How To Improve Customer Engagement On Your E-Commerce Store

When designing your e-commerce site, remember that your purpose is to help users achieve their goal (purchase a product, read reviews, download a report, etc.) as quickly and efficiently as possible. Let’s look at some ways that we can create content that keeps readers on the site and engages them with your brand.

Do’s and Don’ts

When designing your website, focus on keeping it simple and easy to read. That means:

• Using grid-like layouts that focus the reader’s eye on what’s important

• Breaking up text into chunks that are easy to scan and help your visitors find what they are looking for

• Using graphics, images, audio, video, and interactive widgets to appeal to different types of visitors

• Using a minimum number of complementary colors that suit the brand and the audience

• Using fonts that are easy to read

• Creating a consistent structure that includes menus, categories, and search boxes

• Making sure that pages load quickly

• Building in ways for visitors to interact with you and each other

Use Dynamic Pages

Visitors and search engines love content that is new, fresh, and relevant. In addition to keeping your site up-to-date with new articles, posts, and product features, you can use dynamic page generation features in your website hosting suite to generate unique pages on the fly. Dynamic pages can also be customized per user to reflect products that they have looked at before or terms that they have searched for.

Leverage User-Generated Content

Another great way to engage users is to encourage them to create their own content. Some ways to do this include:

• Contests for user submissions (for example, a recipe website might have a contest for the best apple pie recipe)

• User forums

• Ability for users to leave comments on articles and posts, or to review products

• Guest bloggers

• Easy-to-use widgets that allow users to share your site on their social networks

Use Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design attempts to automatically optimize sites for all platforms, adjusting the resolution and display to create a better experience for the user based on o what type of device they are using. It uses the following tools to achieve this:

• Flexible grid-based layouts

• Flexible images and media

• Media queries (allowing the page to use different cascading style sheet layouts based on the device and browser that is being used)

Responsive web design is more technical, but it can give your e-commerce site wider accessibility and visibility. It is also usually more aesthetically pleasing and creates better engagement with visitors.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

E-commerce customers won’t be fooled, cajoled, or bullied into buying products. In order to be successful, you need to build relationships with customers to bring them to your site and to ensure that they will remember you when they are ready to buy.

Here are some of the techniques you can implement to help build relationships with your customers:

Building Credibility

The Internet is full of information, but it can be hard to know what’s valid and what’s not. Develop credibility on your site by writing in-depth articles, citing your sources, and linking to them. As well, share your expertise and credentials.

Be very careful when re-using content from other sites. Text, images, audio, and video presented on the Internet are usually copyrighted. Always get reprint permission in writing and cite the original source when re-posting content. Alternatively, share the relevant content right from the author using social media.

Positive Emotional Drivers

Successful e-commerce copy gives visitors a positive feeling about using the brand. It may also give a negative connotation about not using the brand.

Have you seen websites use phrases like this?

• Start feeling better today with our vitamin-rich meal replacement solution.

• Don’t be fooled by the other guys… get the real deal today.

• Make the smart choice!

• Help a child in need by donating today.

These are examples of emotional drivers that are designed to generate the most-wanted response. (Remember, the most-wanted response, or call to action, is the website’s goal. They might want visitors to donate to a charity, purchase a product, or download an e-book.)

Touchpoints

Give customers a way to make a human connection to the brand. One way to do this is to have audio, photos, and videos of the business owner, employees, and customers throughout the e-commerce site.

They might be talking about how they use the product, behind-the-scenes information about the company, or something relevant to the industry.

Social Selling

We tend to work with what works. We look at best sellers, best practices, and ideas that are endorsed by other people because if it works for them, it just might work for us. To leverage this online, e-commerce sites often show customers what their Facebook friends bought, or offer opportunities for customers to share their purchases on their social networks.

So there you have it, some of the best tips for improving customer engagement and increasing your conversion rate. If you enjoyed this blog post, feel free to like and share and come back regularly for future blogs posts.

If you have any questions or need help creating more engaging content for your eCommerce store, feel free to email us at info@swayvendigital.com and we'll be happy to assist!