11 Customer Acquisition Strategies For Your eCommerce Business
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Customer acquisition for eCommerce business takes a lot of time. There are many common strategies for eCommerce customer acquisition. We are sure you are familiar with some. For example, you may have already built the ideal buyer personas. Also, you would have segmented buyers and targeted them with the right content. Or, maybe you found the best acquisition channels and fueled your SEO strategy.
Measuring and improving analytics and getting regular feedback from customers are two other ways to build your company. And, inspiring customer loyalty, and using current customers to bring in new ones cannot be missed either. As a marketer, you do so much. It’s surely giving awesome results. But, did you know that there’s even more, you can do?
Here are some other strategies for improving customer acquisition for your eCommerce business.
Related Read: A real-world marketers guide to creating passionate brand subscribers
1. Improve Product Pages
High-quality product pages are essential to your eCommerce customer acquisition. Your customers should find all the information they need, quickly. As people are lazy, simple layouts are easier to process.
For example, take a look at the product page for this pair of boots on Zappos’ website.
The boots are eye-catching front and center, and buyers can click on images taken at other angles in the library off to the side. We can also tell exactly what others think of the boots by the star rating and reviews. The price is clear, and even more, they tell us that shipping is free (What a relief. We don’t have to wait ‘til checkout to find out!). Now, all we have to do is click the “add to cart” button. Isn’t it simple and convenient?
How did Zappos help their customers? They created a simple layout with buttons where people expect them. Social elements like customer reviews and trust ratings help them because 82% of consumers say user-generated reviews are more valuable than information from the brand. Additionally, users are more likely to trust reviews from peers, generating an uplift in sales.
High-quality images are extremely important, according to 90% of the buyers on Etsy. Ideally, your product images will be 1024 x 1024 at 72 dpi.
2. Increase Interactivity
It’s important to make your customers speak to you. No good conversation comes without a response. And interactive content is a great way of allowing your customers to interact with you. Interactive content types like calculators, quizzes, chatbots, assessments, etc. are great at increasing customer engagement. They add value to your customers and educate them about your products better. This results in your customers making better purchase decisions and having a better experience!
For example, an outcome quiz for ‘Which Smartphone Suits Your Needs The Best?’ will help customers avoid the ocean of choices and confusion. This will help them understand exactly what they should buy. It will also let you learn more about your customers, their opinions, preferences, and needs. Well, isn’t that a win-win situation for all of us?
3. Work On Site Speed
Most people expect your pages to load in under 2 seconds. Not to mention, Google offers preferential ranking in search results to websites that load fast, so this highly influences how easily users can find you in the first place.
This can be a challenge for eCommerce companies because of product images. To increase your site speed, compress product images to the same size, and use JPEGs. JPEGs will give you the best quality to file size ratio over PNGs.
You’ll also want to make sure your images have the same dimensions.
Some great tools you can use to check your site speed are Google’s Page Speed Insights or Pingdom.
4. Integrate Live Chat And Support Options
Did you know that people prefer assistance when they shop? And, when they want help, they want it right away? That’s why online consumers like live chat.
A live chat tool doesn’t just help the customer; it also helps you! For example, a good tool will tell you what pages your customer has been on already, so you know where their head is before you even start talking with them. More importantly, you can save a potentially lost conversion by jumping into support right when it seems they’ve been trying to get information on a page for a little too long.
Online support boosts eCommerce customer acquisition by 20%. Moreover, 63% of millennials say that they prefer their support to be through live chat.
Congrats to you if you sell internationally! To be there for all your customers, you’ll want to have 24/7 support. Toll-free numbers will make it easier for them to reach you irrespective of their location. We understand it may not be feasible to provide around-the-clock phone support. So, at a minimum consider email and/or chatbots.
Chatbots are the best way to engage your customers in a prompt and efficient manner. You can optimize your budget on ecommerce customer service and reduce the load on your employees by making the use of chatbots. You will also prevent customers from cart abandonment and website exits by offering instant responses and solving their queries.
Not just that, chatbots are available 24*7 and your team can take care of other pressing issues in the time saved. Sign up for a 7-day free Outgrow trial and create an eCommerce chatbot today!
Related Read: Six best chatbot practices
Try LiveChat, Olark, or Zopim – well-respected support tools by eCommerce merchants, that have been around forever.
5. Optimize For Mobile
79% of smartphone users have made a purchase from their phones in the past 6 months. Consumers spent $360B from their mobile phones in 2021 and that amount is expected to increase to $710B by 2025.
This says one thing: make your site mobile friendly so that they have a great experience independent of whether they are coming from an iPad, tablet, an iPhone 5 or an iPhone X. No one likes scrolling horizontally to explore products or find a button. If moving around your site isn’t easy, your eCommerce customer acquisition may suffer. According to Google’s research, 61% of visitors to mobile sites say that if they can’t find what they are looking for right away, they’ll head elsewhere.
Another reason to optimize for mobile: Google indexes mobile sites first.
6. Drive More Sign-Ups
If you are providing SaaS/software, trials could be your key to optimizing your eCommerce customer acquisition. Is your trial what people want?
You may get more trial sign-ups if you don’t require a credit card. Not having to provide payment information removes friction. Moreover, this clear indicator of lack of commitment can minimize users’ initial skepticism relative to your free trial.
Another strategy to drive more trial sign-ups could be to simplify the sign-up form. By keeping only the essential fields (you may want to A/B test the fields to see which are essential for your business), you can provide the seamless and frictionless experience customers expect.
Make available a sneak peek into what users will get after they sign-up for your free trial. A product video or high-quality screenshots can demonstrate the value of your solution and persuade potential users into why it is worth to spend time filling in your sign-up form.
7. Think Local, Not Just Global
While some peoples may seem very similar, there are, in fact, huge cultural differences between countries. Consequently, this affects the purchase decisions. Shopping carts must be tailored to local cultures to maximize buyers’ eCommerce shopping habits and conversion rates. You can’t cater to everyone, though.
So, choose the countries you want to “crack.” Identify who your most valuable visitors are so you can focus on making changes that will maximize sales in that country.
To increase customer acquisition in the countries you identify as having the biggest potential, create culturally relevant content. Content cannot simply be translated from country to country. You must think deeply about what you are saying and how you are saying it. Proper formatting around time and date, currency, and taxes should also have top priority.
In some markets, offering local payment methods is particularly important to avoid cart abandonment. Up to 50% of purchases may be made with a local payment method. Play this to your advantage and make the fact that you are local, clear with logos, that shoppers in the country recognize.
If you’re thinking about how to best serve your key customers, you’ll certainly want to provide local support. Nothing says care like a local phone number and service in the local language.
Further, A/B testing your checkout experience may be more important than you realize. The right flow is surprisingly important and can result in drastic conversion differences from country to country. Some regions prefer a 1-step process (summary and checkout) and some prefer a 2-step process (summary, checkout, and review). The only way to know what is best for your company and customers is to test different experiences. So, test, test, test, away!
8. Salvage Cart Abandonment
7 out of 10 people abandon their carts during the shopping process. That’s a lot of business that’s being lost out on. This can make eCommerce customer acquisition challenging at times. But, there are ways to work around this!
Save items in their cart to make coming back to complete a purchase easy. People expect the cart icon to be in the upper right-hand corner of their screen.
Some people abandon their carts because they are forced to create an account. Guest checkout saves you from losing these people. Others abandoned their carts because they didn’t understand the full cost of shipping. During the pandemic, information on extended shipping times – if you are selling physical goods – is also a must.
Implementing efficient, seamless fulfillment centers operations is crucial for reducing cart abandonment rates. Just as optimizing your checkout process helps retain customers, managing every aspect of your fulfillment centers can lead to timely and accurate order deliveries, enhancing overall customer satisfaction and encouraging repeat purchases.
A quarter of cart abandonment is because the consumer thinks the price is too high. A timely exit pop-up offering a discount can save up to 15% of these people. Or try a web-based push notification giving them a little word of encouragement and discount. If you weren’t able to catch them with an exit pop-up, a follow-up email sharing great user-generated reviews and ratings on the products they left behind could save up to 36% of them!
9. Improve Conversion and AOV With Personalization
People only buy what suits them. So, presenting them with the right options converts more. An example can be presenting them with items similar people bought. Using a tactic like “visitors who viewed x also viewed” generates 68% of eCommerce revenue.
You can also send people marketing emails based on their search behavior. Or, consider their location and present them with weather-sensitive, locally relevant ideas such as rain gear on a rainy day or flips flops on a sunny day.
Moreover, featuring complementary products on product pages is another way to increase AOV. After all, most people appreciate relevant offers.
10. A/B Test Everything
A/B testing cannot be overstated. A well-designed interface can increase your conversion rates up to 400% and you definitely want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward because eCommerce conversion rates are fairly low: 1-4%. It is not enough to assume that you know what your buyers like most. There are so many design and communication nuances that you guess at when creating.
So make sure to A/B test your color schemes, location of images, and wording on buttons to improve your eCommerce customer acquisition. Which wording converts more for you? Add to cart? Buy now? I want this? Split testing will help you discover nuances you didn’t expect that affect your conversion rate. Additionally, optimizing your eCommerce fulfillment processes is crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction and retention.
Depending on where you are in your eCommerce maturity, sometimes it’s best to test small, incremental changes. Other times, especially when you’re starting out and see things are not working as expected, it’s worth trying something completely different and test that instead of just a color change.
11. Measure Key Metrics For Continuous Optimization
There are so many metrics you can be measuring and it’s pretty easy to get lost in them. Neil Patel, founder of Kissmetrics, says,” To really succeed, you need to focus on the right numbers.”
The most popular key metrics in eCommerce are average order value, number of items purchased, number of transactions in customer lifetime, conversion rates on various steps, and cart abandonment rates. You can look at metrics overall, then drill down by customer segment, market, product line and so on.
Begin by measuring each key metric to know where it stands. Then, decide what you are going to do to improve them, make those changes, and monitor the results.
These metrics can constantly be improved. They should be a key focus in growing your eCommerce business.
Conclusion
You’re probably already doing a great job with your eCommerce customer acquisition, which is why your company is alive today.
These are 11 customer acquisition strategies that can take your business growth up a notch. Are there a few that you see as something you could implement in the coming weeks? What about compressing your product images? Or, how about adding a live chat option?
Whatever you choose, you are bound to see a positive change in your customer acquisition. Meanwhile, you should also explore interactive content by signing up for a 7-day free trial. Happy acquiring!
Author Bio:
Alexandra is VP of Marketing at 2Checkout. She is passionate about everything she does, having 15+ years of expertise in marketing for B2B (Commerce, Online Payments, Subscription Billing, SaaS/Cloud Services).