E-commerce Marketing Strategies To Drive Sales In 2022

The E-commerce market is one of the most competitive business fronts in the world at this juncture. Thousands of entities flock to the digital scape each year to capture an audience that is inclined to shop online since the Covid-19 pandemic limitations. This ripple effect has created a substantial change in consumer behavior and therefore, there is no better time for entities to use the right resources in the right way and establish a strong foothold in the market.

Now when it comes to a website, the way it is designed plays a humongous role in its success, driving sales and gaining customers. Bad design can distract, confuse, and frustrate customers. All of these can ultimately decline your sales as your E-commerce website is your virtual storefront. However, the quintessential element of sales is building customer loyalty.

What is Customer Loyalty?

In simple words, if put, customer loyalty means a customer’s commitment to your brand, a customer who will always choose you over the competition. It can be well understood that it is the most valuable asset for a brand to hold on to. A repeat customer evidently makes transactions of higher value, while more efforts have to be spent on converting leads into new customers. Thus, as important as it is for a brand to fetch a new audience, it is essentially important for them to engage their existing consumer base through customer loyalty programs. In the same tandem, well-planned, structured, and vibrant E-Commerce design also plays a significant role in building customer loyalty and driving sales.

Functional E-commerce website design not only creates a positive perception of your brand but also presents an alluring experience – high customer satisfaction and an increase in sales and loyalty. Hence as one of the leading E-commerce website design companies in Dubai, we can help your E-commerce website gain huge business with these top E-commerce strategies that can drive sales and gain customers in 2022.

1. Optimize Your Website Load Speed

When we say that the paradigm of E-commerce websites has become garnered cut-throat competition, the Google algorithm has taken it quite literally. In July 2019, the search engine giant deployed website speed as one of the factors determining website ranking on mobile search, as part of their drive to develop a faster internet based on consumer demand. It is supported by research that shows 53% of the visitors abandon an E-commerce website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. So mathematically, for a matter of one extra second, you will suffer a 7% lesser conversion rate. The longer your website takes to load, the more your search engine ranking, traffic, return on investment, and search engine marketing gets compromised. Therefore, if you optimize the speed of your Shopify E-commerce website, customers would visit more pages and therefore increase their chances of purchase.

2. Target Existing Customers With Remarketing Ads and Email Campaigns

Personalization

Taking the concept of ‘Personalization’ goes a long way in building customer loyalty. It’s popularly said that “people buy from people”. This valid point demonstrates how personalized interaction is crucial for a customer and strengthens the trust quotient.  As technology becomes more progressive through Artificial Intelligence with data and machine learning rising up, the opportunity to personalize your online shopping experience also increases. In addition to that, remarketing ads and email campaigns are good strategies to engage with existing customers.

For example, “Google’s remarketing ads target users who have already visited your E-Commerce site. Hence, the people receiving these ads are the people who are likely to be the most receptive to your message, because they’ve already sought out your brand on their own.

Targeting the Right Audience

Unlike traditional businesses where your reach to your target customers was not limited, you can restrict your audience on websites and customize your E-commerce store in a way that appeals to a specific audience. This targeted approach helps you focus on a group of population and offer better services and keep those customers with you for a longer duration. Targeting the right customers enables you to save resources that will otherwise be wasted on a consumer who will never buy your product. These savings can be utilized for better conversions.

Custom Advertisement & Newsletters

E-commerce allows you to run custom advertisements for a specific group of your customers by letting them interact with offers/discounts/sales, which may benefit them. This custom marketing allows you to attract a focused audience for specific products and services and save your marketing costs.

It is one option that was never available with a traditional business setup. Newsletters are also a way to let your customers know what is new with your store. E-commerce platform owners can use it for various benefits, like providing customers information that they are providing exclusives.

3. Harness the Power of the Landing Page

In a general sense, a landing page is a standalone web page created categorically for a marketing or advertising campaign. In short, it is where a visitor “lands’ ‘ after they click on a particular link in an email, or advertisement from a Search Engine like Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or similar social media platforms.

Majorly, the focus of the landing page is to

• Increase the conversion rates of the marketing campaigns done
• Lower the cost of acquiring a sale.

Following are those particular aspects when incorporated, can convert visitors into leads:-

Catchy and Click-Worthy Headline

The headline is the first thing that catches a user’s attention, and if it fails to impress or impact, it can even lead to a higher bounce rate. To make headlines that leave the viewer wanting to know more, it must be:

1. Concise
2. Creative
3. Convincing
4. Curiosity

Choosing Effective CTA (Call To Action)

A CTA or call-to-action button draws the audience’s attention towards the next step you want them to take. A compelling CTA that grabs attention immediately is made using.

• Large fonts.
• Bright color scheme.
• Adding actionable texts like ‘Try it for Free.

Keeping Form Fields Concise

To generate qualified leads, you have to keep your form fields:

• Proportionate
• Short
• Simple
• Include relevant fields
• Goal-oriented

Placing the Lead Generation Form Above the Fold

Anything that is placed above the fold evidently,

• Grabs the most eyeballs.
• Leads to more excellent conversion.

Using A/B Testing

You must continuously experiment and test different versions of your landing page to that ideal, successful, well-optimized landing page that results in a high conversion rate.

4. Recover Abandoned Shopping Carts To Boost Sales

Taking personalized care of the cart is essential to ensure potential customers with a smooth delivery process.  This attracts new users as well as the old constant ones. Therefore, the cart has to be set up in a way that is most accessible to the user. In addition, the transaction process must be carried out smoothly. For an E-commerce store, the shopping cart is the final stage keeping prospective customers away from becoming a sale, therefore shopping cart abandonment is an issue that all E-commerce businesses experience. Customers load up their carts with items — and then promptly disappear in thin air either by being shocked by the shipping price, confused by the check-out process, or using the cart for storage for purchasing later.

5. Provide Social Proof To Build Customer Confidence

We, humans, are social creatures. We all want to belong and seeing other people sharing a certain opinion encourages us to share that opinion, too. Thus, while designing your E-commerce website, you must leave room for displaying social proof and other trustworthy symbols. Psychologically speaking, social validation and proof are the most excellent ways to pursue and build brand credibility. Therefore you must display:

• Integrate social media on your product pages.
• Social engagement like subscribers and followers and,
• Trustworthy symbols like McAfee Secure, SSL, and more.
• Showing credible testimonials of previous users who have experienced your services.

Do remember to place testimonials in prominent spots.

You can include a picture of the quoted customer whenever possible after seeking their permission obviously. Also, choose a testimonial font that is easy to read.

6. Make Your Website User-Friendly

Visual Media

Visual media serves as a useful medium if one needs to learn anything on the internet.  Several marketing gurus have stated that “video” can easily turn consumers’ minds toward making any product purchase. Landing pages having video content have a high engagement rate when compared to simple pages. It also boosts a user’s interest in pitching products.

Video Tutorials

Simple video marketing will not suffice in 2019, it’s time to include a video on your E-commerce site. It’s the best way to showcase your product in a detailed way. You can go for a background video, how-to video, explainer video, or a promotional video, for active customer engagement. To conclude it’s a good strategy for brands to persuade users’ buying decisions.

Voice Search

A recent trending phrase in the digital world is “Voice search”, which is reliable for smooth communication with your target audiences. Major players have now shifted themselves to incorporating voice search technology. It’s convenient and easy when used through voice assistants by letting you place orders with a simple command.

Set Your Prices Right

Analyze your competitors and after studying the market of your products, set the prices right. You can also provide free shipping over a specific amount, which can be looked over according to your profit margins. Your price can also be one of your major USPs.

Don’t Make the User Wander

Well, there are two rules that govern your users’ conversion to customers after landing on your website. It has been observed that customers are more likely to purchase from websites that are easy to use. The 3-click rule suggests that your customers must reach the checkout page in three clicks on your website. The 15-second rule suggests that if you are unable to grab your customer within 15 seconds, you lose them.

7. Add Filtering Options For Your Products

Consumer loves filtering options, which helps them to easily find products or services. Customers who know exactly what they want can find it without having to sift through too many options. While designing your filtering system, ensure you make the categories broad enough to fit all of your products, but specific enough to be helpful to customers. For example, an apparel brand builds the filtering system inclusive of color, size, price range, type of apparel, and brand so that customers can filter out what piece of clothing they are looking out for, easily.

8. Include Customer Service Capabilities On Your Website

Customer satisfaction is foremost for any business to succeed; consumers want the “best” every time. Busy schedules have made them impatient; require prompt replies that are too accurate. Therefore, it’s necessary for E-commerce businesses to entertain them on a 24/7 basis to increase mutual trust. The challenge of being available for all kinds of requests and queries can be solved by using AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered chatbots.

The rise of Artificial Intelligence has opened new verticals for development in the technological sector basically web designing. Several web designing companies have successfully integrated AI-powered chatbots for providing prompt answers to endless queries without any break. These chatbots are multilingual and easily catch sentence context and revert politely. The inclusion of AI-enabled chatbots on your E-commerce website can be helpful for gaining customer satisfaction, which eventually leads to business growth.

9. Have The Right CMS (Content Management System)

Understanding what is a content management system and how it works is easy. Basically, Content Management System or CMS is software that helps individuals create, manage, and modify content on their website, irrespective of the individual possessing any specialized technical knowledge. Hence understand a Content Management System as a tool that helps one assemble a website without having to compose all the codes from scratch and without knowing how to code in the first place.

Therefore, you don’t have to build your system for building web pages, storing images, and other functions with a CMS. Instead, it will take care of all that basic infrastructure stuff so that you can be busy doing more substantial forward-facing aspects and operations of your website.

Following are the vital features you must look out for in your E-commerce CMS –

Easy to Use

A CMS must be easy for setting up, installing, and using. In addition, its learning curve must be low, mainly if you are not relying on a web development company for building your website; it is presumed in good faith that you may not be that technically advanced. Therefore, the platform must be user-friendly and allow the users to take action instinctively since the primary objective of CMS is to minimize the complexities in managing content rather than making it more stressful.

Built-in SEO Support

An E-commerce platform must implement the best SEO practices to obtain high search rankings and drive more traffic. Thus, the CMS platform must-have features like URL optimization, page title, meta description, etc. Furthermore, the platform must generate such content and give users the autonomy to edit it if and when required. For example, optimizing URLs makes it easy for Google to crawl your website, while page titles and meta descriptions help rank the page and click-through rates.

Optimizing UX (User Experience)

Excellent user experience is the topmost priority of every digital system. The CMS helps business owners to achieve their goals by changing page layout and optimizing product content with ease. The design has to be simple, flexible, and usable. The interface must be such that it supports responsive design and optimizes content for mobile devices. Statistics prove that most of the population uses mobile to browse websites now.

Easy Integration

Depending on the functionalities one requires for their E-commerce platform, one might integrate third-party extensions or plugins into their existing CMS. Therefore you must check features like ease of integration with other tools, available extensions, installation flexibility, etc. The number of available integrations also shows the extent of API support the CMS platform extends.

Active Community Support 

Choose a CMS which hosts an active community of members who can provide great assistance whenever you face a problem or have a doubt. These members make the community lively, engaging, and innovative and guide you through the latest developments, trends, new approaches, etc., which helps you learn and improve.
 

10. Spice Up Your Product Descriptions

Good content is essential for a successful E-commerce website along with an alluring user interface and graphics.  Sadly it’s been often unnoticed with several websites as an example. Online buyers prefer every detail while making a purchase decision presented concisely and clearly. Of course, it’s dependent on what’s been sold and includes:

• Color
• Price
• Availability
• Measurements
• Materials
• Warranty
• Delivery times
• Returns Policy
• Customer reviews
• Great Product Imagery

A clear product image from various angles will be helpful for clients in their buying decisions. The use of videos and 360° videos allowing users to experience and interact with the product from every possible angle is another good way of enhancing the user experience and encouraging sales.

11. Make Branding A Priority

Branding is like the DNA of an E-commerce business; it’s who you are as a company, what you’re about, and how you’re different from your competitors. Therefore, it plays a huge part in building a connection with your audience and driving sales. Ask yourself these questions, when you are envisioning your brand.

• If I had to describe my brand in three words, what would they be?
• What makes my brand different from other E-commerce brands out there?
• What do we do better than anyone else on the market?

Once you know who you are, you can work it into the branding of your E-commerce site.

12. Think Like A Website Visitor

If you want your E-commerce website design to connect with your audience, you need to think like your audience. Ultimately, there are just a few things your potential customers want in an E-commerce experience—a site that’s easy to navigate, well-designed, and makes the process of shopping easy, straightforward, and hassle-free.

During the design process, put yourself in your visitor’s shoes and ask yourself the following questions:

• What kind of layout is going to be easiest for them to navigate?
• How can you organize your products in a way that makes sense for the end-user?
• How can you simplify the checkout process?

It is advised for an E-commerce website to have a hierarchical structure.

Your home page is at the top of the hierarchy and below you can have 2 or 3 levels before you reach the bottom of the hierarchy – your product pages.

To help you visualize what a hierarchical structure looks like, have a look at the following diagram.

The home page is at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the main categories (level 1), sub-categories (level 2), and finally the product pages (level 3).

13. Use Color To Your Advantage

Using sober colors is the easiest way to grab user attention. On E-commerce websites, the color red is a popular choice, but blue and silver can serve the purpose also. Always remember that the green and the red color combination is difficult to find, so please avoid this combination if possible. Prefer using big headlines, large “stickers” showing sales prices, and white space.

Furthermore, try using appealing and captivating designs. Captivating graphics can help you hold your customers and appeal to them. E-commerce website developers use this benefit to create a brand image of your company in your customer’s minds. So when they think about a product, suddenly your brand will come to their mind.

By incorporating high animations, leading E-commerce websites in the UAE have been providing the best user experience. With the recent addition of animated graphics as an eye-candy element, novelty is more of a powerful tool to increase a customer’s online shopping experience.  The inclusion of reciprocity elements will put the end customers in front and sustain their experience and orientation.

14. Use High-Quality Images

Apart from the above-mentioned points, the website is a visual medium and having high-quality photographs is a dominant trend in web design in the past decade.

In the physical world, users can easily look and touch the product they are looking to buy, but online stores don’t offer them this luxury. Here they need to go through product imagery.

Moreover, any online store owner wouldn’t like to get his/her products from bad photography. Services like Stock Photo or Gratisography have made it very easy and pocket friendly to get visually enticing product photography on your E-commerce website!

15. Make It Look Professional

To make your E-commerce website look professional, you must provide a certain personality to the website like if it is a fashion brand, it must be modern and fashionable. Similarly, if it is an industrial machinery-related website, then it must portray strength and a certain masculine appeal, and if it is a home decor brand, then it must display vivid aesthetics. This point cannot be stated objectively, every website has a distinct personality. An E-commerce website is a huge reflection of a brand’s identity and a tool for conveying the values and attributes every online store owner wants their products to reflect. Imagine your website as an individual and think of one word (or a few) to describe how you would prefer your potential customers to see it. Words like ‘chic’ would be suitable for an apparel brand, ‘homely’ for a family-owned restaurant, and ‘trustworthy’ for financial services. After finalizing the personality of your e-commerce store, you can proceed toward key factors like the color scheme, layout choice, and images you will use. It’s important to note here that ‘giving it personality does not refer to making it bold or flashy, but reflecting what it really means.

16. Make Categories Easy To Navigate

Try to create product groups so that it is easier for a customer to navigate through your website.  The tendency of the human brain is more towards sorting and organizing things in order to make them sensible. In e-commerce websites, one can link one object to another through their proximity. Also, you can boost your conversions and AOV by grouping all the products categorically – whether they are complimentary (shoes matching with a dress your customer is seeing) or merely recommended (based on what other users are buying). Furthermore, keep  navigational links at bay so that,

• Your fundamental objective does not get diluted.
• Viewers’ attention does not get diverted.
• Improve user experience.
• Increase conversion rate

17. Make Checkout Easy and Secured

A prominent E-commerce website design company in Dubai emphasizes on simple checkout process. Having a user-friendly website is just not enough if the final checkout process is complicated as it will definitely frustrate the customers. Reviewing the order before proceeding for checkout is an important aspect of the process; however necessary steps must be kept to an absolute minimum.

18. Make It Responsive On All Interfaces

Perhaps the most important factor you should always remember is the growing number of online visitors from mobile internet– and not desktop or laptops. This is the precise reason why a mobile-first strategy for user experience often leads to driving up more conversions.

A recent study shows that 60% of website visits are done from mobile phones and highly recommends improvising the mobile experience to increase your website’s conversion and ‘stickiness’ (a key measurement of acquisition and landing page performance). A good mobile website emphasizes hassle-free browsing and viewing of products with easy check-out pages providing necessary options like delivery and payment option in the cart view page itself.

Online shopping sales crossed the $108.2 billion mark in 2019. That’s more than a 15% increase from the year 2018. Also, it’s expected that 75% of online visitors will come from mobile devices. This clearly indicates that your website should be mobile-friendly and streamlined for your visitors. To achieve it; 2 main factors need to be considered: speed and usability. Ways to make your site mobile-friendly and sales-focused –

• Keep the simple design as graphics-heavy designs and videos immediately slow down the page.
• Prefer using properly optimized images.
• Remove unnecessary widgets or add-ons.
• The important contact information like store hours, address (brick and mortar location), and shipping information must be available and easy to find. These things need to be clear and easy to read for mobile users.
• Also, make your links easy to interact with and read. Put buttons over hyperlinks since a person’s finger and screen calibration sensitivity can make clicking on hyperlinks annoying. Especially when you have multiple links close to one another in your content.

19. Keep The Content Scannable

Even after spending days writing long and detailed descriptions for your products on the website, nobody really reads it. Wonder why? As per industry experts, 90% of the people read only 20% of the text present on your site. Instead of reading word to word, they scan the content for key information. Therefore, if you want to put your point across, be it through a product description, “About Us” page, a blog, or an article, it must be composed in a scannable structure.

All of these designing tips ultimately aid in user experience on your website which in turn results in sales, however, there are more direct and methodical ways of increasing customer loyalty which is directly proportional to sales.

Pro Tip:

Devising a customer loyalty program can prove to be an effective way of encouraging customers. These programs are usually planned in a way where the customer is rewarded for meeting criteria, for example, cashback for purchasing products worth a definite amount, free delivery for certain products, etc. This strategy has been observed to make customers buy usually more than they initially plan to. You can employ shopping incentives like:

• Discounts, free shipping notice, and the use of urgency (loyalty sales, customer appreciation sales via newsletter, and more) can drive sales.
• Be mindful of holiday and festival sales opportunities as these days can drive your biggest sales number, large discount, and incentives.
• Utilize cross-sale promotion methodology to get people willing to buy.

Highlighting the clearance section will also be useful to attract bargain hunters and budget-savvy shoppers.