According to industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB, the e-commerce industry is growing at an outstanding rate in India and is expected to nearly double to Rs 2 lakh crore in 2016.
The festive season is considered to be the most important part of the year for online businesses. While there are festivals throughout the year in India, the October to December time period is widely considered the festive sales period, with major festivals like Dussehra, Diwali and Christmas falling in this period.
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To reap maximum profits during the shopping season, e-retailers need to arm themselves with the best ammunition. Betaout, a customer intelligence and marketing automation platform for e-commerce companies, has identified essential tricks that can help e-tailers maximise sales this holiday season:
- Increasing Conversion Rates: E-retailers should take every possible measure to increase conversion rate, rather than simply attracting traffic. This can be achieved by optimizing product pages, designing effective landing pages, minimise shopping cart abandonment rates, and finally, optimizing the checkout process.
- Optimize site for Mobile Experience: m-commerce is on the rise; more and more people are using mobile devices to search and shop online. Stats suggest that retail purchases conducted on the smartphone will have doubled in 2017, as compared to 2013. Therefore, responsive site design is not merely a requirement, but a necessity for every e-commerce site. Stats also suggest that 78% of mobile device users claim that the “look and feel” of a company’s mobile site has a huge impact on their decision to make a purchase from it. E-commerce sites which are not optimizing for these shoppers are surely missing out a lot of potential sales.
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- Real-time personalization: Nearly three-fourths of the online consumers get frustrated with websites when content (e.g. offers, ads, promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests. According to a consumer survey conducted by MyBuys, 40 percent of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels. Therefore, to win prospective customers and to improve customer intelligence, e-retailers need to provide the customers with a shopping experience customized to what they are looking to buy.
- Underestimating the Power of Social Media: According to a recent stat, 93 per cent of purchases start as online search on search engines, and 68 per cent of consumers check out companies on social networking sites before buying. Therefore, an effective social media strategy is key to increasing your customer base by creating brand awareness, and building a loyal social media community. Besides, social media is also an important customer service strategy for e-commerce companies. Customers expect prompt response on social media and are using it as a medium to give instant feedback.
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- Leveraging the Power of Happy Holiday Visuals: Last but not least, e-retailers should spruce-up emails with holiday imagery and videos, and keep them short & sweet. Visuals are incredibly important for an e-commerce site. Customers can’t touch and feel the product when they shop online, which makes it extremely essential to have high quality product images and videos to aid decision making. A comScore study revealed that when video was included in the shopping experience, visitors were 64 per cent more likely to purchase than without it. They also stayed on the site for an additional 2 minutes.
“We are edging closer to the biggest shopping season of the year. It is a make or break period, during which an online retailer generates a significant part of their annual revenue, as high as 40%. We believe that by leveraging the above consumer behaviour trends, e-tailers can pivot their e-commerce strategies and take advantage of the festive spirit by staying aggressive right up until the New Year,” said Co-founder and CEO, Ankit Maheshwari.
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