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How Much Does it Cost to Start an eCommerce Website from Scratch?

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Sourced from Boss Magazine

Setting up any website has costs to take into account, and this is particularly true if you’re aiming to enter the eCommerce marketplace.

So what can you expect to spend to turn your shopping site from a concept to a tangible, transactional service that’s ready to welcome its first customers?

Considering platform costs

Almost no eCommerce site on the market today runs on its own platform developed in-house. This is because there are tons of robust, affordable and well-established solutions out there already to act as the foundation.

Of course each platform has its perks and pitfalls, as well as targeting different types of business users. For example, there are all-in-one solutions like Shopify which offer several tiers of license suited to everyone from individual sellers to large businesses, with prices starting at $10 to $20 per month and rising to $2,000 or more for enterprise grade setups.

Then there are open source platforms like Magento, which don’t come with licensing costs, but do require that you take charge of every other element involved in building a site around them.

Calculating Magento pricing is therefore a bit more complicated, but does provide more flexibility than the proprietary alternatives.

Handling hosting costs

There are two main aspects of web hosting which cost you cash; the storage of the data that makes up your site, and the domain name which represents it and by which customers can find it in their browser of choice.

Again, the platform you pick can influence this, with the all-encompassing services often coming with a hosting package built in with the other aspects of a bundle. However, you can choose a third party host instead, and it’s usually best to combine hosting and domain name costs together.

What you’ll pay for hosting is not just down to the provider, but the size of your site and the amount of traffic it receives. A basic deal for a small site can come with hosting costs of under $100 annually, while a sprawling site with hundreds of product pages and millions of monthly visitors might require a hosting spend of $10,000 or more each year.

Breaking down site building costs

If you have a shoestring budget and you want to launch an eCommerce site, using a basic site builder and relying on standard templates is sensible, as this could be free at best, or cost you a couple of hundred bucks at worst.

If you want to let a professional handle this, then your choice is between a freelance web designer, or a dedicated agency.

Freelancers will be more affordable, but might have longer lead times to contend with. Agencies will eat into more of your budget, but will have the peoplepower to get a project off the ground quicker.

Outsourcing the design and construction of your site could cost less than $1,000, but it’s better to be more realistic and expect a spend of $3,000+ if you are serious about making this business venture work.

Exploring marketing & more

There are lots of ways to market a shopping site, from SEO tweaks that help it to become organically discoverable on search engines, to social media campaigns which focus on platforms that are right for your brand and audience.

Costs here are just as variable as elsewhere, depending on whether you choose to do the hard work yourself, or pay someone else to tackle it in your place.

All of this means that you need to have a realistic budget to start off with, and cost out every aspect of your eCommerce site before you spend any money, to avoid nasty surprises.

Sourced from Boss Magazine

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The messy middle and infinite choice: hacking the complex new consumer journey

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By Annie Little

With the Covid-19 pandemic transforming shopping habits, journey orchestration matters now more than ever before. Digital commerce has shifted the journey stage balance. Annie Little, strategy director at agency Initials, asks whether there is, now, such thing as ‘the’ consumer journey for any given category and explains the complex maze of touchpoints that brands must carefully navigate.

The stakes have never been higher.

Brands need to get a firm grip on how the consumer journey has evolved and update traditional linear purchase funnels from their marketing agenda as a strategic priority.

Here, we’ll look at the evolution of the purchasing journey, the impact this has on consumer behaviour, and how to ensure that (in a sea of endless consumer choice) your brand gets chosen first.

Decision paralysis

The ease with which consumers can access product information has changed the landscape forever.

Gone are the days of a linear purchase journey. With more options and far greater accessibility than ever before, consumers today are spoiled for choice.

While this new world offers countless benefits for brands and retailers, it also adds a new layer of complexity to consumer decision-making. When this complexity reaches a tipping point, it can spiral into ‘decision paralysis’: too much choice, too many options, too hard to decide.

Such an overwhelming wealth of information for consumers to wade through has done the opposite of streamlining the consumer journey. In many ways, these extra touchpoints and decision-factors have created a more complex and cumbersome path to purchase.

A new model for the consumer journey

Some of the savviest brands and retailers have quickly pivoted their consumer engagement strategies, adopting prevailing shoppable touchpoints to remove any immediate friction or pain points for their target audience.

Creating a high-converting omnichannel purchase journey can’t be a checkbox exercise. A more holistic and strategic approach is required, spanning the entire consumer journey and incorporating reciprocal actions at every experience encounter.

This requires, first, an understanding of how the consumer journey has evolved; and, second, insight into how consumers are navigating their way through it.

Let’s start with the former. The ‘messy middle’, coined by Google, is a space of abundant choice and unlimited content. Here, consumers explore and evaluate product information, research brands, and weigh up their options. This is happening across an ever-expanding digital ecosystem, from online channels to social media to search engines, aggregators, review website and much more.

This exposure is not a stage or step in the buying process, but an ‘always-on’ experience. Consumers will traverse the loop between exploration and evaluation many times before making a purchasing decision.

So, how can brands show up at the right moment and win consumer preference?

How to address cognitive biases and win consumer preference

While the initial trigger and purchasing moments still stand in today’s journey, the middle area between the trigger and purchase has become messy and complex.

Due to the constant bombardment that consumers now face, they are turning to a range of coping mechanisms (including cognitive biases) to shortcut indecision and make purchase conclusions.

Cognitive biases are often a result of the brain’s attempt to simplify information processing. In this case, they help consumers make sense of the world and reach decisions with relative speed.

These cognitive biases shape shopping behaviour and influence why we choose one product over another.

By responding to the cognitive biases at play intelligently, responsibly, and at the right moment in the consumer journey, brands can effectively shorten the gap between trigger and purchase and emerge victorious at the point of conversion.

But how do brands pinpoint which biases are at play during a typical purchase journey in their category?

At Initials, we’ve developed a strategic model to help brands hack the consumer journey and win the moments that matter. Since the path to purchase is no longer linear, we can’t afford to think in linear terms.

Our Consumer Journey Hacker is a data-driven and behavioural science-based strategy that helps brands plan for the right stimuli that will impact buyers in key moments.

Understanding behavioural biases does more than just increase advertising effectiveness; it can encourage a deeper psychological understanding of consumers and their cultural norms and nuances. It can inspire new business strategies and products.

These behavioural science principles (and the behavioural and informational needs they align with) are powerful tools for winning and defending consumer preference in the new complex consumer journey.

The goal is close the gap between trigger and purchase. This means consumers spend less time exposed to competitor brands and transition to your basket faster and with greater confidence.

In a sea of overwhelming choice, this is how your brand can emerge victorious.

By Annie Little

Sourced from The Drum

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New Retail Realities: Why Do People Still Shop At Stores?

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Ecommerce is still gaining. Yet there’s evidence that people are tiring of it, too, with foot traffic rising at brick-and-mortar stores.

That means people in retail design are constantly asking themselves this question: In an age when you can buy anything online, what are people looking for when they go to a physical store?

President of TracyLocke agency Tina Manikas, with a long track record in retail, has some answers.

Marketing Daily: Let’s start with why experiential retail is so important right now.

Tina Manikas: It’s driven by this overall shift toward ecommerce, especially in the last 18 months. There’s been a big improvement in how useful technology is. The tech is better, and people are more open to embracing it. And that’s driving expectations. We now expect all the convenience of online shopping in our offline shopping trips.

Marketing Daily:  Ecommerce will always win on speed, as well as selection. So what can stores do to compete?

Manikas: There’s plenty. Stores can be more exciting and entertaining. They can be more inspiring and educational. Experiential retail has now risen to a higher level because stores are being redefined. And it’s especially important now because, after so many months of shopping less, there is a pent-up demand for new experiences.

Marketing Daily: Also, at its best, ecommerce comes down to a few clicks — and that’s boring. That’s especially true when I can buy the same sneaker from a dozen websites, including Nike. How can retailers use physical stores to sharpen the science of their own branding?

Manikas: For some retailers, the store and the brand are the same things, like Apple or Ralph Lauren. But many retailers sell many different brands, often even store brands. So it comes down to not just the sale of a product, but a product and a service.

The question is how that product and service combine to strengthen what’s unique about both brands. Besides just selling me the sneaker, how can that retailer teach me something about that particular shoe in a different way from other stores? How are you helping me make my decision?

Another experience element is personalization: What can you offer me to customize my purchase? Play into my areas of affinity?

That’s what makes in-store experiences potentially more interesting, getting people away from that simple “Click here, click here, check out” aspect of online shopping.

Marketing Daily: We’ve seen a lot of underperforming stores close. But we’ve also see many open. Levi’s is opening 100 new stores this year, and Warby Parker is expanding. Many previously all-digital brands are also opening more stores, like Allbirds.

Manikas: Yes, everyone put store plans on hold at the start of the pandemic. There was so much uncertainty. Now they’re going ahead with openings — although cautiously — for several reasons. One is for experimentation. Another is paying attention to the community. There is a resurgence of people caring about where they live, about staying local.

[Retailers are] also using these stores to explore ecommerce connectivity within store formats. It also makes sense to help fend off the impact of aggregators. If I buy a product online through a retailer, but Instacart delivers it, which brand will have the biggest impact on me?

And those D2C retailers are opening live locations to differentiate themselves from digital competitors and raise awareness in different target audiences or geography.

Everybody’s fighting for attention. You can win the battle for attention, and drive that back to the brand with compelling commerce.

Marketing Daily: What are some other ways to make shopping feel different?

Manikas: Social commerce. It’s starting to serve as a bridge that provides both inspiration experience and immediate ways to buy.

Marketing Daily: What stores do you think are doing this well? Where do you like to shop?

Manikas: I love Nordstrom. It’s had the jump on everyone by combining and turbocharging service with products. So not only does it curate something new, but it’s got that service mentality, both on and offline.

I also like the rise of Restoration Hardware. You can design things online quickly, and it also sells high-end furniture. And I think what’s happening in the resale market is interesting, especially in the physical locations of The RealReal, which resells designer clothing.

Marketing Daily: What’s your best advice to companies considering going into physical retail?

Manikas: Know what you’re trying to sell and what your purpose is. Experiment online first, and test interest. Then move into pop-up stores before investing in a physical location. That way, you can fine-tune your brand before investing in physical spaces.

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@mahoney_sarah

Sourced from MediaPost

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Top 10 eCommerce Reports Every Store Owner Should Follow For A Successful Business

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Sourced from FINCYTE

Every venture, whether an eCommerce store, a specialized blog, a portfolio website, or a company’s official website, needs analytics.

Finding the appropriate eCommerce reports and learning about your customers might mean the difference between steady growth and exploding earnings. However, having an inexhaustible supply of good data to mine can be a challenge.

ECommerce reports provide vital data that allows you to make informed business decisions about how to increase sales and revenue while enhancing the customer experience.

Importance of Regular Monitoring in e-Commerce Business

eCommerce Reports

Depending on the type of your subscription, Shopify, Magento, or Woo Commerce all feature a wide selection of reports, ranging from conventional overview dashboards to more granular reports. You can’t keep track of every other eCommerce report on the marketplace. This just dilutes important information, which can easily escape your sight.

So, to help you avoid this problem, we’ve compiled a list of the most crucial eCommerce reports that you should be monitoring. To demonstrate how you can unlock and exploit the full potential of your eCommerce store data, let’s start with the reports provided in the standard Shopify subscription.

1. Overview Dashboard

The report allows users to compare data and identify patterns all in one place. By clicking the “Compare to previous dates” option and selecting the dimensions for comparison, the data can be compared to a specific period or the same date range from the previous year.

You may also see the number of sales made in each of your point-of-sale locations, also the number of sales looked after by each member of the staff, if any.

The overview dashboard makes it simple to see which traffic sources are most effective, how your marketing efforts are going, and what your current repeat customer rate is, so you can act on this information and consider retention methods.

2. Finance Reports

This report summarizes your sales, payments, liabilities, and gross profit. It organizes your sales and returns, as well as the taxes you must pay, to make book keeping easier for you. You can select the period that you need and download the data in a spreadsheet for that month or quarter.

You can also customize the reports by adding or removing metrics, dimensions, and filters to meet your individual needs. If an order has multiple commodities, each commodity appears in the report as a distinct sale or return. The same can be said about shipping expenses. The specifics of an order become available when you click on the order number.

3. Product Analytics

Product analytics reports show you how different products in your portfolio have performed over the last 90 days. This way, you can learn who is buying what, which sources drive the most sales for a specific product, and more about the company’s past performance.

  • Net sales: This value is derived by multiplying the price of each commodity unit by the total number of unit sold, minus the discounts and returns; it can then be compared to the preceding 90-day period’s net sales value.
  • Breakdown of sales: This is the breakdown of all the values that result in net sales when added together.
  • Net sales by channel: The channels that account for the majority of a given product’s net sales.
  • Customers: The percent of customers who made their first purchase from your store versus those who had previously made at least one purchase.

4. Marketing Reports

Only the Sessions Attributed to Marketing report is available on the Shopify Basic package. This report shows number of people that visited your store as a result of marketing initiatives like UTM campaigns, Google ads, social network ads. Google Analytics must still be used to track marketing campaigns, and Shopify gives instructions on how to do so.

5. Behaviour Reports

Knowing your customers’ behaviour opens up a plethora of opportunities for optimization, retention strategies, and marketing tactic improvement.

  • Online store conversion over time: It displays the percentage of visitors who made a purchase on your website during a specific timeframe; You can choose a timeframe and then see the sessions that occurred during that timeframe, out of these sessions, how many of them led a product to the cart, you can see how many of them led to the checkout page; finally, out of the sessions where the checkout was completed.
  • Online store speed: This is crucial for the customer experience, but it is also a criterion that Google considers when deciding how to index and rank web pages.
  • Online store searches: This shows you which terms your customers used to search for a product on your online store the most frequently. Use these to update the name and description of the products if necessary, so that your customers can find what they’re looking for more easily. This report assists you in understanding the specific terms that customers enter in the search bar. Furthermore, they may reflect trends in search query trends on search engines, making this report an excellent resource for search engine optimization. If you notice repeating patterns, you can use these terms in your ads as well.
  • Sessions by landing pages: In this report, your see on which page your website’s sessions begin.
  • Sessions by device: This report displays the devices that were used to access your website. The Overview Dashboard also includes the Sessions by landing page and Sessions by device reports.

6. Acquisition Reports

The acquisition reports track sessions over time, sessions by referrer (how users arrived at your store: directly, through search, or through a referral; this metric is also included in the overview dashboard, but the Session by referrer report provides more detailed information and insights), and sessions by location.

It’s crucial to know where the visitors are coming from so you can better target potential new customers. If we see the number of session over time, this is a critical metric to consider when analysing the overall performance of your eCommerce store: are you getting enough visitors? Are you keeping up with industry standards?

7. Inventory Reports

The inventory reports may come in handy at the end of the month because this can be the reference of the inventory and track the quantity and percentage of stock units sold each day.

  • Month-end inventory: shows how many of each product variant you had on hand at the end of each month
  • Average inventory sold per day: shows the average number of product variants sold per day over the selected time period
  • Percentage of inventory sold: the percentage of the product variant sold during the chosen period as a percentage of the total starting quantity
  • ABC analysis by product: A-grade, B-Grade, C-grade where A represents the source of 80% of your revenue, B represents the next 15% and C represents the last 5% of your revenue.

8. Live View

Who wouldn’t want to know what’s going on with their eCommerce store’s website in real time? Shopify users can get real-time insights from all over the world with live view. There are two kinds of dots on the map: white ones and orange ones.

The white dots represent a recent session, while the orange dots represent recent sales. The dots pulsate constantly and then fade away after a certain amount of time. Every 10 minutes, Live View will display a visual representation of your customers’ behavior during the checkout process. This type of visualization is especially important during peak times like the holiday season or Black Friday.

  • Visitors right now: shows how many visitors have viewed a page, clicked a button, added something to their cart, etc. in the last 5 minutes on your online store; to be active, the visitor must engage in some way with your website- view a page, click a button, add something to their cart, etc. Note that this number may differ from what you see in Google Analytics because Google does not disclose the mechanism by which they estimate the real-time visitor count.
  • Today’s total: shows all of the current day’s sessions, orders, and sales. The count begins again at midnight in the time zone of your store. The total value of sales is calculated by adding gross sales, discounts, refunds, shipping, and taxes to purchases placed on your web store and through other sales channels since midnight.
  • Real time page views: indicates how many pages of your website have been viewed by visitors in the last 10 minutes; each bar represents the number of page views for a 1-minute time unit; the last bar represents page views in the current minute.

9. Sales by billing country

This report will show you which countries contribute the most to revenue. The data can assist you in deciding where to invest in new markets.

You can even dive down into a country to observe which provinces or states perform better in terms of future ad targeting.

10. Sales tax reports

You’ll very certainly have to pay sales taxes on anything you sell, regardless of what you sell or where you sell it. The methods of taxation vary depending on where your consumers are located.

However, they are also determined by the volume of sales in each destination. When it comes to setting up your store, make sure to seek advice from a certified financial specialist.

You may focus on improving all of the crucial components of building an online store by tracking these Ecommerce reports. Make it a habit to review the data on your eCommerce dashboard on a weekly or monthly basis and make informed decisions based on it.

By Ekta Patel

Ekta Patel is a technical writer and digital marketer at Selected Firms – detailed analysis of top IT, mobile, web, digital marketing and E-commerce development companies. Skilled digital Marketer with 7 Years of experience in eCommerce SEO marketing, Google AdWords, and social media content building. Successfully increased organic traffic by 70% for small and medium sized businesses in the eCommerce sector. Has also built content for the company websites/apps, blog and case studies. Has profound experience in working for IT organizations and is responsible for introducing the latest eCommerce trends to the team.

Sourced from FINCYTE

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The future of marketing is building a privacy-safe world

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By Benjamin Poole

“Privacy regulations, e-commerce integration, customer data platforms, and better ROI optimization enabled by smarter marketing analytics” will be some of the leading trends going forward, according to Ben Poole, head of office of Singapore-based data company Fifty-Five.

Brands are finding themselves in very uncertain business environments, as there is a move towards the post-pandemic new normal. As already experienced, the decisions being made today will chart the journey to the future of digital marketing, and impact long-term successes. Here are some trends that will impact the digital marketing landscape of the present and the future.

Consumer data privacy will reshape digital marketing

Cookies and other available trackers will continue to be compromised by the ‘triple cookie restriction’: legal (GDPR, PDPA); technical (browsers and operating systems); and behavioural (ad blockers and cookie notice blockers). Consumer data privacy is a key concern for regulators and consumers alike, as more turn to online services and platforms to fulfil day-to-day functions. Data privacy regulations are fast evolving in Southeast Asia. For example, Singapore and Thailand have already implemented PDPA (personal data protection act) regulations that comprise requirements governing the collection, use, and care of personal data which protects consumer data privacy.

In 2022 and beyond, countries in Southeast Asia are expected to seek tougher approaches to data regulations. These data privacy enhancements are already leading to a major shift across advertising platforms to develop consent-based solutions. Meanwhile, the ‘walled gardens’ such as social platforms like Google, Facebook, and e-commerce like Lazada will seek to strengthen their hand with first-party data, while the rest of the open web will come to rely more and more on contextually driven targeting solutions.

With the increasing shift to first-party data and modelization, media measurement and activation teams will increasingly employ data compliance experts and data scientists to ensure data safety, data quality, and data actionability. The securing of data, renewal of measurement and targeting approaches, and deployment of a ‘watch-and-innovate’ mindset will become ever more important in 2022.

Ecommerce will change how brands organize themselves and their data

The pandemic has accelerated Southeast Asia’s digital commerce transformation. By the end of 2021, there will be 350 million digital consumers in this region, of which almost 80% of consumers will have gone digital, according to Facebook’s Annual Digital Consumer Report.

In 2022 and beyond, many digital habits learned in the last few months will persist, including e-commerce and grocery shopping – which have seen the most profound change with almost half of all digital consumers in Southeast Asia now shopping online for daily necessities.

The divergence of media investments across digital platforms (Google, Facebook, TikTok) and marketplaces (Lazada, Shopee, Amazon, Tokopedia), has led to increased data and organizational silos, creating challenges around accurately measuring and optimizing digital marketing budgets.

Brands will reorganize to integrate digital media and e-commerce teams while rethinking their data architecture to take into account this increased investment into new e-retail platforms.

The future will be about a unified customer view

As Southeast Asia continues to see a transformation in online user behaviour and digital commerce, marketing investments have diversified across various platforms, leading to data silos that prevent digital marketers from seeing a complete view of customers and their buying journeys.

The customer data platform (CDP) promises to reconcile all channels’ first-party data in a privacy-compliant manner. The CDP creates a more complete view of each customer by capturing data from multiple systems, linking information related to the same customer, and storing the information to track behaviour over time. It contains personal identifiers used to target marketing messages and track individual-level marketing results.

The real question then would be: will all marketers need a CDP? Not necessarily, as there are currently more than 10 technologies such as Google Cloud Platform, that have features that overlap with a CDP existing in the market today that can achieve similar results.

Therefore, when choosing to acquire a CDP, the marketer must first determine if they have access to a large amount of individual-level data to learn how to achieve a higher level of data granularity. Marketers should also consider whether they have the in-house skills necessary to deploy a CDP, whether that be an IT team or knowledgeable marketing technologist.

Evolving shape of brand engagement backed by digital analytics

The future of digital marketing analytics technology is bright. New and improved tech such as Google Analytics 4 will represent a new paradigm in digital analytics. Digital marketers will look forward to more in-depth marketing analytics and e-commerce reports, which will provide the opportunity to create enriched customer journeys that are multi-screen and multi-device.

Expect to see cross-platform material benefits (consistent metrics and dimensions, for integrated reporting across web and app); flexible and efficient (faster event modelling for more granular and flexible analysis); more visual (ad-hoc analysis and improved data visualization for a deeper understanding of your users); more intelligent (machine learning capabilities that automatically surface insights, anomalies and predictions).

A new era in digital marketing beckons, driven by evolving data privacy, emerging consumer behaviours, and technology solutions that will help the modern marketer craft privacy safe, superior customer experiences – all driven by data. The securing of compliant data, the design of new media measurement and activation methods, and keeping a ‘watch-and-innovate’ mindset towards regulatory and platform privacy changes, will be key to succeeding in 2022 and beyond.

The future would be about unlocking the potential of these advanced analytics to give digital marketers more user-centric insights, with a much deeper understanding of individual customer journeys, and how to improve them for better business results.

By Benjamin Poole

Ben Poole is head of office of Singapore-based data company Fifty-Five.

Sourced from The Drum

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The 4 Biggest Misconceptions About Selling On Amazon

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Like it or not, it’s the king of ecommerce. Here’s how to win selling on Amazon.

Selling and advertising successfully on Amazon takes time, energy and specific knowledge of Amazon’s SEO and keyword system. Because of the complicated nature of selling on Amazon, there are plenty of misconceptions out there that can derail your sales strategy and leave you far behind your competitors. We’ll dispel four of the most common misconceptions about selling on Amazon to help you get and stay on the right track.

1. Amazon is a passive “set it and forget it” sales channel

The biggest misconception about selling on Amazon is that you don’t need an active and dynamic sales strategy. The reality is that the Amazon marketplace is constantly changing. With a sea of other sellers all competing to sell similar products to the same customer base, you’ll need to remain competitive in order to stand out. This requires a thoughtful strategy that is precisely executed over a long period of time.

It’s critical to continuously monitor the different category and marketplace trends as well as the trends of your competitors and respond accordingly. Make sure you’re monitoring the effectiveness of your advertising strategy, as you’ll just be burning cash otherwise. Keep an eye on your operational KPIs to keep your account performance from declining. If you sit back and take your eye off the ball, don’t be surprised if you’re left in the dust.

2. Success on Amazon happens fast

Employing any sales and advertising strategy takes time and continuous effort. If you expect the orders to start pouring in as soon as you set up Brand Registry or begin your first PPC campaign, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. Success on Amazon takes time. The most successful brands on Amazon are the ones that execute a precise sales and advertising strategy over a long period of time.

Building reviews, ranking for keywords and fine-tuning your advertising strategy are all vital to boosting sales and growing your brand. But these things all take a long time. None of them happen right off the bat. However, if you’re willing to be patient and to play an active role in managing these factors over a sustained period, you will see meaningful results. Your brand awareness will skyrocket, you’ll earn customer trust, and you’ll soar through the search results.

3. My brand doesn’t need to advertise on Amazon

For better or for worse, Amazon is the king of ecommerce. It’s the most competitive marketplace in the world, so succeeding without advertising on Amazon isn’t really feasible. Advertising on Amazon was a luxury only a few years ago, but it has now become a necessity. The good news is that if you can navigate advertising on Amazon, then you’ll be able to make this ecommerce giant work for you.

The most successful brands on Amazon give their brand a paid competitive advantage by using sophisticated PPC strategies that are constantly evolving with the marketplace. This means gathering information on the marketplace by running ads for sustained periods of time with specific bids, budgets and targeting options. Once you’ve let the ads run for long enough, you’ll be able to determine the best bid for each keyword and create an optimal advertising strategy.

4. Amazon’s search algorithm is the same as Google’s

It’s common to think of Google when optimizing SEO for your brand, as the company has established itself as a giant among search engines. But Google’s search algorithm is not the same as Amazon’s. That means your SEO strategy is going to be entirely different. To master SEO for Amazon, you need to understand what shoppers are searching for. This means doing research on category and competitor keywords, which are specific to searches on Amazon. This will help you reach more customers as they type in their searches to Amazon’s search bar.

You’ll also need to optimize your Amazon copywriting to be indexed for Amazon’s algorithm. Your Amazon copywriting is the foundation of your listings, and when you invest in good copywriting, you can help your listing organically rank and index in Amazon’s algorithm.

At the same time, you want copywriting that is going to be more than just a jumble of keywords. The best Amazon copywriting contains the right keywords while simultaneously appealing to shoppers and compelling them to purchase your product.

Successfully growing and scaling your brand on Amazon is achievable if you have the proper knowledge of how to operate in the marketplace. If you maintain an active sales strategy and don’t fall prey to these misconceptions, you should be on track to sustainably grow your brand into a marketplace powerhouse.

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Nick Heethuis is an Amazon consultant, thought leader in marketplace ecommerce and the founder of TripleShot Marketing. He has helped established brands scale to new levels of sales and profitability on Amazon.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

 

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The Right Tools to Create Successful Social Media Videos That Convert for Ecommerce

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People depend on social platforms to connect with friends, watch videos, make online purchases, and more. As internet connectivity continues to penetrate the world, social media is now integrated into everyone’s daily lives. Also, these platforms are not just for posting content, they are powerful tools for ecommerce owners. As a result, you can now convert social media followers into your loyal customers with the right video marketing strategies. With the help of a video maker, you can create stunning videos that drive traffic, generate leads, create audience engagement, and increase your company’s bottom line.

Video Is Now More Important Than Ever

As of 2020, the number of online buyers is over 2 billion, which means one in four people all over the globe is an online shopper. And the majority of these buyers conduct online research before making their purchases.Take a look at these astounding figures below:

With these findings, it is clear that you have to leverage social media platforms to promote your business. For marketing to be effective, you need to send your messages to the right place, at the right time on the right channels. In today’s modern world, your clients hang out online. Since a large portion of your leads and customers use various social media apps daily, you need to be where they are if you don’t want to get crushed by your competition.

Gradually, people of the modern world are having reduced attention spans due to the technology that makes everything swift and easy. They don’t like reading lengthy blog articles without pictures. In the same token, a simple image is not sufficient enough to provide ample information. Hence, online users prefer to watch product review videos, how-tos, live demos, webinars, and the like. This is not surprising as videos convey more information using the least amount of time. It also assures better understanding because viewers utilize more senses with an audio-visual format.

The popularity of video content will continue to rise because moving messages prove to be more enticing and engaging. Most of all, viewers understand them better. Clearly, as an ecommerce owner, it is time for you to capitalize on the power of video content by using a video maker to create stunning videos that wow your audience.

What Is Social Media Video Marketing?

Social media video marketing combines two powerful approaches. First, video marketing is a noted strategy designed by marketing specialists to create and curate video content as a method of marketing goods or services to your target audience. It works by keeping viewers engaged with your brand, using an informative and entertaining format they love watching from start to finish. It is effective because video content is simple and easy to digest. It contains the power of words, the magic of images, and the beauty of sound in one remarkable marketing material.

The second component is social media marketing. This means you engage with the target audience using various social media platforms. Since everyone hangs out online, to the point of using their favorite platforms many times daily, it is no wonder why marketers believe you should focus heavily on social media to promote your ecommerce brand. Increasing your marketing efforts by using a video maker to craft stunning masterpieces for social media will allow you to increase your brand’s reach.

Remember, videos create more engagement as viewers prefer to watch them than read a huge chunk of boring text. Whether it’s to learn more about your product or just for pure entertainment, people will click that play button as long as you make compelling videos that resonate with them. For this reason, you need social media video marketing to capitalize on the popularity of social media apps and videos. You can create videos for the following social media platforms:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube

Lucky for you, you can utilize multiple types of videos for different social profiles. You can create a video on how you founded the company, product overviews, how-to guides, commercials, and more. For best results, you need to find out the specifications and limits of each platform so you can optimize the videos you create with your video maker.

Why Your Business Needs to Implement a Social Media Video Marketing Strategy

When you look around you, you will realize that your fiercest competitors already use social media. They don’t just post pictures, articles, and updates, but they rely on stunning video content to capture an elusive target market. If you don’t want to get left behind, you need to begin implementing a social video media video marketing strategy for your ecommerce business. Take a look at the top four reasons why you need to use social media videos for your brand.

1.   Video converts viewers into customers.

Video informs, persuades, and entertains, which is why they make the perfect material for converting leads into loyal clients. With the right video content, you can capture your target market’s attention and make a great first impression. The key is using the right hook, and following it up with amazing content that keeps them engaged and interested in what you have to say.

You can use videos to inform them of your products, make announcements, and show behind-the-scenes footage. When they see real faces behind your brand, they feel more affinity for your goods or services. Besides, videos assure engagement with your target market because it is the fastest way to learn information. Videos prove to be more interactive than articles. When everything is presented visually with sound, you can show people what you mean instead of merely telling them. As a result, clients become more inclined to connect with your brand. If you don’t use social media video marketing for your business, you lose out on a fantastic way to help your company grow.

2.   Video builds trust between you and your audience.

If you want to build trust, use videos to make it happen. Trust is a vital component for every business. Remember, customers will only buy your product if they feel they can trust your brand. To maintain your credibility, establish your authority, and build solid relationships with your clients, you need videos. This medium fosters trust because you can be transparent and honest. Take a look at what you can do with videos to bolster customer confidence in your brand:

  • Show what goes on in your factory.
  • Exhibit your company culture.
  • Showcase testimonials from happy clients.
  • Conduct product reviews or how-to guides.
  • Let your authenticity shine with interviews.

As you can see, using videos allows you to create various video content that can help amplify your brand in the eyes of the people who matter. Moreover, leveraging this content on your various social media profiles assure higher visibility because people are more likely to watch, react, and share a video than other content formats.

3.   Mobile users crave video.

Today, your competitors understand the power of videos and social media to make an impact on your audience. Besides, people of the modern world don’t just use smart TV screens or desktops to consume content. Since the advent of mobile technology, from smartphones to mobile data, your clients love consuming content anytime, anywhere. With the rise of Bluetooth earbuds, more people watch videos while on the go. You can often see everyone watching videos as they:

  • Go on with their daily commute.
  • Wait for appointments to start.
  • Relax at home after a long day.
  • Take a breather while at work.
  • Pass the time while using the elliptical in the gym.

The list above is not exhaustive, but as you can see, people can do so much with mobile videos. In today’s forward-thinking society, multitasking is the name of the game. In fact, even kids young as two-years-old have their own favorite YouTube channels. Hence, creating brand videos with a video maker and releasing them on your social media profile will help you generate more leads and entice more prospects for your business.

4.   Video is the best content for social media.

Video works best for social media because it receives the most engagement. People are more likely to watch a video than read an article or view a photo album. Right now, social media users are more inclined to give their likes, comments, and shares for video content.

Besides, people log into their social media profiles throughout the day. And whatever interesting tidbit they see, they quickly react as the various platforms make it easy for everyone to voice out their opinions. Thus, it is not surprising at all why videos hold a strong influence on the viewers. If you want to create leads and convert them into loyal clients, you need to start churning amazing videos for social media.

5 Types of Social Media Videos Perfect for Ecommerce

Videos dominate the social media arena because they catch the eye and prove to be more appealing than text or photo content. As a result, you need compelling videos to drive audience engagement. Doing so assures your ecommerce brand gains tons of visibility, by driving traffic to your website or increasing sales. Now, the most important question to ask, is what kind of video content must you post for social media? Take a look at the top five best video formats to include in your marketing strategy:

1.   About us videos.

A brand is typically just a name and a logo. If you want people to feel more invested in your brand, you have to offer them something more valuable. ‘About us’ videos work well because they do exactly as their name says. They tell your clients what your brand is all about. If you remain a faceless name, people will not care about your brand at all.

If you want to make an impact with your target customers, you need to tell your brand’s unique story. What sets you apart from the other companies who sell the same products or services that you do? Why should they buy things from you? When your customers understand your company’s mission and vision statement, they feel more invested in your brand.

Hence, they begin to trust you more. When you ingrain your brand into their lives, they see you as something they cannot live without. If you successfully build a relationship, they will patronize your products.  To illustrate, Bliss World does a great job sharing various clips on social media to inform the world about their cruelty-free and vegan skincare products. They use:

  • Behind the scenes videos
  • Employee closeups
  • Product manufacturing clips
  • Clients testimonials

2.   Product close-up.

Writing about the product, no matter how in-depth, will never bring the same satisfaction as seeing the product up close and personal. Seeing what you want to up-close makes you feel more confident in spending your hard-earned money. If you want your clients to see the details and nuances of your product, a close-up video is a must.

This allows you to take shots of your product from all possible angles. As a result, your clients won’t miss out on any important details. Sometimes, whatever questions they have on their head will be answered when you show them every intricacy of what you offer. For example, Solo Stove portable fire pit and single stoves did a great job by showing every angle of their unique gadget that’s specifically designed for adventure. Those people asking if this is worth it will get their answers when they see for themselves what a Solo Stove can do.

3.   Product overview.

A product overview offers so much more than a close-up. Apart from showing different angles of the product, you discuss its purpose, features, and pricing structure compared to the others in the market. You can also discuss where you distribute your product so clients know where to buy it. As an example, Natori always does a great job presenting product overviews of their sexy lingerie lines from sexy silk nighties to comfy cotton pajamas.

Take a look at the different types of content you can create for your product overview:

  • Informational: This video covers what your product is all about. It helps you establish authority because you share helpful information. If you want to make sure they buy your products, always have handy informational product overviews.
  • Tutorials: Tutorials or how-to videos are super popular because people want to know how to use your products. Since they’re spending a lot of money, showing them this demo overview inspires confidence in your brand. After all, this is better than just reading any instruction manual. You can even tie this up with industry-related content to make it more engaging.
  • User-Generated: Nothing beats user-generated content because these come from your various clients. These act as testimonials coming from users who are happy with your brand. Best of all, this doesn’t cost you anything, as you can ask the original content creator for permission to share the video.

4.   Messages from the founders.

Hearing from the founder who conceptualized the brand makes people feel at ease. Using this method is a great way to showcase your company culture. Apart from encouraging sales, it can recruit new employees. You can try the following video formats:

  • Announcements: Release new product information and sales announcement to entice clients to keep adding products to their carts.
  • Appreciation: Make a thank you video to show your appreciation for your customers’ loyalty.
  • Q&A: An interview format with the founder makes for an engaging video. It satisfies the need for information. You can announce on your social media profiles before you release the video and ask them what they like to know.
  • Live Videos: Nothing beats a live story when it comes to showing authenticity. You can do a live interview session with questions from the chatbot. Moreover, you can show event videos and actual store footage. This method is effective as you can interact in real-time.

5.   Explainer videos.

As the name of the video implies, this does a great job in providing explanations about your products or services. They are very effective because they showcase both audio and visual stimuli to explain complex information thoroughly. As a result, your viewers can understand what your brand is all about, removing confusion and mistrust.

The key to making an effective explainer video rests on the script. It serves as the strong foundation from which the entire concept is built. Hence, you need to draft a good script with an accompanying storyboard before shooting. With this helpful guide, editing your project using a video maker online becomes a breeze.  You can use this to explain anything you want, and they are effective when used in:

  • Landing page
  • Product page
  • Social media posts
  • Accompanying blog articles

Strategies for Social Media Video Marketing Campaigns

Creating a strategy is essential, as a goal without a plan remains a wish. You need to create a video marketing strategy for social media to further engage with the followers you’ve painstakingly built. This also assures that you can continue to attract new followers. To improve your result, remember to follow these basic rules:

1.   Know your audience.

This tried and tested concept is central to any marketing strategy, and it holds even more true for videos. Since you will use a lot of resources to create your videos, you need to get things right. If you don’t know your audience, you won’t know what topics to include in your content. You need to know them to understand how and where they consume their content. Hence, you must be familiar with your target audience’s pain points, needs, and wants. These details can guide you in making your marketing materials.

Remember, knowing your ideal customers helps you write touching scripts and select images that appeal to their emotions. When you touch their hearts, they feel more compelled to support your brand. Most importantly, they will most likely share, like, and comment on your video uploads, assuring an increase in brand awareness.

2.   Run tests.

Before releasing your videos, it would be highly beneficial to do test runs. It will save you from doing guesswork. For best results, conduct an FGD or focus group discussion with key interviewees who best represent your audience profile. Ask them what they think about your brand and what would work best for videos.

Later on, examine tests and analytics to gauge which among your videos gather the most attention. How many people watch a few seconds as opposed to watching the whole clip? Check your data to see which topics gathered the most engagement. Knowing these details can help you map your content. As a result, you can focus your resources on the topics that your audience love. At the same time, you can figure out what went wrong, allowing you to avoid these costly mistakes in the future.

3.   Fit their videos to their platform.

While YouTube reigns supreme in terms of videos,  you cannot discount that many people watch videos on Facebook Feed, Facebook Live, IGTV, IG Stories, TikTok, and Linkedin.  Thus, your videos must match the platform as they have various specifications. Take a look at the following examples below:

For YouTube:

  1. Always have a call to action at the end of your videos, to guide viewers on what to do.
  2. Though you can upload videos that are 12 hours long, the majority of your users are mobile so stick to 30 minutes or less.
  3. Create a custom thumbnail because people see this when they search for videos.

For Facebook:

  1. When users scroll through the newsfeed, videos will autoplay without sound; so make sure your image clips stand out and consider adding subtitles.
  2. Upload native content on Facebook so your viewers don’t bounce out of your profile to another page.
  3. Max of 240 minutes video with 10GB only.

For Instagram:

  1. Take note of IG’s 60-second time limit on the feed because it will cut off, while IG stories have a 15-second cutoff.
  2. Put the most important information first so in case they don’t watch on IG TV, they have heard what matters.
  3. Use the IG Loop, which continually plays your videos until the users scroll down, to create seamless clips that keep viewers engaged.

For Twitter:

  1. Videos autoplay on Twitter so try to make an impact right from the start.
  2. Use quality captions that keep viewers interested.
  3. Limit videos to 20 seconds or shorter as this is mostly a text-based platform.

For LinkedIn:

  1. Most users of the site are professionals so keep your content the same.
  2. Limit videos from 3 seconds to 10 minutes long, with a total file size of no more than 5GB.
  3. Vertical videos will look square on the newsfeed.

For Tiktok:

  1. Limit videos to 15 seconds.
  2. Longer videos up to 60 seconds must be four 15-second clips recorded natively on the app.
  3. Use compelling captions

If you want to get the right message across to your audience, you must keep the platform in mind. Otherwise, all your hard work crafting the video will be wasted.

Wrapping Up

If you want to increase client engagement levels, generate more prospects, and build trust in your ecommerce business, you need to start capitalizing on videos. Share these on your various social media profiles to stay connected with your loyal clients and possible leads. Remember, videos convert viewers into customers because they are more likely to buy your products if they see them. Most of all, your customers are on mobile and they crave videos. Finally, videos just prove to be the best content for social media and receive higher engagement than any other content format. As you can see, the success of your ecommerce brand hinges in part on a strong social media video marketing strategy. To stay ahead of your competition, you must rely on video content or your voice will get lost amid all the noises online.

By

Tom More is the CEO and founder of Promo.com, the leading video content creation platform for businesses.

Sourced from BIGCOMMERCE

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Live commerce is here and brands are upgrading. Is this retail’s next big leap?

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By Jhinuk Sen

We’ve seen retail undergo a series of changes and upgrades over the past two years. Before COVID-19 got us to stay in and shut down malls and markets, 85 per cent of all shopping used to happen offline. Forced into quarantine, retailers and brands did the best they could to adapt to a new world order where they had to transition to online for sales or perish.

Digitalisation became the new mantra. Consumers too, quite naturally, weren’t immune to this renewed digital push.

Many took to online shopping naturally. The younger generation had been buying things online for a while now, the elders followed suit gradually, but definitely. But many things were missing when it came to online shopping.

First and foremost, the experience. Pre-pandemic, going out to buy an outfit meant an evening out with friends or family – it was a social outing in most cases. It was all about consulting each other, speaking to the salespeople, trying to find the best deal, and visiting multiple shops until you found just what you were looking for.

Online shopping took all of it away by bombarding customers with a million discounts and offers, and consulting another person for the best suggestion got replaced with sending each other links. And while that’s exactly how things still stand, social commerce and live commerce has brought some action into a space that is cluttered and on the verge of becoming very boring.

Ask Paloumi Das. The 25-year-old, who works as head of content at the fabric retail outlet Cottons and Satins, is no stranger to online shopping and social commerce. Das has been shopping online for years now and the brand she works for has been juggling between ramping up their portfolio on Instagram – where they have about 65k followers – and directing interested users to their website or their brick-and-mortar stores in Delhi and Mumbai if and when feasible.

“I’ve been shopping online long enough to not be hassled when malls were shut down due to the pandemic. One barely needs to go out to buy anything nowadays and while that is very convenient, it is also quite boring,” Das said. She argues that social media has made it easy for consumers to buy something with a click of a button.

While it certainly is easy, but it has killed off the excitement of shopping. And at this point, consumers like Das feel frustrated being confined to this linear mode of shopping, where all it entails is sharing product links to friends so that they can decide what one can buy, and if not that, then after a bout of endless scrolling, chance upon something to buy it using a click of a button.

And this increasing frustration is slowly percolating into the brands as well. They too seem to be asking the same ubiquitous question: how do we liven things up?

The solution lies in the question itself. When social commerce has become mainstream, the next best bet is to go live.

What does ‘going live’ in shopping mean?

Live commerce, simply explained, is a real-time event where customers get a chance to bag some great deals and they also get to engage with other customers, and influencers, ask questions, etc., before they buy the product.

Live commerce is already a huge trend in China and globally people are starting to pay attention, as are the brands. Cartier hosted its first jewellery show on Taobao Live where they unveiled more than 400 timepieces and jewellery items. Kim Kardashian sold more than 15,000 bottles of her perfume in minutes, live.

Closer home, Myntra has taken its first step into the world of live commerce with M-Live. The company said during its announcement that this move is “likely to engage 50 per cent of its monthly active users” over the next few years, while currently, it engages about 20 per cent of them. The company aims to push out about 1,000 hours of video content per month.

M-Live is a real-time, interactive experience that can be found on the shopping app and is currently live. “M-Live is also the nearest to an expert-assisted offline shopping experience that is fully experienced online.

The core benefit is the users’ ability to get interactive descriptions of products independently curated by experts they can trust and identify with while getting instant advice on various aspects like styling, fitment, product quality, and material,” the company explained.

“With several concurrent users joining the live sessions, it also gives users the opportunity to shop as a community and benefit from the community’s knowledge, observations, questions, and comments, enabling a more confident shopping decision that is backed by social validation,” it added.

This community feeling is one of the core benefits of live commerce and the only one that effectively can recreate the social experience of being able to shop with friends and family.

Live commerce has other perks too. For example, it is the best way to publicise and optimise product launches, thematic sales (like Diwali or Black Friday sales) with the aid of celebrity interactions, product demos, and influencer videos. And another very significant feature that live commerce can optimise is impulse purchases.

To make the best of impulse purchases, all that apps, websites, and brands need to do is to embed a clickable layer that presents users with a shortcut to making the purchase fast and smoothly. The good news here – for brands looking to get on board with this – is that there are apps that can help you.

“Indians spend on average over five hours a day online with a large part of that time is dedicated to two activities: consuming content and shopping,” said Firework’s President of Global Business Jason Holland to Business Today. Holland’s company, Firework helps bring these two concepts together to help brands create live commerce experiences on their platforms.

“Global e-commerce growth accelerated dramatically as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. This, combined with recent forecasts that 82 per cent of global Internet traffic will be video by 2022, make the growth of live commerce in India seem practically inevitable. As a blend of two of Indian consumers’ favourite online activities – content consumption and e-commerce – livestream shopping is arguably the most important factor in the evolution of shopping, both in India and around the world,” Holland said.

Conceptually, all this sounds fair, but would it work in India as well as it did in China? Holland thinks it will.

“India has all the right ingredients to become one of the top three global leaders in livestream shopping, and it’s only a matter of time before it does,” he said. And Holland has data to back his belief.

He points out that according to Comscore’s data, online retail sales increased by 43 per cent over the first several months of the pandemic, from January to October of 2020. “And even now, long after the lockdowns ended, online retail sales still clock significantly higher. This suggests that COVID-19 has not only driven digital adoption in developing nations but has also accelerated digital maturity and established habits,” Holland pointed out.

“The responsibility now rests on brands to embrace live commerce and seize the massive opportunity to be among the first movers in these emerging markets,” he added. And Holland isn’t the only one to think this way.

Achint Setia – VP & Business Head – Social Commerce at Myntra – argues that livestream shopping is that perfect confluence of aspiration, on one hand, and innovation, on the other.

“We are always on the quest to build innovative fashion-tech shopping experiences for our customers that can strengthen our relationships with them by garnering higher trust, creating inspirational and immersive experiences while deeply engaging them.

Livestream shopping is the perfect fit for fashion and beauty shoppers as it blends both aspirational and informative content with commerce, it democratizes fashion, and is a convergence of many current trends, such as influencer-led shopping and social commerce,” he said.

So, what’s the best way forward for brands looking to step into the live commerce space?

“I think it is important for brands to embrace the change first. Brands need to understand that establishing a social media presence isn’t the best path to digital transformation. Additionally, with a significant share of shopping happening online, brands need to remember that competition is only a click away – which is a significant departure from brick-and-mortar retail. That heightened competition makes it incredibly important to offer a differentiated shopping experience – one that embodies the brand identity faithfully, while also delivering on the promise of entertainment,” Holland explained.

The most important factor for brands to succeed in this space is data.

With social media platforms that have incorporated more sophisticated e-commerce elements, businesses end up forfeiting all access to their first-party data, which is an invaluable resource for any brand.

If data is unavailable, that combined with very low engagement and conversion rates can lead to hugely inefficient marketing spends. Brands need to thus pick the right apps that give them access to all the numbers like Firework does so that they can understand their audience.

Live streaming and the influencer

The job of getting all this right lies with the brand – obviously. But there’s a massive lot that content creators and influencers can make off this as well, and short video apps are paying attention.

This year two short video apps, Moj and Bolo Live, ventured into live streaming, while Glance’s Roposo too took a step ahead and moved from live streaming and into live commerce.

“The next decade belongs to creator economy globally and live streaming influencers from India shall dominate the same. Just India is expected to see over a $300 million market for creator economy by 2023 end,” said Tanmai Paul, Chief Product Officer and Co-founder, Bolo Live.

Paul said that pivoting into live streaming from short videos has helped democratise monetisation opportunities for content creators by giving them opportunities beyond brand partnerships.

“Fan-to-creator microtransactions on Bolo Live has led to over 4x increase in creator earnings in just last six months. Already more than 18 live streamers are earning over Rs 1 lakh per month from our platform,” Paul added.

Influencers and content creators will play a significant role in live commerce and its proliferation in the retail space, at least for starters. Live commerce is an ecosystem that can benefit the brand, the content creator/influencer, and the customer, it is only a matter of time till everyone cashes in.

By Jhinuk Sen

Sourced from BusinessToday.In

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Relevance remains in retail as marketers juggle to balance physical and digital outlets

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By Olivia Atkins

The physical demise of high street clothing brand Topshop signalled the turn of the UK’s retail sector. As the flagship store closed in 2021, the physical became digital, and the brand was picked up by online retailer ASOS – a move demonstrating the appetite and continued willingness of UK consumers to shop virtually. As the rise of online shopping continues, how can marketers seize the digital opportunity? And is there a role for the physical store anymore?

In a panel discussion spearheading The Drum’s latest Deep Dive: The reinvention of retail and ecommerce, The Drum’s Olivia Atkins speaks with experts from VMLY&R COMMERCE and Heal’s on how to assess the changes in customer experiences; the technology pushing the sector forward; and how agencies and retailers can prepare for what lies ahead.

Brand purpose is here to stay

E-commerce in the UK grew by 46% last year as the pandemic forced stores to close, driving consumers online from the lockdown convenience of their homes.

“People who buy online now are used to buying online – they’ve adapted to the price and the convenience of it; and recognize the advantages of doing so,” said Debbie Ellison, global chief digital officer at VMLY&R COMMERCE, who believes these habits may be here to stay.

Online shopping saw many customers become more aware of their purchases and look into the purpose of the brands they’re buying from – a trend perpetuated by Gen Z.

Ellison recognizes the spending power of Gen Z and their influence in pushing retail trends forward. She suggests brands need to become more relevant to their audiences or risk seeming redundant.

She thinks, “retailers should respond to their shopper’s needs and communicate their brand purpose at shelf – whether that’s in a physical or digital space. In physical retail environments, marketers easily understand their local community and how to engage there. This same logic needs to be applied in the digital sphere.”

David Kohn, customer and e-commerce director at furniture retailer Heal’s, agrees: “Purpose is the single biggest social consumer trend that we’re seeing at the moment. In retail, that translates to being a brand that stands for something – whether that’s environmentalism, diversity or even quality design.”

Physical versus digital

Despite the surge in online shopping, retailers should work to embrace both virtual and physical spaces for their brand, as certain purchases may require prospective customers to shop in-person to get a sense of their desired products.

Ellison said: “Over the last year, there’s been a pent-up demand globally to get back in-store with consumers wanting to experience something special. Retailers will be listening to that and thinking how to differentiate their offerings across channels.”

The focus for retailers is to understand the role and purpose of every space they have. Ellison suggests that in-store offerings could feature more sensory experiences where the social aspect of shopping is considered along with how to improve the service and looking at how consumers interact. Technology also works to scale up connected experiences, by automating backend processes and improving the consumer’s experience.

Kohn adds: “Technology in-store can be useful for getting your consumers to imagine. At Heal’s, we try to bring them into our world and get them to visualize our products in their home.”

He’s excited about the prospect of incorporating new technology like virtual reality (VR) in stores, believing it will be a great device for reviving storytelling methods in retail.

Merging e-commerce with in-store

“We’ve all moved online; we’re all inspired and purchasing within milliseconds,” says Ellison. “But now that the gap between inspiration and purchase has converged, how is that going to translate into the physical retail space? How will creativity be brought through each touchpoint to deliver on both the emotional and functional aspects of buying?”

Despite this change in habitual consumer behaviour, Kohn suggests that retailers need to reassess how they use each space and set them up accordingly to ensure they cater to customer needs. He gives the example of Heals’ online in-store teams who work to connect customers online with relevant store team members.

“As a brand, you’ve got to think carefully about your customer’s purchase journey,” he says. “Try to understand where the customer fits in and what you can do to move them along that process. That’s where the fusion between in-store and online can come into being.”

It’s been a trying time for retailers but having a clear understanding of what consumers need and want from each space will only help brands to move more seamlessly between their online and physical offerings. Customers are already overwhelmed by the amount of choice available to them in the marketplace, so brands need to work hard to stand out.

“Selling products is not enough anymore,” said Kohn. “You’ve got to look at the wider needs of your customer and work towards fulfilling those.”

Ellison agrees and concludes: “Brands need to walk in their customers’ shoes and really look at how they will show up in a connected way across all their different channels.”

By Olivia Atkins

Sourced from The Drum

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Unlocking the virtual reality for the in-store shopping experience of the future

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By Stefano Hatfield

As brands and consumers seek a return to the physical retail space post Covid-19, the technology that has enabled ecommerce to fill the gap as stores were closed will play a vital role in the recovery of that same bricks-and-mortar retail. Shoppers, particularly in the UK, want a “connected shopping” experience.

The pandemic has obviously hit the UK high street, but shoppers are ready to return, particularly if the ease of online shopping is blended with the richness of the in-store experience. Some 40% of UK shoppers use their mobile in-store to look up more information on a product. And there is a huge increase (80%) among Gen X shoppers who say they will use augmented reality (AR) in shopping over the next five years.

These are the headline findings of a new report, ‘Future of Shopping’, based on a global survey of 20,000 shoppers by trends agency Foresight Factory, for Snap Inc. Technology, rather than sounding the death knell for bricks-and-mortar retail, has led to an irreversible shift to omnichannel that genuinely benefits both shoppers and retailers.

As we have seen over the past 18 months, when new technologies are built primarily around human behaviour, rather than imposed because of internal business needs, their impact can be positive. Yes, online shopping has disrupted bricks-and-mortar retail over the past two decades. However, technology has also helped retailers navigate the increasing overlap between online and physical environments, now a part of our lived experience.

The report reveals that consumers worldwide feel their shopping experience has been greatly enhanced by camera technology and accompanying digital innovations. It is clear that shoppers are keen to get back into stores, but they also want to keep all the advantages of technology when they return; for example, instant access to stock information or home delivery service.

Britons seem more wedded to online shopping, particularly for clothes, than others. Some 44% plan to do the majority of clothes shopping online, above the global average of 38%. Only 34% of Brits said buying in-store was their favoured method of shopping – compared with 43% globally. But nearly half (49%) of Brits missed the social aspect of shopping and more than half (51%) found the inability to try on products frustrating.

This desire to blend online and in-store highlights how vital the mobile phone has become across the shopper journey and explains why the new consumer habits forged in the pandemic are here to stay. However, consumers have missed the social component of physical shopping, so e-commerce advertisers need to greater humanize their brands online.

The report identified several other key takeaways:

Growth in e-commerce during Covid-19 will be sustained

81% of UK shoppers are expecting to do the same amount or more online shopping in the next 12 months compared to last year, with only 19% indicating they plan to do less.

A post-lockdown return to physical retail

Shoppers returning to store post-lockdown will seek the social and tactile experiences they have missed in the last year, albeit combined with the convenience and safety of shopping online. But bricks and mortar stores must act fast to ensure they do not lag behind shopper expectations.

Technology will drive shoppers into stores

Some 35% of global consumers would visit a store specifically if it had interactive virtual services such as a smart mirror that allowed them to try on clothes or makeup.

Mobile will connect brands and consumers across the shopper journey

One in three global consumers choose the mobile phone as their preferred shopping channel, and 50% of Generation Z and millennials say they never go shopping without using one. These trends will only continue, not least in the area of price comparison.

Virtual testing could accelerate e-commerce further

Some four in 10 consumers globally state that not being able to see, touch, and try out products puts them off online shopping. Retailers will therefore need to invest heavily in try-before-you-buy technology to help encourage purchase and reduce the potential need for returns, by enabling consumers to more tangibly engage with products.

Shoppers will demand widespread AR

Within five years we will see a 57% increase in Gen Z shoppers who use AR before buying. Significantly, 56% of consumers who have used AR when shopping claim it encouraged them to make a purchase. The mobile phone will be the core tool.

New technology could reduce the number of online items that are returned annually by up to 42%. The study estimates that the cost of online returns now amounts to around $7.5 billion each year – and £377m in the UK alone.

Resale platforms cement their position as a credible alternative

Four in 10 consumers globally have bought and sold something via resale platforms, which attract shoppers searching for cheaper prices and unique products. Second-hand goods no longer come with stigma, but are a more desirable, sustainable alternative. Retailers like Levi’s, Ikea and H&M are moving into the branded resale space.

The key trends identified above talk to the blurring of consumer needs and expectations across physical and digital shopping channels. They reflect shoppers’ primary demands (beyond pricing): convenience, social interaction and product testing.

Ed Couchman, general manager, UK, Nordics and DACH, at Snap Inc. says: “People thought the internet and technology was a threat to physical retail but this report clearly shows that those who harness the benefits of tech are best placed to thrive post pandemic. Shoppers want to read reviews, compare prices and try on items using AR – but they also enjoy the experience of going into a shop, speaking to staff, and looking at items. They want the best of both worlds.”

The ‘Future of Shopping: Global Report 2021’ from Snap is available here

By Stefano Hatfield

Sourced from The Drum

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