Creating a customer experience that is engaging and exciting from start to finish is what actively leads to higher conversions
Keeping your customers happy is the key to making sales, and it’s the reason why businesses are so obsessed with building audience engagement these days.
And this obsession is for a good reason, too. Creating a customer experience that is engaging and exciting from start to finish is what actively leads to higher conversions. According to a research from Capgemini, when a customer is highly engaged with a brand, they were more likely to spend more with each purchase and become a loyal customer, meaning that highly engaged companies were more profitable than their competitors.
But how can you create this kind of engagement with your customers when your only interaction with them is online?
Here are four key strategies that have been proven to directly affect conversion rates through engagement building practices.
1. Utilise Meaningful Integrations
Since online companies are able to cater to a wide range of consumers, the best way for them to build an engaging website UX is by including multiple integrations that lead to conversions. Many e-commerce platforms offer apps and integrations that primarily serve a purpose for the seller (i.e. inventory management, email marketing, invoicing services, etc.), but e-tailers should also make use of the integrations that service their customer base as well.
Using a smart app integration that hits on customers’ main motivations is a surefire way to boost conversion rates. Since most customers are influenced by price and are more likely to convert if they are offered a discount, using a promotion and referral app is a great option. The online beauty brand Soko Glam uses this kind of integration, and as you can see from their homepage, incentives to convert abound. They offer a hefty referral program, alone with discounts for first-time buyers. With a reported 9.2 ROI from this app, the numbers speak for themselves.
By utilizing more integrations that actually offer customers meaningful incentives, you can start to create a more engaging UX with each interaction. This can be done by understanding what best motivates your customers to make a purchase and then incorporating those incentives into your site wherever possible.
2. Use Your Social Influence Wisely
Obviously, social media plays a huge role in the engagement rate of your audience. In fact, it is often the first word that pops into a marketer’s mind when they even hear the term “engagement.” But, in order to drive conversions, e-commerce marketers need to focus on more than just increasing likes, shares, and follower numbers.
Since social influence is such a powerful tool that online brands can use to constantly engage with customers, they must use their social voice wisely. According to a report from Sprout Social, customers are very picky about the brands they follow on social media, and the content that businesses post often pushes them to hit the “unfollow” button.
However, this report also found that consumers are more motivated to follow brands that their friends or “people like them” follow. Therefore, including user-generated content (UGC) that is relatable in your marketing scheme is a highly engaging strategy.
Also read: From zero to hero, here are 4 ways startups can build influence quickly
The protein bar company Go Macro does a fantastic job of creating this kind of content through their Instagram page, which regularly features UGC posts and recipes from their followers. They even host weekly giveaways to followers who shared a post mentioning their brand accounts, which motivates their followers to stay engaged and share content consistently.
3. Make Your Personalisation Efforts Personal
Personalization is more than just a trend in online sales, it is basically a requirement these days if e-commerce brands want to stay competitive and keep customers engaged. Since so many brands offer smart personalization, people have come to expect customized services when they shop online.
Of course, Amazon is one of the best e-sellers at this – thanks to their massive inventory and loads of consumer behavior data for personalized touches. But, this does not mean that smaller e-commerce brands can’t offer similar experiences.
The key here is to only personalize the details that will lead to conversions, and the customized experience that has been proven to matter the most to consumers is relevant recommendations. According to a study from Salesforce, customers who receive personalized product suggestions were 4.5 times more likely to complete a purchase, and were 37% more likely to shop from that site again. Furthermore, websites that offered recommendations reported that customers were far more engaged with their website, viewing over five times more products than customers who merely searched or browsed for items on their own.
Ultimately, personalization efforts should leverage customer data to create offers that actually matter to specific people, such as targeted discounts, relevant product recommendations, upsells, cross-sells, etc.
4. Be Transparent and Customer-Centric
Without a doubt, online brands today are highly data-driven, since this is the best way for them to reach their audiences with targeted marketing messages. However, customers are not likely going to engage with a brand they do not trust. Today’s consumers are not exactly in favor of businesses tracking their behavior and storing their information, especially when it is done without their knowledge.
Therefore, if your e-commerce business is going to rely on data for its strategies, it is also important that your methods are transparent and customer-focused. 75% of customers say that they would be comfortable with sharing their personal data with businesses if they were able to control how it was used, and if the brand was transparent about how it will be utilized. Therefore, making data sharing an option rather than a give-in on your website is a better policy to build trust with your customers.
Also read: 5 ways to build a customer-centric culture in your startup
Conclusion
Customer engagement is an important ingredient to the recipe for success as an online brand, but your approach to building this with your audience matters. Engagement can be fleeting or it can lead to long-term loyalty depending on how it is created. By understanding what motivates customers and the kinds of experiences that matter the most to them, online businesses are able to build this crucial connection that leads to conversions.
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