eCommerce Events

The Future of Ecommerce for Marketing 2021

Discover Tactics and Tools to Grow Your Brand

Derric Haynie

Sep 13

mins

Mar 3, 2021

September 13, 2024 6:49

Can You Spot These 10 Trouble Issues in Your Own Site?

A talk by Anne Thomas, Co-Founder, Shop Critique

Overview: Why you should conduct a site audit, where to focus first, and how to spot the 10 most common mistakes merchants make when developing a website.

Summary: There are 10 major problem areas that tend to appear on merchant websites. The top three are:

Text in images

In many cases, images are difficult to read on mobile devices. They are also bad for search engines, especially if you don’t use alt text.

Large inventory, but no filters

More often than not, stores with large inventories don’t have search functionality that enables customers to filter by things like reviews, size, color, etc.

Vague product descriptions

Don’t repeat the same description on multiple items/products. Doing this makes it difficult for customers to compare products if they’re reading the same description in multiple places. You should also be sure to include relevant sizing information and dimensions, as well as bullet points to make your product pages easy for readers to scan. A great tool to help you do this is Copysmith.

Check out the full session video for details on the other 7 major issues that might be on your website.

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3 Customer Experience Trends to Use for Ecommerce Growth

A talk by Julia Whatley, Partner Manager, Gorgias

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Overview: Marketing research shows that customer experience is what matters most customer retention and lifetime value. Having a well-designed website or app no longer sets you apart from the competition, as the ease of opening an eCommerce store has increased competition, making it difficult to attract customers solely through product differentiation. This session shows you how eCommerce businesses can deliver exceptional customer experiences in the online marketplace with no traditional physical store or interaction.

Summary: Having a well-designed website or app no longer sets you apart from the competition, as the ease of opening an eCommerce store has increased competition, making it difficult to attract customers solely through product differentiation.

Rather, customers are now turning to eCommerce businesses that:

• Personalize experiences tailored to the shopper

• Provide integrated Omnichannel shopping experiences

• Offer top-quality customer support and fast, easy returns

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3 Tactics To Fast-Track 2021 Into A Record-Breaking Year

A talk by Nicholas Romaya, Head of Partnerships, Recart

Overview: Learn how Messenger can help you make the most out of this year with 3 tactics that will cut through the noise, grow your SMS and email list faster & cheaper, and maximize your most valuable assets: existing customers.

Summary: There are 3 pre-existing strategies that can help you turn 2021 into a record-breaking year if you use them correctly. They are:

Facebook Ads
Organic Posts
Pop-ups

Of all the Facebook ad options, messenger ads provide the most value. This is because they offer more touchpoints for you and your potential customers than traditional ads. Posts and pop-ups (namely, quizzes) are also great because they enable you to have real conversations and utilize exclusive offers.

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Maximize Conversions with a Strategic Approach to Live Chat

A talk by Jon Tucker, CEO, HelpFlow

Overview: Most stores think of live chat as a customer service cost center, but it can be a massive conversion driver to recover a big chunk of checkout abandons and drive even more conversions earlier in the purchase flow. In this session, Jon Tucker shares the strategies Helpflow has used to drive nearly $100M in live chat revenue for a wide range of stores

Summary: For every 100 customers who enter checkout on your website, 50 or more will abandon. 57% of those who abandon tend to do so on the payment page. But what about the other 43%? If you can predict those abandons before they happen, then you can save some of the revenue from those customers from leaking out. Live chat is the best way to do that. Here are 3 places where live chat fits in to drive conversions and reduce churn.

The Checkout Process: Look at your current site traffic and identify patterns of how and when people abandon. The main way to do that is to look at the changes in progress and velocity that customers show as they move through the checkout process. The longer a customer stays on a page, the more likely they are to abandon. If you can predict WHEN they’ll abandon, you can use live chat to engage with customers before they leave.

Product and category pages: Keep an eye out for customers who either look at categories without moving into product pages or who scroll through product pages without moving to checkout. This implies deep engagement in your products, but a likelihood to abandon the process without interference from your end.

Email flows - cart abandonment emails: More than likely, you’ve already set up abandoned cart email sequences. What you don’t know is that most people tend to abandon due to questions. To combat this, add live chat as a CTA in your abandon cart emails. This will enable customers to get answers to their questions in real-time.

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Tech Showcase: Route

A talk by Bar Bruhis, Partner Marketing, Route

Overview: Are you drowning in WISMO (where is my order) support tickets? Are you losing money from sending replacement products to customers who’ve reported lost or stolen items? There’s an app for that, and it’s completely free. Route offers shipping protection and tracking, and it gives both you and your customers peace of mind that their orders will arrive safely or be quickly replaced if lost or stolen. Check out this session to learn how.

Summary: Did you know that:

57% of customers report that retailers are mediocre at best when it comes to the final mile
98% of consumers say that shopping impacts brand loyalty
94% of customers blame the retailer after a delivery goes poorly

Couple those statistics with the fact that 50% of support tickets are “where is my order” questions, and you can start to see why, for some retailers, it makes sense to invest in shipping protection and order tracking for their customers. Unfortunately, that cost is typically handled by the retailer, which leads to higher internal costs and lower profit margins. Route does the opposite and puts the onus on the consumer to decide whether they want to invest in shipping protection. It does this in 4 parts.

Protect: Customers enjoy increased peace-of-mind at checkout knowing shipping and delivery issues will be resolved quickly.
Track: Customers receive proactive push notifications of their delivery status every step of the way.
Resolve: Customers are able to self-report lost, damaged, and stolen orders with just a few clicks. An automated approval process approves claims on the spot or redirects to a customer experience manager.
Engage: Personalized brand profiles organize all your customers’ orders while providing quick links to continue shopping on your website. Even better, there is a 26% CTR from the brand profile to the merchant’s website.

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Easy Data vs Meaningful Data: Understanding the Buying Process Instead of the Selling Process

A talk by Juliana Jackson (The CLV Lady), Chief Evangelist, Omniconvert

Overview: E-Commerce brands don’t really think about consumers when they are planning out their sales campaigns. They optimize for funnel and efficiency instead of thinking about how consumers want to make progress in their lives. Watch this session to understand more about the science behind buying psychology.

Summary: Are you pushing a customer-centric agenda or your own, personal agenda? Most companies know everything about their customers EXCEPT the reasons why they choose to purchase. Instead, these companies believe in the myth of impulse buying. What you really need to do is use qualitative data to understand the psychological reasons (JTBDs) people have for buying your products.

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Top 10 Deadly Mistakes for an Ecommerce in 2021

A talk by Fernando Angulo, Head of Communications, SEMrush

Overview: In this session, you’ll learn how to find and fix the most important errors in your e-commerce webpage. You’ll also learn how to write optimal content for your product pages and how to analyze a niche.

Summary: There are 10 major mistakes that eCommerce brands tend to make on their websites. Many of them have to do with your site structure and discoverability. To solve these issues, you’ll need to perform a website audit AT LEAST once per month, if not weekly. From there, you should troubleshoot for each issue at a page level, rather than at an overarching website level.

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Lessons from 514,719 Customer Conversations

A talk by Lisa Popovici, Co-founder and COO, Cartloop

Overview: Watch this session to learn why Conversational Marketing is the future, the best practices of conversational marketing, and the top reasons why shoppers are abandoning their shopping carts (and how to deal with it).

Summary: 88% of all orders are abandoned, and the biggest question facing any business owner is WHY. The best way to answer this question is to talk to your customers. They have the answers. Barring that, here are the top 6 reasons behind cart abandonment.

Payment-Related Issues
Unexpected Fees
Technical Issues
High Shipping Times
Trust Issues
Product-Related Information

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Do Good and Do Well: Cause Marketing 101

A talk by Savanah White, Head of Partner Success, ShoppingGives

Overview: The new generation of consumers is buying with their values and voting with their wallets. They are micro-philanthropists. They are agents of change. Watch this session to learn how to Lead with Values, Include your Customer, and measure your impact.

Summary: The new generation of consumers is buying with their values and voting with their wallets. To connect with them, you need to utilize the 3 power strategies to attain cause marketing success. They are:

Lead with values
Engage with your customers with social impact
Test cross-channel marketing

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Tech Showcase: levAR

A talk by Vik Bhaduri & Daniel Esrig, levAR

Overview: In this session, Vik Bhaduri and Daniel Esrig discuss 3D product modeling and its effects on your revenue, costs, and product engagement.

Summary: 3D product modeling has the potential to drive revenue, decrease costs, and increase product engagement. In fact, it’s been shown to increase conversions by 27%, cut return rates by 40%, and double the time potential customers spend reading product pages, which typically correlates with higher sales numbers. LevAR is a good solution to help you see those same results with your products. Watch the session to learn more.

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Influencer Livestreaming

A talk by Sarah Grosz, Head of Influencer Marketing, MuteSix

Overview: Check out this session to learn how to find the right influencer and drive revenue through live streaming.

Summary: Live streaming is a hot topic at the moment, but the reason why many brands take up live streaming isn’t always the same. There are actually 4 common reasons why a brand would want to live stream.

Drive awareness and consideration
Educate shoppers
Connect with customers in real-time
Make immediate purchasing decisions

Streaming platforms like AmazonLive, TikTok, Instagram Live, Popshop Live, and Clubhouse enable brands to connect with their customers one-on-one or through influencer partnerships.

Tech Showcase: Pencil Creative AI

A talk by James Chadwick, Co-founder and COO, Pencil

Overview: Learn how to use Creative AI (GPT-3) to turn any brand assets into Facebook ads that double your ROAS performance. Pencil generates batches of new ads in just a few minutes, and you can then directly export them to your FB account. The best part is it uses data from previous ads to improve itself every week. Explore the new frontier of machine-generated creative.

Summary: Paid advertising is a difficult marketing strategy to master. It requires brands to keep a variety of factors in mind if they want to generate a solid return on their ad spend. Pencil Creative helps you do that through AI technology that generates batches of new ads in minutes based on data from previous campaigns. This AI technology has been shown to:

26% - lower cost per action
15% lower cost per recall
13% lower cost per action intent
Winning assets developed through a process of testing

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2 Keys to Nailing Your Ecommerce Marketing Strategy: Email + Paid Ads

A talk by Lisa Ng, Director of Demand Gen and Digital Marketing, Springbot

Overview: Experts believe that the shift of commerce to online will happen long term, rather than for just a short period of time. To harness that change effectively, you’ll need to nail your eCommerce marketing strategy for email and paid advertising.

Summary: The past few years (2020 especially) have seen a massive shift from in-person purchasing to online. Experts believe this shift will happen long term, rather than just for a short time. Because of that, it’s become more important than ever for brands to nail their eCommerce marketing strategy. Namely, email marketing and paid advertising. Solid examples include:

Traffic ads
Signup forms
Email campaigns
Email automation
And welcome emails

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Final Thoughts

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift from in-person purchasing to online has only sped up. This means it’s even more important for brands to establish and perfect an online presence that’s dedicated to providing customers with an engaging, problem-free experience every time they shop on your website.

Stay tuned for future events, especially our retention event in April, by subscribing to our email list and bookmarking this page.

About the author

Derric Haynie was the founder and Chief Ecommerce Technologist at eCommerceTech.io – Where Ecommerce stores go to research, discover, and buy the right tools to grow their store. Half of his day is spent reviewing tech tools, and the other half is talking with merchants to help them discover which solutions are right for them.