This year’s holiday season is going to look different from past seasons, with heavy emphasis on eCommerce versus in-store -- a potential win for tech-savvy DTC brands. Early reports indicate retailers are searching for creative ways to generate shopping excitement online beyond “hot” prices -- such as offering early start dates, exclusive products, personal shoppers, virtual reality, credit/payment plan options, social and gamified interactions, and more.
A subscription program can be a powerful strategy to make your business more valuable to investors and help make it easier to raise funding. Subscription models bring in more reliable, longer-term revenue, and can flatten out seasonal spikes, making forecasting easier and more accurate. However, it’s not easy to do eCommerce subscription programs right – it’s a delicate dance to optimize retention, churn, customer acquisition costs, revenue per customer and other factors.
This blog is part of a series about how and why retail brands must “earn the customer” – their trust and loyalty – to remain competitive in a digital world. See the first post on "Earn the Customer with Unique Brand Content on Your eCommerce Site".
We get a lot of questions from our eCommerce clients about how to go beyond basic reporting and use analytics more effectively. We find that brands are collecting a lot of data and have a good handle on the basics like site traffic, gross and net sales, average order value (AOV), conversion rates, and ad spend/conversions. However, many of our clients are frustrated that while every vendor/platform they use – Shopify, Google, Facebook, Instagram – offers some level of analytics, it’s limited and they can’t get a clear picture because the numbers are different depending on the source.
Variety is the spice of life. Many eCommerce merchants take this sentiment to heart to keep their customers satisfied, offering multiple styles and features for the products in their stores. However, the different features or variants offered – colors, sizes, widths, etc. – can quickly add up and add unwanted complexity to the shopping experience.
The behavior shift to increased online shopping during the pandemic is no blip. Experts predict that even after life goes back to some sort of “normal,” more consumers will continue to shop online. COVID-19 has had some interesting effects on not only where consumers shop, but which brands they’re purchasing. For example, many consumers who switched brands due to product shortages or low availability may not switch back. This may come as a big shock to well-established, multi-channel brands that have historically benefitted from pre-pandemic shopping habits, relying on store chains and large online platforms to manage customer service and sell their products for them.
There’s no time like the present to launch a new direct-to-consumer (DTC) E-commerce site on Shopify Plus. Site launches and re-platforming are moving to the top of many retailers’ to-do lists as more consumers are suddenly shopping online due to COVID-19 and shelter-in-place orders. An efficient new site can be a smart investment to be able to continue serving your (previously offline) customers. If you already have an E-commerce website, migrating to a more powerful platform like Shopify Plus will reduce or eliminate ongoing costs to maintain and upgrade, and better performance and customer experience will help convert more consumers to purchase.
E-commerce for wholesale is becoming the norm of how to do business. Online B2B sales surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2018. Merchants like purchasing directly from brands. It’s more convenient, gives them more control over their orders, and eliminates the payment of commissions to third-party marketplaces. Brands benefit from being able to process orders more cost-effectively, leverage their current fulfillment infrastructure, grow revenue with new channels, reduce sales team costs and find efficiencies, and better manage inventory. If you aren’t selling wholesale online, you probably should consider it. One survey found that 75% of wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers who didn’t have an E-commerce site said they were planning to launch one in the next two years.
Some things change, others stay the same. For example, women are still more likely than men to ask (their voice assistant) for directions. Joking aside, mobile and smart speaker voice assistants are fast becoming a part of everyday life, allowing us to conveniently ask for information like the day’s weather report or commute times, or to more easily multi-task; for example, to adjust the thermostat and play a favorite song while working.
“Automation” sounds cold and detached, but email marketing automation is actually all about thoughtfully nurturing the customer relationship through personalization – albeit on a large scale. Automating emails based on behavioral triggers and real-time data enables you to consistently email many customers at just the right time with just the right message or information. For example, a “welcome” email after someone creates an account, a discount for someone who abandons his/her cart, or a recipe that uses a recently purchased product.