Managing your Ecommerce Business during this Critical Time

The COVID pandemic has made every business, every organization go virtual. In a situation, the businesses need to use the Ecommerce route to increase the revenues. Today there are some fortunate companies selling essentials (i.e. groceries, healthcare products, homework out equipment’s) and there was a boom in sales in categories such as face Masks, Sanitizers and Disinfectants. In this pandemic most businesses moved into sales & manufacturing of these products and this movement may have helped recovering some loss of revenues.

This pandemic has made people inclined to look for more options in the virtual and online world, thus, bringing more focus to sales on the Ecommerce platforms for every item of customer needs. Hence, the Ecommerce companies need to strategize to increase in sales and there are few simple 25 steps that can be taken to improve the sales during these testing pandemic times.

1. Target existing customers:

There is common misconception that when the business has trouble growing, they start thinking that they do not have enough customers. Instead of focussing all the efforts on customer acquisition, these businesses should strategize on improving customer retention strategy as these customers are; Familiar with our brand, they know how to use your products / services thus having a zero learning curve, expectation of your services are known to them. The Business needs to focus on improving their experience further. We need to create benefit programs such as Loyalty program, Reward Points, Loyalty special discounts, etc. to bring in more sales and benefits. In the current scenario to have maximum reach they need to also initiate converting the off-line buying customers to on-line buying mode, as they have already experienced your brand, once you move your products from off-line to on-line through a ecommerce platform.

2. Ensure that the website is secured:

This builds credibility for your website and it shows that your website is trustworthy to do online transactions, customers feel secure to do business or make payments online. Customers avoid websites which looks sketchy and untrustworthy. The security related information should be visible to customers i.e. SSL certificates, McAfee, Norton Antivirus, Google trusted, etc.

3. Use video demonstrations for products on your website:

Videos resonates with customers and have a strong recall value of your product and services. The video should have demonstrations of your product or services or how to use or where to use or when to use. These videos increase the confidence levels of your products & services and gives a comfort feeling to the customers.

4. Use Testimonials:

Customer testimonials plays a key role as it builds confidence on your product and services. Use photos of customers when you put their testimonials on your website. Testimony would encourage customers to make a purchase which in turn would help in driving sales numbers. You can also add video testimonials of customers talking about your product and services.

5. Website should integrate with a mobile interface:

We need to recognize that the customers would like to shop from their mobile devices, hence your website should be mobile friendly which helps in smooth navigation. The website should be optimized to make in user friendly as mobile sales contributes 40% of overall sales in the current scenario. Customers do prefer to download Apps compared to using websites for their shopping needs as they feel safe. The Apps needs to have features like convenience, speed of downloads, saved preferences & settings to be simple to use, personalization, special benefits and reward program for customers.

6. Offer more discounts:

Most companies offer discounts on their products on their website, seems simple but it is a complicated deal. It is all about creating value benefits for the customers and enticing sales from the customers. We need to jack up the price of each product and put in on for sale. Every customer loves to get good deals and wait for such discounted sales to buy the products.

7. Top selling items to be showcased:

The idea is to give direction to the customers and create the niche for some products. We need to also show them what people are buying today, basically these are the best-sellers. The customer also needs to understand what your popular products are and what is the current trends going on in the marketplace. Customers want to be with the trends and buy products which may also be an appeal to the masses, specially the brands.

8. Promotions for special holiday season:

Today due to the current pandemic, the holiday season is not celebrated the way it has been celebrated in the previous years. But still you can do a ramp-up promotion for the coming holiday season and offer large discounts on Special Days before the festivities begin. Give the customer’s choice with offerings for them to make compulsion and extra buying looking at the discounts or special offers. Bundle different products under the same category for enticing the buy.

9. Create the fear of missing out (FOMO):

FOMO is just creating the sense of urgency of buying on the spot and making the offer good to buy now. This creates an awareness for the shoppers to act fast as we need to display mentioning limited quantity available, for example available stock shown as 2 or 3 or 4 or so on... The fear created for the customer is that if they do not buy now, then they would have to spend more for the same product. This could also be for a sale ending by midnight or by 6 pm.

10. Different payment options:

Give the customer options to make payments through different options i.e. Wallets, Debit Cards, Credit cards, Amex Cards, Net Banking, etc. The customers should also have options to choose from different payment gateways. Ensure that you have a tie-up with the popular payment gateways such as Paypal, Amazon Pay, Skrill, Stripe, 2Checkout, Authorize Net, Payza, Securion Pay, CCAvenue. etc... This helps the customer choose the favourable one and builds trust for your website.

11. Focus to be on the value proposition:

We need to make a story to tell customers what separates our products from the similar products available in the market. Create some headlines which captures customers attention to entice them to buy your products. Ensure that there is a top focus on the features of the products. Sow some unique and actionable value proposition for the customers.

12. Focus on the market you need to sell:

You need to focus on the markets or segments where you need to sell and do not go all over the place to sell your products. You need to imagine every question a customer may think of asking, basis which you need to arm yourself with answers, linking each product fact indicating customer benefits. We need to condense everything you know about the product into a brief explanation that can grab interest and cause the customer in thinking of buying the product.

13. User registration:

Stop forcing users to register themselves before buying the products, this may make the customers move out of your website. Keep the guest checkout as an optional registration on your website which simplifies the purchase process. This also helps in inviting customers to register when they are ready and feel comfortable, rather than forcing them to do unwanted registration.

14. Shipping costs:

Manage your shipping costs wisely, usually 58% sales abandon takes place once the customers learn of higher shipping charges. Your product costs should include the shipping costs as the customer does not feel that they are paying extra. This makes the customer feel comfortable by not paying extra costs on shipping costs and this ensures a sale of your product.

15. Personalization:

Personalization of website is the process of creating customized experiences for customers / visitors to your website. We need to provide a single and broad experience, website personalization allows you to present visitors with unique experiences tailor-made to their needs, preferences, details and desires. This would drive customers to be more reactive with your website, thus catering to their specific requirements and help customers in buying more products.

16. Page Loading time:

We need to optimize the time taken to load the products on a click on your website. The usual conversion rates are in the range of 35% to 40%, if the page load time is less than 2 seconds. The more the delay in loading the products, less is the interest of customers buying your products.

17. Analysis on abandon of Carts:

We need have a continuous process of conducting the study of “Why” and “When” the abandon of cart takes place. The current trends are: 46% happens on the payment page, 36% happens during the checkout login page. We need to have a simplified and streamlined checkout process, ensuring less navigation related issues for the customers. We need to have a process to connect with customers who abandon the carts and properly guide them to complete the process, this could be through a Chat Process or On-call. Ensure that the analysis throws light on why the abandon takes place and Win-Back and built the confidence levels amongst customers.

18. Social Media Marketing:

We need to focus on the Social Media platforms currently available and ensure maximum utilization of these platforms for promotions of our product with their stories. Currently Facebook contributes to 63% of the total Social Media revenues, Instagram contributes high on engagement, YouTube videos ensures your ad recall value up to 55%. We need to understand that Social Media is for sharing and we should ensure our sales pitch is kept to minimum.

19. Live Chat on your website:

Add live chat to the website, customers usually have questions for a specific product to which instant answers needs to be given to entice a purchase. The website should automatically trigger a chat window if the customer has issues on the checkout page, this should be used to seamlessly take customers to finish the sale formalities without any hassles. This will improve our sales and closures. Immediate customer support is the key and triggers should be placed for chat with customers to clarify / solve the issues.

20. Inventory:

Keep your inventory in check, ensure all the products put up on the website are available, on sale it should be available for dispatch to customer. Poor inventory management could lead to lost profits and lost market share, in addition the customer confidence could also be lost on our brand. Customer assume that the product would get delivered once the sale is made and get disappointed when the product is not delivered, this could trigger no sale for our brand.

21. Receipt Emails:

Use the opportunity to upsell / cross-sell when you send the payment / order receipts to customers who have brought your products. Showcase products which are similar or compliment the product the customer has brought; you can also give special offers to entice the customer buying the product.

22. Business Partnership – Cross promotions:

We should partner with other businesses for cross promotions. We should run partnership giveaways, event sponsorships and company branded campaigns to bring more value to customers by bringing products that complement each other or benefit when it is brought as a combo pack. It is also a marketing tactic for expanding the reach of your brand or product. This helps in connecting with potential customers on other marketing channels, which is usually done through collaboration and cross-promotion.

23. Money back guarantee:

If your product is good and you are confident about its quality, then to you need to offer money back guarantee, this would build the trust with the customer. We are giving customers satisfaction guarantee, as this is a simple guarantee that if the customer is not satisfied with our product, a refund will be made to him. The money-back guarantee acts as a major tool to win the confidence level of consumers.

24. Re-targeting:

We need to study and keep a track on the abandon’s in the cart. We need to immediately target people who have abandoned the carts, once you solve the concern of the customers there is 60% chance on conversions on this abandons. We can use the option of cookies saved on the customers computers when they visit your website. These cookies should contain an Ad code, when a would-be shopper browser elsewhere on the internet, the customer should see advertisements related to your offers.

25. Email database:

We need to start building the customer email lists and use email marketing to stay connected with your customers. We need to remind customers of our special offers, holiday season offers, big discount offer days, customer loyalty programs, etc……. thus, by staying connected with customers, but ensure these emails sent are in limits and not over flooding customers mailboxes. Keep the email size on low pixels / less MBs so that the same can be easily opened and it does not take time for downloading to the point that customers loose interest on checking the mailer.

The above points are some of the basic tips we can do to improve our Ecommerce Business during this testing times. We need to focus on these simple steps which would help us increase our businesses. I’m leaving you all with on of the quotes I saw on the Internet….

“Nothing can be accomplished without the hope of accomplishment”

Thanks & Warm Regards,

Sujit L. Suvarna