Running a digital commerce business can be challenging. Here are six tips to help you improve your digital commerce strategy.
1. Think like a customer
• When implementing/refreshing your site, it is important to ask yourself the question “would I buy from this site?” If you cannot navigate the site or are unimpressed by product offering and descriptions, update the site to reflect the quality expected from the sites you shop from most. Creating a site that is both beautiful and easy to use can be challenging, but all of your hard work will be rewarded when customers keep returning to you site for more.
2. Implement a user-oriented approach
• Implementing a user-oriented approach essentially goes hand-in-hand with thinking like a customer. By focusing on your users, you can help to drive brand loyalty—which translates to more sales. Loyal customers will return to your site as long as the site continues to appeal to them. Personalization can help you segment your audience so you know how to appeal to them and can also run more effective advertising campaigns.
3. Customer Feedback
• Customer feedback—regardless of the channel it comes from—is a crucial part of your eCommerce business. Whether you receive a tweet, Facebook comment, phone call, or email listening to your customer can help your business succeed. Digital commerce is obviously a different experience from traditional brick-and-mortar stores, and the personal touches associated with face-to-face interactions with sales associated can be lost. By listening to your customers and giving them a voice, you are bringing back the personal touches. Again, your customers are the deciding factor of whether your business will make it or break it, and by taking their advice, your shop is more likely to thrive.
4. Don’t ignore mobile…it’s here
• Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is the next step in shopping. As more and more consumers are purchasing tablets and smart phones, there is a stark rise of individual buying directly from their mobile device. Forbes reports that “mobile commerce is growing at a rate of over 130% annually” (forbes.com). To keep up with the growing trend, make sure you have a site that is optimized for mobile. To see if the responsive web design approach (for mobile commerce) is right for you, click here.
5. Reward your Customers
• Whether you offer a promotion, discount, or a loyalty rewards program, giving customers an added incentive is a great way to nudge that sale. Also, many of us love to brag about a great deal or sale, and offering a promotion or coupon is a good way to positively promote business by word of mouth. Many companies even go as far as to send two coupons, one for the loyal customer and one for ‘friends and family.’ Rewarding customers for their feedback can promote more responsiveness from them, and give you a better idea of how to shape your business.
6. Don’t be afraid of change
• Change is an important part of business, and it holds especially so for those involved in digital commerce. With new technologies and improved ways to run business, it is important for store owners to be aware of and keep up with the latest trends. As mentioned previously, listening to your customers can positively impact the way you design your store. If you design a site based on what you think people want versus what the actually want, reworking it to accommodate actual wants would greatly improve your business.
In today’s evolving eCommerce to digital commerce space, one thing is certain—your customers are the key to your success. Keeping a customer-centric strategy will help you build a loyal base and thus differentiate yourself from your competition.
