The top ecommerce marketing trends of 2017 and how to keep up with them

Ecommerce marketing is all about coming up with new ideas to engage with customers. The latest trends are all about focusing on the customers and their needs, and that's a great way to improve your marketing efforts.

As digital technology evolves, trends in ecommerce marketing change with it. Here’s how a business can keep up with them.

Ecommerce marketing is all about coming up with new ideas to engage with customers. The latest trends are all about focusing on the customers and their needs, and that’s a great way to improve your marketing efforts.

BizTech created an infographic highlighting the latest trends in ecommerce marketing, and we’ve decided to elaborate on the most interesting ones here.

Understanding customer journey

The first step to a successful ecommerce marketing strategy is to create a smooth customer journey.

Does the customer experience help your audience proceed to a purchase? Is there a process that’s blocking them?

A closer look at the site’s analytics can offer useful insights on the customers’ behavior. For example, a high bounce rate can indicate that the customers are not interested enough in the products (or the design of the page) to stay longer.

Is there a way to facilitate their browsing? What’s the page with the largest number of exits?

The customer journey is a combination of blending psychology with UX. Once you master both of them, then you increase the chances of grabbing the customers’ attention.

Review marketing

Reviews can have a positive impact on your site’s reputation. In fact, they may serve as the right incentive for new visitors to trust your products.

Customers are more inclined to proceed to a purchase after a recommendation from a friend, or even reviews from people they don’t know.

88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers, the way they would trust a recommendation by a personal contact. Thus, a business cannot ignore the importance of reviews and the way they are highlighted on the site.

This doesn’t mean that you should only highlight the positive reviews. Customers can appreciate your transparency if you decide not to delete negative comments.

Review marketing can be part of your bigger marketing strategy, as a way to come up with the best methods of encouraging users to leave their reviews.

What’s the best way to motivate your users to leave a review? Do you need to reward them after reviewing your business?

UGC

As with review marketing, user-generated content is all about the customers. It’s a great way for a business to make their customers feel included.

The rise of social media makes everyone capable of creating interesting content. That’s how an ecommerce business can leverage this trend to come up with new content. It’s not just about finding new content though, but also about the fact that it comes directly from the customers.

This makes them feel closer to the business, and they are more inclined to build a long-lasting relationship with its products.

It’s useful for an ecommerce business to encourage its customers to post their own content on their social networks and the idea of rewarding them can bring great results, especially at the initial stage of obtaining content.

It has been observed that user-generated content is 20% more influential than other types of media, with millennials depending even more on it as a way to decide whether they trust a brand – or not.

Triggered emails

There’s always a unique opportunity to send a new email. Once there is a reason for sending it, the chances of turning the prospects into customers are increased.

The most popular triggered emails have to do with incomplete transactions. Cart abandonment emails can remind customers that they have a pending order. This increases the chances of nudging them towards a purchasing decision, or at the very least, increasing brand awareness and a brand’s reputation for caring about its customers.

Email marketing automation can be very effective, provided that it still maintains its personal element. If the customer journey is central in automated emails, then it can be a great addition to the sales funnel.

It is estimated that automated emails average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates comparing to other messages. This can be attributed to the fact that they are already optimized and can also be sent out at the most appropriate time.

Customer Loyalty

The idea of rewarding customer loyalty is not new, but there seems to be a growing trend towards such schemes.

There are many reasons that customers want to feel part of a loyalty scheme, and it’s important to find a way to encourage all types of customers to be part of it.

AR and VR

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are already present in many marketing efforts, and we can certainly expect more creative uses of them in the future.

But how can they help an ecommerce business? We’ve already seen businesses using technology to help the customers’ decisions. Whether it’s a preview of the product, a memorable experience, or improved customer service, there are many ways that marketing engagement can be enhanced with new technologies.

It is estimated that the total number of active Virtual Reality users will reach 171 million by 2018. This is a good reason to start exploring its uses for your brand before it’s too late!

Wallet payments

The increasing use of smartphones has created a need for faster payments among ecommerce sites.

Wallet payments have been extensively used in 2016, with more users exploring the benefit of fast payments.

Although there is still a number of customers who are cautious about the new technology, now is a good time for an ecommerce business to activate an alternative and digital method of payment.

Close to a quarter of purchases on smartphones (23%) already make use of alternative payment methods, while just 16% use digital wallets across desktops, and 19% use the payment option on tablets.

More trends to consider

There are many ecommerce marketing trends that work well in 2017, and we cannot ignore the ones that have already been proven to perform well in the past:

– Content marketing
Video marketing
Marketing automation
– Data-driven SEO

All of them offer significant opportunities for an ecommerce business to improve its sales along with customer satisfaction.

There’s no need to dive into all of them at once in an attempt to increase profit, but a period of trial and error can bring your business closer to its desired goals.

After all, it’s all about discovering the best-customized strategy for your own site.

Keep scrolling for the full infographic from BizTech:

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