it comprehensive, yet much more effective than before.
Based on the past up-downs and current technological waves, here are the top 8 trends which are most likely to become mainstream in E-commerce in 2014.
E-commerce personalization software is a tool that allows online retailers to provide a personalized shopping experience to their customers. The software uses data analytics and artificial intelligence to track user behavior and preferences, and then recommends products and services that are tailored to their interests.
Some of the key features of e-commerce personalization software include:
- Personalized product recommendations: The software analyzes the user’s browsing and purchase history to suggest products that are most relevant to them.
- Dynamic pricing: The software can adjust the price of products based on user behavior, such as abandoning a shopping cart or browsing multiple similar products.
- Personalized email marketing: The software can send targeted emails to users based on their behavior and preferences.
- Behavioral analytics: The software can track user behavior, such as clicks, views, and time spent on site, to gain insights into user preferences and optimize the user experience.
- A/B testing: The software can test different versions of the website or product pages to see which version performs better with users.
Overall, e-commerce personalization software can help online retailers increase customer engagement, loyalty, and sales by providing a personalized shopping experience that meets the unique needs and preferences of each customer.
Therefore, if you want to take advantage of the benefits of e-commerce personalization software, invest in the right tools now. You can check reliable websites and other online resources for more information.
Multichannel Marketing
Multichannel marketing, in simple terms, is approaching the customers in more than one way. Depending on only one method to reach out to the customers will limit the number of potential customers or the types of customers.
Instead, multichannel marketing enables you to find out the different ways to find prospective customers where they could be available.
Types of multichannel marketing includes Emails, Direct mails, mobile, websites, retail stores, etc. Such options give the customer a freedom of comfortable choice.
On the other hand, multichannel marketing includes the utilization of social media platforms to engage with customers and prospects. By establishing a strong presence on popular networks, e-commerce businesses can foster brand awareness, share valuable content, and interact with their audience on a more personal level.
These platforms provide unique opportunities for companies to tailor their messaging and showcase their brand’s personality, ultimately fostering stronger connections with customers.
Multichannel marketing uplifts the company’s general impression on the customer’s mind with a positive vibe about the company’s reach and efforts in multiple facades of advertising. It also establishes the company’s brand image in their minds for future reference and creates trust which is the element every advertising effort in the world is aligned towards.
By leveraging multiple touchpoints and engaging with customers on their preferred platforms, businesses can create a seamless and personalized experience that drives brand loyalty and long-term success.
Mobile
M-commerce or mobile commerce is going to be the next big step in the ecommerce market. Companies will take mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops) as their main focus to sell their services and to gain the advantage of the technology which rests in their prospective customer’s pockets.
Thus, mobiles will be the most vital marketing strategy for companies and very beneficial for customers. Some call mobile devices as small retail shops in customer’s pockets, targeting mobile devices to pursue viewers to become their customers could be the most effective and streamlined marketing strategy than the conventional ways of offline marketing. Even e-commerce couldn’t be as tailor-made for each customer as m-commerce could be.
According to a graffiti blackbooks ecommerce shop owner, around 29% of mobile users have already made at least one purchase on their mobile devices. That means, people love to buy online and love it more when they are lying on the sofa or riding a bus home or having some good time on their mobile devices. The freedom they get on mobile devices may indirectly encourage them to buy more.
Also, the big retailers and eCommerce websites are getting more and more visitors from mobile-devices. Such reports and statistics are clear indicators of people’s affection and love towards mobile-devices.
On this basis, companies and retailers are obviously going to focus on mobile games and applications, mobile websites and such mobile centric strategies. It will be a remarkable progression in the eCommerce market in near future.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an online marketing strategy. In any form of content marketing, SEO, Pay per Click (PPC) or Email marketing, it is operated according to the success those ways bring in. Thus, affiliate marketing is more of a performance based marketing strategy.
At the beginning of e-commerce, there was a method called CPT (Cost Per Thousand) in which per thousand views the website owner would get payment from the advertiser. After that came CPC (Cost Per Click), which meant the payment would be greenlit according to the numbers of clicks on the banner.
Even that strategy turned out not to be the most proficient one and marketers came up with the latest strategy of CPA (Cost Per Action), in which the payment would happen only when the customer takes some action through the advertising, such as buying a product or service or clicking on an advertisement.
It is similar in Email marketing, content marketing or search engine marketing.
Responsive Design and Mobile Applications/Games
As mentioned above, people are using more and more mobile devices. If the mobile visitors are growing up, then companies will change their marketing strategies to mobile devices or at least, would consider them more important than ever.
To mobile users, companies have two ways:
- Responsive Designs
- Mobile Applications/Games.
Right now, there are more than 230 different unique screen-sizes compared to 2010’s 92. Also, 28% of people are used to using mobile devices more than desktop ones. This increase of numbers created a problem of uncomfortable or distorted outlay of websites on the unsupported devices or devices with smaller screen sizes. It just irritated mobile-users.
There comes the responsive designs.
Developers came up with their own solution of responsive design. A singular design which would adjust the content according to the screen-size. You don’t need any mobile-specific website. Content and templates adjust themselves according to the screen size.
Another solution the developers brought was developing mobile apps. They are encouraged to make their company’s app as the client which stays present in customer’s pocket 24*7. After the application (such as an employee vaccination management app) is installed, the direct availability of the company’s services and information makes it more likely for the customer to return and purchase from it.
There is a possibility of customers forgetting about revisiting the same website, however the unique icon flashing on their mobile-screen will keep reminding them about the company. It is the most personalized and effective marketing right now.
Offline Marketing
Companies are preferring online marketing more than the conventional offline marketing for its advantages like convenience and easy-operation.
But, offline marketing hasn’t died either. It has just saw evolution in modern times and has made itself much more effective personally.
Offline marketing includes sponsorships, flyers, hoardings, commercials, special gatherings, contests and many more ways. Even the unique business cards are considered as the way of effective offline marketing for the great first impression.
Location based Services
Among mobile users, 1 out of 3 keeps the location tracking on for applications and services to improve. This way, companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook are getting big amount of data about the location of the users and their daily habits.
Using the similar algorithms mentioned above on these data, companies can now offer better services according to the end-user’s location. Also, the advertisers would get a clearer idea of which part of an area is more active than the others or what their primary interests are. All of such correlated information becomes gold-mind for companies.
eCommerce websites could take advantage of location based services by personalized sales approach, real time customer communication through push messages sent on the mobile devices or increase the customer flow at the brick-and-mortar stores.
Personalization and Marketing Intelligence
Companies are operating their marketing strategies with more personalized experiences. According to the place, type of group or requirement, marketers change some elements of their strategies to appeal to the audience in the best way.
A banner with a china wall isn’t going to appeal to the African audience in the advertisement of local cultures. The same goes on to the individual level. Users from different locations are going to have different choices and habits and companies need to find out those habits for the optimized services for targeted audiences.
For instance, providing local languages on mobile devices is a good way of personalization. Such personalization in advertisements could be much more appealing.
Such decisions of personalization are taken after the Marketing intelligence is gathered. Marketing Intelligence is the information about the habits, choices, likes-dislikes and general disposition of a group of people. It could be gathered from social websites, email accounts or through direct research campaigns. Such marketing intelligence is useful to come up with the most streamlined and personal marketing approach.
To better understand marketing intelligence, essential aspects should be considered when creating marketing campaigns.
For instance, segmentation allows marketers to divide their customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics such as demographics, interests, and behavior patterns. This information can be utilized to create highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with each segment, thereby increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
Moreover, integrating marketing intelligence with customer relationship management (CRM) systems allows e-commerce businesses to create a 360-degree view of their clientele. This comprehensive understanding of customer behavior, preferences, and interactions enables marketers to deliver personalized content, offers, and experiences at each customer journey touchpoint.
Adopting a data-driven approach to personalization and marketing intelligence allows businesses to attract new customers, foster long-term loyalty, and drive sustainable growth.
Algorithmic Recommandations
Algorithmic recommendations are similar to gathering marketing intelligence. The way of collecting the information stays mostly online. The best example is Amazon.com.
The products Amazon.com recommends you are the algorithmic conclusions based on your history, past purchases, preferences, wish-lists and product reviews. Thus, it mostly works with statistical data using different correlations and a set of rules to guess the best recommendation.
Such algorithmic recommendations are very much effective for the end user as he would be enabled to surf through the products which relates to his necessities and will make the whole search, surf, decide and buy procedure faster for online retailers.
Summary
These 8 trends are most likely to become mainstream in the years after 2014 until their better versions come out. Until then, you wouldn’t like to miss the significant benefits they could derive for you.
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