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Quick Commerce, or Q-commerce, is one of the most significant industry developments that came out during COVID-19. In 2021, Q-commerce formed 36% of online shopping purchases and will continue to increase even faster.
Key Takeaways
Q-commerce is a subcategory of eCommerce that has rapid on-demand delivery.
The three main priorities of Q-commerce are delivery efficiency, delivery speed, and customer experience.
The most common industries among Q-commerce businesses are the food and beverage and grocery companies.
The Q-commerce business model comprises five main departments: product, technology, marketing, sales and support.
What is Quick Commerce?
Quick commerce is a subcategory of eCommerce with rapid on-demand delivery, meaning that orders are typically delivered within an hour of being placed.
Between eCommerce and Q-commerce, the only difference is in the delivery time, with the basic premise being the same. For delivery to be competitive, it must take 30 minutes or less rather than days.
The Benefits of Quick Commerce
1. Outstanding Customer Service
The three main priorities of Q-commerce are delivery efficiency, delivery speed, and customer experience. Customers save time and money by forgoing the inconveniences of making their market visits thanks to the quickness and efficiency with which such businesses deliver their goods. Because everything can be brought right to the customer’s door within minutes, which improves the customer experience significantly.
2. Unique Selling Propositions
Q-commerce developed a new market by offering a low-cost last-mile delivery solution. Due to the ability to provide customers with greater convenience than their competitors while charging less, businesses can now compete not only with online stores but also with local markets. Such firms have been able to distinguish themselves as distinctive and competitive brands in the market because of this speedy delivery mechanism.
3. High Growth Potential
Q-commerce presents a market expansion opportunity by establishing cloud stores in several cities or nations. Furthermore, such businesses may eventually broaden their business models to include various other services in addition to delivering a restricted number of goods. Due to their ability to outsource delivery operations and grow their own business simultaneously, startups can accomplish this growth considerably more quickly than established eCommerce enterprises.
4. Many Delivery Options
Numerous last-mile delivery personnel can find work with Q-commerce enterprises. It employs multiple delivery partners who can work on their schedules and make extra money, even though it follows an aggregator business model. Many people who were previously jobless and without a reliable source of income now have employment opportunities.
How Quick Commerce Works
Q-commerce is currently on the rise, especially in the grocery industry. Q-commerce delivery operations have a high starting cost; because these businesses must establish the facilities and equipment necessary for last-mile delivery.
This entails establishing a warehouse where they can store their items, hiring and training delivery personnel, and providing this personnel with the instruments they need to make deliveries. In low-margin areas, it is challenging for Q-commerce firms to compete due to the high expenses connected with such deliveries.
1. Setting up Your Account
Most Q-commerce businesses operate with mobile applications. Therefore, starting with a desktop website and mobile application would be helpful to get more customers from both ends.
2. Creating Your Products
As previously mentioned, most Q-commerce businesses are grocery stores that deliver within 10-30 minutes. The food and beverage industry is suited for this business model since people need their food or groceries quickly rather than ordering and waiting for days or weeks.
Products that can be sold at a Q-commerce store are products that people buy from markets close to their homes. These can be sanitary products, food and drinks, bakery, seasonal items, and household items.
3. Creating Your Store Pages
The main idea of a Q-commerce store is that it is fast and has fewer options than regular commerce websites. This makes it easier for the customer to find and decide what they want to buy and complete the order as soon as possible.
The store pages should have a basic design, including pictures of the product, information about the product and the price. Since there are no or a few other options for the same product, the search tool should work properly and show the relevant items.
4. Customising Your Store
Customisation of your online Q-commerce store is very crucial for your business. Quick commerce means that everything is supposed to be quick and easy. The customer should be able to find the items they are looking for as quickly as possible. Following that, the payment process should be fast and easy for them. After that, their items should come in 10 to 30 minutes.
The desktop website and mobile application can be customised regarding the customers’ likes, previously searched items and previous purchases. Additionally, depending on the customer base, seasonal items, sale items and coupons can also be recommended to the customer depending on location, date and usage of coupons.
5. Managing Your Orders
This business is a quick business; therefore, operations are an essential part of this business. The warehouse, delivery and procurement processes should be handled professionally with the least amount of problems.
The warehouse should exist in many different locations for delivery convenience and quickness. These locations can be inside the city and urban areas, which may increase the warehouse rent prices. Though every single warehouse does not have to be significant in size, they have to be highly organised so that products can be sorted out efficiently. A professional warehouse system would make it easier for the warehouse manager and other employees.
The delivery system is another distinguishing factor of Q-commerce. Mostly, the delivery is done with motorcycles, electric cycles, or bicycles (in some cases) to avoid city traffic and deliver quickly. It is crucial to have enough delivery employees waiting for orders and delivering them on time.
Procurement is another essential department at a Q-commerce store. Since there will be fewer options for each item, it is necessary to include the most sold and commonly used items on the website. Additionally, since having several warehouses inside the city and having many delivery employees costs high for the business, Q-commerce stores try to keep the buying prices of the items as low as possible to offer their customers products with acceptable prices.
The Quick Commerce Business Model (Features)
The Product/Service
This department focuses on the selection and buying process of the products. Additionally, the analysis of the products, data on the amount sold, the time spent on product pages and the whole buying process etc. All of these previous points should be assessed and analysed in detail.
The Customer
Q-commerce businesses are customer-oriented businesses; hence customers are put first. The customers’ behaviour and buying habits are examined in detail. Providing a top-tier customer experience is key to growth in this industry.
The Technology
Q-commerce businesses are fully online; technology greatly influences these online stores. It is essential to catch up with the latest technology for your Q-commerce business. Product recommendations, coupon offers, search, warehouse systems, and purchase tracking systems should work correctly and efficiently to deliver the best outcome.
The Marketing
The marketing department is responsible for all online and offline marketing processes. These processes include digital marketing, social media marketing, television advertisements, brochures, partnerships, and more. The marketing strategies of Q-commerce businesses include personalisation of the website, email marketing and push notifications. Additionally, they target student accommodations and workplaces.
The Sales
The Sales department is responsible for inbound and outbound sales processes. When a prospective client or lead contacts your company to inquire about a good or service, this is known as inbound sales. Outbound sales happen when a sales representative contacts a potential client who has yet to express interest in a good or service that the company provides. The sales department must analyse and track sales data in a well-built Q-Commerce system.
The Support
The Support departments are the Technical Support and Customer Service departments.
Technical Support
Technical Support is needed when the customer has problems with the website or mobile application. Technical issues can occur due to payment problems or issues with real-time stock information.
Customer Service
The Customer Service department handles customer issues and communicates with them. This department can use several different ways to communicate with their customers, whilst the essential part is to be quick and easy to reach out to.
Live Chat
Live Chat is the most commonly used customer service system. Companies can use automated messages to customers dealing with similar issues, and when the problem is more complicated, customer service employees can deal with the issue individually.
Social Media Monitoring and Engagement
Social media is widely used; therefore, many people try to communicate with companies via social media to get recognition. The social media marketing strategy is essential. On the other hand, it is necessary to always be active in the comments, direct messages and mentioned tweets to resolve any issue quickly.
FAQs
We recommend adding a Frequently Asked Questions section so that customers dealing with problems, or even if they have a question in mind, can easily read this page and get their questions answered. This page can include questions regarding the process of buying and other relevant frequently asked questions. It is important to keep the answers brief and explanatory.
Email Support
The Customer Service department deals with issues that have been raised by email. This is a formal way of reaching out to a company. A dedicated email address should be given to the Customer Support team, and they should send an automated email regarding when they will respond to the issue. This will increase the customer’s trust and help the team sort out emails.
Phone Support
The most commonly used Customer Support communication system is phone support. Since it is a way to talk to the team one-to-one and get their problem solved on the spot, having a dedicated team to answer phone calls is necessary to increase customer satisfaction.
Wrapping Up
As a result, Q-commerce is one of the newest and fastest-growing industries within eCommerce. Especially after COVID-19, people’s buying behaviour and decisions have changed, which has led to an increase in online shopping, high competition in eCommerce, fast delivery and high levels of customer experience.
Segmentify offers Q-commerce companies the best personalisation tools, including product recommendations, personalised emails and SMS, push notifications, personalised search and data analytics system. Contact us for a free trial and more information regarding Q-commerce solutions.
We’ve already talked about the significance of customer engagement for your business. In a nutshell, it is basically what makes a business successful. If you haven’t read our article regarding the subject, you may take a look before we dive deeper into it. And now, we move along in our series with types of customer engagement strategies and help you see the best way to engage your customers.
Key Takeaways
Active engagement both increases the time spent on your content and grants social proof for other prospects.
Social media platforms should be used for successful customer engagement in a variety of ways, from providing tailored customer service to boosting brand awareness.
Technology is evolving; so does eCommerce: interactive content reinforced by augmented reality and gamification encourages action and provides a fun and engaging customer experience.
Types of Customer Engagement
1. Active Engagement
Active engagement happens when a prospect or a customer comments, shares and spends time on your content or website. They don’t just like your posts and continue scrolling, but interact with your online activities. The prospects who spend time engaging with your content are more likely to buy or continue buying from you.
Another aspect of this type of engagement is that it draws more customers to your business. Many people seek additional information and positive comments about a business before they make a purchase from that business. Therefore, customer feedback through social media or the business website can significantly influence others and grow your audience. So, having a good content strategy for your business is vital to get customers to interact with you and improve customer engagement.
2. Passive Engagement
Passive engagement is when customers interact with you in a passive way, such as by liking a post or opening an email without further interaction. Those customers show themselves as mere numbers on an Instagram post or email open rate. They follow and react to your content in one way or another but don’t invest much time and effort into participating in your online activities.
3. Interactive Engagement
Interactive engagement, as befits the name, is a two-sided engagement. Though similar in many aspects, it differs from active engagement in terms of the content type it provides. Interactive engagement means that beyond leaving comments and emojis to your content, you and your customers communicate through interactive content that prompts action.
Gamification and quizzes requiring a response or action are among the ways to better engage customers. In what follows, we will discuss how you can implement these strategies for good customer engagement.
5 Types of Customer Engagement Strategies
Let’s see some of the most impactful customer engagement strategies.
1. Social Media Strategies
Most customers like to receive information about a business via email. But you shouldn’t limit your messaging to it. A social media presence is a powerful way to create and improve customer relationships.
You can use social media platforms for almost anything you want to share, from announcing your new products and providing tailored customer service to boosting your brand awareness.
Expanding your customer service into social media, making it omnichannel and letting the customer choose where to interact with your business helps you show that you care about your customers and build closer relationships.
The feedback you get from customers provides insight into your products and lets you see in what ways you can improve them, contributing to your current and future business strategies.
Boost your brand awareness, showcase your brand culture and build a community that will consist of your most loyal customers. Use social media platforms for everything you want your customers to know about. Stay informed about customers’ needs and wants and strengthen your relationship with them.
2. Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs make your customers feel appreciated for the effort and time they invest in your business. It also prompts them to continue their participation in any of your content.
Customers participating in loyalty programs are more likely to spread the word for you and recommend your products to their friends and family.
Moreover, the rewards and points you will offer the customer occasionally appeal to their reward system, making it harder for them to churn.
3. Gamification
Turning your content into games will be rewarding not only for your customers but for your business as well. Using gamification for your content makes it more attractive and fun, and urges a customer to interact with it. They will participate to win, making them remember you or even wait for another gamified content that would come from you.
Scratch and wheel of fortune are two examples of implementing gamification on your website, emails or social media. This will increase the number of active followers and contribute to ongoing engagement.
4. Augmented Reality
Augmented reality has caught on for the last several years and is favouring consumers at a large scale and, in turn, eCommerce businesses. Many businesses from various industries have been using AR to serve their customers better and provide them with an excellent shopping experience.
Have you ever been worried that something you saw online and liked might not look good on you? Or did you have second thoughts about buying a couch or a lamp because you couldn’t imagine how it would fit in with the rest of your furniture? AR helps you with that and prevents the uncertainties that usually surround online shopping experiences.
With ‘virtual try-on’ tools, you can now see how a piece of clothing or a make-up product would look on you or whether a piece of furniture would match the room.
Not only that, but you can also attract customers’ attention and offer them fun and engaging experiences by incorporating AR-based filters and games. Overall, AR provides enhanced customer support and an improved shopping experience, easing the process for the customer.
5. Personalisation
In our last article about the significance of customer engagement, we touched upon personalisation and how it results in profit. But let’s get into details and see some other vital points of personalisation.
Personalisation basically works as a personal assistant that guides customers through their journey. But unlike a real-life assistant, personalisation in eCommerce (or at least that’s the case for us) doesn’t have to ask questions to know what the customer wants. This leaves customers satisfied and creates memorable experiences.
Keep in mind that most customers get frustrated when they receive irrelevant messages and product recommendations. Indeed, with 80% of shoppers only preferring brands that provide a personalised customer experience, a business without a proper personalisation strategy is bound to fail or achieve little to no growth.
The Future of Customer Engagement
The future is almost here. With the last aforementioned statistic, it is already evident that people have been turning their backs on brands that don’t focus on building meaningful interactions and relationships with them. You have to constantly show that you care and try to find ways to optimise customer engagement.
Turning Customer Engagement into a Priority
Aside from all those benefits it brings to your business, customer engagement has become a differentiator between a company and their competitors for a while now. And it doesn’t seem to change in the near future.
Don’t waste any more time and see what you can do to improve your relationship with customers for great profits. Get in contact with us to learn about all the ways we can increase your customer engagement and leave your worries behind.
It’s here, the final chapter of A Case of Sporting Goods. So far in this case study series, we’ve examined the challenges of the sports goods industry and went over winning strategies for the homepage, search areas, product and category pages. It is now time to close this case with the basket page and cross-channel messaging strategies, Watson.
Key Takeaways
The global average cart abandonment rate is 70%.
Cart abandonments can be unavoidable at times. Asking customers why they’ve decided not to finalise their purchase might prove valuable.
In order to market effectively, you need to understand how consent information can be used in audience segmentation.
📍 Winning Strategies for the Basket Pages
You’ve made it! The customer’s added the items they’re thinking of buying. However, nothing has ended yet. The possibility of cart abandonment is still there. In fact, the global average shopping cart abandonment rate is 70%. How can you avoid cart abandonment and make sure the transaction is completed?
“Purchased Together” Campaigns
“Purchased Together” or “Frequently Bought Together” campaigns are a great way to boost your AOV. A single product recommendation increases shoppers’ average order by 369% compared to shoppers who don’t engage with any recommendations.
Use the basket page to upsell or cross-sell. Why not recommend a pair of tennis shoes to go with that racket?
Sometimes it’s really not you; it’s them. At times, it’s more about the customer’s mindset and not how effective your campaigns were. Remember that many of us also love to use our basket pages as pseudo-wishlists.
So the customer has decided to not buy the items in their cart. You can still use this to your advantage. How? Just ask them why they’ve decided not to finalise their purchase. If it’s something that you can fix, this is highly valuable data.
They have to re-enter their address and credit card information
The discount code doesn’t work
Hear what the visitors have to say about your brand and store with some elegantly designed pop-ups when an exit intent is detected. If the problem is one of the ones stated above, these surveys help you detect and solve them as quickly as possible!
Achieved with Exit Surveys: CX optimisation, increased customer retention and loyalty, smoother customer journey
📍 Winning Strategies for Cross-Channel Messaging
Customers have different opinions and preferences when it comes to communication channels. Some might want to be notified about your brand via email, while others prefer to keep their email addresses private. However, the latter might still choose push notifications. Knowing how to use consent information in audience segmentation should be a vital part of your marketing efforts.
All-Automated Push Notifications
Push notifications are cool because they don’t require filling out a lead form; a simple click is enough to opt-in or opt-out. Using all-automated push notifications, you can directly communicate with customers via push campaigns triggered by their specific actions.
For example, you can segment Puma fans who opted for push notifications to send them special offers, exclusive deals, etc. How you define a Puma is up to you: People who shopped from them in the last 30 days or who like browsing through that brand. It’s your choice. Just think of which segmentation and push campaign will bring the best results.
Achieved with All-Automated Push Notifications: CX optimisation, increased customer retention and loyalty, faster decision-making, increased customer engagement
Bulk Push Notifications
Bulk push notifications are some of the most basic push campaigns out there. But boy, are they effective!
Bulk push notifications according to special days, holidays, seasons, brands or product types. You can use bulk push notifications to inform your customers about new site-wide deals and campaigns, seasonal promotions, etc. You can also use these to start countdowns to specific seasonal campaigns to increase urgency.
Are you about to have an exclusive sale for the yoga category? Let your customers know with a countdown!
Achieved with All-Automated Push Notifications: CX optimisation, increased customer retention and loyalty, faster decision-making, increased customer engagement
All-Automated Emails
Automated email workflows are a series of pre-written, automated emails triggered by specific actions. You can automate email workflows to streamline your outbound communications and make them more specific and targeted.
Let’s say a customer browsed through the running category but left the website without buying anything. Personalised automated emails could be sent to the customer offering help, advice, more information, and even discounts for that particular product to get them back to the store.
You can send them persona quizzes to better understand where they are in their running journey and share special tips and guides about running based on their level. Someone getting ready to run a marathon will have different needs as opposed to someone considering starting running in the mornings.
Achieved with All-Automated Emails: CX optimisation, increased customer retention and loyalty, increased customer engagement, increased trust
Wrapping Up
This brings us to an end. Throughout the “A Case of Sporting Goods” series, we first examined the market’s challenges. Then we discussed strategies to overcome these challenges on the homepage, search areas, category pages, product pages, basket pages and cross-channel messaging.
No road is without bumps and obstacles. The trick to success is to first understand these obstacles and what causes them. And then comes the next step: Building the right strategies with the right people by your side. Then, solving problems turns into doing puzzles—fun and exciting!
Previously in A Case of Sporting Goods, we’ve discussed the current state of the market and went over the homepage and search strategies to tackle its challenges successfully. It is now time for the penultimate chapter: Let’s discuss the winning strategies for the category and product pages!
Key Takeaways
For consumers, purchasing is a form of commitment. So give them additional reasons to make the purchase.
Minimise the friction in the customer journey and prevent the customers from feeling lost with the correctly placed recommendation campaigns.
Offer gamified experiences like Persona Quizzes to engage the customers and get first-hand information.
📍 Winning Strategies for the Category Pages
Often overlooked by brands, category pages are essential to a customer’s journey. And with correctly placed personalisation campaigns, they hold great potential for improving the customer experience (CX).
Category-Specific Personalised Recommendations
By optimising your category pages, you can not only make customers’ journeys much easier but also direct them to your checkout page. Instead of letting customers scroll aimlessly through a category page, list the products according to their interests. This will make product discovery a lot easier and improve customer satisfaction.
Gamification is a wonderful way to boost customer engagement while collecting first-hand data from customers to offer hyper-personalised journeys. Journey Builders and Persona Quizzes allow you to get to know your visitors better with questions regarding their tastes, life choices, etc. You can ask anything you deem essential.
Persona Quizzes help brands turn audience segmentation into a real-time practice. They do this by assigning customers’ answers to specific dynamic segments, which in turn, help brands understand the customer personas they’re targeting in a deeper sense.
Achieved with Journey Builders & Persona Quizzes: Increase customer engagement, higher conversion, smoother customer journey
📍 Winning Strategies for the Product Pages
A good product page should inform, excite, and engage the visitors. Here, you need to present the customers with reasons why they should purchase the product. What makes this particular product unique? What’s the urgency and why should they buy it now?
Alternative Product Recommendations
Alternative product recommendations can be offered for out-of-stock products or as an upselling strategy. Either way, providing alternative options shows your customers that you care about their shopping experience.
Why the customer should choose the alternative should be clearly communicated, though. And badges are a very UX-friendly way to do so. Does it have free shipping? Or maybe it’s eco-friendly? Whatever it is, use badges for clearer communication.
Achieved with Alternative Product Recommendations: CX optimisation, higher AOV, higher conversion, lower bounce rate, increased customer retention and loyalty
Purchased Together/Shop the Look
Product Bundles, like salespeople in brick-and-mortar stores, make shopping convenient and stress-free for customers. With the help of “Purchased Together” widgets, customers don’t have to scroll endlessly through for the chance to discover something that matches what they’re looking at. This minimises friction for the customer and prevents them from feeling lost.
This cross-selling strategy is also great for showing your customer that you are aware of their needs and can guide them to purchase anything else they might need before they realise it themselves.
Achieved with the “Purchased Together” widgets: Higher AOV, CX optimisation, increased customer retention and loyalty, smoother customer journey, faster decision making
Last Visited Products Reminders
Sometimes buying something requires research. And sometimes people just like window shopping. Whatever the reason, it’d pay nicely to remind visitors of the last items they’ve looked at.
We might’ve put this strategy under product page strategies; however, nothing’s set in stone. Why not send reminder emails about their last visited products? Or push notifications? It’s up to you to get creative!
Achieved with Last Visited Products Reminders: Higher conversion, CX optimisation
Social Proofing
For consumers, purchasing is a form of commitment. That’s why they spend so much time researching the items’ features and benefits, as well as the opinions of other users. This is where social proofing comes into play.
Observing and mimicking the actions of others is an instinct in all of us, so naturally, social proof marketing is an effective way to nudge customers in the right direction and make the decision-making process easier and quicker. Information such as product ratings, view count, purchase count, basket count, etc., gives visitors an additional reason to purchase by increasing the urgency.
Achieved with Social Proofing: Lower bounce rate, higher conversion, faster decision making, smoother customer journey
Wrapping Up
In this series, we’ve first examined the current situation of the sporting goods industry and its challenges. Then, we started going over the strategies to help you overcome these challenges. The previous entry takes us through a journey on the homepage and different search areas. Then in today’s entry, we went deeper into the customer journey and discussed winning strategies for the category and product pages.
It’s essential to provide an enjoyable shopping experience from the beginning to the point of post-purchase to encourage the customer to interact with you along the way.
Key Takeaways
Customer engagement is a key determinant of success in business.
It increases revenue and improves retention while encouraging impulse purchases.
Customers are more likely to engage with interactive content.
Tailoring your content through personalisation establishes a bond between a customer and a business.
What is Customer Engagement?
Simply put, customer engagement refers to the ongoing interaction between a business and a customer through different channels in various ways. This is the first part of our customer engagement blog series and as we dive deeper and explore different aspects of the term, it will naturally gain a broader meaning.
Why Should You Pay Attention to Customer Engagement?
When a customer is engaged, you can assume that you managed to establish an emotional bond in between. That means you will most likely be the first they’ll remember and resort to when they want to buy something. We can say then that customer engagement is a significant sign of customer retention and revenue.
Another thing you should know about customer engagement is that it increases the amount of reaction to your content. An engaged customer brings along their likes and comments, feedback and suggestions, which helps you reach out to larger audiences.
4 Benefits of Customer Engagement
1. Encourages Impulse Purchases
Although it gives the impression that these are one-time purchases driven by emotion, engagement plays a significant role in impulse buying.
When customers impulse buy a personalised recommendation which is most probably what they need or want, the chances are that they won’t regret their purchase. They will feel closer to your business since you have created a relatable customer experience for them.
2. Decreases Returns
Customer engagement leads to fewer returns for the same reason that makes impulse purchases work: a good personalisation strategy. A high sales volume doesn’t mean you will get an equally high number of returns. If you have an efficient personalisation tool, you can make relevant recommendations and show customers what they already need. This will minimise the number of possible returns.
Impulse purchases probably have much less to do with emotion and more to do with the fact that the customer realises it’s something they truly want – hence the high rates of satisfaction and fewer returns.
3. Boosts Revenues
Customer engagement is about making a customer feel satisfied with their purchase. But it doesn’t end there. Seeing that a business comes back with a response or solution to their feedback is another thing that will make the customer buy more and, further, recommend your business to others.
Customers don’t just make purchases they weren’t planning on or purchase more, in general. Many customers report having spent more because of a shopping experience that engaged them personally.
To spice it up, here is an interesting statistic for you: Companies that invested in customer engagement have seen a 70% increase in revenue.
4. Improves Retention
There is a direct correlation between customer engagement and retention. Customer engagement, especially when established through personalisation, keeps customers loyal to the business. They become more likely to keep buying from you and less likely to go to competitors.
Types of Customer Engagement Strategies
We will elaborate on these customer engagement strategies in our next article in the series, but before that, we would like to touch upon them briefly to paint a clearer picture next time.
Social Media
Having an online presence and getting in touch with your customers on social media has become more than an eligibility factor. It is now a must-have for your business and, thus, for customer engagement.
Expanding your customer service to social media, conducting competitions among your followers, and creating interactive content will strengthen your game and both build and increase brand awareness.
Loyalty Programs
Customers participating in loyalty programs means that customers are more open to offerings that will come from you, more inclined to recommend your brand, more responsive to your content, and ready to spread the word for you.
Moreover, the rewards and points you will offer the customer occasionally appeal to their reward system, making it harder for them to churn.
Gamification
Getting a customer to interact with your content is generally hard, but gamification makes it easier for you. Implementing game-like mechanisms into your content will make them more attractive and fun for customers to participate in. This will ensure ongoing engagement and increase the number of active followers.
Personalisation
We already mentioned that personalisation is key to successful customer engagement. As much as it increases revenue and average order value, personalisation shows customers that you know and care about their needs and interests.
Seeing your unique recommendations assist them as if they have a personal assistant by their side leaves them satisfied and makes you stuck in their minds. That is one of the ways you connect with your customers.
Time is Running Out
The term “customer engagement” has been around for a long time now, and many companies already invest in optimising customer engagement. As competition between companies becomes tighter, few things are left to leverage as differentiators. The brand loyalty you create by interacting with customers through various channels will make you stand out among the competitors.
Stay tuned to learn more about customer engagement and how to step up your game to stand out among your competitors.
eCommerce has become as much a part of most people’s lives as retail shopping was 20 years ago, especially with the push of COVID-19. Chances are you’ve made an online purchase – a new song, clothing item, or even something more substantial – within the last few weeks.
It’s probably a safe bet that your company has a lot riding on its current eCommerce efforts. But have you ever looked back at where eCommerce began? It might help you better predict where it’s going and how your company can prepare.
Key Takeaways
The roots of eCommerce stretch all the way back to the 60s. We can trace its origins to the Electronic Data Interchange, which was used to transfer data from one computer to another.
In the 2010s, Shopify and WordPress made it easy for people with no technical background to set up eCommerce websites.
In today’s world, using AI in commerce is crucial. Businesses can better tailor their suggestions for products and services, enhance their shipping capabilities, boost marketing effectiveness, and much more with its assistance.
The 4 Eras of eCommerce (So Far)
If you think eCommerce is a relatively new phenomenon, you might be surprised to learn that it goes back several decades. Here are the four eras of eCommerce thus far:
The 60s to 80s
The roots of eCommerce stretch all the way back to the 60s. We can trace its origins to the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which was used to transfer data from one computer to another.
For example, trading partners used EDI technology to exchange invoices, orders, and other business transactions. Eventually, EDI led to teleshopping, which resembles today’s eCommerce much more remarkably. Users could place orders with grocery stores and local businesses through a device hooked up to their televisions.
The 80s to 90s
France was the first to introduce something that functioned like the modern World Wide Web. Minitel was invented in 1982 and only went out of use in 2012. The device was a beige computer with an attached keyboard. At first, it gave users access to the phonebook and little else, but eventually, it could be used to look up:
Bank accounts
Exam results
Stock prices
Travel reservations
University applications
Weather reports
Though it pioneered much of the eCommerce revolution, it couldn’t compete with what the Internet would offer users.
The 90s to 2000s
In 1990, Tim Berners Lee and his friend, Robert Cailliau, famously published a proposal for what they called “WorldWideWeb.” By the following year, the Internet was flourishing. The National Science Foundation rescinded restrictions that kept it from commercial users, and online shopping as we know it today began. Even in these early days, it became clear that eCommerce would be an unprecedented force affecting how the entire world purchased products.
The book Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy predicted how combining new information technologies and public policies would help consumers make sense of a marketplace that has been growing more and more complex in recent decades. You only need to think about sites like Amazon and YouTube channels that feature expert reviews to see how prescient this prediction was.
In 1995, the NSF started registering domain names for a fee. The domains quickly grew from 120,000 to more than 2 million in just 3 years. That much growth in that short period proved overwhelming for the NSF, which abdicated its role as a regulator of the Internet, mainly handing the job over to the commercial sector.
One example of innovation that helped move eCommerce forward was Netscape’s invention of Secure Socket Layers (SSL), a security protocol that promised its users the comfort of encryption while shopping. Encryption remains a vital part of online shopping today. It’s hard to imagine eCommerce without this decades-old technology.
2010 to Present
The big story for the last 15 years has been social media. While SixDegrees, founded in 1997, is probably the first example of such a site and AOL messenger, also founded in 1997, undoubtedly influenced later versions. Platforms like MySpace and, later, Facebook got the ball rolling with social media.
Today, it’s hard to separate eCommerce from these platforms. Almost every company uses social media to draw attention, bring people to their websites, gain email subscribers and, ultimately, sell.
The establishment of Facebook has been a significant event in the history of social media. Facebook, which has become the “flagship” of social media over time, was founded on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, who studied at Harvard University. Following Facebook, several other social media platforms were created.
The platforms that are still relevant today are as follows:
Another significant advancement during the past 10 years has been sites like Shopify and WordPress, making it easy for people with no technical background to set up eCommerce websites. eCommerce has become fertile ground for new companies between these sites and social media platforms. Entrepreneurs who take the time to learn the ropes can quickly become significant players.
Brands are giving importance to Millennial and Gen Z shopping habits. Though they are generations one after another, surprisingly, their shopping habits are different. Whilst, Millennials are more old school and used to shopping from physical stores, Gen Z is all about online shopping.
eCommerce Revolutionisers: Mid-90s to Early 2000s
Amazon
Though many predicted it was an idea guaranteed to self-destruct, Amazon introduced the now-popular concept of sharing user reviews – including those that are incredibly unflattering and may even hurt a product’s sales.
eBay
While Amazon would eventually allow something similar, eBay popularised the idea of letting one stranger sell their property to another. Again, the concept was initially derided. Though the first-ever sale on eBay didn’t look promising (it was a broken laser pen) and the company has declined since. However, there’s no doubt that it revolutionised eCommerce.
Napster
Speaking of companies that enjoyed a meteoric rise, Napster was the predecessor to iTunes and, arguably, YouTube. Like eBay, it provided a platform that strangers could use to carry out transactions, albeit illegally. Though Napster’s success was controversial, to say the least, it proved that a website where people shared with no real direct benefit could be viral.
The Dot-com Boom and Boost
The dot-com bubble started in 1998 and ended in 2000. As of 2000, the so-called “dot-com bubble” resulted from a confluence of factors, including the prevalence of speculative or trend-based investing, the abundance of venture capital funding for startups, and the inability of dot-com to generate a profit. In the 1990s, investors poured money into Internet firms in the hopes that they might someday turn a profit. Fearing they would miss out on the lucrative opportunities presented by the increasing Internet use, many investors and venture capitalists abandoned a cautious approach.
The deflating of the dot-com bubble was the primary cause of the stock market crash of 2000. It burst when the majority of publicly traded technology businesses that had raised money folded when the money ran out. By the end of 2001, the majority of dot-com companies that were publicly traded had gone out of business, wiping out trillions of dollars worth of investor capital.
Following the dot-com bubble, the Internet continued its growth. Subsequently, social media came on the rise.
The Future of eCommerce
The Continued Globalisation of eCommerce
COVID-19 has changed and improved eCommerce for the better. The growth of eCommerce happened faster with the push of COVID. Looking at eCommerce’s future, we can say that eCommerce companies that can add a human touch to their strategies will succeed.
Businesses now have to react to the effects of globalisation by producing localised digital content for their current and potentially global markets. Additionally, it has compelled companies that formerly focused primarily on domestic and brick-and-mortar marketplaces to develop more user-friendly websites that accept orders from customers worldwide.
Undoubtedly, it must be secure whether a customer is using an eCommerce site in their own nation or halfway around the world. However, due to globalisation and the possibility that a visitor from another continent could arrive, businesses now need to exercise greater caution.
Users will only be encouraged to purchase from a company’s website if they feel secure disclosing their personal and sensitive bank information.
The Continued Rise of Mobile Commerce
While eCommerce entails online shopping on a computer, mobile commerce, or social commerce, it involves shopping through a mobile device (usually a smartphone or tablet).
Mobile commerce only made up 3% of eCommerce as recently as late 2010. However, that number has been rising over time. That percentage had increased to 11% after the previous holiday shopping season.
“Buy buttons” have been added to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest so that users may make purchases without leaving the website. Furthermore, many retailers have added one-click checkout to their websites. Customers must only submit their payment information once for this method, after which they can use the one-click option to make purchases without having to do so again.
The Continued Growth of Social Media Commerce
Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are used to promote the direct purchase and sale of goods and services.
Everyone has access to the same tools, so the advantage will be to those who can create a real connection with their audiences. The rise of YouTube celebrities is already showing what’s to come. Influencer marketing is already relatively new, but the industry was worth $13.8 billion in 2021.
That’s not to say your company needs a YouTube channel, but there’s every reason to believe that the overall trend for eCommerce continues moving toward a more personal approach. Use your platforms to create genuine connections, and customers will respond by giving you real profits.
The Rise of AI in eCommerce
Artificial intelligence (AI) in trade and commerce is now crucial. Businesses can better tailor their suggestions for products and services, enhance their shipping capabilities, boost marketing effectiveness, and much more with its assistance.
Many eCommerce businesses are aggressively investing in AI to stay competitive and give their customers the best possible customer experience. We’ll discuss several examples of how AI might be applied to eCommerce in this post and how many companies are already using AI to improve their offerings.
Wrapping Up
Segmentify offers eCommerce businesses the best AI personalisation tools to improve their customer experiences and conversation rates. Contact us for more information regarding our products, and book a free trial to check out the best personalisation tools!
In the last article of the series, A Case of Sporting Goods Part I, we examined the current situation of the sporting goods market and discussed its challenges. Now, it’s time to move on to the next stage and share our winning strategies to overcome these challenges!
Key Takeaways
Homepages are like window displays: They spark interest, tell a story and invite you in for further exploration.
Video killed the static: Use dynamic video banners to get and keep the customers’ attention and boost your conversion by 15%.
Search results should be listed to appeal to each customer and reflect their personality and uniqueness.
📍 Winning Strategies for the Homepage
A website’s homepage is what a window display is to a brick-and-mortar store. A window display is designed and crafted with care to lure customers into the shop. This is true for homepage and window display designs: They are how you spark interest, tell a story and invite customers to explore your store further.
The customer has landed on your website, peering through the window. It’s up to you to offer them the right journey to increase customer retention and customer lifetime value.
Let’s see how it’s done.
Personalised Product Recommendations
Everyone talks about personalised recommendations, but no one really explains what you must absolutely pay attention to. It’s a given in analytics to use purchase history, product/category/brand clicks, added-to-basket movements, etc., for recommendation purposes. However, you must not forgo browsing behaviour as it tells you so much about where people’s interests lie.
But what about first-time visitors? I don’t know anything about them to offer something personal!
You still have all that data from your other customers, though. Through the Segmentify Analytics dashboard or Google Analytics, you know your most popular categories, best-sellers, popular searches, etc.
Use this information to recommend the right products to the right customers on the homepage to get them out of the house and to the gym!
Achieved with Personalised Product Recommendations: CX optimisation, smoother customer journey, higher conversion and AOV
Personalised Dynamic Banners
Static banners are out; video banners are in. Get and keep the customers’ attention with videos chosen for them personally.
Whether you like it or not, video is the ruler of all content. People prefer video format over static images. Look at how TikTok is the go-to search engine for gen Z.
Let’s face it. Video banners on a webpage are fun. You can showcase ads, special campaigns, product demonstrations, etc. It’s truly up to your imagination!
Achieved with Personalised Dynamic Banners: Increased customer engagement, higher conversion
Personalised Brand Logo Orderings
We all have a favourite brand to shop from or browse from time to time to check out the newcomers or latest sales. And you already have that data through browsing behaviour and purchase history. You know what brands are more popular, so put them somewhere the visitors can see on your homepage.
Want to know a secret tip? You can customise the order of the logos if you wish to promote a particular brand. 🤫
Achieved with Personalised Brand Logo Orderings: Increased customer engagement, higher conversion, improved communication between the website and the visitor
Personalised Navigation Bar
You may want to keep your homepage less crowded and not put a bunch of brand logos. Here’s what you can do to show your visitors that you know them in such cases: Place the brand logos in the navigation bar. The tips and tricks mentioned above are valid here as well.
Achieved with Personalised Navigation Bar: CX optimisation, smoother customer journey, higher conversion, increased customer engagement
📍 Winning Strategies for the Search Areas
It’s almost a natural reflex—landing on a webpage and immediately clicking the search bar. “Search” is an inseparable part of our lives, so you should be paying great attention to it.
Before Search
Let me ask you a simple question: Why would you “just” have a search bar? Why?
“Before Search” is activated the moment a visitor clicks on the search bar. This is another content area where you can display popular searches/categories/brands, product recommendations, banners, last searches, etc., based on the visitor’s personal affinities.
Here’s a fun idea: You can always customise how the search box looks to match it with the website’s overall design!
Achieved with Before Search: CX optimisation, increased customer engagement, smoother customer journey, encourage product discovery
Personalised Search Results Page
Two users searching for hiking boots are not the same. They might belong to similar demographic groups, yet they are not the same. What they like and want will be different from each other. So obviously, when each of them searches for “women’s hiking boots”, they should get different results.
The search results should be listed to appeal to each customer and reflect their personality. That’s how you can guarantee their engagement and satisfaction. However, if you have specific products you want to promote, that can always be done in the background.
Achieved with Searchandising: CX optimisation, smoother customer journey, increased customer engagement, higher conversion and AOV
Don’t: Empty Search Results
Don’t ever show someone an empty search results page. You’re basically telling them, “We don’t have what you’re looking for. There’s nothing interesting here for you. You might as well just go away and look at another store.” You don’t tell this to a potential customer.
Customers using the search function are often highly motivated, deeper in the sales funnel and more likely to make a purchase. Which means you shouldn’t send them empty-handed. So what you need to do is to use what you know about your customers to bring up the most relevant offers, even when you don’t have what they’re looking for.
To offer frictionless customer journeys, you must have a firm grasp of your customers’ pain points. What areas are most likely to hinder the journey and what can we do to eliminate those bumps? These are two of the most important questions you should ask yourself.
In this article, we’ve examined how Segmentify can help offer frictionless customer journeys and increase customer engagement through the sporting goods market and shared the results we’ve seen with our clients. Contact Segmentify to get more information on what solutions we can offer you.
Engagement Engage customers across all channels
Recommendation Offer personalised recommendations
Dynamic Bundles Increase your cross-selling
Growth & Optimisation Monitor website data in real-time
Customer Data Management Enjoyable unique customer journeys
Cross-Channel Marketing Optimise the customer experience
Search & Discovery Improve your search capabilities
Growth for All Industries