Neuromarketing explained: By applying neuroscience-based principles, you’ll be able to create marketing messaging and visuals that better connect with your target audience

As the name suggests, neuromarketing means the application of brain-based research to the discipline of marketing in general and digital marketing in particular. It involves the use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), the measurement of brain electrical activity, or other technologies used to measure people’s responses to marketing creative, such as copywriting, product descriptions, pricing, packaging, and advertising. For example, researchers may find that a particular stimulus causes a response in the brains of test subjects that’s correlated with a desired behavior (e.g. the release of a ‘feel good’ hormone). Obviously, as a marketer, you’d want to know these cause-effect relationships so that you can apply the principles to your creative, and thereby drive improvements to your key conversion metrics. While neuroscience has been around for decades,…

Digital tactics can be a boon for bricks and mortar retailers

Within many multichannel retailers, digital teams work primarily to e-commerce KPIs – traffic, conversion, units per order, unit value and so on. As a consequence, digital activity that might benefit the physical store estate is often deprioritized or completely ignored. However, digital marketing presents some of the best opportunities to drive footfall and in-store sales. [si_guide_block id="30829" title="Multichannel retail proposition audit and competitor benchmarking template" description="Review and improve the effectiveness of your e-commerce site's capability, including how it integrates with the other channels that are part of today's omnichannel retail."] Here’s a checklist of 5 things you can do straight away:

1. Improve the store-related areas of your website

It’s likely that a large number of your visitors are already looking for store information on your website or app. First, make sure that your store locator is up to scratch, especially for mobile users, and make sure…

Reaching the first page isn’t enough anymore, you need to place your business in the #1 position

Ranking higher among a congested competition in Google is a mandatory goal for many businesses today. If you are an e-commerce business, are you aware of the SEO tactics and requirements to take you to the top? After all, if you aren’t generating enough clicks, you’re not generating sales. The following data should show you why a powerful SEO strategy for your e-commerce website is necessary. Around 44% of online shoppers initiate their search through a search engine. According to the data provided by the US Department of Commerce, in 2015, the e-commerce sales per year reached $341.7 billion, which is a 14.6% increase from that of 2014s $298.3 billion. Furthermore, the data also stated that online shopping accounted for 7.3% of the total retail sales in 2015, as compared to 6.4% in 2014. Updated data for …

Chart of the Day: Which are the most popular merchandising techniques used by online retailers?

Best practices for creating effective user experiences for Ecommerce sites are often discussed along with how to improve experiences through conversion rate optimization. However, it's less common for retail merchandising techniques to be discussed. To help retailers learn best practices, we've created a new online merchandising guide by retail Expert Mark Hall which is available to Business members. To highlight some of the merchandising techniques available this research reviews techniques used based on a review of the Ecommerce sites of some of the 50 top global Ecommerce brands. The results suggest a variation in merchandising adoption with some techniques such as top sellers, trending now and top-rated products having a surprisingly low adoption. This in turn, suggests, the challenges of including merchandising features when retail brands are looking to simplify experiences on mobile devices…

Which KPIs will help retailers optimise their mobile apps?

Well, you've finally launched your app and like other app makers in the retail space, you are looking to increase engagement with your users and generate income. You are monitoring your downloads and sources, but is that really enough to understand your users and discover what makes them stick? Will you be able to fully optimise your app based on this information alone? The answer is a pretty firm NO. You might be monitoring certain elements or metrics of your app, but is it really giving you the info you need? Going one step further, you need to be monitoring the right KPIs under those metrics. Because when it comes right down to it, KPIs are where the clues are at - these will guide you in optimising your app and increasing conversions. In this post, I…

Use these features to optimize your Shopify ecommerce platform for search engines

Shopify is one of the most recommended e-commerce platforms used by online sellers to set up their online retail businesses. If you are running a Shopify Ecommerce Platform and looking for some SEO tips for your Shopify store, then look no further! I have compiled a list of SEO tips that are fundamental for running a successful Shopify ecommerce store to increase online visibility. Follow these easy-to-follow tips below to discover all the essentials for improving the SEO of your Shopify store.

What is Shopify and why should you use it?

The Reasons why you should choose Shopify Ecommerce for your online Store: Highly flexible and tailor to your specific requirements. Easy backend administration Shopify has Lots of built-in tools Advanced ecommerce CMS Platform with fantastic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features. Shopify Ecommerce Platform is easy to use with no coding…

How you can use Shopify to build your ecommerce business

When it comes to building websites for your business with so many options to choose from, sometimes it’s so overwhelming that you are tempted to just purchase from the first website you go to. You should buy your website from Shopify as this is the easiest, cheapest and most convenient way for a business to set up a store and start selling their products and services online straight away. If you're not tech savvy and you want your own e-commerce store, and have outgrown marketplaces like eBay or Amazon, and just starting out, go with Shopify. Last month, the leading multi-channel commerce platform, Shopify announced in a press release that it now powers more than 500,000 businesses in 175 countries around the world. Since 2012, the number of merchants on the Shopify platform has grown annually at an average rate of 74%, and these…

Our recommended blogs that every retail and E-commerce professional should be following to use the latest innovations and grow their sales

Considering the growth in importance of E-commerce, contributed to both by pureplay online-only businesses and multichannel retail businesses, it’s surprising that much advice on marketing best practices is ‘vanilla’, simply covering advice that could apply to any type of business. While some fundamental marketing concepts such as the marketing funnel and lifecycle marketing do apply across different businesses, many of the success factors for E-commerce businesses are specific to this sector. So, it can be difficult to find the best advice to inspire your improvements if you are new to working in the sector, or just want to expand your knowledge. At Smart Insights we’ve been covering E-commerce and retail since we launched, and have a specific E-commerce toolkit for members, relevant for the main types of transactional businesses of…

Boost your conversion rate with ecommerce personalisation

When it comes to giving customers a better shopping experience it is crucial to make them feel like they are valued. In a brick and mortar store, this can be done through personal greetings, in-store perks, and personalized offers based on feedback that results from in-store conversations. Running an ecommerce business presents an additional layer of challenges for businesses trying to nurture personal relationships with customers. But these challenges are not insurmountable when using ecommerce personalization for better conversions.

What is Ecommerce Personalization?

Ecommerce personalization involves giving customers a customized shopping experience based on their demographics, likes and dislikes, tastes, previous purchases, interests, and buying behavior. Ecommerce personalization for better conversions has proven itself to be a great investment both qualitatively and quantitatively. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has been quoted saying, “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of…

The top strategies for retail brands looking to compete online with the digital natives and pureplays

Last year Accenture’s Love Index report discovered that 4 out of the top 5 most loved brands were Digitally Native Vertical Brand (DNVB). These are 'online pureplays' brands which are born from, and function solely in the digital landscape like Netflix and Amazon. But surprisingly, the fifth company to have made that list was Walmart due to the digital experiences that it was creating. There’s a lot of emphasis on creating digital experiences and equally a lot of news around brick-and-mortar having hit a glass ceiling; It’s this dynamic that led the Huffington Post to recently report that nobody knows what’s going on with online shopping. We beg to differ. You do know what’s going on, the difficulties for a multichannel brand is knowing how to execute efficiently and track accurately. If you can relate to…