Category: Ecommerce

Can Product Videos Help in Boosting Conversions? 5 Reasons you can be sure

One of the better approach to reach out to maximum potential buyers is by making sure that the product description reaches in best possible way to the customers. There are many ways to provide a better insight of the product to the customers like Image, ads, Posts and videos. Though all the option may seem to be feasible and appropriate, but with the increase in the competition, it important to provide the customers with the look and feel of the products for better understanding. Thus, the seller needs to make sure that the products is made visible in the most suited way.

Product video are a quite helpful approach in doing so. The customer may get a better insight of the product by just giving a couple of minutes of their time. It helps them get an actual glimpse of the product before making a purchase. It is a much better approach rather than having to browse through multiple images or post just in order to make sure the product is in compatibility with what the customer wants.

Every store owner would like to get an additive description of the product on their store. Knowband offers an effortless way to upload the product images on the Prestashop store. Prestashop Product video module is one such addon that can help you upload the videos without making any code changes on the website. The seller can add a video of the product, giving a brief insight of the product. It helps the customer in every possible way to make up their mind regarding the purchase. The review videos from the YouTube, Vimeo can help customers to rely on the product authenticity.

Let us discuss some of the reasons which can ensure the seller about the efficiency of Videos in making conversions.

1.  Better product clarity

The idea of making use of the product videos rather than just sticking to the images and snapshots ensure better user experience. It is the best way to showcase the product. The chances of conversion increases when the customers get a perfect view of the product. Thus, the videos are an effortless way to build the trust and aid the purchase decision of the customers.

2.  Reliable

The reliability of the product video can be made by a survey result. It is a proven fact that 23% of the customers prefer making an instant purchase of the product after they have been provided with the product video. Thus, the videos are definitely a better approach which provides higher chances of conversion. Most of the time it wouldn’t take much for the seller to provide a product video in order to make a sale. Thus, video serves the seller with immediate and better results in the mean time they take down customer with ease.

3. User Engagement

Every customer needs a reason to keep browsing the website. If they can’t find the site worth-it, then, they are more likely to move on. The product video gives them an opportunity to relate to the product. For instance, consider the video showcasing a man wearing the shirt that the customer finds interesting. The customer will find it easier to make the purchase decision in this case. In the meantime, it also ensures the seller that a customer has better experience with the web store and they are more likely to give a look to other products that are provided by the store. It increases the chance of making sales on various products in the web store.

4.  A better marketing tool

The videos have been proved to be a better marketing too. Product video is the winner when it comes to enhancing the popularity of the product. It is the right composition of the product description in the most feasible and creative way. Images may fall short for the customers who likes to gather more and more information about product before placing the order. A video is exactly what the new generation online shoppers desires for. It reaches out to most of the people in best of the condition and offers the complete analysis of the product.

5.  Responsive

No product would be successful unless it receives a positive response form the customers. Thus, in order to get response on the product, sellers must fed the visitors with required information. The video are best suited means for doing this. They consists of equal composition of description and interaction, necessary for the seller to make it up to the customers. Most of the time, sellers might get too descriptive with the video but still it helps in one or the other way.

Over to You

One of the best way to get better conversions on a product is by using product video. The statistical report approves of it and in the meantime these reports do serve the purpose of fetching important aspects of the products. Thus, making it easier for the customer to make purchase on the product and at the same time seller can get better conversions.

For more Information About Prestashop Product Video Module visit here:-

Module Link: https://www.knowband.com/prestashop-product-video

Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAi9ZVUdoxs

User Manual Link: https://www.knowband.com/blog/user-manual/prestashop-product-video-module/

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5 Immediate Advantages of the Mobile app builder by Knowband

eCommerce store owners are always in search of better alternate to connect with the customers. The immediate need to make the web store attractive and more engaging encourages the sellers to keep the web store updated. Most of the time, a customer prefers to make a purchase from a web store if the product of his/her interest is readily available. Thus, bringing the entire store into the pocket of the customers is a must. Thus, upgrading the eCommerce website on the mobile platform is a must.

It won’t be wrong to state that the mobile commerce is the latest development in the eCommerce scenario. The mobile phones have proved to be a great step in making online trading easier for the sellers. The easy accessibility and reachability of the mobile phones makes shopping effortless for the customers. The shifting trend of desktop sites towards mobile apps is proving to establish new milestones for the eCommerce store owners.

If you are a web store owner and want you want your products to reach out to more potential buyers, then, Knowband’s Mobile app builder for Android and iOS may enable you in doing so. The multiple features provided by the applications prove to be a better way to engage more customers and enhance your store’s conversion. According to a survey, “54% of the customers prefer mobile apps to make purchase over desktop sites”. Thus, it’s always a better option to get a new head start to your business with better options. Mobile apps are currently trending and has proved to be an effective option to feature your products in the market in a much better way.

Let us discuss some of the feature of Mobile app builder which can help the web store in touching new heights.

1.  Customizable

The web stores may deal in sales of various products and items. Thus, every store owner has different expectations from the mobile app to gain better response. The mobile apps that are developed are fully customizable. The store owner has the full control over all the features starting from the look and feel of the mobile app to the checkout options. The sellers can make sure that the store has multiple features which describe the thought process of the seller. The representation plays a key role in binding the customers, thus, using mobile app builder to get a mobile app assures greater customer retention and app visibility.

2.  Attractive

Any seller would expect the store to look attractive and engaging. Thus, the multiple theme layout and color combinations offered by mobile app builder makes it sure for the seller to express the product identity in the most advanced form. The store owner get full liability to select the store theme and match them with different products and categories to fit in. Apart from the theme layout, the very immediate need of the customer is to connect with the web store and the products or services that it offers. The retina ready display and the uncluttered layout of the application ensure best user experience. Thus, aiding the visitors in making their purchase decision. Moreover, the mobile app builder offers comes with a number of alluring themes. The admin can choose the one that he find interesting.

3.  Compatibility

The introduction of different types of hand held devices and the platforms that they run on has made it tough for the merchants to reach out to their prospective customers. Our mobile app builder has made it easier for the store owners in making sure the seller is connected to customers irrespective of the platform or mobile they are using. It supports the mobile app to be compatible to multiple devices like Smartphones, tablets, iPads and others. In addition, it supports most of the eCommerce platforms like Prestashop, Magento, OpenCart, Shopify and others which are currently trending in the market. No matter if the customer is using Android or iOS in their mobiles, the mobile app builder develops the app to be compatible with all the OS. This helps the customers to access the web store throughput without any difficulty.

4.  Allows the admin to stay in touch with the customers

The mobile app builder by Knowband helps the admin stay in touch with the customers 24*7. The push notification allows you to keep them informed about the activities of the store. The task of making marketing easy for seller and customers is well maintained and the smooth running of the store via mobile app is maintained. The live chat option can help your sort out the queries of the store owner then and there. The real time interaction ensure at par customer engagement.

5.  Additional features

Any product is incomplete if it doesn’t provide any additional features to make it better. The mobile app builder enables the mobile apps to be compatible with multiple languages. The RTL language feature of the mobile app allows you to take your business at an international platform. This is one of an inevitable feature to ensure that the mobile app is a success in the Middle East Asian countries and the gulf countries where customers prefer store interaction in Arabic and Hebrew rather than English. Over it, the automatic synchronization also enables the store owners to keep the products on app updated with respect to desktop site.

Over to You

The mobile app builder is a complete package, which provides immense features for the web store to grow more and better using the mobile apps. Thus, it keeps the sellers in trend with the market and keep their customers updated about the store in a much better and convincing manner.

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5 Recent Market Trends in Mobile eCommerce

The introduction of the mobile phones to eCommerce is not new. The rising popularity and the easy access to mobile phones have compelled the eCommerce store owners to take their businesses to the mobile platform. After all, mobiles do serve the purpose of making shopping fun and convenient for the internet users. The mobile store helps the customers to browse eCommerce store with much more convenience.

As, the number of mobile users is growing day by day, it has become an effective way for the eCommerce store owners to connect to their customers in a more defining way. One of the advantage of using mobile apps is the large access to mobile phones. Thus, it helps the sellers to reach out to maximum people and at the same time it helps in boosting the sales and make better conversions.

While this has opened up an ocean of opportunities for the merchants, the introduction of eCommerce players and the ease of upgrading the business into m-commerce has increased the competition. One of the biggest hacks to stay of the competition is to keep yourself in line with the market trends and technological advancements. For the eCommerce business runners, here are some of the latest market trends in m-commerce that you need to consider in order to stay abreast with the customer expectation.

The time spend on mobile apps is expected to increase

There have been a steady rise in the number of smartphone users in the recent past. This has made it inevitable that mobile commerce is not just a fad, but an unavoidable trend. In addition to this, 85% of the mobile time are spend on the applications. This indicated that having a mobile app for your eCommerce business is a must.

Location-based content curation

With the introduction of 2016, there have been an increase in popularity of the voice search. Along with this, the location-based services are on a rise and will continue to lead the market in the years to comes. Hence, the content of the mobile application for any eCommerce company needs to be curated with these two aspects in mind. The content of the mobile app should have location reference. Along with this, instead of targeting keywords, the content should provide the solution of the queries being searched by the target audience. The voice searches include questions such as ‘Chinese restaurant near me’ and other such queries. The contents should be updated accordingly.

Easier navigation a must-have

Not just in the eCommerce ecosystem, even in mobile commerce, 1 out of 4 customers are expected to abandon the cart if they find the store navigation complex. Thus, this adds to the need of focusing on the mobile apps. While the mobile responsive websites will continue to outpace the application as they do not require any installation, they are more likely to annoy the visitors with complicated navigation. The mobile apps, in this case, will prove handy in curbing the cart abandonment.

The need to bring the store in the customer’s pocket

As per a recent report of Google, the ‘Right here’ and ‘Right now’ requirement of the online shoppers are on a rise. Moreover, 50% of the smartphone users are likely to place their order immediately. They not just want the load time of the web store to be less, but they even wants the stores to be at their arm distance. Thus, the online retailers need to bring in the entire website in the pocket of their target audience. What can be better option that having an app for your business. Moreover, the application should sought at making the shopping experience easier and fun for the consumer. Easier check-in and checkout process with social login options will ensure greater customer retention.

Social engagement is a must

Even in the m-commerce ecosystem, the social media platforms are more likely to steal the show. Overall, 60% of the consumer times spent on social media is on mobile. Hence, the mobile application for the eCommerce businesses should be optimized to tap this audience. Promoting the app on these platforms and incorporating deep links and other features in order to increase the number of downloads is a must.

Having discussed the above-mentioned trends that are expected to follow in the m-commerce industry, it is now time to elaborate how can a mobile application help your business model. If you are a Prestashop site owner than you can easily switch your web site to mobile app by using Prestashop Mobile App builder module. Knowband offers an easy and effortless module for that can help you take your eCommerce business to the next level. Similar extensions are available for Magento, OpenCart and other platforms as well.

Let us take a look on some of the evolution in mobile eCommerce which can help the stores to grow more and better.

1.  Better traffic

The accessibility of mobile phones has grown up to more than 3 billion peoples. Thus, it ensures that more users can help the seller in re directing a better crowd to their stores. The introduction of m-commerce can help the web stores to get a better traffic on their stores which will be a good sign for better sales. It also helps in making more conversions.

2.  Reachability

Mobile phones are reachable at almost every place. Customers don’t have to reach out to desktop sites in order to make a purchase. They can easily reach out to their mobile phones and make purchase. It has helped the seller to reach out to maximum potential buyers who would have otherwise given a second thought of making a purchase. A better option to make purchase will surely help the seller to reach out more.

3.  Convenience

Mobile apps are more convenient when compared to desktop sites. One of the immediate advantages of mobile apps is the convenience. Most of the time a customer will hesitate to go through desktop sites and make a purchase. With the introduction of mobile aps marketing has become way too easy. The customers can now reach out to their mobile app any time and make a purchase on any of the product they like. It has helped the customers to make immediate purchase.

4.  Direct sales

Mobile apps helps in making direct sales. The visitor can use the mobile app to browse the web store and see the product and make a purchase. Unlike, desktop sites where they have to go through all the products and then settle down for their likes after searching many options. Mobile apps provide direct approach to get the products. The customers just has to select category and make a purchase. It just gets better with using the mobile apps for customers in order to make a purchase.

5.  Better approach

Seller always keep the customers experience as priority. If the customers have a better experience with a web store than they are more likely to visit the store again. Thus, keeping this factor in mind the seller need to make a better approach to reach out to customers. The customers can visit the store using mobile apps making a purchase and getting better deals. Thus, mobile app ensures a better marketing opportunity for both sellers and the customers.

6.  Social Sharing

One of the best feature provided by the mobile apps is social sharing. Most of the time when a customer likes the product they want to share it with their friends, thus mobile apps prove a great way to do that. They enable the customers to share the products with others. It helps in promoting the product even without the seller promoting it directly. The mobile apps are quite handy and can always be used to grow market. The social feature of mobile apps makes the store more prone to growing and get better sales.

Conclusion

Most of the time a customer would like to make purchase through mobile apps due to better convenience. Hence, the seller must be oriented towards providing customers with better services. The m-commerce is taking over the market rapidly and if a store owners doesn’t change with trend than they are most likely to lose a large portion of potential buyer. It will reduce the sales made.

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5 Quickfire Prestashop Addons that can Boost your Conversions

E-commerce merchants crave for conversions, but conversions do not happen automatically. It requires your time, efforts and a well-structured strategy. If you are a Prestashop store owner and looking for some helpful addons to boost your conversions, you can try out the Prestashop addons that are listed below.

1. Spin and win popup module

The traditional approach of asking for visitor’s email addresses by offering them some deals and discounts doesn’t work any longer. This is why e-retailers come up with new ideas every now and then to increase customer engagement. And why shouldn’t they? Customer engagement is an important factor to drive more conversions.

Spin and Win popup is the recent approach followed by merchants to engage customers. The motive behind this is to provide a gamifying experience to users, make them earn some discount by spinning the wheel and capture their email addresses when they claim the deal. Prestashop Spin and Win pop-up addon is a 3-in-1 popup (Entry, Exit, and Email subscription popup) that focuses on engaging your users in a fun activity. When visitors enter your store, they are asked to spin the wheel to win some amazing discounts on your store. Curious to win discounts, users spin the wheel and provide their email addresses to claim the offer. This way, you get their email addresses which can prove to be very useful for your email marketing campaigns. You can display the spin and win popup even at the time when a visitor is attempting to take an exit from your store.

2. FB wall post

The introduction of Social media has made marketing much easier than before. E-retailers are utilizing the advantages of major social media platforms to boost up their business, where Facebook is on the top list.

Prestashop FB Wall Post addon is one such way for you to increase your e-commerce conversions. The FB wall post module helps in generating automatic wall posts as well as manual wall posts based upon the seller’s convenience. One of the very advantages of this module is that it enables the merchant to make the customers aware of the new products arrival. Moreover, you can select the category and the brands that you wish to display on the wall post.

3. Social loginizer

Imagine how frustrating it would be for a user if they have to go through a lengthy registration process every time they visit a new eCommerce website. The registration process is the door to enter the store. Would you like to make your users wait or get them inside as quickly as possible? The latter would arguably the most obvious answer. This is what the social login option does. It allows users to sign in directly with their social accounts such as through Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.

Prestashop Social loginizer addon offers 15 log in options to visitors The Social login saves the time in filling up the lengthy registration forms. Social loginizer allows the store merchants to place the easy social login facility on various pages such as Home Page, Category Page, Product Page, Checkout page, etc. The availability of social login makes you gather your user’s data easily and you can get more insights into your customers like their age, location, gender, etc. This helps in target marketing. Social loginizer can be very effective in increasing your eCommerce conversions.

One page checkout

 

The checkout page of your eCommerce store decides whether the visitor would convert into a customer or not. It either leads to increased conversions or increased abandoned cart. A complicated checkout process is one of the major reasons for customer dissatisfaction that leads to cart abandonment. Customers find it tiring to provide their details on a number of pages. As a result, they just hit the exit button and leave your store. In order to overcome this problem, e-retailers are following the one-page checkout process that puts up all the checkout related fields on a single page.

Prestashop one page super checkout focuses on providing a better checkout experience to your customers. It offers a social login option (Facebook login, Google login and PayPal login) to your users along with a guest checkout option. As a store merchant, you can offer multiple shipping and payment methods to reduce the possibilities of cart abandonment. Apart from that, you can choose multiple layout designs of your checkout page

5. FB store

The growing popularity of Facebook has led brands to promote their products on the largest social media platform today. With over 2.38 billion active monthly users, it has become a major platform for online businesses to market their products and earn more revenue. If you haven’t marked your brand’s presence on Facebook, you are seriously missing out on a great opportunity to gain more conversions.

Many brands have opened their Facebook stores to drive more sales. If you haven’t opened a facebook shop yet, open it today. It is a must if you are thinking to take your business to a large scale.

Prestashop FB Store module is a good approach to gain higher traffic and increase user engagement on your prestashop store. It helps you integrate your Facebook page to your Prestashop store and provides you various options to customize your Facebook shop. It increases your product visibility and makes you reach out your products in front of a wide facebook audience.

Conclusion

Expecting your conversion funnel to go up rapidly would be unwise. It takes the right tactics and the right approach to get more conversions. Take your time, brainstorm new ideas and come up with some amazing ways to improve your conversion rate. Above all, keep the user experience the topmost priority.

If you found these 5 Prestashop addons helpful to boost your conversions, do let us know by leaving a comment below.

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5 Incredible Hacks to Enhance your eCommerce Businesses

If you are running an eCommerce store, then, prioritizing customer’s satisfaction becomes inevitable. Most of the time, customers prefer to make a purchase after they are fully satisfied with the services provided by the web store. If you think that providing quality product can lure the customer to your store, then, you may not be right completely as there are many other factors contributing to customer acquisition. Nowadays, almost every other store is using the same brand merchandise. Customers have plenty of options to buy those products.

So, what factor differentiates between the stores for a customer? Why should he/she choose your online store over the others. Well, getting required traffic to your website and at the same time having a healthy amount of satisfied customers is different. The eCommerce store owners need to think differently and creatively, in order to be upfront. The sellers must divert their attention from ‘only providing quality products’ to enhancing the customers experience with the web store. A better UX ensures a better customer relationship.

Seller need to make sure that the customers have a smooth and pleasant experience while shopping. It helps in making sure that the customer will engage them with your web store in future too.

Discussed below are certain strategies which can be used to build a stronger customer base.

1.  Better navigation

The web store owners needs to provide the customers with smooth browsing and better access to the site features. The website should be enhanced for better user engagement and shopping experience. The category and product navigation should be easy and effortless. Keep the category pages uncluttered. Moreover, the filters and deep linking can help you get some customers. In addition to this, features like one page check out, Infinite scroll and others prove to be useful features in binding the customer’s interest towards the web store. These may seem to be small details, but if acted properly, it can lead on to a significant raise in your sales and ultimately boost your conversions.

2.  Interactive Pop ups

The main task for the web store owners is to keep their customers occupied. Thus, the sellers must provide the customers with an interactive platform where they can easily make purchase. The web store can use creative ideas like Spin and Win pop up and other gamified popups that are less annoying and ensures longer engagement at the same time. These pop ups keeps the customers on the website and curbs their exit-intend. The seller can also make huge sales by luring the customers through various offers, provided using these pop ups.

3.  Social Media Marketing

The concept of social media marketing is heating up. Most of the web store have either started to market using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or planning to do so. The user based on these sites is way too much and it is never a bad idea to promote your products among such crowd. If proper strategy is followed than social media marketing can boost the product sales and increase the amount on conversions significantly.

4.  Mobile Apps

The significant rise in the numbers of mobile phones have changed the marketing strategies. With an easy access to mobile phones, it has become a better source to increase the number of customers visiting your store. In addition to this, the customers find mobile app more comfortable and trustworthy rather to desktop site. Thus, launching a mobile app for your web store might show an increase in your revenue generated through sales. Knowband offers an robust medium to all the eCommerce owners for having their own mobile app. Our Mobile App Builder can help you get your application in a matter of moment.

5.  Product reviews

According to a study, “Almost 54% of people would prefer to purchase a product after reading positive reviews about the products”. Thus, try to maintain a section which consists of all the product reviews. It enables the customers to share their experience about the products and helps other to make up their mind in order to purchase the particular product. It serves a huge purpose in increasing the sales.

Conclusion

Marketing with time has become more research based than service based. The sellers need to be stay updated about the trends which can boost their eCommerce store. If they want to grow more than they must give preference to their customer’s choices. Take the above mentioned consideration into account and optimize your store for better results.

For more Information about Shopify Spin & Win Module visit here:-

Module Link: https://www.knowband.com/shopify-spin-and-win

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Infinite Scroll Optimization: You Enroll while they Scroll

In the past couple of years, there has been a significant increase in the number of eCommerce stores. On one hand, this has opened multiple options for the online shoppers to shop from, while on the other hand, this tremendous rise has made it quite challenging for the e-retailers to keep their customers stick to their store. The competitive market has led the eCommerce merchants to come up with some unique ideas on their store at regular intervals to ensure that their visitors enjoy a smooth experience and remain loyal. One such idea adopted by the e-merchants is the use of Infinite Scroll, also known as an endless scroll.

Great user experience is essential to ensure customer acquisition as well as customer retention. To make sure that users enjoy a hassle-free browsing experience, Knowband comes up with the Infinite Scroll module for Prestashop, OpenCart, Magento and Magneto 2 store owners.

The Infinite Scroll module eliminates the traditional pagination system from your eCommerce store and optimizes your site to load the next page products automatically within the same page. It helps customers browse your store products easily without the need to navigate to the next page manually. The infinite scroll module saves a lot of time and effort of your customers.

Why do we prefer the Infinite Scroll module?

Infinite Scroll module has proved to be very effective in increasing the conversion rate. How? Check out the points mentioned below.

Efficient

With the help of the Infinite Scroll module, merchants can now provide an easy browsing experience to their customers. Because of continuous loading, customers can now browse all the products of a particular category on a single page. Since a user needs to put minimum efforts to browse content, this makes infinite scroll an efficient module as it saves time that otherwise would have been wasted while switching multiple pages. Along with this feature, the customers are provided with a “Go to top” link button, clicking on which they would be able to navigate to the top of the page with just a button click.

Engaging

The availability of Infinite Scrolling has proved to be very engaging for the customers, which has helped store owners in keeping high the customer engagement rate on their store The potential buyers now need not skip from page to page in order to browse their desired product. The option to view all the products under a single page makes an infinite scroll module more convincing and provides an interactive interface to the store. With easy automatic scrolling, e-retailers have found a significant increase in the average time spent by the customer on their eCommerce store.

Effective

The infinite scroll module has turned out to be very effective as far as the conversions are concerned. Most of the time, when customers don’t find the product matching their expectations after scrolling a number of pages, it certainly kills their interest to browse further. Who knows if they had got the perfect fit on the next page? But since they stopped after a point, they couldn’t be converted into potential buyers. This causes an effect on your sales. Hence, with the introduction of the infinite scroll module, it becomes quite easy for the customers to keep looking for the products without skipping to another page. It doesn’t break their flow and keeps the chances of conversions very high.

Emerging

The infinite scroll module has given a new definition to product browsing. The concept has emerged and started to catch the attention of merchants as well as the customers. A majority of the customers now seek for the Infinite Scrolling feature on different eCommerce stores. It won’t be wrong to say that, “Infinite scroll is the new cool” for the e-commerce industry. Most of the web stores have already opted for this feature. If your store is lagging behind, you are seriously missing out on a great opportunity to scale-up your conversion funnel.

Evident

Serving customers with better features and functionality to provide them an amazing user experience is the necessity of every store owner today. The infinite scroll module is one of the features that have evidently proved to be a boon for the eCommerce merchants. This not just ensures better conversion rates but also promises to keep your customers stays intact with your web store for future purchases.

If you run your e-commerce store on Prestashop, OpenCart, Magento or Magneto 2, do try this module today. Check out: Infinite Scroll addon for Prestashop, Infinite Scroll extension for OpenCart, Magento Infinite Scroll extension, Magento 2 Infinite Scroll extension.

Conclusion

The tough competition in the e-commerce market has enforced the online businesses to come up with creative ideas to stand out in the market. Businesses are keen on looking for ways to improvise user experience, and reducing clicks is one of the best practices for that matter. If you found this article helpful, do drop a comment in the comment section below.

👉Explore the Module with Our Video Guide

Do give a read:

Pagination vs Infinite Scrolling: Which is better and why?

How can Infinite Scroll benefit your eCommerce Site?

7 Effective Strategies to Improve Customer Retention

Customer Acquisition and Customer Retention are two of the most important aspects of any eCommerce business. While acquiring new customers can be arduous, retaining customers is, sometimes, even more challenging. Once a visitor/prospect becomes your customer, you need to ensure that they stick to your brand in the long run.

You might be surprised to know but around 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers (Source: Small Business Trends). If you lose the grip on your existing customers, you will lose them to your competitors.

What is Customer Retention?

Customer retention is defined as the process of retaining your existing customers or in other words, you can say reducing customer defections. It involves various activities and programs that a Brand performs to keep its customers loyal to the Brand.

How to Calculate Customer Retention Rate?

For customer retention rate calculation, firstly you need to define the period for which you want to calculate the customer retention rate and you should have some parameters defined such as customers at the start of the period, customers acquired during the period, and customers at the end of the period. Once you have these numbers, you can easily calculate the customer retention rate. The formula for customer retention rate is as follows-

Customer retention rate = {(Number of customers at the end of the period- Number of customers acquired during the period)/(Number of customers at the start of the period)} x 100

Customer Retention Strategies

As I said above, different businesses have different strategies to retain their customers but they are a few which can be applicable to all types of businesses.

Let’s try to find out how you can improve customer retention in your online business. In this article, I will discuss 7 customer retention strategies that can be helpful to retain current customers.

1. Launch a Loyalty Program

A loyalty program is a marketing strategy used by Brands where they reward some loyalty points to customers on every successful purchase, which they can use a discount on their next purchase. The motive behind offering loyalty points is to encourage customers to continue shopping from the same brand in the future.

Many eCommerce businesses run customer loyalty programs and they have proved to be an effective customer retention strategy. They ensure repeat purchases and ultimately improve customer retention. It creates a win-win situation for both the Brand and the customer.

The loyalty Points module by Knowband is a feature-packed module that lets you provide loyalty points to your customers on a number of factors. If you are thinking to add a loyalty points system to your business, this module will be a perfect fit. It is available for a number of eCommerce platforms. Check out:

PrestaShop Loyalty Points Addon

Magento Loyalty Points Extension

OpenCart Loyalty Points Extension

2. Personalize Your Emails

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to strengthen your relationship with your customers. So once they land in your email subscribers’ list, take the onus of making them your valued loyal customers.

Here is what you can do. After the user has made the purchase, thank them for showing trust in your brand and choosing your platform to shop. Ask them about their shopping experience. It is a nice way to start the conversation and leaves a good sign of a healthy relationship in the future.

Afterward, you can ask your customers if they had any issues with the product they purchased. Appreciate them for leaving a review. It shows that you value your customers’ opinions.

Then in your next email, you can recommend some products that could be related to their previous purchase or some products that they might be interested in. And this is how your emails should go always. Keep engaging with your customers at regular intervals. This makes it one of the effective strategies for customer retention.

Keep a few things in mind. Do not clutter your emails with just the Sales tag every time, else you would land in their spam folder or they might even unsubscribe. Add a personal touch to your emails. Customers feel more connected to your emails if it contains a personal touch.

You need to add value to your customers’ lives if you want to improve customer retention.

3. Bring Surprises to Your Loyal Customers

Is there anyone who doesn’t love surprises? We all do. Surprises are a delight and bring pleasure to one’s life.

Surprise your existing customers at regular intervals with some amazing deals. Offer them credits or discount code and persuade them to come back to your store. If you have a database of customers’ birthdays, send them exclusive offers. Add happiness to their lives and make their day more memorable.

This is an important part of customer retention management.

There cannot be a better way to improve customer retention than making your customers feel special and treating them well. Customers love it when they are presented with some personalized offers, especially when they expect it least. It leads to a good brand image and leaves a positive remark about your Brand.

This customer retention strategy does more than just improving customer retention. It does free word-of-mouth, builds customer loyalty and trust, and improves brand loyalty.

Loyal customers need to feel that you still care for them and haven’t forgotten their contribution to your business.

4. Find Out Customers Who Haven’t Purchased Since Long

It is always a good idea to find out why your existing customers have not made it again to your store rather than regretting it later when they are all gone.

Once you get that data, reach out to them and ask why they haven’t shown up for long, or is there something that is bothering them from making the purchase again?

Make an emotional connection, tell them that you miss them. And if they have decided to part ways, tell them that you would love to see them back. The relationship should end on a high note.

You should also often conduct surveys to know what your customers feel about your brand, products, or services. And this is important to know beforehand so that you can work upon those issues.

This customer retention strategy will definitely help you improve your customer retention rate.

5. Enhance Your Customer Support

One of the most important customer retention strategies is to provide a quality support service to your customers. Quality customer support has a huge role to play in a successful consumer-brand relationship.

You can never grow as a brand if you fail to resolve your customers’ queries. I mean how awful it would be if customers put their trust in your brand but cannot reach out to you for a quick resolution when needed. This way, customers would always remain unsatisfied and will likely stop shopping from your brand.

If you do not want to lose your customers to your competitors, provide them with a quick response, be it via live chat, email, customer support number, or social media. Listen to their queries and sort out their problems as soon as possible.

A high-quality customer support service is the best way to win your customer’s trust and improve customer satisfaction. It is then only a matter of a few minutes to see a frustrated customer turning into a happy and satisfied customer.

6. Connect with customers on Social Media

Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are some of the best platforms to connect with your audience and build customer relationships. They give you access to communicate with your followers in a friendly manner unlike emails or chat where you have to be professional all the time.

Perform some activities to engage with your customers. Keep up the excitement about your brand.

7. Collect Customer Feedback

Even if you do everything right, there will be some customers who will leave and would no longer like to be a part of your business. For such customers, it is important that you know what made them leave your brand.

To improve customer retention, you should ask for customer feedback so that if such a problem exists as defined by the customer, you can work on it and avoid losing further customers.

Why is Customer Retention Important?

Customer retention tells you how good you are at retaining existing customers. You might be having a good customer acquisition rate but if there is a major difference between the acquisition and retention rate, it means you are not able to get hold of your customers for a longer period. And this is why customer retention is important so that you get an idea about the areas that you are lacking to retain them.

Final Thoughts

While it is important to acquire new customers, not turning away the interest of the existing customers is essential too. The latter holds more potential for your business.

You might discover some other strategies for customer retention, however, I find these 7 customer retention strategies to be the most helpful and effective to improve customer retention rate. Once you get a clear idea of how to retain customers, you will be able to deal with this issue quite conveniently.

Right customer retention strategies provide a number of benefits to your eCommerce business, including improved Brand Loyalty, Customer Loyalty, Customer Acquisition, Brand Relationship, etc.

Just be honest with your customers and stand by your promises. That’s it for customer retention management.

If you find this information useful, do leave a comment below. What customer retention strategies have you implemented for your business? What has been your success rate?

How can Infinite Scroll benefit your eCommerce Site?

With the availability of multiple eCommerce stores, online shoppers have a number of options to choose from. But what leads to the decision making of the shoppers when it comes to choosing the best store among all? Can you guess?

It’s the User Interface. Apart from UI, it is the UX. Your website appearance is the first impression of your eCommerce store on your visitors. If it doesn’t look pleasing, you won’t be able to make your visitors stay on your store. A good user interface is followed by good user experience. If your UI is impressive but you are failing to provide a comfortable browsing experience to your visitors, you are probably not going to see them back on your store.

So, in order to provide customers with a smooth and pleasant experience, enhancing the user interface as well as the user experience is a must. Bridging the gap between the user experience and user interface is highly important for the success of an eCommerce store. E-commerce merchants use different tools and features on their web stores to make it more interactive and engaging. One such method to enhance the UI and UX of an eCommerce website is the Infinite scrolling.

Infinite scrolling, also referred to as Endless scrolling, eliminates the pagination process from your store by bringing the automatic and continuous loading. As a user scrolls downs the page, the product list continues to populate. As a result, users do not require to click on the next page to browse further.

The Infinite Scroll module by Knowband helps the eCommerce merchants get rid of the conventional pagination system. It adds an automatical scroll on the product listing page and enables the user to easily navigate through your store products, on a single page. If you run an e-commerce store on Prestashop, OpenCart, Magento or Magento 2, you can avail the benefits of this Infinite Scroll module. Try them out:

Infinite Scroll addon for Prestashop

OpenCart Infinite Scroll extension

Infinite Scroll extension for Magento

Infinite Scroll extension for Magento 2

Are you still sitting on the fence of whether to implement this infinite scroll feature on your store or not? Here are some of the compelling reasons that would help you make up your mind.

Infinite scroll is time-saving

As an e-retailer, your primary focus should be to maintain the user flow when they are present in your store. A pagination process can disturb the user flow and create frustration when users go through a number of pages. Infinite Scrolling, on the other hand, makes the browsing interesting and time-saving.

Infinite scrolling offers Easy browsing

One of the main advantages of infinite scrolling is that it makes browsing easy. With the automatic loading of products, the customers just need to scroll to find their desired product. But continuous scrolling, sometimes, can make a user dig so deep that it will be difficult to reach to the top of the page again. For this matter, the Infinite Scroll module contains a “Go to top” button to make a user easily navigate to the top section of the page.

Infinite Scrolling increases session duration

To be very true, users get bored and tired after browsing a number of pages. They do not even look further to see more results and take an exit from your store. This isn’t the case with Infinite Scrolling. When products are displayed continuously on a single page to the users, they browse more products and spend more time on your store, which helps in increasing the average time spent by a user on your site.

Infinite Scroll offers fast browsing

Customers prefer fast loading. They just hate to wait for the pages to load. Clicking on the next page several times and waiting for the page to load every time can irk your visitors. Infinite Scrolling overcomes this issue and keeps adding the next page content automatically. Users find this way more convenient.

Amazing for touchscreen devices

Touchscreen mobile devices are heavily dominating keypad devices over the last few years. Today, almost every user owns a touchscreen mobile phone. This is why Infinite Scrolling is considered to be the ideal way and preferred over pagination by e-commerce merchants. It gets so simple to just use a thumb to navigate to different pages. Facebook is a prime example.

Infinite Scrolling creates more user engagement

When the content gets loaded quickly, it makes a user stay longer on the page, hence increases customer engagement. Because of the continuous appearance of products, users find themselves interacting in your store for a longer period.

Conclusion

Customers love the Infinite Scrolling feature. It enhances their user experience and keeps them engaged in your store. I guess this is enough for you to make this feature available on your e-commerce store. Check out the Infinite Scroll modules and let me know the results that you obtain afterward.

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What is Google AMP and how will it impact eCommerce Businesses?

The ever-changing market and consumer behavior have compelled the eCommerce store owners to stay on their toes. With the aim of easing out the pressure of the online business units, Google keeps on updating its policies and schemes from time-to-time. The quest to stand out in the competitive market will be easier if the eCommerce store owners stay abreast of Google’s update. Google AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is one of the updates of Google that is expected to take the online market by storm

Google AMP project was launched in the year 2016 but was restricted to a few segments. However, the project now provides an option to the eCommerce companies to build their sites in the AMP format.

What is Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)?

Google AMP is an initiative by Google for publishers to make web pages load faster on mobile devices. With M-commerce in trend, AMP proves to be very beneficial to take mobile shopping to the next level.

Around 40 to 50% of the sites are abandoned because of the slow load time, especially in the handheld devices. Catering to this prominent problem of the mobile site owners, this project of Google makes the mobile pages load faster.

The remarkable load time is achieved in two ways. First of all the developers are required to create their pages in accordance with the guidelines prescribed by Google. There is a narrow set of web technology that is required to be used during the web page creation. This technology forbids most of the JavaScript which ultimately reduces the load time of the pages. Secondly, the web pages are served from Google’s server when the page is visited through Google Search.

Effect of AMP on eCommerce business

The whole purpose of Google AMP is to make the web pages load faster, ensure customer retention and boost conversions by simplifying the shopping experience of mobile users. There has been a major shift in online shopping from desktops to mobile devices. Even the famous eCommerce platform like Prestashop offers Prestashop Mobile App Builder modules to help the owners have their own shopping applications. Thus, a project that resolves the problem of slow mobile experience of the customers will definitely give an edge to the businesses.

Impact of Google AMP on online marketing

Having discussed the effect of the Accelerated Mobile Pages on eCommerce, it is inevitable to note that it will have a huge impact on online marketing. Listed below are some of the effects of the same. Take a look.

AMP-enabled web pages will rank higher in SERPs. As per a report shared by Google recently, 9 out of 10 online customers are more likely to shop if they find the mobile experience informative. This is the biggest reason the AMP-enabled article will prove a boon for online marketers. The AMP contents will rank higher in the SERP. Since the number of internet users who seek advice and tips on their mobile phones has increased in the recent past, the articles that are ranking in the first 3 positions of Google’s SERP will reap results for their respective stores.

AMP is open source

Google AMP allows people to incorporate the changes as per their needs. Hence, the marketers can now formulate their content with close reference to the consumer behavior of their niche audience. The contents will get more readers and so the traffic of the mobile sites will increase ultimately.

A boon for SEM

The paid ads with AMP-enabled pages will stand out from your competitors. Ads in AMP use Https and will be more engaging and innovative. Hence, it is likely to have a positive impact on both the organic and inorganic results.

Reduced load time

Loading time is the major factor leading to an increase in the bounce and exit rates. With Google AMP, the quick load speed will have the readers stay longer on your page, hence reducing the bounce rate. In addition to that, a low bounce rate helps to validate the search engines that whether your web page is in accordance with what the visitors are looking for. Along with a number of benefits, it has certain cons for online marketers as well. Some of them are listed below.

  • The AMP contents are currently simple articles. These web pages would not provide any subscription or a form-filling option to the users.
  • Even though ranking the pages on Google SERP will become easier, the budget invested in content marketing will definitely increase.
  • Adding to the troubles, Google will not accept the content in AMP cache unless the content is free of all the errors.

Final Say

While the mobile app can improve your business, Google AMP can take your business to new heights. Google AMP accelerates content marketing, and the Android app builders should gear up for the changes that the search engine is expected to see.

If you have an e-commerce store on PrestaShop or OpenCart platform, you can try out our PrestaShop AMP addon and OpenCart AMP extension.

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7 Social Media Trends that may Change the Game of the eCommerce

With over 2.5 billion active social media users worldwide, this platform is one of the greatest rays of hope for the online traders. In addition, this figure is growing 9% every single year. The opportunities are huge and so is the risk. The only way to keep up with the ever-changing market scenario and the cut-throat competition is to stay informed about the market trends. While we are on the doorstep of the third quarter of the year, it is high time for all the marketers to analyze their results and make necessary changes in their marketing strategy.

The social media platform has seen most of the sparks in the recent past and will continue to surprise the marketers in the future. The blog talks about some of the social media trends that will hold the gears of eCommerce in the future. Check them out.

1. Live Streaming

While product videos have always been a USP for the online seller, this aspect is expected to take a leap in the coming year. Taking a shift from the content marketing, the social media platform is expected to see a rise in live video contents. As per a report, approximately 30 – 40% social media marketers have used the interactive video this year. This figure is expected to grow even more in the coming year. One of the statistical reports that give a green flag to this estimation is the fact that live streaming on Facebook reached record-breaking numbers around the globe on this year’s New Year eve. Some of the biggest players in the industry have already pulled up their socks for the huge opportunity, the small and medium enterprises need to gear up for the changing ecosystem.

2. Virtual Reality

Artificial intelligence and virtual reality are undoubtedly the future of eCommerce businesses. This is the talk of the town for over a decade now, but haven’t implementation till the last year. Along with Google and Microsoft, even Facebook is working on this technology for a past few years. This makes inevitable for the eCommerce businesses to make changes in their content marketing strategy. The contents should enable the consumers to compare and visualize the products without getting the touch and feel of the same. This would make it easier for them to take the purchase decision. The introduction of the virtual reality in the social platforms has reduced the dependence of the customer’s decision on the word-of-mouth. So, the online businesses should enhance their social media marketing strategy in order to tap the market while it is still hot and new.

3. Social eCommerce

Not just the marketing strategies, the entire face of the online trading has changed from eCommerce to m-commerce and now to social commerce. Trading directly through the social media platforms without driving the traffic to the website is on the rise. According to a survey from Aimia, 56% of consumers said that they follow their brands on social media in order to browse products for sale. Moreover, surprisingly 31% of online shoppers said that they use social media specifically to look for new items to purchase. Not just Pinterest, even Twitter, and Facebook are allowing for purchases. One of the most prominent platforms for tapping the social commerce market is Facebook. Most of the eCommerce stores now offer the option to sync the products of the site on the Facebook store. For instance, Prestashop FB store plugin allows the Prestashop owners to have their own shop on their Facebook pages.

4. Chatting tools

Most of the marketers may consider it a traditional and orthodox method, but SMS has a phenomenal 99% open rate. Most of the brands and the online businesses have made use of the hand held devices to market their brands and have seen exceptional results. The messaging tools, especially, Whatsapp on of the other platforms that will have a marginal effect in the eCommerce ecosystem in 2017 and years to come. It was announced last year that WhatsApp will share user data with Facebook for ad targeting with an option to opt out. Hence, sticking to the classic methods will be one of the ways stay in sync with the growing market.

5. Shift from SnapChat to Instagram

SnapChat have been a trailblazer lately, but this year has seen a change in the trends. A marginal shift in the interest of the online buyers has been observed. Instagram offers a vastly bigger audience than Snapchat. The former has 600 million users while the latter has 150 million users. While Facebook still remains the key to success, the businesses that can quest the market of Instagram will have an egde over the crowd. In fact, many small enterprises have reaped results by advertising their product on Instagram.

6. Mobile advertising

Promotional messages and mobile marketing are two different things. This year, the marketers have made a greater investment in mobile advertising. The ad revenue of Facebook is more than $7 billion out of which 80% came from mobile ads. Even the mobile ad revenue of SnapChat raised the eyebrows of the online marketers, but that of Instagram is something all the online business needs to look out for.

7. Video Storytelling

This is one of the most interesting progressions in the online sphere. Storytelling through video ads has actually succeeded in grabbing the attention of the customers in the competitive marketplace. Amazon.in has made full use of the technique. Their ad for with signature hashtag campaigns and attractive videos is a trend setter. The videos build excitement and nurture customers relationship. Every ad campaign gained millions of views, likes and shares. This has opened up new doors and opportunities for the marketers. Along with this, video testimonials and clips providing quick tips to the customers are other influential ways to stand out among your competitors.

Over to you

The options of social login and Facebook post feed on the eCommerce website are all aimed at increasing the visibility and customer engagement at the social platform. However, eCommerce is changing constantly and so is Social Media. Predicting what’s gonna work and what not is tough, but these staying abreast of these trends will definitely help you go a step ahead in the competitive scenario.

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