Boosting e-commerce customer engagement is one of the most challenging issues that marketers have to tackle these days considering that it represents why online marketers market.
You have to keep in mind that online marketers are responsible for creating relationships with customers so that they will choose your brand or organization over your competitors. Not only that, but they also have to ensure that the customers benefit from the products and services that are being offered with the goal of making them come back for more, and encourage other people to go with what you’re offering.
We know what we wrote sounds like a huge challenge, but remember that all challenges have solutions. There are many methods and ways that can help you boost client engagement, and in this blog, we are going to list them down.
What Is Customer Engagement?
Before we talk about how to increase e-commerce customer engagement, it is necessary to understand what customer engagement is.
So basically, customer engagement is all the ways that you get to interact with your customers, and that includes both online and offline. Most of the time, it includes answering questions and queries or just getting positive and negative feedback regarding your services and the products that you are offering.
To help you understand it more, here are customer engagement examples that happen from time to time:
- One of your customers receives a message or an email that’s about your product and clicks through the URL that’s included to see it.
- Your customer calls your number or the customer support service to inquire about an item.
- A customer calls the support line to ask or inquire about returning an item that was purchased through your website.
- A customer likes, engages, leaves a comment, and shares your post on social media.
Remember, those are just some of the many examples that help you understand what customer engagement is. As we said, it’s all about how you get to interact with your customers, and that involves through the internet or off the internet.
4 Reasons Why E-Commerce Customer Engagement Is Important
Understanding why e-commerce engagement is important should be the top priority of all digital marketers as it allows you to know how it could benefit the organization or brand that you are representing. To allow you to understand why it’s necessary to focus on it, here are the key reasons why e-commerce customer engagement is important:
Better Retention For Customers
Engaging with your e-commerce customers is necessary, considering that without customer service, your platform would serve no purpose. According to official statistics, a good e-commerce customer service experience is capable of actually keeping more than 80 percent from leaving.
Customer Promote You
Once the customers feel that they are constantly engaged with you, it is likely that they will be sharing or promoting your brand or services and products to other people or all over the internet. Not only that, but they are also likely to recommend what you’re offering to their family, friends, or colleagues!
Customer Loyalty
Engaging with your customers not only allows you to make your customer service better but also makes your relationship with them stronger. Remember, all customers are not only there to make transactions with you, but some want to become loyal supporters, which is why those companies that are engaged with their customers are 5 times more likely to have them avail their services again.
Keep Them Updated
With the help of blogs, vlogs, and social media posts, you can keep your customers, followers, subscribers, and website visitors updated all the time. Remember, customer engagement also includes handing out information!
10 Essential Ways To Increase E-Commerce Customer Engagement
If you are planning to increase e-commerce customer engagement, here are some essential ways that can help you do what many think is tough:
Use Digital Tools To Engage With Real-Time Customers
Digital tools like live chats are heavily present on e-commerce platforms these days trust us, users prefer to have such features as it eliminates long waiting periods that they have to experience when they have to call the customer care line. The thing with live chats is that half of the questions could be answered by chatbots and the other half could be answered by real humans, which improves efficiency and customer service availability all together.
Offering Great Customer Experience
Having a marketing campaign or just engaging with your customers is not enough, you need to make sure that you are offering solutions to problems and are coming up with ways to make the overall customer experience great when engaging with those that are availing your services or products. From how fast you respond to actually finding ways just to get things done, the better customer experience you will offer, the more likely the user will remain loyal to you.
Make The Checkout Experience Easy
Decreasing the bounce rate of your e-commerce platform is necessary, and one of the best ways to achieve that is by boosting e-commerce customer engagement through making the check-out experience easy. The thing is, some websites have very complex checkouts, and instead of making the purchase users just give up and decide to leave, which increases the bounce rate of the platform, so to decrease try to make the checkout experience easier!
If you do have a bit of a complex checkout experience, try to offer live customer support on that page itself so you can assist your users in making the purchase.
Use Customer Reviews On Products
To sell something on the internet, it is necessary to have reviews on the products that you are selling. If you go to online e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Walmart, BestBuy, NewEgg, and many more, you will notice that under every product there are reviews. The main reason for this is for customers to have an idea on what they would be getting if they do decide to go with the product. It’s basically a form of increasing customer engagement as it allows them to see and carefully understand what the other customers have in mind for what they are planning to purchase.
Be Active On Social Media
Staying active on social media allows your loyal customers, clients, and followers to know what you’re up to, what’s new, and what changes are being brought upon your brand or company. From daily updates to just posting new products and telling your followers what changes are being made, you can increase the way they interact. From likes, shares, comments, and forwarding the content to the people that they know, the number of things that users can do are countless!
Offer A Customer Loyalty Program
Having a customer loyalty program where you give out coupons, special discounts, rewards, point accumulations, and freebies can help your customers engage more with your platform. Remember, everyone likes it when you make them feel special, and with customer loyalty programs, you allow your customers to feel like they’re getting something out of every purchase that they make. It also allows them to constantly engage with your platform to see what’s new so they can make the most out of the rewards that they are getting.
Get Constant Customer Feedback
Knowing how your customers feel after availing of your services or products is another great way to enhance customer engagement with your e-commerce website. From having a review section under each product that you’re selling to just asking them how you can improve what you’re offering, getting customer feedback allows you to engage directly with those that are visiting your website or platform!
Enhance Your E-Commerce Based On Feedback
As soon as you get feedback on how you could improve your services or products, you want to start working on making things happen and if possible, announce it to let your customers know that you took the time to improve your platform. Once you post it, they can visit it again to check out the new features, and then get back to you again to let you know how the changes made them feel.
Content For Your Audience
To keep your audience engaged, you have to make content that’s targeted toward them. For example, Nike loves to endorse that they offer top-quality sports products for athletes across the globe, and their slogan alone “Just Do It” is highlighted in all advertisements, posts, or content that they post, motivating people to just do what they think is impossible. This allows people to engage with them more and more, and with the content they make, you can see how well they’re doing with selling products. The Jordan brand alone is so big that it generates 5 billion USD in revenue annually, so you can imagine what the entire brand is generating, and most of it comes through its online sales thanks to the content that they make for its audience.
Provide Resources
If you are selling products, resources like product information, manuals, claim forms, and warranty-related details should be available on your e-commerce platforms. Not only available to view but such things should be available to download, especially if you are offering products. All the resources should have the necessary information about the product that’s being availed by the customers through your e-commerce platform.
Conclusion
Customer engagement plays a huge role in keeping your clients and website users happy. The better it is, the more likely they will stay loyal to you. If you’re planning to improve how your customers engage with you, follow the 10 essential ways that we have listed above!