A Guide to the 3 C’s of eCommerce That Can Drive Customers Your Way
There’s no denying that in the eCommerce world, competition is tough.
After all, launching an online shop is easier than ever, industries are oversaturated with people trying to make money online, and customer expectations continue to rise.
It’s no wonder marketers are seeking a different approach to doing business.
One way online companies are trying to get ahead involves focusing on the experience of customers as they journey through their sales funnel and finalize their transactions.
Called experience-driven marketing, this approach to eCommerce revolves around the customer’s perception and engagement and holds onto the hope that with a good enough experience, customers will convert.
It’s important to note, however, that it takes more than experience-driven marketing to get people to hand over their hard-earned cash in exchange for what you have to offer.
In fact, if you want the best results from your experience-driven marketing efforts, you’re going to have to focus on the 3 C’s of eCommerce.
What is Experience-Driven Marketing?
Before jumping into the 3 C’s of eCommerce, let’s take a more in-depth look at what experience-driven marketing is.
- Customer Perception. This includes how you market your brand to your target audience, how they perceive your brand across multiple platforms, and whether they have a positive or negative impression about your company.
- Customer Engagement. This includes how involved people are with your brand, the relationship you’ve built with customers (both old and new), and whether people are actually buying from your eCommerce shop.
Now let’s look at the 3 C’s of eCommerce and how they can help your experience-driven marketing.
1) Connection
Connecting with your audience on any level is the key to building long-lasting relationships, acquiring new customers, and retaining those that have purchased from you in the past.
The way to connect with your target audience, and then give them what they need, involves taking the time to learn about them on a deeper level.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to sign up for a free Google Analytics account and do a little research.
⇒ To start, go to Audience > Overview.
Here you’ll see what percentage of your site visitors are returning, how many are new, the top ten most popular languages, and your site’s bounce rate, all of which are important to know.
⇒ Next, go to Audience > Demographics > Overview to find out the average ages of your site visitors and their genders.
⇒ Lastly, go to Audience > Interests > Overview to find out what categories of interest your site visitors are more likely to fall into, so you can see what kinds of things they like most.
Of course, there’s a lot more to Google Analytics and your target audience than these simple overviews.
But they give you a good start so you can start focusing on who your customers are so you can provide them with exactly what they need.
As an eCommerce shop owner, it’s your job to understand your target audience, discover their pain points, and reveal to them how you can solve their problems.
It’s also your job to relate to them on a level they’ll appreciate.
Google Analytics helps lead the way so you can better connect with those that are showing interest in your brand, which will in turn, help both brand perception and content engagement.
2) Context
When it comes to context marketing, and the eCommerce world, we’re talking about being able to deliver targeted and personalized ads to a specific customer base.
There’s nothing worse than conducting a Google search for one thing and seeing an advertisement for an entirely unrelated item.
The same rings true on your eCommerce shop.
People don’t want to visit your website and be bombarded with ads that don’t offer value, are unrelated to what they’re looking for, or disrupt the user experience.
In short, context marketing is delivering the right content to the right people at the right time.
Here are some of the best ways to deliver context to your customers once they visit your online shop:
⇒ Dynamic Calls-to-Action
It’s not enough to have calls to actions on your website that apply to everyone that visits. After all, not everyone is looking for the same thing when they come to your site.
That’s why understanding the customer journey, and where people are at in that journey (awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, or advocacy), helps you deliver the right CTAs to get people to convert.
Dynamic CTAs will adjust on your website based on who is visiting your site. This advanced type of website personalization makes sure that people that fit your pre-defined segments see the right CTA.
For instance, a new site visitor may see a subscribe form and a returning customer may receive a coupon for your online store.
Use the popular lead generation tool OptinMonster to get you started with adding context to your eCommerce shop and personalization that will encourage people to take action.
⇒ Segmented Email Lists
Segmenting your email lists according to where people are in the purchasing journey is again, the key to getting the right content to the right people at the right time.
After all, it would be silly to send a long-standing subscriber a welcome email right?
You can create segmented lists using an email service provider like MailChimp so when people subscribe or fill out some other form on your eCommerce site, they get added to the right email list.
⇒ Smart Forms
Form fatigue is a real thing amongst site visitors. In fact, there is plenty of information out there about how people abandon site forms when they feel they are too long or unrelatable.
One of the best ways to reduce form abandonment, personalize the user experience, and boost conversions on your site is to use a form builder solution like WPForms to create smart forms.
In the example above, the only time the phone number form field will appear for people filling out this particular form will be if they answer “Yes” to the question about wanting a quote via a phone call.
Otherwise, this form field will remain hidden and not bother anyone who is just looking to subscribe or get in touch for another reason.
In the end, adding context to your site’s content will meet the increasingly demanding expectations by consumers to be catered to based on their personal needs and desires.
Doing this will improve the overall perception people have of your brand and get people to interact with your content, your products and services, and other like-minded people.
3) Content
The final C of eCommerce is content.
And, while you probably know by now how important high-quality content is for any website, let’s just take a quick look at some of the most important things to remember:
- Always publish content that is valuable, informative, and even entertaining to increase engagement and encourage conversions
- Add images for visual appeal
- Focus on SEO to boost your search rankings: conduct keyword research using Ubersuggest, focus on improving site speed, internally link to your own website to boost authority, and structure content in an organized way
And lastly, don’t forget to focus on a social media platform such as Instagram and getting more followers.
With Instagram, you can achieve the following:
- Appeal to people’s visual nature by sharing imagery with those that follow you
- Sell individual items to followers with a click and buy system
- Direct people to your eCommerce shop in your bio
- Help get your items trending using hashtags that will have a far reach
- Expose your brand to a new audience and garner more sales
Focusing on the power of high-quality content, and the reach that social media platforms such as Instagram have can help you give people the right perception about your brand and get them to engage.
Final Thoughts
Using the 3 C’s of eCommerce – connect, context, and content – is a great way to grow your business, customer base, and authority in your industry.
It’s also an excellent way to improve the perception people have of your brand when you show up on the social media feeds or in their search results.
No matter what you sell in your online store, it’s a good idea to always have the 3 C’s of eCommerce in the back of your head.
After all, the better experience you can provide customers that land on your website, the more sales and revenue you can generate.