There are many difficult decisions you’ll be forced to make as an entrepreneur. Once you’ve built your site and got it up and running, you’ll be tasked with making continuous improvements. To stay ahead of your competitors, it’s important that your website is equipped to handle and help every potential customer that lands on your page.
In the ecommerce world, increasing conversions isn’t just about improving your SEO. There are also hundreds of apps and tools designed to aid business owners on their mission to create branded customer experiences and generate more sales. Whether your goal is improve your marketing strategy or increase your customer service satisfaction, you should be using your website a vehicle to reach your final destination. Here are five tools you can add to your ecommerce site to help you do so:
Add A Live Chat
Today’s consumers want to make quick decisions about a product or service, and if they don’t understand your offering or have additional questions, they’ll likely move on to the next option. Having a live chat option on your ecommerce site can do wonders for your conversions and customer service. According to Neil Patel, ecommerce owners who add an on-page chat feature to their site can increase their conversions by 45% or more.
Even business owners whose customer service teams are available by email and phone will still get those visitors who want answers faster. Live chats also create a communication experience for the potential buyer, which helps humanize brands. By creating an efficient portal for customer service, your satisfaction and conversion rates will go up.
ReferralCandy
According to ReferralCandy, the potential of referral marketing is huge, and webmasters should factor it into their overall strategy. After all, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, and with a referral component, businesses can increase their ROI by as much as 300%.
While brick-and-mortar businesses are known for getting business through word of mouth sales, ecommerce is relegated to paid advertising. Business owners are increasingly looking for new ways to help bridge this gap. The ReferralCandy ecommerce plugin allows your online store to make the most of word-of-mouth sales. Business owners can create and manage incentives and rewards programs, brand the ReferralCandy tool, and integrate it with hundreds of other types of apps.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps help webmasters better understand the behavior patterns of visitors. They show where and what visitors are focusing on during website visits. This information can be very vital to business owners. Through the use of heat maps, you might see that visitors aren’t paying attention or navigating towards an area of your site that contains important content. Or, you might find that certain headlines on your page are more attractive than others.
There are many things you could learn from your heatmaps, and you could then make appropriate changes depending on your findings. There are several heat map tools to choose from, and many offer free trials to help you make a decision. Many case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of heat maps. For example, the Crazy Egg heat map helped Softmedia increase their conversions by 51% after identifying distractions on their webpages.
Use Upsell & Cross-Sell Tools
Beeketing is a WordPress plugin that’s built to help increase conversion rates and sales through the power of upselling and cross-selling. The tool will automatically suggest relevant upsell items to customers based on the products they add to their carts. Similarly, when a customer views a particular product, they’ll see a bundle of complementary products through the cross-selling function. You’ll also be able to set up a sales gamification threshold, which encourages buyers to increase their purchase order to receive additional discounts and deals.
Boost Sales is Shopify’s version of the Beeketing plugin. Just like Bekeeting, it makes suggestions based on products the customer puts in their cart. For example, if a customer were to add a hair dryer to their cart, they might receive a pop-up encouraging them to take a look at a higher-priced hair dryer with a range of temperature controls and more features. Smart coupon pop-ups also encourage customer engagement and referrals.
Start A Chatbot
A report conducted by Ubisend found that one in five consumers would make a purchase from a chatbot, and that at least 40% want special offers from chatbots. Chatbots are smart AI-based tools that allow the customer to communicate with a bot rather than a person. Unlike live chats, chatbots can be comprised of a mix of natural language, live operators, and machine learning. Today, many businesses are using chatbots to solve customer issues and sell products . A handful of those businesses are using Facebook Messenger or messaging app Kik to host bots. These companies include American Eagle, Sephora, and H&M.
