Nearly half of shoppers in the U.S. buy multiple sizes of the same apparel item with the intent of returning the ones that don’t fit. That’s according to a survey that was conducted in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic. With the resultant surge in and broadening of online shopping since then, we can infer this practice has only increased. Which means more brands may be seeing narrower profit margins.
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 other posts, including Earn the Customer with Unique Brand Content on Your eCommerce Site and Earn the Customer with Customer-Centric UX Design.
If your brand is committed to being customer-centric, then every interaction in the customer journey should merit close attention, including post-purchase experiences like returns. Although your gut reaction may be to focus on revenue-generating areas of your business versus profit-sucking returns, it might be time to take a different view (and tap a potentially lucrative upside). “Return” is not necessarily synonymous with “refund.” If you expand your definition to include exchanges and store credit and treat the return experience as a way to support customers, returns can actually be an opportunity to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value.
The year 2020 will not soon be forgotten. The events of the past year have dramatically affected how we live, communicate and work (and shop!), perhaps in more permanent ways than we know. Despite the challenges, there’s a lot to be grateful for – and eCommerce certainly didn’t slow down for the pandemic! As a company that just celebrated 18 years in business, we’ve been reflecting on many things as we enter the new year, including what we’ve accomplished and what’s yet to come.
Consumers love a good app; in fact, I probably peruse my Amazon app every other day. From a business perspective, eCommerce brands often benefit from having a native app – their fast, intuitive and mobile customer experiences can lead to higher conversion rates. However, getting consumers to find and use your app in an app store has historically been a challenge; furthermore, research indicates that 25% of apps downloaded by mobile app users are abandoned after a single use.
eHouse founder and CEO Aaron Quinn joined the folks at Loop to talk about how great eCommerce customer experiences are essential for brands to be successful today, and how subscriptions can support creating those experiences.
Having great products and innovative marketing aren’t enough to win market share – brands need to take a good, hard look at customer experience too. eHouse CEO Aaron Quinn has a lot to say about customer experience and recently shared his insights on ReCharge’s podcast, Hit Subscribe. Learn what he thinks about the current state of eCommerce, where he thinks it’s headed and what brands need to do to “own” the customer experience. He also delves into ways to create value for customers, beyond discounts and free shipping, what’s needed to get ready for this year’s holiday season, and discusses the future of voice commerce. Listen now>
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.