Jewelry Industry and Retail News

Online Retail Marketing Tips and Trends

Lots of changes on how online retail works have been seen in the past. One of the most notable trends found is that more than fifty percent of online retailers in 2017 also have physical stores. While it’s not new that millennials prefer to buy online than in physical stores, a new find is that almost half of parents say that they cannot live without online shopping and that fifty-one percent of seniors have shopped online.

True enough, e-commerce is already part of modern living for all generations. However, knowing these facts alone won’t turn an online retailer into a success. There are lots more to consider like how the behavior of online shoppers has also changed over the years.

Understanding the trends for this year will give you a better foothold on what to expect in the fast-approaching Future. You will then know how to position yourself best in order to reap maximum benefits.

In order to help you face the upcoming year with confidence, we have come up with a legal guide to e-commerce. The following tips will steer you in the right direction should you wish to make this year a good year for your online retail business:

Continue improving your process

Successful businesses involve an organized process. If you don’t follow a standard process, then you might need to consider employing one. An organized process will help you keep track of everything you do, and will enable you to rate how effective you are in doing your business. E-commerce is a complex activity and standardizing your tasks into an organized process will ensure that you are doing the right thing all the time.

There is, however, no one perfect process for all businesses. You will have to learn which process works best for you. Furthermore, no one process will forever be effective so you will need to continuously work on improving the current process you follow. This will ensure that requirements and challenges that were not present before will be dealt with, and will help keep your business running smoothly.

Some ways for you to improve your process to make it future-ready are the following:

• •    Be innovative

• •    Invest in technology that will promote efficiency

• •    Interact and communicate with your customers

Use Video for future online communication

Video is considered as the future of online communication, and this makes absolute sense. As one of the most famous clichés goes, “a picture tells a thousand words”. Video, which is basically a collection of innumerable pictures, will tell you even more.

Videos serve as amazing communication tools. Not only do videos command more attention than plain words or simple images, but they also capitalize on the power of the movement that pictures cannot provide.

In e-commerce, one of the biggest challenges is how to make products appeal to the senses. The best that online retailers can provide is a video. At the core of it, reading specifications and features is so troublesome, and leave a lot to the imagination. Videos give room for talking about the product but with more feel to it.

Studies also show that videos help attract new customers and increase conversions. Therefore, using videos should be a must in the future.

Spread unique, quality driven, and relevant content

Content is the best weapon for marketing, especially for online businesses. The lack of experience in shopping online should be fed by coming across quality content, giving an online shopper confidence in buying a certain product you have for sale.

Quality content, however, is worthless if this does not reach the target audience. There are many different channels that an online retailer should tap in order to reach as many potential customers as possible. There are a number of channels being used for disseminating content, and Facebook is one of the most widely-used, and we assume that you do that too. If you don’t then you should start there now. But for the Future, try your best to tap as much of the following channels:

• •    YouTube

• •    Instagram

• •    Tumblr

• •    Guest blogging

• •    Email campaigns

• •    Apps

Use more social media tools

Marketing in social networking sites is fairly fundamental. As we mentioned above, Facebook advertising is a basic requirement. Sadly, some online retailers fail to employ social networking effectively.

This Year, make sure you do the following to level up your social media marketing:

• •    On your product pages, make use of share plug-ins. The power of social networking sites is the number of potential views that your content can have. This is multiplied when a user shares your content. This being said, equip your product pages with sharing capability.

• •    Offer to sign up using social media accounts. Shoppers find that signing up is much of a hassle. Provide a shortcut by allowing them to sign up using their social media accounts. Signing up via Facebook is quite commonplace nowadays.

• •    Feature products that are trending online. People love to know what’s trending. Something that is liked by many is bound to pique the interest of others, and it also serves as a testament in itself that a certain product is good. It is then a good idea to highlight products that are trending so that even more would talk about these, and hopefully buy.

Confidently face the Future with a more effective campaign

We’ve learned over the years that trends in e-commerce will continue to change. Our tips above will help you face the Future more confidently because you will be armed with a more effective campaign.