The shift in online consumer shopping habits and behavior
With every online business, there are key elements that are needed to breed success. For brands and their websites, one of those elements is an ecommerce strategy roadmap, which lays out a clear path for sales, growth and customer acquisition. However, because of the impact of Covid-19 in 2020, it has never been more clear that an ecommerce strategy needs to be adaptable for unexpected circumstances.
According to research from McKinsey, the shift to shopping online continues to grow, with consumers opting to skip the stand in line at the store and make purchases from a socially acceptable distance via the web. Their report also stated that “aside from value, convenience and availability are most often cited as top drivers of consumers’ decisions about where to shop”, so adapting your ecommerce strategy for 2021 to meet these drivers is crucial.
We’ve outlined 5 ways that you can update your ecommerce strategy roadmap to meet the new online consumer shopping habits and behaviors to drive growth in 2021.
1. Use data analysis to target your audience
This may seem like a basic step and it may be one that already exists within your ecommerce strategy, but understanding your audience is such an important factor for 2021. With a new wave of consumers spending online, data analysis can help you to see who they are, what they are buying and how they’re finding your website.
By pinpointing exactly who your customers are, you can look at demographics; how consumers shop and which products are selling well, but also look beyond these base level statistics to explore the features customers want, why they are shopping in that moment and understand consumer psychology as a whole. This can form a plan around how to target future audiences and inform any upcoming campaigns that you may have.
2. Consider adding new payment options
Leading financial platform, PayPal, announced that its users will have the ability to hold virtual coins in their online wallets in 2021, opening the door to businesses allowing cryptocurrencies and bitcoins as payment options. While it’s unknown whether cryptocurrencies will become mainstream, it is clear that there is a large demographic of people that are ready to use their virtual currencies for online shopping.
By allowing consumers to use various forms of cryptocurrency on your ecommerce site, you will be unlocking the potential to reach an untapped audience and expand your market further than you may have expected.
3. Refresh your ecommerce UX strategy with intelligent guided selling
In 2021, it will be crucial to recreate the in-store experience through your online website in order to help consumers find what they are searching for and build brand loyalty with them for future purchases. With intelligent guided selling, you can offer a personalized journey to every customer, which learns what shoppers want, then guides them through your website to the appropriate products or services.
Just like asking for assistance in a store, intelligent guided selling ensures that your customers will be directed to exactly what is relevant for them and their particular need at that time, making their shopping experience convenient and easy. In such a fast-paced world, convenience is essential ground to cover in your ecommerce UX strategy, so if you’d like to find out more about intelligent guided selling, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
4. Use data effectively across all touchpoints
Once you have identified your audiences and explored the data to delve a little deeper into your customers’ psychology, you can use your findings across all the touchpoints of your business for truly effective precision marketing and targeted selling. For example, you could segment your email marketing list into demographics, motivations, mindsets, shopping occasions, shopping frequencies or specific product categories. The data can advise with social media marketing, including which platforms to use, the type of content to share and posting frequency.
This data analysis can even inform whether there are elements that you have yet to build into your ecommerce strategy roadmap and identify why they might be needed. It may be that you haven’t considered website UX or paid advertisement in full detail before, but your customers’ data could show that these are crucial elements for your business.
5. Develop an undeniable loyalty program
Tying in to building an email list and creating an incentive for shoppers to sign up, an undeniable loyalty program is essential for every ecommerce strategy roadmap. By rewarding customers for shopping on your online store, you are inviting them to keep coming back and earning points, rewards or freebies. Some great examples of this are personalized discounts from Boots, Walgreens, Amazon’s Subscribe and Save model, and account specific codes on Uber Eats.
While this is one of our more time-consuming suggestions, it’s going to be one of the most effective steps for your ecommerce strategy in 2021. It will promote customer satisfaction, allow you to gain more details to inform your customer data analysis and encourage customers to continue shopping with you in 2021 and beyond.
Now is the time to start making these adjustments to your ecommerce strategy and react to the rising numbers of online consumer spending. Not only are these steps guaranteed to help for the short-term, but they can also be implemented into your long-term ecommerce strategy to future-proof your business.