Tips To Improve Customer Engagement
No matter how big your brand is, it can always benefit from a human touch. But in the ecommerce sphere, it can be a challenge to make customers feel engaged, welcome, and understood.
With that in mind, we’ve collected our top tips for personalization and customer engagement. These simple strategies are sure to keep customers coming back for more.
Increase Trust With Product Reviews
Product reviews and testimonials are one of the most important things you can have on your site. Not only do they give customers a sense of what your products are actually like, but they’re an important trust marker and signifier of quality. In fact, a study found that customers were more 63% more likely to purchase an item with ratings and reviews, and detailed customer reviews were often the deciding factor on whether or not a customer completed a purchase.
Customers are 63% more likely to purchase an item with ratings and reviews.
If you’re on BigCommerce, a product rating and review system comes standard, but there are ways you can beef up your customer review strategy and make it more effective. One way is to actively solicit reviews from customers. You can easily do this using email marketing software like Klaviyo or Yotpo (bonus: Yotpo lets customers draft reviews in the body of the email!).
Another way to improve your additional rating scale to provide customers with additional rating systems or scales. With our add-on Custom Product Reviews, you can add functionality that allows customers to rate the item by various metrics like fit (true to size, runs big/small, wide/narrow), quality, or warmth. This provides customers with additional information and is especially helpful for helping fashion and apparel shoppers choose a size. Since the rating system is configurable, you can choose the additional rating scale that makes sense for you.
Grow Your Social Media Presence
For many brands, connecting with customers is a big part of their social media strategy. Whether it’s following up with customer service questions, participating in hashtag conversations, or creating a community of regular shoppers, social media gives you the opportunity to humanize your brand and directly interact with your customer base.
Responding to messages, researching the conversations happening in your industry, and giving customers a platform (such as your own hashtag, or designated weekly posts) to showcase ideas and feedback all go a long way.
The best way to foster this aspect of your social media strategy is to dedicate time and attention to your social media presence. Responding to messages, researching the conversations happening in your industry, and giving customers a platform (such as your own hashtag, or designated weekly posts) to showcase ideas and feedback all go a long way.
Showcase User-Generated Content
Another way to add a human touch to your BigCommerce is to showcase user-generated content. Rivetworks is a tool that lets you collect, display, and analyze pictures and feedback from people who have bought on your site. It serves a similar function to product reviews but is far more advanced and automated.
With Rivetworks, customers are invited to create and submit content about their purchase. This content could include photos, videos, long testimonials, or short blurbs. Rivetworks then moderates that information and pulls the most valuable content into displays on your website and social media. It also collects data, allowing you to analyze which pieces of content translate into the most clicks and sales.
Capture More Leads With Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence on an ecommerce store might sound space-age but the technology is already here, most commonly in the form of chatbots. Chatbots are popup instant message windows that use automated, smart responses to collect information from customers and lead them to relevant information or products. Most chat bots appear on your website but you can also integrate them with Facebook Messenger.
Chatbots are popup instant message windows that use automated, smart responses to collect information from customers and lead them to relevant information or products.
Chatbots are great for capturing leads and answering questions customers might have before they need to buy. Not only can be staffed by a customer service person who answers questions in real time, many allow you to program “paths” that direct customers to relevant products and information. For example, if a customer asks what your brick-and-mortar’s hours are, the chatbot will automatically reply with the correct information and could even prompt them with a further question (“Want to make an appointment?” or “What services are you interested in?”).
Chatbots can be utilized all sorts of ways on ecommerce sites. They can help customers find technical products or refills (“Do you have a black cartridge for a Canon 250-XL Printer?”) and some brands, such as makeup giant Sephora, even use them to create custom product recommendations.
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