How brands can improve their e-commerce experience in 2020 by using marketing tools such as user-generated content to personalize their consumer experience in an effort to support their e-commerce experience strategy.

E-commerce sales are growing year on year, as are the number of e-commerce businesses in each industry. But B2C brands that wish to ride the wave of e-commerce success can’t afford to be complacent.

The reality is, consumers are faced with temptation from their competitors every day, many of whom offer a similar user-experience to your own site. And once they are on your site the consumer might also realize that there is relatively little difference between your products/prices versus those of your competitors. However, there are still ways to differentiate yourself. The online e-commerce experience is where you can make a real difference!

When presented with good consumer experience, consumers are 3.5x more likely to make additional purchases than if they have a poor experience, so, for those companies who are serious about growing their market share it is worth investing in user experience.

What are the solutions to achieving a great consumer experience in 2020? Here are three top tips on how to boost your consumer experience.

Personalization:

Good consumer experience is a highly personalized one. Everyone likes to be made to feel special and no one likes to waste time sifting through content that is not relevant to them.

48% of consumers surveyed said that they have left a website after receiving a poorly curated experience. 91% from the same survey said they would be more likely to shop with brands who recognize and provide relevant offers and recommendations and 83% said they were willing to share their data to make this work. These stats prove that personalization matters, so much so that consumers are often willing to give you their data in order to facilitate a better experience.

There is also evidence of tangible results from brands that adopt a personalization strategy, 93% of those who have experienced YOY revenue increases.

So how can you personalize the shopper experience? Typically brands leverage personalization platforms such as Nosto. Such platforms enable the automatic collection of simple anonymous data points like how often a person visits your website and what they do on your website. The platform then uses such information to serve dynamic content including personalized product recommendations based on what the user has or has not interacted with.

Conversational Marketing:

Nowadays, consumers expect to have asynchronous relationships with brands that they are trying to buy from. In other words, they want to be able to strike up a conversation with the brand to get the answers they need, when they want and where they want. If an e-commerce brand wants to maximize its sales, it can’t afford to let those people looking for quick answers slip away because you cannot give them what they want at that minute.

Online store experiences are slowly replicating the experience of bricks and mortar shopfronts. Thanks to conversational marketing tools, brands can mimic the effect of having helpful sales assistants ready at every customer’s beck and call. Chatbots can take questions and direct shoppers to FAQ sections or even provide detailed explanations of products or services. The more sophisticated chatbot tools take a more quiz-like approach to answer customer queries – the automation of a sequence of questions can help qualify leads and push them towards more relevant offers and promotions. Platforms such as Intercom and Drift allow brands to integrate such functionality with their e-commerce websites.

Social Proof:

Social proof is the idea that we tend to trust other people more than we trust companies. Social proof in the digital marketing world consists of written reviews and visual reviews. You may recognize the likes of TrustPilot who encourage consumers to give a star rating of the product or service they have bought. Visual reviews can exist as positive posts on Instagram, showing happy customers posing with their purchase. Or they could take the form of in-depth “unboxing” videos or application tutorials that show the product’s valuable qualities. Such content is also known as consumer-generated content and it is gold dust for marketers. Why? Because it is the digital version of ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing – this is content that passively markets your product/service for you, without you having to pay anybody.

How does this impact the consumer experience? It turns out that seeking reviews is a regular part of the consideration process for consumers. In fact, 64% of consumers actively seek out reviews before handing over their money according to Social Media Week. So, the implications are that, if you make the review finding easier and quicker, you have the ability speed up the process and give the consumers the confidence they need to buy your product.

What’s next?

If you are an e-commerce business looking to outpace your competitors in 2020 and really ramp up your revenue, putting your consumer experience under the microscope is a must. Not only could you be missing out on those harder to convince window shoppers, but there’s also potentially useful data you could be losing out on.

The good news is all of the above is achievable, because of the emergence of cutting-edge marketing platforms. These tools are also easy to implement, and the majority of providers can provide additional managed services or strategic support if you need it. Sign-up for platform demos, take a look through relevant case studies and begin your search for a platform partner for onsite personalization, social proof, and conversation marketing.

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