Recommendations for success in E-commerce

We know that digital transformation is here to stay. However, many small and medium-sized businesses are still not prepared to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by online commerce and are missing out on hundreds of opportunities offered by online commerce and are missing out on hundreds of opportunities in local and international markets. From Teipe Digital we share with you some tips to be successful in E-commerce:

KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS

The first and most important thing is to know your customers. What does this mean? It is not just about having an idea of ​​people by gender, age and geography, it is more about understanding who they are, what their habits are and; once you have determined what they are, you have to know and understand them: get to the how, when and why of their habits. This is something that is increasingly important and crucial to achieve objectives. What is more, this is something that concerns all types of companies; large, medium or small. Without going too far, large corporations are investing a lot of time and resources to understand and master the behavior of their customers. Which leads to a third variant: understanding the purchasing motivations of our customers and using that information to obtain similar future customers.

A great tool to start getting to know who your client is is this Hubspot template to start defining your buyer persona.

THE LINEAR FUNNEL:

ATTRACT:

There are a lot of things that happen in the Attract stage , and it is perhaps the most difficult to work on, since reaching the specific future client requires many different pieces. To do this, you have to think about how to keep your visitors and clients attentive to what is happening with your business. For them, there are several tactics that you can develop, such as organizing and planning special offers, coupons, etc. As well as identifying and implementing automated workflows based on your contacts' data. For example, let's suppose that you have the registration date of your clients in your database, with that you can automatically send them a thank you note for being with you for another year and for that you have made this special offer, or you give them a book, or a ticket.

• ATTRACT WITH SEO: Spending money on advertising is of course necessary at this stage, but it is also important to appear in the first results of Google in an organized way. Even if you are a small business, you have to work on SEO, and to do so, you must have mastered the following basic SEO practices:

1. Create and manage small URLs that use Key words (action) - Shorter URLs.
2. H1 tag type texts must include the main Keywords.
3. Images, always carry the ALT TAGS , so that they can find you through the images as well.
4. Include customer reviews (if you don't have any, you can still think of a workflow that allows you to obtain them).

When you think about SEO , it is inevitable to think about the BLOG. Yes: a blog can help, if done well, but don't make a Blog just for the sake of making unrelated content; it has to add value to your client. Once you have thought about your Blog strategy, and you start writing quality content, this content must be optimized for SEO . But it doesn't stop there, the Blog template, if well thought out and optimized, doesn't forget to be elegant with the Call to Actions.

Finally, your blog posts must be related to your products and services, which means that these articles must be linked to the landing pages of your products and services.

Let's not forget about social media, it is essential to generate quality traffic in the long term, so we can divide social media activities into two: on the one hand, Social Media per se, where the basics are communicated, the brand is worked on, it serves as a direct channel to your followers... This should be treated as a small community and kept informed. It is important to treat it very carefully, so that it breathes the essence of the brand and its values.

Second, Paid Social , this activity is nothing more than the use of these channels to attract new followers, generate more web visits and even generate sales. Both Social Media and Paid Social must be coordinated and integrated with each other.

ENGAGE:

When we think about e-commerce and the stages of Inbound marketing, products are fundamental, especially in the “ Engage ” stage, where you make your products/services known. Therefore, it is important to know the status of your products, which ones are popular, which ones sell more, which ones have not been optimized (content, SEO, image). It is also very important to know the volume of traffic for each product classification. Once these two analyses have been done, the important thing is to cross-reference the data and make decisions: what do I remove, what do I put in, and what do I optimize? Which is my cash cow? Etc.

Marketing Automation takes on special relevance at the time of “ Engage ”, as it will allow for better conversions if used consistently. For example, while you use push tools in the browser or use email, you can make workflows when people have viewed products and/or added products to the shopping cart. This workflow will focus on trying to recover unfinished shopping carts, with sequences of 3 or 4 messages maximum, and where in each message the “reward” for the customer increases if they complete the purchase.

CLOSE/CONVERT:

It's time to pat yourself on the back, you've made a purchase! You've converted! It's a very small but very important moment. But the most important thing at this moment is to take care of it: supervise the shipment, be there if they need you, if the product hasn't arrived, know how long it will take them to receive it. Maintain it. This is where Customer Service plays a crucial role, because it is part of the User Experience once the purchase has been made, you want them to stay with your product or service, and beyond that: you want them to come back.

I always wonder, when does customer loyalty begin?

Once you receive and consume the product, or once the purchase is made.

Which brings us to the important question: When does the Delight phase begin then ?

In my opinion: when they make the purchase. Well, very simple, this customer has already placed their trust in your product or service because you have convinced them and while they receive or consume your product or service, we must not forget them. In other words, we must maintain contact and above all provide value in some way, whether with premium content, inviting them to listen to a talk, “private” promotions, making them feel important, exclusive. Now imagine that we have sold a product to someone, and we do not maintain contact with that person, and the shipment is delayed, or the product arrives defective. It is very likely that they will not buy from our site again, because there was no emotional connection with us during this period. If we had maintained communication using our content and automation tools, perhaps they would have made an emotional connection and therefore given us a second chance. You know what they say “it is 7 times more expensive to attract new customers than to sell to an old customer”.