E-commerce and e-business have entirely transformed the retail world as more customers look forward to convenience, competitive pricing, variety and most of all, excellent business to business e-commerce customer support. The impact of e-commerce business has reached a level that it is expected that e-commerce sales will hit a whopping five trillion dollars in the coming year. This means that building an e-commerce business is becoming more and more popular these days, and this colossal transformation of traditional retail is not going anywhere any sooner.

What is customer experience in the business-to-business e-commerce?

We all have an idea of what B2B or business to business e-commerce actually is. It simply describes online sales between companies. Coming back to the topic, customer experience in e-commerce and e-business is just your customers’ reviews of how your e-business treats them. The way your customer would feel will directly affect your customer’s behaviour and their loyalty to your brand. Therefore, offering excellent e-commerce customer service is essential in businesses and is gradually becoming necessary.

Why is customer service important in e-commerce and e-business?

Well, e-commerce customer support is simply how you retain your existing customers and win more simultaneously. A great business to business e-commerce customer service helps gain more customers in the form of companies. Eventually, these satisfied businesses would turn into your most loyal brand ambassadors. The impact of e-business customer experience would lead you towards the following improvements:

· Customer loyalty

· Customer retention

· Referrals

· Brand equity

· Revenue and growth

· Customer lifetime value

How can business to business e-commerce improve its customer experience?

It should come as no surprise that individuals and businesses buy brands instead of products as your e-commerce customers. Therefore, your e-commerce customer service needs to be top-notch, offering an all-rounder fantastic experience. We have brought together a few methods to help your e-commerce and e-business improve customer service.

Audit your e-business with deep research.

To offer excellent e-commerce customer support to your existing and potential individual and business to business e-commerce customers, it is crucial to question your business with the following queries.

· Is my e-business website appealing enough to attract customers?

· Is my e-commerce website user-friendly?

· How easy it is to look for a specific product or service on my e-commerce website?

· Do all the website pages and content load timely?

· What is the readability score of my e-commerce and e-business websites?

· Is my e-commerce customer support good enough to assist the customers precisely?

· Is my e-commerce customer service enjoyable?

Finding the detailed answers to these questions requires thorough research on your own e-commerce business. It will give you a rough idea of where you stand on the e-commerce customer experience quality scale.

Build a user-friendly e-commerce and e-business website.

Your customers need an easy to navigate e-commerce website that loads in time and provide exactly what they look for. Therefore, it is rightly said that your e-commerce website can either grow or simply destroy your e-commerce business to business customers. Make your buttons and links bold enough to be visible. Use fonts, colors, and backgrounds carefully. Your e-commerce website would be considered user-friendly if it consists of the following features:

· A fast loading speeds

· Easy navigation

· Simple product categorization

· Advanced product filter options

Provide assistance across all social media platforms.

Regardless of your target market, today’s e-commerce and e-business customers are used to communications across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc. Take full advantage of your e-commerce customer experience by integrating social media in your e-business to engage your audience. This is also a cost-effective marketing solution that provides instant assistance to your customers rather than keeping them waiting by issuing tickets or calling e-commerce customer support.

Add some customization to your e-commerce business.

Offering your customers some kind of customization in e-commerce buying can instantly improve your online business. As you know, all business-to-business e-commerce customers are different, so you must provide a clear and crisp call to action, directly leading them to the website page they can relate to. Also, keep a friendly e-commerce customer support tone on all your website pages so that your customers always feel welcomed and valued. Including this personal touch in your e-commerce and e-business website is a must-have.

Include a customer review section.

Adding customer reviews to your e-business website is a great idea to inform business to business e-commerce customers about your best-selling products of good quality and performance. Potential customers would read product reviews on your website and decide to buy from you instantly if the reviews are good. People appreciate reviews from real customers who purchased the products before and used them. Therefore, ensure that your e-commerce and e-business website displays customer reviews clear enough for your potential customers to read and get convinced to buy from your online store.

Optimize a mobile-friendly e-commerce store.

According to research, e-commerce sales through smartphones would skyrocket to 55% in the current year. Your e-commerce customer experience via mobile phones would be seamlessly effortless. Therefore, building a responsive e-commerce website for your business-to-business e-commerce customers is essential. Here are a few tips to optimize your online e-commerce store for smartphones and devices:

· Build a responsive mobile version of your e-business website.

· Do not over-complicate the website by adding too much content.

· Balance the whitespace and make your font readable.

· Work on the load speed, as most customers tend to exit the browser if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Improve the business-to-business e-commerce customer service.

Like traditional businesses, e-commerce and e-businesses should offer excellent customer service to their business-to-business e-commerce customers. Especially on the website pages specifically for customers only, like the checkout page or confirmation emails. You don’t need to interact with your customers personally in customer service. However, you should provide all the required contact information on your e-commerce website, giving your customers a way to be in touch with you if any issue arises. Your FAQ section on the website must be clear and straightforward. Do not load your customers with unnecessary information. It could leave a negative impact on your e-commerce customer support.

Use compelling e-commerce website content.

The content on your e-commerce website can be used to build and attract your target audience. It can be a resource that your customers can use if they need expert advice on a topic. Due to this reason, your e-commerce business’s existing and potential customers keep on coming back to your website. Therefore, your content should be engaging and compelling enough to retain your customers and be published as frequently as possible.

Follow up religiously.

After your business-to-business e-commerce website makes a sale, you should follow up with your customers for their feedback and check if their e-commerce customer experience went smoothly. However, following up with your customers does not only mean getting their feedback, but you can also send them promotional offers and discounts on future purchases. Doing this would positively affect your e-commerce customer service and make your customers feel remembered and valued.

Minimize any hassle in the checkout process.

Building an e-commerce business depends on how simple you keep each process. Thus, developing a convenient checkout process is an excellent way of reducing abandoned carts. Hence, integrate a simple checkout process on your website to offer your customers a seamless e-commerce customer experience. The shopping cart should be seen on every page of your e-business website, and the payment process must be secure and straightforward, including all kinds of payment options. Most customers abandon their shopping carts if they do not find their preferred payment method on a website.

Offer a clear return policy.

The biggest challenge of buying from an online e-commerce store is that customers do not know the quality of the products being sold. Therefore, offering a clear return policy to your customers is essential if they dislike the product. This would help your customers build their trust in your brand, thus adding value to their e-commerce customer experience with your company. They would appreciate that your e-commerce business values its customers over profits.

Summary

The role of e-commerce in business is increasing in popularity every single day. Therefore, the part that e-commerce customer services play to deliver a positive e-commerce customer experience help your customers greatly in self-serving their own needs. While improving your e-commerce customer service and retaining your existing and potential customers through that is itself a huge benefit, these improvements can also lead to more cost-savings and revenue returns. It also saved a significant amount of time. For example, fewer customer complaints would lead to lesser emails, calls, or texts received, thus taking less time to respond. Hence offering a unique e-commerce customer experience is a win-win situation for all!

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What is ecommerce website development?

ecommerce web development is a complex task, but it does not need to be complicated. There are many factors to consider when building an ecommerce website: affordable web design, web performance, and user experience. While building a website for an ecommerce store development is a little tricky, hiring the right ecommerce design agency and ecommerce web designers and developers will ensure that your website is top of the notch. Some of the challenges in building an ecommerce website include:

• Determining appropriate functionality and features of your website.
• Understanding which ecommerce web design would work for your business.
• Integrating your ecommerce store into an existing website.

What do ecommerce developers do?

ecommerce web developers are the people who are responsible for building an ecommerce website for your business to facilitate sales and purchases. They offer you different work skills from front-end ecommerce web development to back-end programming, depending on the type of ecommerce store you require. Therefore, mere knowledge of custom ecommerce web development is essential to create a platform, enabling your customers to make seamless purchases from your business. These ecommerce store developers should also be professional in ecommerce web design. Knowing how to design an ecommerce website would ensure that your website pages are easy to navigate, thus improving business sales. 

Choosing the right ecommerce design agency and store developer

Let is spotlight what an ecommerce design agency does for ecommerce store development and building an ecommerce website. The best way to ensure that your ecommerce web development offers a great user experience is to hire professional web developers skilled in both design and ecommerce web development. Your ecommerce web developer must know about the latest trends and practices to develop a website that satisfies your customers and guides them to make purchases. 

Things to consider when building an ecommerce website

How can I develop my ecommerce website? Business owners ask the most popular question when planning ecommerce website development. There are different functionalities and features that you should discuss with your ecommerce design agency before they begin with your ecommerce website development. The features and goals you set for your ecommerce website must align with your customer lifecycle. Therefore, there are four essential functionalities to consider when building your ecommerce website.

Responsive website design

ecommerce businesses today not only need a traditional website but also a responsive one to stay ahead of the game. This is because most people use their smartphones to shop online rather than desktop computers. Either way, whether your customers shop from their computers or phones, your primary goal is to offer them a seamless shopping experience.

Search Engine Optimization

Ensure that your ecommerce web developer knows how to make your website SEO ready. Search engine optimization is an excellent source of generating organic traffic to your website, with a high conversion rate. It is a vital aspect to consider when building an ecommerce website. 

Loading speed

According to research, around 70% of customers are interested in buying from your website if it has a real-time loading speed. Rapid loading websites are also suitable for SEO, as Google considers site speed an essential ranking factor. This is the reason why you need to hire an ecommerce design agency that not only offers a beautiful and affordable web design but also makes your website fast-loading.

Integrations

No ecommerce website would come with all features already integrated into it. Therefore, you need to be precise to your web developers about what plugins and integrations you actually require for your custom ecommerce website. Payment integration is the most important, but that is not it. You might want to add the following integrations to your ecommerce website:

• Do you want to integrate your website into existing CRM or ERP systems?
• Do you want to add a live bot chat option?
• Do you want to incorporate social media channels? 

What are the stages of custom ecommerce web development?

Building an ecommerce website from scratch is not necessary every time. Many ecommerce store development options are available that require minimal coding and technical skills. However, here are a few steps to consider before launching the ecommerce web development process.

What are your selling products?

Determine what your selling products are. Are you selling your own products, or are you a third-party seller? What is your target market? These questions are essential for the ecommerce design agency to understand your ecommerce web development requirements. This way, your web developer would be more precise with your ecommerce web design and deliver you a website that best suits your ecommerce store development goals. 

Determine your business goals

The decision to build an ecommerce website for selling products is not an easy-breezy task. You cannot move forward unless you are clear enough about your business goals and what you want to achieve in the longer run. There are a few questions that you could ask yourself before starting your ecommerce web development.

• Why do I want to sell online? For better reach and sales, of course!
• Do I want to expand my business to B2B or B2C?
• How should I measure my business growth?
• How many products do I want to sell online?
• How will I grow by customer lifetime value?

These questions would give you a crisp idea of what you need from your business, thus making it easy to launch the ecommerce website development.

What platform options do you have?

Every ecommerce website development vendor offers reliable, fast, and SEO-ready platforms, but do they suit your ecommerce business requirements? Magento development services are one of the most used platforms for ecommerce web development, as it is cloud-based, fast, has an automated email campaign, and automatic upsell. Here are a few advantages you would get when choosing Magento development services.

• Feature-rich and robust.
• Unlimited customization.
• High flexibility and scalability.
• Substantial SEO scope.
• Offers one-click selling.
• Millions of users and community.

In addition to all these benefits, Magento development services also offer features like SEO grinding, membership subscriptions, discounts, unlimited products, recurring payments, etc. However, some other common platforms include WooCommerce, Drupal, and Shopify.

Adding products to your website

You need to ensure that adding or listing products or services on your website is accessible and seamlessly synchronized across your sales channels. This makes the back-office operations pretty easy and helps you avoid overselling. When adding your products to your website, you must make sure that:

• Detailed product descriptions so that your customers know all the relevant information regarding your products.
• High-quality images so that your customers expect to receive the exact product as the picture displayed. 

Setting the payment settings

When building an ecommerce website, your web developer would assist you in the checkout or the shopping cart process along with the payment integration to your website. Integrating several payment options to choose from is an excellent idea for your ecommerce store development. 

Launching your ecommerce website

Once your website moves from setting up the stage to the launching stage, giving it a test drive is essential to ensure everything is in order, like the ecommerce web design, navigation, and the website’s performance. Here is a quick checklist that your ecommerce store developer may provide you. 

• All call-to-action and titles on the home and landing pages are in place. 
• The checkout experience is smooth and hassle-free.
• The payment integration is appropriate with different types of payment options. (PayPal, credit card or cash on delivery)
• The product images are clear and HD, optimized with the website’s loading speed.
• All products have accurate, relevant information without anything missing or being left out.
• All the website links and buttons are functional.
• The tax settings are verified.
• Your products or services are appropriately listed according to their relevant category. 
• The discount or promo codes work accurately.
• The website design is responsive on smartphones and devices with an optimized loading speed.
• The ecommerce website design is according to the type of ecommerce business you own.

Summary

ecommerce store development and building an ecommerce website range in complexity, along with the available platform options. Whether you begin your ecommerce web development with a complicated platform or a convenient one, you may find the need for some ecommerce web development help from professional ecommerce store developers for your business lifecycle. Therefore, if you are a business owner and have not invested in ecommerce web development services, you are lagging behind. Because in today’s world, ecommerce trends have taken a tremendous shift, increasing global sales up to 55% in the current year. Hence, to stay on top of the market, you must invest in complete ecommerce web development services to attract more customers and take your brand one step ahead of others!

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What is an E-commerce customer journey?

A customer journey for e-commerce is simply defined as the phases that customers go through while interacting with your e-commerce business to make a purchase. Like making sales is essential, your customers’ overall experience is equally important. Many factors determine a successful or an unsuccessful conversion. For example, the time your online store takes to load, how user-friendly is your interface, and how convenient is the whole process of making a purchase. It also comprises e-commerce development services like advertising, customer support, and how well the communication goes with a specific customer. Therefore, all of these factors determine the customer’s experience with your brand and how your overall e-commerce journey has been.

The phases of the customer journey for e-commerce

So we now know that the e-commerce journey for customers is not only making a purchase from your online store. To develop a successful e-commerce business plan, we also know that understanding the five phases of the b2b e-commerce customer journey is essential. We need to make sure this customer journey map is planned carefully and optimized as much as possible. Let us look at those five stages of a customer journey for e-commerce.

Awareness

Like every journey, the starting point of an e-commerce business is raising awareness. This is simply a phase where your customers discover your brand for the first time. This is also the stage where you get to know where your customer actually found your online store. Was it via social media, search engines, or any other traditional medium? All these questions might lead you to find out what products or services your customers are interested in. This first phase is the learning phase, where you learn about your customer, and your customer learns about your brand simultaneously. 

Consideration

The second phase comprises your customer’s genuine interest in a specific product or service. From your perspective, this is the stage at which you can analyze what works for your e-commerce development and what does not. Based on these analytics, you can conveniently reduce bounce rates on the e-commerce website and encourage further searches by your customer.

Conversion

These magic words determine the fundamental importance of the e-commerce customer journey. However, this stage still does not mean a guaranteed sale, but this might mean that your customer has added a product in the cart or to their wishlist for buying later. From a business owner’s perspective, you must deliver any promise you made to get your customer to reach this point. These deliveries include all the e-commerce management services, such as marketing, sales, customer support, etc. 

Retention

Making one sale is always good, but retaining that same customer is excellent. This clearly indicates that your customers are delighted with your services and would shop again, whenever needed. From a business perspective, you should work hard to enhance the customer journey in e-commerce by providing the best service possible. 

Advocacy

When a customer is delighted with your product or service, he becomes the best brand advocate. If you pass the fourth stage successfully, you will gain a lifetime brand ambassador who will promote your brand by interacting actively. They will do that through every touchpoint of your e-commerce business like blogs, homepage, social media and recommend you by posting reviews on your website or on their own social platforms. 

How to build a map for customer journey for e-commerce?

A map for e-commerce customer journey is basically a visualization of all experiences that your customers have with your e-commerce organization. Building a map will allow you to understand the importance of the e-commerce customer journey, identify your strengths and weaknesses of e-commerce development services, and improve them if needed. Here is how you can start mapping your customer journey for e-commerce.

Perspective

You need to think like your customer by visiting your own website and building a review based on your experience when you saw your own website. Take notes on customer touchpoints. 

Research

Research your brand deeply by putting together a focus group that would buy from your brand and gives honest reviews about your services and their overall experience with your website. This way, you can enhance your e-commerce development services by having a more comprehensive view of your customers’ interactions and touchpoints.

Understanding

Now that you better understand how your customers would most likely feel when navigating through your e-commerce website, your primary aim should be to have your website optimized at every touchpoint your customers have identified. For example, your social media, search engines, or other review websites.

Visualization

You cannot keep all this information just in your mind. Thus, a visual that is easy to look at and understand is essential. Once you visualize your map, it would become convenient for you to enhance the customer journey in e-commerce.

The importance of e-commerce customer journey

Your customers are more likely to retain if they had an excellent customer experience from your brand. This is why owners have modified their e-commerce business plan and shifted their focus to provide a pleasant e-commerce customer journey to attract new customers while retaining the existing ones. Here are a few reasons why a good customer journey for e-commerce is essential to add to your e-commerce business plan.

• Effectiveness: You need to ask yourself if the required e-commerce journey map makes any sense to your customers. Thus, creating a practical e-commerce customer journey map is essential, as we all do things differently, from searching for products to navigating a site.
• Efficiency: The customer journey for e-commerce can help streamline your customer’s overall experience and identify various touchpoints from start to finish. 
• Understanding: The importance of the e-commerce customer journey also lies in learning and knowing your customers’ requirements, their likes, dislikes, and how they actually think. This is the point where most e-commerce businesses fail, as they create an e-commerce journey for themselves rather than focusing on ways to enhance customer journey in e-commerce. 
• Setting goals: An exceptionally planned map for customer journey for e-commerce can also help identify and set better goals for your e-commerce business plan. It is also important because it gives you a better idea about what would make your business thrive and expand.
• Planning: Having a good e-commerce customer journey map is essential, as it allows you to focus on future events of e-commerce management, e-commerce development services, and growing your B2B e-commerce customer journey.

How to maintain a positive customer experience throughout an e-commerce business plan?

We understand how daunting it can be for companies new to e-commerce customer journey mapping as they identify various gaps and flaws in their e-commerce development services. Therefore, we have compiled a few points to understand how you can improve customers’ online experience. 

Create touchpoints wherever possible

Any platform where your customer interacts with you is a touchpoint. For example, seeing your advertisement, visiting your website, reading product reviews, contacting your customer support, and finally purchasing your product. Therefore, you should make sure every touchpoint works appropriately and fit perfectly in its respective stage.

Optimize your online store for every smart device

Always remember that half of an e-commerce business runs via smartphones. Hence, a poor mobile site will navigate all the potential traffic somewhere else, making you lose your customer base. Therefore, creating a responsive e-commerce website design is essential to improve your customer’s online experience.

Offer proactive customer service

Offering excellent customer service in e-commerce management includes identifying and resolving errors and issues before they are even complained about. This can be done by adding an FAQ section on your website and providing practical answers to general customer queries.

Personalization works every time

Everybody likes a personal touch in online shopping. This means that you can add a little more personal touch to your website along with your customer’s username. For example, identify their interests and buying habits by collecting as much data as possible based on your customer’s age, location, gender, etc. Content marketing is the perfect example of using a personalization tactic to attract customers to your e-commerce website. 

Conclusion

The importance of the e-commerce customer journey has skyrocketed since business owners have learned that providing exceptional customer support can convert searches into sales in real-time and retain existing and new customers forever. Therefore, the key is to remain consistent in offering the best customer experiences throughout your e-commerce journey so that your online store feels no less accessible and helpful than a physical store can be.

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Today, industries that want to stay one step ahead of their competitors, and increase their ROIs rapidly, require a robust command over the fundamentals of e-commerce marketing techniques. 

Before we dive into more details about e-commerce marketing, let us tell you what e-commerce marketing does. 

What does e-commerce marketing mean?

First things first, what is e-commerce marketing? What does it do? E-commerce marketing is simply a method of marketing techniques into marketing an e-commerce store. It is a way of driving sales by promoting your brand and creating awareness about it among your target audience by using different e-commerce marketing strategies. Ecommerce marketers use digital marketing, social media, email marketing, and search engines for attracting visitors and facilitating online sales.

An online e-commerce store is a bustling place. Since online stores are increasing in popularity day by day, e-commerce marketing can prove the best way for businesses to tap into that growing space. By implementing the right e-commerce marketing strategy, you can guide your audience seamlessly to your online store, thus increasing your brand visibility and sales. 

What are the types of e-commerce marketing?

Coming back to our main discussion, let us tell you the most common types of e-commerce marketing channels to give you a basic idea for planning your next e-commerce marketing strategy. 

Content Marketing

Whenever you hear this word, the first thing that comes to your mind is blogs or vlogs contents that help improve the website ranking on the search engine. But for marketing an e-commerce store online, do you think you need blogs and videos to generate purchases? Yes, you do. 

Here is how to use e-commerce content marketing.

• Write relevant articles and blogs about the products available for sale on your website.
• Create a few guest posts, targeting on the products you sell on your website. 
• Optimize your product page by focusing on the right keywords that are product-driven.
• Make the most of YouTube, creating short videos that link directly to the products available on your online store.

Social Media Marketing

All popular brands globally have created their pages across every social media channel to raise their brand awareness, create a brand image and connect with their target audience by posting content that might interest them. For your e-commerce marketing strategy, you need to do the same. However, not every social media channel would be suitable for marketing an e-commerce store. Therefore, Social media channels like Instagram and Facebook are appropriate platforms for e-commerce marketing that enables you to post sharp pictures of your products, expanding their reach among the masses.

Email Marketing

One of the oldest forms of e-commerce digital marketing strategy is e-commerce email marketing. Though it is an old method, it holds immense importance in the e-commerce marketing world. You can send automated emails, which is hands down the best part of e-commerce email marketing. Automation means automatically sending a promotional email to all of your subscribers or potential customers, marketing about your product, following up on an abandoned shopping cart, or just for post-purchase feedback. 

Five things you need to know about e-commerce marketing

Now that we have told you about some essential types of e-commerce marketing, here are a few facts that every e-commerce marketer should know about. Have a look. 

The game is all about the content!

• It is evident that customers are flooded with a plethora of options to choose their desired products since there are thousands of e-commerce stores on the internet. 
• To be successful in marketing an e-commerce store, having a website and an SEO strategy is just not enough. 
• Today, the most successful e-commerce businesses include content marketing among their top e-commerce marketing strategies to stay ahead of their competitors. 
• By implementing a relevant content marketing strategy, you build a trustworthy relationship with your consumers and create your brand awareness, just the right way! 

Mobile app-based e-commerce marketing has taken the world by storm

• It is no surprise that mobile marketing has become indispensable in today’s world. People today spend most of their time surfing the internet on their smartphones instead of desktop computers. 
• While e-commerce marketing has seen massive growth overall, the growth of mobile e-commerce has also exploded to around 50% from the past six years until today. 
• Therefore, for all e-commerce businesses, either big or small, it is essential to keep a significant part of their e-commerce marketing budget for focusing on marketing strategy for their target mobile audience. 
• Developing e-commerce websites with a mobile app or a responsive design enables the users to view your website on their smartphones any time of the day. 
• If you focus on creating a seamless mobile commerce user experience, this directly affects your sale rate. 
• Hence, switching to a “mobile-first” e-commerce marketing strategy has been a significant feature for many brands investing in their e-commerce marketing. 
• It is almost impossible to connect and engage with your customers online without a mobile presence. 

E-commerce marketing enables more audience engagement if done across multiple marketing channels

• E-commerce marketing does not rely on a single marketing channel. 
• A multi-channel approach is key to developing a successful e-commerce marketing strategy. It should be supported and integrated with a supply chain management system.
•  Generally, the marketing channels for e-commerce marketing include email, website, text messages, search engine optimization, GPS integration via mobile app, alerts, and social media. Thus, you need to ensure that your e-commerce business promotes your products and services via all the above-mentioned channels to gain a maximum number of customers globally. 
• However, E-commerce businesses need to tailor their products to their clients, considering the global nature of their market and the evolving requirements of existing and potential customers, in addition to multi-channel marketing strategies.

Real-time access to performance metrics

• If you are an e-commerce marketing professional, a storm of helpful data is waiting for you. From this data, which includes the statistics of the visitors on your website with their bounce or conversion rates, exits, and referrals, along with performance metrics, the e-commerce marketing experts can identify high-performance marketing campaigns and do the readjustments within no time. 
• The access to performance metrics offers you more flexibility and control over creating new e-commerce marketing strategies and website features. 
• This access would also help the marketing experts to follow their customers’ buying personas and typical customer behavior. 
• You can also categorize your customers into a different list based on the performance metrics and create e-commerce marketing campaigns accordingly. 

Digital Marketing has a high impact on e-commerce marketing

Here are a few reasons why e-commerce businesses must invest in an e-commerce digital marketing strategy. 

• Digital marketing is hands down the most efficient yet cost-effective e-commerce marketing among all marketing media. 
• More and more e-commerce businesses are integrating digital marketing to increase their brand awareness, get a greater return of investment, and build a loyal customer base in less time and money compared to other traditional marketing methods. 
• Search engine optimization and email marketing need a much smaller investment initially. 
• Also, changing the format or the content of digital marketing campaigns is much more convenient than others. 

Quick E-commerce marketing tips

There are hundreds of marketing tactics that you can apply to your e-commerce business to drive customers to your online store and increase sales. Let’s dive into a few essential ones.

Personalization

Personalizing your online store means looking for ways to cater to customers within the marketing materials you already possess. In simpler words, it is tailoring your products and services to reflect the unique requirements according to the global buying nature of your consumer.

Create a loyalty campaign

What does a loyal customer mean? It means that customers keep coming back to buy from your e-commerce store. Therefore, building a loyalty program for your repeat customers is essential. It provides certain benefits for repetitive customers like discounts and other promotional offers. 

Integrate a Live Chat option

We are sure you have heard about chatbots, haven’t you? There are two ways to integrate a live chat option for your e-commerce store. Either you can hire a live chat customer service representative or a robot to live chat with your customers. It all depends on your business and your e-commerce marketing budget.

Get, set, grow!

Ecommerce businesses should imply several e-commerce marketing tools to create brand awareness and a desired brand image among the masses. You can achieve your goals if you use both inbound and digital e-commerce marketing strategy just the right way. Planning the right e-commerce marketing strategy means that you must create e-commerce marketing campaigns specifically designed to help your online store grow and attract customers, leading to more and more sales.

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If you are planning to build a B2B e-commerce platform, you should get all the rules right to get a good headstart in your business. The competition is overwhelming, so attracting businesses to your online store and scaling your business with time is no cakewalk.

That’s why implementing appropriate ecommerce store development strategies that position you well in the digital space is so crucial. A lot of factors are involved in strategizing an online marketplace that provides easy, smooth, and efficient solutions. 

Experts can help you build your online B2B store in a compelling way so that it influences businesses to choose your products and/or services over others. Let me explain to you why you need experts to build your B2B e-commerce platform in the first place and how they can perfectly pull it off.

Why Do You Need to Outsource Experts for Your B2B E-commerce Store?

Do you know that 70% of clients report that websites of B2B vendors are the main source of content for them? So, that justifies the need to maintain a credible, captivating, and informative B2B e-commerce site to thrive in the online B2B marketplace.

Suppose your company provides B2B logistics solutions, and you are just entering the digital space to grow your market. So, no matter how exceptional your logistics services are, if you fail to reflect it on your site, you won’t be able to attract your target audience.

Your online store should position well in the online B2B marketplace and be discoverable in the top search results of businesses searching for logistics solutions. Also, your site content should be 100% original, optimized, and to the point so that businesses take an interest in your services and can easily comprehend why you are better than your competitors.

That’s where experts are specialized in. They create subtle differentiating factors that set apart your B2B e-commerce site and enhance your brand reputation in the online marketplace.

Let’s now understand the various e-commerce store development strategies that help your B2B business flourish and how experts can help you with all those.

1. More Product Information on Your B2B E-commerce Site

The Challenge

One of the challenges in B2B e-commerce services is to accentuate your products and services correctly so that buyers take notice. Providing clear, detailed descriptions of products and services on your B2B e-commerce site increases the chances of sales. Include bold and clear images, demos, and videos, properly thus explaining your products and services to your site visitors.

The Solution: Experts Provide Valuable Insights

Ecartize experts scroll through your website to identify loopholes and accordingly devise solutions. For instance, you supply medical devices to hospitals, so your product descriptions should include the working mechanism, operating procedures, device accuracy data, etc. 

The experts help your B2B e-commerce website be more transparent, thus enhancing the trust between you and your potential clients. That way, you can also expect a higher sales rate.

2. Enhanced User Experience of Your B2B E-commerce Store

The Challenge

According to stats, 67% of mobile users say that they are more likely to buy a product or service from a site that is mobile-friendly. So, the user experience and compatibility levels of your B2B business to business website is a deciding factor in your business growth. 

B2B buyers can use any devices of their choice to visit your online B2B store. If your site is not responsive and lacks the user experience it provides when visited from computers, you will have a hard time increasing your client base.

The Solution: Responsive and Easy-to-navigate

Web experts at Ecartize build you a fully responsive B2B e-commerce platform so that it fits every screen size and provides the same levels of user experience on every device. Your site’s user experience is also enhanced by integrating the latest navigating features so that visitors have no problem traversing your web pages and sections.

3. SEO of Your B2B E-commerce Website

The Challenge

Google’s search engine algorithm uses over 200 factors to rank websites, and the algorithm changes from time to time. So, you cannot expect to increase the audience reach of your B2B e-commerce platform unless you do quality SEO of your website. The online B2B marketplace is dominated by business giants, and it is quite daunting for small and medium-sized businesses like yours to make a mark.

The Solution: Quality SEO to Improve Your Site Rankings

SEO experts optimize your site content, link your B2B site to credible websites and conduct competitor analysis to improve your SEO rankings in the search engines. 

Your online B2B business to business platform is made discoverable using specific keywords that your target audiences use to search for the type of products and services you provide. That way, you have higher rankings on Google and other search engines and can expect more traffic and sales.

4. Flexible Ordering and Pricing Options on Your B2B E-commerce Store

The Challenge

Limiting your clients only to a few payment options on your B2B business to business platform is never a good idea. Your clients might be looking for more robust and personalized purchasing models, so you should try to accommodate those in your ordering options.

The Solutions

• More scalable solutions: You should check your finances and sales forecast and see if you can change your pricing model to offer more flexible and scalable solutions. It can include eliminating minimum sign-ups, postpaid options, or giving discounts over a certain purchase limit.
• Role of experts: Experts can build you a robust and secure payment infrastructure for your B2B e-commerce store and integrate the latest payment options that will add convenience to your clients. Crest cards, digital wallets for orders, and even extending the payment windows can help you strengthen your relations with the buyers and enhance your company’s brand reputation.

5. B2B E-commerce Platform’s Unmatched Customer Service

The Challenge

You should be aware that 93% of your buyers are more likely to come back for another purchase from your B2B company if their previous experience was satisfactory. So, focusing on providing better customer services to your buyers can help you build brand loyalty.

The Solutions

• Easy buying options: Consult with experts on how you can implement simple and easy buying options for your clients on your B2B e-commerce site. You can install a live chat function on your website that will help buyers get real-time answers to their queries and elevate the user experience.
• Increased customer support hours: You should try extending your customer support hours so that you can provide quick solutions to your customers’ queries. Making your clients wait for long will only impact your reputation badly and may cost you your client base.
• Dedicated account manager: For personalized or bulk orders, it would be better to provide your clients with a dedicated account manager who can walk them through the buying process. That way, your manager can convince a buyer to commit to a purchase and guarantee you a sale. So, it’s a win-win situation – your buyers are satisfied with their purchase, and the sales rep of your B2B company improves.

6. Digital Marketing of Your B2B E-commerce Company

The Challenge

As per stats, 56% of B2B organizations are investing in digital marketing, which is more than half. Therefore, it can be clearly stated that digital marketing of your B2B e-commerce platform is non-negotiable. Without investing in online advertising, you will not be able to expand your e-commerce services to a larger audience and scale your business with time.

The Solutions: Experts in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing experts can accurately devise digital marketing strategies for your B2B firm, understanding your requirements. They also conduct deep market research to collect information about the latest industry trends of the sector you perform in so that they can go past the digital crowd and connect you to your target audience.

With services like PPC, SMM, paid advertising, influencer marketing, and email marketing, the experts can put your company at the forefront of the B2B game.

Understanding the Role of Experts in Your B2B E-commerce Business

The e-commerce services you are planning to provide may or may not be the first of its type in the market. If those services already prevail, the experts will help you compete with the others and earn you your rightful place in the market.

And if you are starting out with new and unique products and services, you still need experts. That’s because you will have to make people aware of your B2B e-commerce business that specializes in new things and make sure no other venture hijacks your idea and surpasses you in the market. Experts help you spread your business to more potential clients and keep your competitors at bay.

Ecartize: The Best Option for Your Ecommerce Store Development

So, an efficient B2B e-commerce store development is based on lots of factors. Your B2B e-commerce site needs to amalgamate all necessary aspects so that it can provide effective solutions to clients. Outsourcing experts to design your store development strategies will take the load off your shoulders, and you can make sure that your products and services are being showcased well in the online B2B marketplace.

Ecartize provides a comprehensive e-commerce store development solution and has over 10 years of experience in this sector. They can build you a stellar B2B e-commerce store within 2 weeks. They provide extensive services from store design, development, migration, and integration to support and maintenance.

Give them a call or drop a mail today so that they can get started with building you the B2B e-commerce platform of your dreams.

Hit the like, comment option, and share this blog with anyone and everyone you know who needs to develop their B2B website.

The post Implement B2B E-commerce Store Development Strategies in Your Business: How Experts Can Help You Do It? appeared first on ECARTIZE.

The B2B ecommerce development is a process of creating a website for your business and offering all your products and services through the site. You might choose to list your business on social media platforms as an alternative, but having a site of your own earns you online credibility and more customer reach. In this digital age, it is not possible to survive unless you have a strong online presence apart from your offline business reputation.

Through B2B ecommerce development, you do targeted marketing of your products and services and ensure your audience is being influenced by your B2B business. Read on to know how B2B ecommerce development can help your ecommerce business succeed.

Importance of B2B Ecommerce Development

Do you know that 70% of business buyers admit to finding content directly on a vendor’s website? That brings us to the conclusion that buyers prefer to go through your products and services directly from your site rather than from any third-party platform. So, it becomes imperative to build a compelling website through B2B ecommerce development with optimized content so that your customers take an interest in your business.

Also, expanding your B2B business only through word-of-mouth is not an option today, in this digital era. So, the only way you can grow your business is by earning your rightful online position.

Suppose you are a dairy company providing dairy products to retailers. So, how do you influence more retailers to sell your products at their shops? You can surely market your products through offline channels, but do you think you can compete with the existing companies with such methods? The e-commerce business models are a neutral space where you can grow your business if you go by the rules, and that’s where digital experts can help you.

Let’s go through the advantages of B2B ecommerce development and how experts can help you with everything. 

1. Scalability Using B2B Ecommerce Development

Even if you run a successful B2B company as of now, unless you develop a B2B ecommerce website, you will have serious problems scaling it with time. As your business expands with time, you will need to open new units which focus on specific market segments, and all of these are not easy to do without B2B ecommerce development.

The Solution: Efficient B2B Ecommerce Platform

Experts can help you by building the best ecommerce platform for your B2B business that would enable your company to scale easily with time. The platform would fulfill market demands and client requirements by opening new sales channels.

You can create and share compelling content through your B2B ecommerce site for your target audience, deliver value and be prompt in responding to the market changes. Also, using extensible B2B ecommerce solutions such as cloud, you can update your existing technology to improve your merchandising and marketing capabilities.

2. Enhanced Brand Awareness Through B2B Ecommerce Development

Around 67% of global consumers admit that they have made a cross-border purchase from a foreign site. Without B2B e-commerce business models, it won’t be possible for you to create a strong online presence for your business and spread it locally and internationally.

The Solution: SEO-optimized B2B Website

Although you can promote your brand through external B2B market channels, they are not as effective as your own B2B ecommerce website. It acts as the primary marketing medium for a sustained digital presence and visibility. SEO experts from a B2B ecommerce development agency can create an SEO-friendly site so that your business ranks higher in Google searches. That way, you can expect more B2B business owners to visit your site and take an interest in your products and services.

3. B2B Ecommerce Development for Increased Productivity

How to increase the efficiency of your B2B business? By limiting your clients only to order offline, you will not be able to focus on actual customer service functions. Also, your business productivity is hugely affected when you don’t have a streamlined ordering system.

The Solution: ERP and Back-end Systems

Web experts integrate ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and various other back-end systems to increase efficiency in B2B e-commerce business models. That way, your customers can order online conveniently, and you get to focus on providing better customer service and support.

Also, automation of the ordering system and workflows eradicate the need for reconfiguring data in multiple independent systems, reducing the chance of errors. So, through B2B ecommerce development, you increase the efficiency of your shipping processes and enhance your throughput.

4. B2B Ecommerce Development Increases Your Sales

According to a study by Google and EB Marketing Leadership Council, more than 50% of decisions by technical buyers are made before the decision-makers engage with a sales representative. So, increasing your sales rate through offline channels is difficult given the fact that you have very limited opportunities to influence the decisions of buyers.

The Solution: Automated Ordering Platform

Through B2B ecommerce development, experts not only help you reach new customers through your site but also allow you to implement an automated upsell and cross-sell recommendation program. So, you can enhance your sales by offering relevant product or service recommendations to customers and influencing them to buy related items.

Experts provide B2B the best ecommerce platform experience to your clients by including well-detailed product descriptions, images, demos, and videos on your site, thus facilitating the ordering process. Your customers can order or reorder conveniently based on their previous purchases, including personalized preferences and negotiated prices.

5. Higher Analytics Capability with B2B Ecommerce Development

Getting accurate insights into each of your B2B business aspects is crucial as all those decide your future actions and ensure your business growth and success. However, traditional processes are not that efficient in generating pinpoint data, and if they do, it would cost you a way more amount of time.

The Solution: Analytics Software-integrated Website

Precise Analysis

Around 95% of marketers admit that they know which channel is capable of generating maximum leads for their business. And that has been possible due to precise analysis of B2B business processes using various analytics software.

Instant Insights

With B2B ecommerce solutions like ERP, CRM, Procurement, PIM, etc., you get comprehensive data of all your business processes. Moreover, the data is generated instantly, so you can be swift in your decisions and manage your B2B business efficiently. Through B2B ecommerce development, your revenue, profit, and market valuation – all show positive growth.

6. B2B Ecommerce Development for Customer-centric Support

Users today prefer researching products and services before buying them. Without B2B ecommerce development, you cannot present your offers before customers. So, your business lacks a customer-centric approach.

The Solution: Personalized B2B Ecommerce Platform

Experts integrate self-service portals in e-commerce business models for your customers. These portals consist of reviews, product descriptions, handling and shipping information, delivery tracking information, and order history.

With B2B ecommerce development, you can create a personalized experience for your users and display your products and services as per the demands of customers. That way, you follow a customer-centric approach and increase your brand reputation.

7. B2B Ecommerce Development for Retaining Customers

One of the most efficient ways of growing your B2B business is through customer retention. However, it’s not an easy job to always follow your previous customers and convince them to buy more products and services from your company.

The Solutions

Identifying Problem Areas

Using B2B ecommerce solutions, you can create a customer profile based on Net Promoter Score (NPV) and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). These will help you keep track of repeat purchases and customers’ ongoing activity. You will also be able to identify customers’ requirements and issues.

Reduction in Churn Rate

After you address the problems, the churn rate reduces, and so your sales increase, generating more revenue for your B2B business. With higher repeat customers, you can explore the opportunity to offer continuous subscription-like service. Using this service, your customers will be able to purchase and re-purchase your products and services with convenience without having to connect to a representative.

8. Multi-site Capability Using B2B Ecommerce Development

When you run your B2B business from a physical space, your exposure is limited, so you do not have the opportunity to attract a broader range of your target audience. That way, it takes a lot of time to grow your business and increase your client base.

The Solution: Multi-channel Exposure

With B2B ecommerce development, you provide an omnichannel experience to your customers with the best ecommerce platform experts build you. Users can access your site from a range of platforms and devices when they search for the type of products and services your company deals in.

Advantages

Your B2B business gets more local, national, and international exposure when you spread your website through multiple online channels. Hiring a B2B ecommerce development agency is the most sensible decision you can take to expand your business across international borders.

Ecartize: Your One-stop B2B Ecommerce Development Solution

By now, you must have understood the importance of B2B ecommerce development for your business. It builds a comprehensive platform where all your and your customers’ issues can be efficiently handled and resolved.You can contact Ecartize for B2B ecommerce solutions as they have a wide range of experts working in this field for several years. They can build you the best ecommerce platform and help you earn the most-deserving position in the online B2B marketplace.

The post 8 Reasons Why B2B Ecommerce Development Is Important for You! appeared first on ECARTIZE.

An organization’s customer experience depends on customer service in the digital business world. Providing poor customer service can damage a brand’s reputation by causing terrible social media disasters. Optimizing the e-commerce customer service of a company must be the top priority of its business development goals. 

Why are customer support services essential?

In a Microsoft report entitled “State Of Global Service,” 62% of e-commerce business owners consider “customer service” one of their most crucial business functions. E-commerce Customer service is anticipated to overtake prices and products as the primary brand differentiator in 2022. Excellent customer service enables customers to return time and time, building trust with your company. However, an unsatisfactory customer service experience can cost the company sales loss, negative online reviews, and damaged brand reputation. 

Approximately 70% of customers globally said they stopped doing business with companies. But why? It’s because they don’t provide a satisfactory level of service. In other words, if you want your business to succeed in the long term, keeping your customers happy is crucial.

E-commerce customer service

What is an e-commerce customer support service? The answer is simple. E-commerce customer service is how businesses assist their customers. An e-commerce customer support service provides seamless purchasing and problem-resolution across all online platforms. 

It is one of the most challenging aspects of business development, driven by instant response and convenience. 

Each brand has a different way of engaging its consumers via customer service. The aim, however, is the same, which is to create an outstanding customer experience, keeping the brand’s promise. 

Pivotal elements of exceptional e-commerce customer service this year

What does outstanding customer service mean in 2022? Simply respond to your customers through social media, live chat, or email, and you’ll be able to solve the problem in real-time.

Here are the top 6 elements that make up exceptional customer service this year. 

• Quickly resolving customer issues.
• Resolving concerns in a single interaction.
• Friendly customer representatives.
• Same customer representative for follow-ups.
• Save copies of the conversation via prints or emails.
• Follow-ups even after resolving the customer issues. 

Difference between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar customer service

A few fundamental differences between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar customer services are as follows:

Opening hours

Brick-and-mortar stores have fixed opening hours, so we cannot expect the employees to be available 24/7 for assistance. However, the internet runs constantly to contact customer service around the clock, resulting in late responses. 

Face-to-face interaction

While brick-and-mortar services run on face-to-face interaction, e-commerce customer service, unfortunately, lacks it. Therefore, the e-commerce customer service teams try to overcome this weakness. They replicate the face-to-face value by using live chats, phone calls, and chatbots available 24/7 for assistance. 

High expectations

Large brands’ quality of customer service has encouraged people to expect more from smaller businesses. Therefore, small e-commerce business owners may have to work harder. As a result, they try to bring their customer service up to global standards. 

Customer service techniques for e-commerce businesses

E-commerce businesses should adapt to timely changes in the buyers’ landscape. Being at the forefront, an e-commerce customer service guide plays a vital key role in gaining consumers’ trust and building healthy relationships. For this reason, creating good e-commerce customer service can become a game-changer for your e-commerce business. 

Let’s dive into some of the best practices that a business can do to improve its e-commerce customer service. 

Create an omnichannel approach

As an e-commerce business, you must be present across every communication channel, such as websites, social media, calls, emails, etc. Therefore, only one or two communication channels are not enough. Instead, it would be best to be everywhere, where your customers are. 

So, what should you do? The best way is to create an omnichannel approach. This strategy would help unify all the customers’ touch points under a single platform, delivering a consistent experience. 

How to build an omnichannel strategy?

To build an omnichannel strategy, you should focus on three key elements to create a seamless e-commerce customer service experience. 

• Identify consumers’ touch points.
• Engage them across the touch points by understanding the customer’s journey.
• Deliver a seamless customer experience. 

Your e-commerce brand can guarantee a stable and long-term relationship with your customers by creating the right strategies.

Deliver support instantly with live chat

A report says that 80% of consumers prefer live chats because of the immediate response. By integrating a live chat option into your e-commerce website, you can deliver instant support to your customers. This reduces the response time and thus increases conversion rates, sales, and customer satisfaction. Some benefits of live chats are as follows:

• Instantly accessible: Live chats help consumers to connect instantly. 
• Multitasking: Live chats help the customer representatives to chat with more than one customer at one time. 
• Live chats are majorly preferred: The majority of the customers feel more comfortable via instant messaging for customer support.

Offer self-service-based e-commerce customer support

Around half of your customers prefer resolving issues by themselves instead of contacting customer service. For this reason, they might surf your website and use the self-help option, if available. Therefore, being proactive when providing customer service is essential. It is, basically, one of the finest ways to offer a seamless customer service experience. 

How to offer self-service-based customer support? Here are a few options.

• FAQs provide customers with all the information they may need. Therefore, adding an FAQ page to your website with every basic information is essential.
• Chatbots can offer instant customer service to consumers 24/7, even when any customer service representative is unavailable.
• Product descriptions can also provide a little assistance to a customer in need. Adding the “how to use” option for your products would be a great idea to improve your e-commerce customer service. 

Maintain consistency in providing customer service

When your customers have a satisfactory experience with your customer service, it is evident that they would expect the same level of service in future interactions. Therefore, it is vital to offer consistent customer support across every business communication channel. Consistency in providing customer service is essential because:

• The average response time is reduced.
• You achieve a high FCR (first contact resolution) rate.
• You build a reliable and trustworthy relationship with your customers. 

Promote a call-to-action culture in your e-commerce service

A satisfied customer does the best advertisement. How?

Customers satisfied with your services tend to recommend your products to others and endorse your brand with positive reviews. As a result, customer reviews are one of the most important aspects of a growing e-commerce business. Customer feedback in a company is essential because:

• The quality of the company’s products and services gets better.
• It offers a seamless customer service experience.
• Customer loyalty increases.
• You can measure how satisfied customers are.

Not only a customer’s feedback is essential, but immediate action on the issue is also equally necessary. The most accurate time to ask for a customer’s feedback is right after the interaction you had with your customer. As the conversation is already going, it is natural to ask for reviews. 

Advantages of good e-commerce customer service

It is no longer considered enough to sell affordable or high-quality products. Customers today also expect a high level of customer service experience. Following are some benefits of providing outstanding customer service to your consumers in the e-commerce business. 

Customer Loyalty

It takes five times more investment to spend on a new customer than retaining an old one. Therefore, good customer service enables the customers to be loyal to your brand, thus making further purchases. 

Profit Increment

The customers’ long-term relationship can make your e-commerce business more profitable. Companies are said to increase their sales by 5% to 8% if they offer better customer support experiences. 

Increased Sales

Good customer service helps businesses quickly turn their leads into sales. By building customers’ confidence, it’s safe to say that a great customer experience will help you improve conversion rates. 

Improved public reputation

A brand’s public image and the customer service it provides go side by side. If your e-commerce customer service is excellent, you can expect a positive impression of your brand from your target audience. Around 80% of customers are more likely to let go of a brand’s mistake only if they offer an outstanding customer experience. 

Customer Recommendation

If your customers are satisfied with your business, they are likely to recommend it to others. Around 90% of customers tend to recommend a company to others if they are offered a perfect customer experience. This, in turn, increases the sales rate and the business’s credibility. 

Parting Ways

The products’ qualities, features, and pricing aspects have been saturated because of the global cutthroat competition in today’s world. Customers are no longer delighted with excellent product delivery only. E-commerce businesses need to stay ahead of the game by offering something unique and different from the rest of others. Therefore, providing stellar e-commerce customer support to your customers through your website or other communication channels would help you achieve precisely what you aim for! Happy selling!

The post Ways to Enhance Your E-commerce Business Customer Service Effectively appeared first on ECARTIZE.

E-commerce marketplaces are among the fastest-growing retail spaces globally. Amazon is the world leader, with 59% of people saying that they always begin their online shopping with a trip to Amazon’s website. E-commerce sales reached $4.8 billion at the start of 2021 and are expected to grow to $6.3 billion by 2024. By 2040, 95% of all sales are expected to happen via e-commerce. That’s why it is not enough to have your e-commerce website. You cannot undermine the importance of e-commerce marketplaces if you want to scale your business.

By following a few e-commerce marketplace management best practices, you would develop a robust strategy to boost sales and reach a wider audience.

Top tips for e-commerce marketplace management

Invest in targeted marketplace advertising

The Amazon e-commerce business has 9.7 million sellers globally, with 1.9 million actively selling in the online marketplace. The eBay e-commerce marketplace has more than 1.7 billion listings. Standing out in these marketplaces can be an uphill task, not possible without a solid marketing strategy. You need suitable ads to increase the visibility of your ads, which eventually will lead to more sales. If your listings do not rise to the top spots in the search results, customers may never see them.

Thankfully, marketplaces like Amazon and eBay offer a range of advertising opportunities that you can take advantage of. For instance, Amazon’s sponsored products help you promote individual product listings. These targeted ads help you get clicks from high-quality shoppers looking for specific keywords. You get a much higher ROI on these ads than several other pay-per-click programs. eBay’s promoted listings and Promotions Manager could significantly boost both exposure and sales for sellers who use them regularly.

Optimize your product listings

There are countless product listings available on e-commerce marketplaces. Not all of them sell. Why? Because not all product listings are optimized.

Creating product content is not enough. You must also focus on the way you structure the listings. Consumers look at several things, such as product image, title, keywords, descriptions, and more, before they buy something. The more engaging and convincing your content is, the more likely it will rise to the top of search results. The easier it is to discover your products, the more likely it is to drive sales.

Having said that, investing in product discovery is yet another e-commerce marketplace management best practice. When researching a product or service online, 85% of buyers turn to Google and 72% to Amazon. Optimizing your product content and improving product discovery ensures that your products are more visible to customers, leading to better conversions. You can also leverage product discovery to boost sales for good but not very popular products.

Create a high-quality catalog

30% of products bought online are returned. A majority of these are returned because they were either broken or defective. However, it is surprising that 22% of the products are returned because they look different from what they appear on the website. It is essential to create a high-quality catalog that attracts customers and highlights the USP of your products.

If you want to create a high-performing catalog, remove all duplicate content. Doing so will make it easier for your customers to find the right products quickly. Duplicate content could also negatively impact your search engine ranking, something that you want to avoid at all costs.

There is a very famous saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Nothing could be more apt for e-commerce marketplaces. Although a large number of customers prefer shopping online, they would still want to take a good look at the product before making a purchase. Grainy, low-quality images could affect the customer’s perception of your products. If they don’t like your products, they are not likely to buy them. Instead, use high-quality images for your products taken from various angles. The more your customers are attracted to your products, the more likely they will hit the “Buy now” button.

Adding keywords to your content can also help your products improve search engine results. A detailed product description that answers various questions that crop up in a buyer’s mind is also essential. You should include all relevant information, product USP, and any other important information in the product description.

Engage with customers

How you engage with your customers can directly impact your sales and customer loyalty. 73% of all customers agree that customer experience is a significant factor that drives their purchase decisions. Businesses that improve their customer experience witness an 80% increase in revenue. 56% of people have stopped purchasing from a company because of poor customer experience. 

On e-commerce marketplaces, customer experience could take on different forms, such as ratings and reviews, response times, and returns. Regardless of the marketplace you sell in; your focus should always be on garnering positive ratings and reviews. 

Positive reviews influence 90% of customers when buying a product. So, how you address your customer’s needs could have a significant impact on hundreds of prospective customers. The trust you build can also go a long way when selling on multiple marketplaces. Say a customer trusts a particular seller on Amazon. If they see the same seller on Walmart or eBay, they are more likely to buy from that seller.

Social media and live chats have become prevalent all over the world. The modern customer doesn’t want to wait, with most of them expecting their issues to be resolved in the first interaction itself. It is essential to respond to inquiries and complaints in e-commerce marketplaces. If your contact response time is poor, it could lead to account suspension in some online marketplaces. Amazon says that orders with messages that receive a response in less than 24 hours get 50% lesser negative reviews. 

The way you handle the returns process can also significantly impact customer loyalty. Most online shoppers prefer not to buy from sellers who have strict return policies. Statistics say that 95% of shoppers would buy from a seller again if they had a satisfactory return experience.

Follow a structured pricing strategy

Multiple sellers in online marketplaces sell the same products. That is why e-commerce marketplace management gets tricky. How do you ensure that customers buy products from you and not other sellers? Attractive imagery and a detailed product description could help you attract customers’ attention. However, the price also plays a significant role.

One of the critical best practices of e-commerce marketplace management is having a structured pricing strategy. There are two main areas to include:

Performance-based pricing

Performance-based pricing refers to a dynamic pricing structure that you can automatically adjust depending on your sales performance. If the sales are not that great, the price is lowered. When sales pick up, the cost of the product also rises.

Automated repricing

Following an algorithmic pricing structure is also vital if you compete in any e-commerce marketplace. You may want to adjust your product prices based on the prices offered by the competitors. You may also like to feature on top-selling positions by adjusting your price. Whatever be the reason, repricing tools can ensure that the changes are done whenever you desire. However, you must ensure that your costs align with competitive prices across channels, preventing the risk of breaching marketplace policies.

Although other factors such as delivery speed, location, and customer reviews matter, pricing is the ultimate factor that influences buying decisions. Pricing your products right is important to e-commerce marketplace management.

Understand the seller management portal

E-commerce marketplace management also involves setting up a seller management portal to handle seller issues. Sellers are the lifeblood of online marketplaces, and by offering adequate seller support, marketplaces can ensure that they run smoothly throughout the year.

One of the prime examples is Amazon Seller Central. It helps sellers with amazon seller account management and product listing management. Sellers can also update pricing and manage their inventory through Seller Central. They can also get support, such as marketplace listing services, sponsored ads, and more.

Leveraging the seller management portal helps in Amazon account management and in minimizing issues that most sellers face when selling on e-commerce marketplaces. 

Invest in a sound inventory system

Investing in inventory management software becomes important, mainly selling on multiple e-commerce marketplaces. Things can quickly get out of hand if you do not keep an eye on your inventory. Online marketplaces operate 24/7, unlike physical stores, which presents a whole new level of challenges.

Do you sell finished goods or manage the entire manufacturing process? These factors also influence your requirement for an inventory management system. You will need a system that syncs your inventory across different e-commerce marketplaces. Say you get an order on eBay. Your inventory system would know the amount of stock available and adjust the same for other channels, such as Amazon or Walmart.

Inventory management systems also offer other features such as managing purchase orders, forecasting demands, managing vendors, and more. Investing in an inventory management system is needed for e-commerce success.

ECARTIZE: Your best choice for e-commerce marketplace management

Ecartize offers comprehensive e-commerce marketplace management services to help you list, optimize products, and boost sales in no time. Our services are designed to be your one-stop solution for all your e-commerce marketplace management needs.

The post Top 7 tips for e-commerce marketplace management for the new year appeared first on ECARTIZE.

So, what are the e-commerce marketing strategies that can ensure success? Let’s find out.

Best e-commerce marketing strategies to boost sales

Make your e-commerce website SEO friendly

You have a great-looking e-commerce website. You have added high-quality images, detailed product descriptions, and more. Yet, sales are not that great. What could be wrong with your website? 

Nowadays, when someone has to look up a product, they head straight to Google. Does your website show up on Google search engine result pages? More importantly, does it appear among the top results on the search results page? Did you know that only 25% of people ever go onto the second page of search result pages? So, if your website does not appear on the first page, you are missing out on 75% of buyers, and that’s a lot.

Optimizing your website for SEO is one of the most effective e-business marketing strategies. Having a comprehensive SEO strategy can help you make your brand visible to all online shoppers. You must include all relevant and popular keywords that your target audience is searching for. SEO is one of the most cost-efficient but high ROI ecommerce in marketing strategy you can implement.

Here are some simple tips to optimize your website for SEO:

• Use image alt text
• Ensure there are no broken links
• Ensure every page is mobile-friendly
• Implement structured markup language
• Remove duplicate content
• Improve page load time
• Create a layout that does not require more than 2 or 3 clicks to navigate
• Ensure that all your important pages are Google-indexed.

Use Google shopping ads

Using Google shopping is also an effective E-commerce advertising strategy. Google ads show users products relevant to their Google searches. Users are taken straight to the seller’s website by clicking on the image.

Targeted ads are one of the most cost-effective ways to boost sales for an e-commerce company. That is because these ads already show the users the product image and the price. The users who click on these ads are high-quality leads, genuinely interested in the product.

Google showcase shopping ads could help businesses attract top-of-the-funnel web traffic with minimal investment. Companies could even group similar or related products together for users searching with generic product terms. Showcase ads can be an exciting strategy since you can bid at a much lower price than traditional ads. However, your prospects would still be able to see a wide range of products. Even if your visitors do not make immediate purchases, you would have at least familiarized them with your brand.

According to Google, businesses that invest in Google ads can double their investment in earnings.

Leverage content marketing

Did you know content marketing creates three times more leads than traditional marketing? It also costs 64% less. Considering these statistics, not including content marketing in your e-commerce marketing strategies could be a costly mistake.

A strong content marketing strategy could help you garner more positive attention and create conversations and interactions that no other marketing method can. Creating and promoting original content can be an excellent way to ensure that your customers get informative content regularly. The primary focus of content marketing is giving the audience informative, helpful, relevant, and exciting content that adds value to their life. Content marketing can play a significant role in cultivating a loyal audience for your e-commerce brand. Did you know companies that blog regularly produce 67% more leads per month? Increased lead generation and inbound traffic can improve sales and a broader customer base.

You can offer different types of content to your customers, such as blogs, videos, social media posts, newsletters, and more. However, you may need some experimentation to figure out what format works best for your brand. Your content should answer questions effectively and do so in an authoritative manner. When your audience perceives you as an authority in your field, they are more likely to return to your website. Of course, you must also use SEO, social media, and other tactics to widen the reach of your website.

Include product reviews

Positive reviews are a potent tool to boost e-commerce sales. 89% of customers say that they read product reviews before buying anything online. 

Google and other search engines also factor in online reviews in their search algorithms. Encourage your customers to leave online reviews because it can help strengthen your online presence. 58% of customers would not mind paying more to a company that has excellent reviews. Also, buyers spend nearly 31% more on great reviews companies. On the other hand, 94% of customers are turned off by negative reviews and avoid doing business with such companies.

You can bolster your e-commerce sales by including online reviews and client testimonials. Better still, you should have your online reviews linked directly to your product pages.

If your e-commerce website is built on Shopify or WordPress, several plugins are available that you can use to upload customer reviews. You can also include pictures and videos to your product pages, just like Amazon does. 

Generate word of mouth

You are more likely to buy a product recommended by a good friend or family member. That’s true for 92% of people who trust recommendations from people they know. That’s why word-of-mouth marketing must be included in your list of e-commerce marketing strategies.

86% of consumers trust word-of-mouth marketing. It also brings in 5 times more sales than paid advertisements. What it means is that you could increase your sales five times, and that too for free. Also, the customers who buy from you due to word-of-mouth marketing are likely to spend 200% more than other customers.

So, how do you generate positive word of mouth? For starters, you need to give your customers an excellent customer experience. It starts with product quality but also extends to the entire shopping experience. It doesn’t end there. Your return policies and post-sale expertise also play a significant role in creating a positive customer experience.

Other wonderful ways to create positive word-of-mouth include:

• Creating a referral program
• Developing a loyal online community
• Highlighting client testimonials and reviews on your website
• Working for a social cause and highlighting that on your website
• Creating unique content not offered by others in your industry.

Focus on cart abandonment

Who is the biggest enemy of e-commerce business owners? Shopping cart abandonment. The e-commerce industry loses $18 billion in revenue every year due to cart abandonment.

If your e-commerce marketing strategies do not include minimizing cart abandonment, maybe you need to rethink them. Shopping cart abandonment could significantly impact your business because it means that you lost a customer at the checkout process. Although you may not be able to get back all your customers, you may be able to get some of that revenue back. How? By implementing automated abandoned cart marketing sequences.

For having a more personalized customer experience, 83% of customers are willing to share personal information. Data reveals that cart abandonment emails do work. 45% of these emails are opened, and 50% of the users who open the emails make the purchase. A cost-efficient and effective way to minimize your cart abandonment rates is by setting up automated cart abandonment emails.

Retargeted ads also bring 26% of the customers back to your website. Personalized retargeted ads offer a whopping ROI of more than 1300%.

Your cart abandonment emails should give your customers a solid reason to complete their purchase. For instance, you could offer free shipping. After all, extra costs, such as shipping and taxes, account for 49% of shopping cart abandonments.

Implement a personalized email e-commerce marketing strategy

Email marketing must be integral to your e-commerce marketing strategies. According to Accenture, 91% of customers will buy from companies that send personalized emails. A study shows that 88% of all customers favor personalized emails. Why is it so? When you use personalized emails, it helps your customers feel a meaningful connection with your company. Customers want to be treated as humans and not just numbers. You can strengthen your bond and create lasting relationships with your customer with something as simple as personalized emails.

You can create personalized email campaigns in many ways:

• You could send a recommendation email based on their previous purchase history
• Include the customer’s name in the subject line of your email
• On special occasions, such as birthdays or anniversaries, you could extend special offers or discounts to your customers.
• Use segmentation to create discrete groups on common characteristics, such as age, gender, location, and more.
• You could also use behavioral triggers, such as if a customer hasn’t bought anything from you in a long time.

You could think of many other different ways that could help in fostering genuine relationships with your customers.

ECARTIZE- To help you create the most effective e-commerce marketing strategies

When it comes to crafting effective e-commerce marketing strategies, no one is better than Ecartize. We offer a wide range of e-commerce marketing services to help you generate quality leads and boost sales.

The post 7 E-commerce marketing strategies you must follow for success! appeared first on ECARTIZE.

Outstanding customer service will set you apart from the competition in a competitive business like online shopping. Technology has enabled eCommerce stores to take a new approach to assist clients. The solution uses conversational messaging and personalization approaches to create customer-centric experiences and provide customer support.

What is eCommerce Customer Service?

Customer Service in eCommerce assists online customers with everything from making smarter purchasing decisions to addressing problems while maintaining a consistent customer experience across different touchpoints.

Customer support for e-commerce can assist you in the following areas:

• Problems with the checkout procedure, inability to add products to the cart, invalid coupons, and other customer service difficulties
• Frequently asked questions about product returns, refunds, and delivery.
• The requirement to provide a consistent experience across numerous modes of communication

10 eCommerce Customer Service Practices to Boost Customer Satisfaction

Do you want to make your responses more efficient, provide real-time support wherever possible, and stand out from the crowd? Here’s how to do it.

Choose A Multichannel Helpdesk With Your e-commerce Platform

It’s critical to employ a help desk that integrates email, eCommerce live chat, phone, and social media into one platform. Tickets will be automatically pulled in from several sources, such as a shared inbox, via an omnichannel platform. Your team can keep track of customer requests and stay organized with a shared inbox.

In the case of customer service in eCommerce, make sure your inbox integrates with your store’s platform to simplify your workflow. Tracking and collecting all of a customer’s interactions with your brand in one location will pay off. As your business expands, you’ll be able to manage and analyze all of your customer services in one spot. In addition, support staff can see a total breakdown of customers. Thanks to an integration with your e-commerce platform: Previous chats or calls, links to social media accounts, Recent purchases, etc.

Offer Self-service (knowledge base) Options To Your e-commerce Frontline

By offering extensive answers to frequent questions, a knowledge base helps potential clients to make informed purchases. In addition, self-service minimizes support volume and improves customer satisfaction after they make a purchase. ECommerce live chat aims to resolve issues promptly, and self-service choices go the extra mile.

Customers can track their orders, return them, or cancel them without speaking to a representative. Building a strong knowledge base saves time for your customers and your customer support personnel.

Ensure that all pertinent information (deliveries, FAQS, return policies, and so on) is easily accessible via Google. Get rid of another step in providing the right solutions to your customers’ questions.

Automate Properly While Maintaining A Personal Touch

The secret sauce of customer service in eCommerce is automation. When done correctly, it allows your team to interact with more of your consumers on a more personal level. How? Most transaction messages, such as order confirmations, receipts, and shipment alerts, are likely already automated. Some of your templates and variables will be so precise and valuable that you can automatically set them to send. Questions about order delivery (if it’s not late) or pre-sales questions about your refund policy are two examples of responses that you can readily automate. 

You might not be automating all of your clients’ one-time or recurrent conversations when they face a block. Common, low-value questions, such as “Where’s my order?” and “How do I return this?” must be automated too so that your eCommerce live chat or eCommerce call center representatives could focus on more complex issues.

However, don’t forget about the obvious: informing clients that you received their request and are working on it. You can swiftly compose precise responses thanks to direct integrations with your inventory management, order management, eCommerce platform, and shipping software.

Meet Your e-commerce Customers On Their Preferred Platforms

For your online store, social networking may be a terrific source of customer service in eCommerce in terms of customer feedback. Use an omnichannel helpdesk solution that allows you to gather, manage, and track social media comments. Rather than forcing an agent to stop/ what they’re doing every day (or hour), use integrations to filter all of your communications through the inbox. This input should also be sorted and delivered to your product development team.

Social media, email, real-time messaging, offline support channels, and phone conversations are common ways for online buyers to communicate with their favorite brands.

eCommerce live chat and phone assistance, as well as any other communication channels you know your clients care about and use, should all be linked into your centralized help desk software. You can provide better service to your clients’ requirements if you actively listen to their dialogues, whether they take place in your inbox or through physical means.

Outsource eCommerce Call Center

Customer service is critical to an organization’s success. You will access individuals with years of experience and competence in customer service by eCommerce call center outsourcing. Expert call center agents will help you retain customers by understanding their needs. Your customer service crew should be the fastest and most professional in the industry. 

Customer service abilities will be strengthened by knowledge and empathy, which will result in positive reviews and help you keep customers. You’ll be able to focus more on your major company and provide industry-specific services to your customers. You’ll have access to a highly-skilled workforce and round-the-clock customer service if you outsource. Customer service that is both efficient and quick is the key to a successful e-commerce business.

Add More Common Questions To Your FAQ

Most online businesses require an excellent FAQ section (knowledge base), and these can help reduce the number of tickets in online live chat for eCommerce and other forms of communication. You should answer customers’ most common queries regarding your products, services, and brand as a whole on your FAQ page. 

The simplest method to figure out those queries is to look at your customer service statistics and see which issues consumers frequently contact you about. If you use help desk or eCommerce call center software, you can quickly identify your consumers’ most frequently asked queries. 

Integrate Inventory Data Into Helpdesk Responses 

Shopping cart abandonment must be addressed from all angles, not simply through exit intent pop-ups and display ads. Quick Customer service in e-commerce is also an important aspect of the customer journey. If they can’t get support quickly, online shoppers will leave. You can assist representatives in swiftly loading accurate responses by integrating your inventory and product details into your helpdesk. Improving your eCommerce business’s first response time is crucial. Marketing’s newest hurdle is the customer’s goldfish-sized attention span.

It may be tough to compete with other eCommerce stores, but you’ve already won the customer by focusing on improving response time.

Develop Customer Retention Strategies 

It’s time for eCommerce enterprises to enhance customer service since studies show that 82 percent of customers have declined to work with brands because of poor service. Customer communication is an important factor in increasing brand loyalty. You can encourage proactive dialogue when an order is delivered by sending SMS messages.

One of the biggest difficulties for eCommerce shops is preventing cart abandonment. Cart abandonment rates for checkout pages can reach 87 percent during the week and as high as 90% on the weekends. It’s crucial to understand this when creating marketing loyalty programs and customer retention strategies.

Customer Satisfaction Should Be Measured

Customer satisfaction should be measured to evaluate if you’ve met your consumers’ expectations. It’s arguably one of the most important eCommerce customer service performance metrics to be aware of.

If you exceed your clients’ expectations, they are more likely to shop with you again.

Measure, Improve, and Repeat

When it comes to customer service, there are no specific rules to follow. Instead, companies must be proactive in resolving customer issues while continuously improving data procedures.

When you measure and optimize outcomes, it helps you refine things such as analyzing the busiest hours, evaluating your team’s volume by channel, and following trending themes among your clients.

Having a system to track performance will provide a basis for future decisions, which is the first step toward providing excellent customer support for eCommerce.

The higher your customer satisfaction, the faster and more accurate your reaction times are. Customers require assistance in completing orders and knowing that your business values them. You must continually deliver exceptional eCommerce customer service to keep current clients and attract new ones to develop your eCommerce business.

Conclusion 

With the help of world-class customer support technology, ECARTIZE, specializes in managing client requests from different channels and providing quicker resolutions. If customers feel well taken care of, the likelihood of ordering from you, again and again, improves, so don’t waste another minute and schedule a call with us to achieve customer support for eCommerce within 48 hours. What do you think about these Ecommerce customer service best practices? Comment your thoughts below, and don’t forget to like and share this blog!

The post Ecommerce Customer Service : 10 best practices to do it right! appeared first on ECARTIZE.