The E-Commerce industry across the globe is at an ever-competitive, crackling space. The fact that all the 3 giants in the domain (Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart) are operating at an annual cash burn of more than INR 3000 crores ($30bn), just to ride out the rivals, speaks for itself. If this is the ordeal of the companies with majority of the market caps, you can only imagine their effect on the younger players. Hence, it is crucial for younger players to optimise their marketing funnels to the core for better customer engagement and conversion. Let’s look at some of the best digital marketing practices in the E-Commerce space that would help you boost your purchase funnels. Image Source To understand this point better, let’s visualise a scenario. 1) Syncing the Checkout Page with the Website Imagine that you are at a merchandise store of a reputed brand. You casually enter the store to window shop. Twenty odds minutes later, you are checking out stuff worth a quarter of your month’s salary. What pushed you to do so? The setup of the store itself — right merchandise displayed at the right places, store employees helping you with your shopping experience as well as the range of choices offered by the inventory itself. But while checking out, what if you are asked to pay to a shady guy outside the store instead of at the counter? You are sure to bail out. Why? Because the last link in the chain is not synchronised with the overall shopping experience. The same goes for E-Commerce. One can do everything right and still end up losing buyers in the checkout page stage if it is not in sync with the website. The reason is simple. It impacts the trust quotient of the customers. You need to make sure that the checkout page has the same design scheme as your landing pages so that the customer is comfortable while making the purchase. There is a story hidden in every data pool. If you have not turned your attention to the statistics churned out by your purchase funnel, you are missing out on some great optimisation opportunities. 2) Focusing Where Customers are Dropping Off in the Purchase Funnel Let’s take a look at a sample funnel report here: Image Source Can you notice the issue highlighted in this report? Clearly, the product landing pages need to be optimised more in order to increase the product checkout ratio. If you look even closer, you will notice that more than half the ‘products in cart’ sessions have been abandoned by the customers. This indicates further synchronisation problems with the cart that need to be resolved. Steps like using tools for detailed funnel reports and A/B testing different orientations of the pages would go a long way here. In other words, create urgency. 3) Tap on the Impatience of the Customers Last week I chose Amazon over Flipkart to buy a pair of curtains just because the former hooked me with a clock that promised a one-day delivery if I order within the next hour. Tapping on the insecurities of the buyers can really give you an edge over your competitors. Another great example would be making your inventory live and displaying the number of product units left. A fast moving product will always keep buyers on their toes (just like the railway seats of an airplane on a travel website) and hence, exceptionally boost the time they take to consider their buying decision. Videos have become the latest marketing norm around the Internet. Even Facebook allows you to upload profile videos now. Then why not make their best use in E-Commerce too? 4) Deploying Product Videos Along with Images Here are some facts. think that videos explain the product better and videos boost the conversion rate by 73% when compared to images. 71% of the customers Consider the following product video of a baseball bat: If integrated with your product landing page, I bet this will sell more units than a few images ever will. The reason is simple. Videos are more engaging. It is easy to attach a story with the product and help the customer to better connect with it. If you haven’t launched an app for your online store yet, you are missing out on a huge chunk of potential business. App notifications are a goldmine to capture recurring business leads from loyal customers. 5) Targeted App Push Notifications Imagine yourself using the Amazon app, adding products in your cart only to change your mind and exit the app later. If you receive a notification motivating you to check-out the products the next day with an update of an additional 5% discount, aren’t you more likely to go ahead and make this purchase? Image Source The E-Commerce industry has been subject to colossal growth over the years with the market now standing at a whopping $23 trillion according to UNCTAD estimates. There are tremendous opportunities to capitalise on in the digital wave sweeping the country, if businesses play their cards right. Optimising the purchase funnel is a crucial step in that direction. OnlineSales.ai offers an intelligent performance marketing platform for E-Commerce, and clubbed with expert business strategists it focuses entirely on driving RoI, RoAS and CPT benchmarks. OnlineSales.ai innovates and lets retailers track profits for every marketing buck they spend. You can watch the product explainer video of our platform here! This article was originally published on OnlineSales.ai
