E-commerce

Sales guru Jim Rohn aptly said:

‘Success is neither magical nor mysterious; it’s the natural consequence of consistently applying the fundamentals.’

I agree wholeheartedly. In order to sell better online you need to know the fundamentals, or essentials, of persuasive selling. These same principles apply whether you’re selling face-to-face or on a website. Only by doing so will you achieve your overarching merchandising goals: more add-to-carts and conversions, triggered by higher click-throughs on your website’s sales pages. In this post I cover essential selling practices. I discuss best practices and optimisation techniques separately.

Start with the essentials

For us humans, the essentials are food, water and rest. For online merchandising, selling essentials are more emotion-based, and include: Understanding your prospects needs and desires Earning the trust of your visitors Using persuasive selling tactics Tailoring your pitch to your shopper’s stage Creating a Product Finder tool Offering proactive customer support

Understanding your prospects

Here’s another saying…

Chart of the Day: Consumer Interest in Using Voice Assistants and Voice Search

Originating from the smartphone trend of voice search, where Apple and Google introduced voice assistants on their smartphone operating systems, we now have voice interactions through the likes of Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa/Echo. This seems to be a growing trend across all the main digital platform providers and these voice assistants are predominately used for search queries.

Google highlighted that more than 20% of mobile queries are voice-based and this will only grow by 2020. 40% of millennials have already started making search queries through a voice assistant, prior to making a purchase. In fact, a research report from BI Intelligence shows that the younger you are, the more likely you are to switch to and prefer voice-activated search as opposed to traditional search engines. 

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Chart of the Day: Exclusives, rewards and a sense of achievement drive people to purchase

Visit any ecommerce company website and you'll likely find you can sign up for a free account or a free trial of the product/tool/service, with which the company hopes to entice you enough to become a regular customer. For example, the office favourite Graze will send you your first box of goodies free, Amazon Prime offers your first 30 days free even here at Smart Insights your can sign up for a free account and access over 20 of our resources. This freemium model has become the defacto model for most brands online. The issue? You have to try and convince your audience who use your free service how do you convert them into paying customers. This is where new research on the mobile gaming industry from Facebook could help.

The most important benefits for high-value payers in developed countries…

A review of page load times and mobile effectiveness for different Ecommerce platforms

More than $12 trillion in B2B transactions are expected for the year 2020. That's up from $5.5 trillion in 2012, according to projections from Frost & Sullivan. B2B online sales are nearly double those of B2C sales. No matter what sphere of digital marketing you work in, it's time to hone in on e-commerce. Clients are hungry for a piece of the ecommerce pie. By staying informed on the existing software solutions, you will have the information you need to lead them towards smart platform choices.

61% of consumers report improved sentiments toward a brand as a result of a positive mobile experience and by 2017, m-commerce is expected to account for 25% of US sales. Mobile shoppers also spend more than users on other devices.Features like…