Strategies to Engage with Your E-Commerce Customers and Increase Sales

With a multitude of perks that are associated with online shopping, brands have one major hurdle to overcome: making the experience more personal. Without the ability to actually sample the product, try on your stylish garments or sense the atmosphere in your physical store, the chances of creating an emotional bond are significantly diminished, hence the need to use every possible opportunity to engage with your customers. This is the gateway not only to more sales but also to a stronger reputation and a more meaningful bond between your brand and your audience.

Among the many marketing tactics you can use to gain more traction, you should focus on selecting the right strategies that will bring your engagement levels up. The following five are considered the top picks no matter your industry, so use them wisely and inspire your customers to engage.

Reward engagement and feedback

It’s no secret that people love freebies and discounts, but when they are created in a way to promote greater engagement, then the benefits go both ways. For example, you can make the most of the upcoming holiday season by offering discounts in exchange for online reviews and feedback, both on your website and your social media profiles.

Strategies to Engage with Your E-Commerce Customers and Increase Sales

Take it a step further and create engaging contests on social media as well as your website, and offer gift cards, vouchers or free samples for the most creative comments, shares that get the most likes, and to those who, for example, make the most brilliant photo using your product.

Enable reviews and inspire feedback

Brands that fail to allow their customers to leave reviews and comments for each of their products or services miss out on a huge pool of engagement opportunities that also have an incredible potential to increase sales. Whether these comments are on your social media and website only or you use platforms such as Yelp as well, reviews are vital to building a reputation. However, if they do share their thoughts and you don’t act on it, then you’re missing the point of feedback, to begin with.

Also read: How to Pursue Global Growth with Your E-Commerce Business?

You need to have a plan in place as to how you can improve your services based on the given feedback and make sure that each and every one of your customers knows you’re listening. Respond to their feedback, and inform them if and when you make changes that incorporate their suggestions – they’ll love you for it!

Perfect your customer support efforts

Every curious customer has the potential to become a disgruntled one if their inquiry isn’t handled properly by your customer support agents. While there will always be ways to boost their productivity and effectiveness, start from the basics and make sure that you have the right essentials for your agents to perform their jobs optimally. By ensuring they have a strong, stable Internet connection through a reliable provider such as Orange and equipping them with equally dependable gear, you’ll make sure they can work with no setbacks.

Additionally, when you provide them with ample training and education, they will be more than capable of handling every issue with proper decorum and managing even unhappy customers. Finally, make sure you hire the right people for your support team, since they need to be able to voice your brand’s values every time they get in touch with a customer – and thus ensure cross-sale opportunities, better engagement and improved return rates.

Socialize better

Since a large portion of the world’s population is active on social media, every forward-thinking brand should make the most of these platforms to ensure greater success in their industry. It’s important to distinguish between being on social media and actually using it to reach more people – just like with your feedback schemes.

Also read: How to Increase Your Commercial Digital Footprint

Every company needs a social media strategy that ensures high rates of engagement through regular posting that’s aligned with your customers’ active times, and diverse content of high quality that inspires shares, comments, and other reactions. Social networks are no longer just ad-worthy places, on the contrary – if you focus on engagement primarily, your sales have a better chance of exploding.

Master the art of responding to complaints

Finally, no matter how hard you try, you cannot please everyone from the get-go, nor can you eliminate the effect your competitors have on your reputation. What you can and should do is create a sound strategy that will help your support team handle complaints, and your brand recover from any negative feedback online.

Also read: Selecting An E-commerce Hosting Plan- 5 Things You Should Prioritize

Consider it an opportunity to engage, which is precisely what you should do when the complaint is legitimate. Some of them may sound like empty, baseless rants, but their social network friends won’t treat them as such, hence the need to constantly improve how you approach complaints.

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