The new year is approaching fast, and now’s the time to evaluate your sales, marketing, and support to figure out the best way to grow in 2021 and beyond. With the COVID-19 pandemic still going strong around the world, there is no denying that the e-commerce market will continue to thrive and expand, but that doesn’t mean that success in the next year is a guarantee. Quite the contrary, with market expansion and growth comes risk and uncertainty as many new eCommerce ventures enter the lucrative playing field.
If you want to stay ahead of the competition in your niche and keep growing your e-commerce business, then you need to stay on top of the trends and adjust your approach to marketing, sales, support, and other customer-centric processes. The goal is to build social proof more effectively, retain existing customers and gain new ones, and spread the word of your brand across the web in the first months of the next year. So, here are the five trends how you can incorporate them in your 2021 strategy.
Focus on retaining existing customers
The pandemic has brought many uncertainties to people around the world, and while the Ecommerce industry has been thriving during this period, now is the time to focus on retaining as many customers as you can. Repeat customers are much more likely buy something again than new customers who are visiting your site for the first time, so your focus should be on inspiring repeat purchases rather than overinvesting in customer acquisition.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t invest in acquisition, but it does mean that your existing customers should be your priority. The Ecommerce businesses that stay afloat and grow over the long term are the ones that can always bank on their existing customer base, so you have to double-down on customer service and outreach in 2021.
Make sure to get back in touch with your past customers through various communication channels to inspire them to see your new offers, special holiday deals, and check out curated product lists. Take this time before 2021 comes to review your customer feedback as well so that you can create a better support strategy.
Put on-site customer experience front and centre
As you can see, customer experience is one of the central elements of a winning sales and marketing strategy, which is why you also need to revise and optimize your website for the following year. Scrutinize your website’s performance, look, and feel from top to bottom, making sure to analyse all technical and UX KPIs to get a comprehensive overview of its overall performance in the eyes of Google and your customers.
Your goal is to optimize the on-site experience for 2021, and to do that, you should start by simplifying your site’s structure. Don’t confuse your visitors, make your website easy to navigate through and implement functional features like quick sidebar filters, a search function, and live support. Improve the average order value by using an upselling tool and minimize cart abandonment by implementing an automated email follow-up.
Build an omni-channel sales structure
In 2021, you can’t hope to achieve your sales and retention goals by running on a single-channel sales strategy. Long gone are the days when people are perfectly happy to buy products only on your website, and nowadays they want to be able to buy on their own terms. This means that you need an omni-channel approach to sales, which you can only sustain with a smart resource planning system.
Take the manufacturing industry. Manufacturing success predominantly depends on eCommerce, but the sheer number of sales channels available means that brands can only run an omni-channel sales structure using dedicated MRP software to handle inventory management, order processing from various customer touchpoints, and the entire CRO process.
To put this into your perspective, regardless the niche you’re in, you need to use a comprehensive tool that will allow you to easily handle sales through multiple touchpoints without risk of processing or inventory errors that could really hurt your brand. If you set this structure right, though, you will be able to skyrocket your sales in 2021.
Emphasize sustainability to attract more customers
Nowadays, people are becoming more eco-conscious than ever before. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that our planet is not in a very good place, both environmentally and sociologically. Between the depletion of natural resources and the exploitation of human labour around the world, people no longer want to be associated with brands that are not sustainable.
Now is the time to build a sustainable supply chain, ditch any exploitative partners, create eco-conscious visual content, start producing sustainable products, and transform your brand identity in this green direction.
Capitalizing on the Mcommerce trend
Finally, if you haven’t already optimized your business model for mobile commerce, now’s the time to do it. Given the fact that the Mcommerce share of the total eCommerce sales is expected to rise to the projected 72.9% by 2021, you can understand why optimizing for the mobile shopper is so important.
Be sure to run a mobile-friendliness test to see how you stack up and start improving. Make sure that all pages are easy to browse through on small screens, that your website loads quickly, and that the checkout process is quick and seamless. Mobile shoppers are still apprehensive when it comes to data security on mobile, though, so you have to reassure them by elevating cybersecurity and displaying security badges across your site.
Wrapping up
The new year is approaching fast, and now is the time to double-down on your 2021 growth strategy. Follow these trends and implement these tactics to ensure seamless and steady growth throughout next year.
Guest post courtesy of Elaine Bennett
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