Important Factors Influencing Purchase in E-commerce

Important Factors Influencing Purchase in E-commerce

by | Dec 27, 2019 | Ecommerce, Marketplaces

In e-commerce, there are certain factors from the customer’s point of view which influence their purchasing decision. Here’s a look at those concerns that leverage customer buying behavior:

1. Good Product Quality

One of the most important factors influencing consumer buying behavior is the quality of the product and the quality of information about that product. These have a significant impact on the visitors to your website and turn them into potential buyers. Your products must reflect different geographic and regional flavors, speak loud the cultural ethos and fit the trend of the season. Product descriptions, specifications, catalogues and images all influence the customer buying decision process. A convincing and well-crafted representation of the products is sure to fetch better results.

2. Free Shipping Experience

Free Shipping is the second most principal factor in influencing an e-commerce consumer’s purchase decision. Free shipping is an attractive element for frequent online buyers as they save on the cross-border shipping cost to quite an extent.

3. Easy Return Policy

A simple, well-defined return policy is the third most influencing factor in urging customers buy a product. A customer-friendly return policy that’s laid down in clear language is convincing to online consumers. A well-structured return policy in case of faulty goods or mismatched sizes is mandatory for every genre of products, from apparel and household accessories to electronic goods and automobile parts. An easy, no-questions-asked return policy grows a sense of trust among customers for your website or brand.

4. Reviews from Customers

Healthy and positive product reviews from existing customers invite new customers. Appreciating existing customers and positive reviewers with award programs, such as free gifts or discounts on the next purchase, strengthens the bond further. Proactive initiative to resolve the problems of not-so-satisfied customers is also a kind gesture. These loyalty-building gestures encourage a growth in your regular buyer database.

5. Easy Navigation

Most e-commerce websites come with well-defined categories of products. That way, a customer can frame a very good idea of the exact location of the products they are looking for. Incorporating the keywords into the search bar also helps in navigating through the pages and finding the desired products or categories quickly. Accurate keywords create better search results. A well-designed visual sitemap, proper product listing and easy to understand controls like previous/next commands all contribute to simple and easy access, which positively influences customer buying behavior.

6. Hassle-free Checkout

Easy checkout logic is yet another deciding factor. Customers don’t appreciate a complicated checkout procedure. Anticipate their needs and make checkout a simple and logical process. Customers wish to complete the payment within one or two steps through debit/credit cards or net banking. They may need items to be shipped to a different address. They may have discount codes, gift cards or coupons to apply. Once these checkout features are taken care of, customers are more likely to continue with their online shopping.

7. Special Purchase

While shopping online, a customer can opt for several special purchases. Unlike many physical stores, e-commerce services make special categories and special custom sizes available in one destination. Not only this, special deals and special sections also create quite a buzz among customers and convert them into potential buyers.

To have customers coming back for more, e-commerce firms must take care of some factors influencing consumer buying behavior:

  • must make sure that their website is stable and easily accessible
  • must invest in building trust and a strong reputation
  • must focus on maintaining appropriate content volume
  • must focus on security and privacy policies to protect customers
  • must promote their website to increase awareness

In an urge to retain existing customers and draw new customers, e-commerce firms are constantly recognizing and implementing customer-friendly actions. All these efforts are made to influence customer buying behavior and take e-commerce to the next level of prosperity.

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Setting KPIs for Product Pages and Improving Performance

Setting KPIs for Product Pages and Improving Performance

by | Dec 17, 2019 | Ecommerce

Before we start talking about things you can do to improve product pages that drive KPIs, it might be helpful to review a few basic concepts. Let’s start by discussing KPIs — what they are, why they’re so important, and how to set them.

KPIs, key performance indicators, provide businesses with concrete data regarding website user experience, consumer preferences, and customer behavior. They give you hard data you can use to meet specific business goals by letting you know what’s working and what’s not. The right KPIs are a must for both growing and established businesses. Not every company needs to measure the same things. KPIs must be appropriate for your business, marketing, and sales goals.

The first step when it comes to getting started with performance measurement is to determine your goals. Figuring out how to measure KPIs comes towards the end of the process. After you’ve articulated your goals, think about what factors lead to success when it comes to your objectives. Select performance benchmarks with those elements in mind. Finally, make sure the measurement tool you choose fits the information you’re looking to gather. You’ll need web analytics software to gather and parse the data. From Google Analytics to paid tools with tons of features, you’ll find several options to help you get a handle on what’s going on with your e-commerce site. A company with web analytic experience can help you make optimal sense of the findings.

When it comes to eCommerce, product pages dominate sales and marketing strategies. They literally drive and create eCommerce success. To increase sales and overall profit, you’ve got to know how your product pages are working. Product page KPIs provide an efficient way to evaluate if you’re doing the right things to grow your eCommerce business. They give you insight into metrics like how long consumers typically stay on your product pages, organic traffic rates, and what items shoppers frequently purchase together. Other types of key performance indicators include how quickly pages on your site load, number of page visits, and even some measures of brand loyalty. Let’s review a few things you can do with product pages to maximize the chances of hitting your performance goals.

How to Improve Product Pages to Boost Organic Traffic

Let’s say you’ve set a goal of increasing your website’s organic traffic as a way to make more sales. Your research team runs the numbers, and now you have absolute proof that your company needs to do something about its lackluster organic traffic numbers. You decide to make some changes to your eCommerce site to fix the situation.

Using long-tail keywords in product descriptions should be one of the first options you explore. Let’s talk for a minute about the two broad keyword categories: short and long-tail. Short-tail keywords are not terribly specific, and they tend to generate large numbers of queries. Since so many sites have text with these frequently occurring terms, including short-tail keywords typically won’t help you improve your search position that much. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, provide more specificity. If pants is your short-tail keyword, potential long-tail variants might include, blue button-up pants, blue straight leg pants, and blue cargo pants.

Adding long-tail keywords to product pages provides a simple, unobtrusive, and natural way to raise your search visibility. It also has the potential to lift sales. Shoppers tend to search using long-tail keywords when they’re ready to make a purchase. Include long-tail search terms in title tags, meta descriptions and H1 headers to get the most out of this SEO strategy.

Optimize Your Product Pages to Reign in Pesky Bounce Rates

You added a few long-tail keywords to your product pages, and your organic search results started to soar. You decide there might actually be something to this KPI for product pages stuff. You ask around, and your web genius says that you really should look into your site’s bounce rates. Your analytics savant runs the numbers and sends you an email describing the results. Things don’t look so good. It turns out that large numbers of people just go elsewhere after getting to your product pages from search engine results.

People typically bounce in two situations: when the page they end up on doesn’t contain the item they’re really searching for, or when the page itself turns them off for some reason. You ask your web person dig a bit deeper. A few days later, another report appears in your inbox. It turns out that shoppers seem to be getting to the right page from search engine results. But they spend a few seconds there and then leave. Your web analytics master suggests there might be something about your product pages that disappoints or frustrates shoppers.

You see reducing bounces as a promising way to increase sales and resolve to act. Here’s a list of six product page optimizing must-dos that’ll reduce those dreaded bounces.

  • Increase page load speeds
  • Add killer visual content that accurately displays products
  • Get rid of distracting popups and advertisements
  • Create crisp, easy-to-read copy with compelling headers and subheaders
  • Make it simple for customers to initiate a live chat directly from product pages
  • Provide accurate and engaging product descriptions

Make a Few Easy Tweaks to Increase Brand Trust

You optimized your product pages and started working long-tail keywords into your product descriptions and your company’s profits really started to rise. Fewer bounces and high organic search results led to increased sales. Convinced this product page KPI stuff is driving your rising profits, you turn to your web team and ask them if they have a way to provide insight into how much trust customers have in your brand. Your web all stars suggest taking a look at the number of people who come back to make another purchase. The head of your research team sends you an article explaining that repeat customer numbers provide a pretty accurate measure of brand loyalty, which studies suggest grows out of brand trust. Your web department does a bit of investigating. It turns out you’re not getting as many repeat customers as you’d like.

You’d love to increase your customers’ brand loyalty. You paid attention in those marketing classes when professors talked about the link between long-term business sustainability and customer loyalty. Here are five easy-to-implement product page tweaks to get you moving in the right direction.

  • Add customer reviews to your product pages. They help the decision-making process and increase the likelihood that a shopper will follow through and make a purchase.
  • Include an easy-to-interpret product star rating or something similar. It gives shoppers a quick, convenient way to gather information that drives purchasing decisions.
  • Provide useful product descriptions. Put the things most important to your audience front and center in your copy. For bonus points, tailor your descriptions to the interests and needs of your target market.
  • Clean up broken links and create a well-designed 404 page. Nothing says sketchy louder than a site full of broken links, all of which lead to some generic, unprofessional-looking 404 page.
  • Put shipping, return, and warranty information right on the product page. Don’t make your customers search for this sort of crucial information. It’ll do two things: improve brand trust and reduce page bounces.

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7 Steps to Building a Successful Customer Behavior Analytics Model

7 Steps to Building a Successful Customer Behavior Analytics Model

by | Dec 6, 2019 | Content Strategy, Ecommerce, Retail

Having a comprehensive customer behavior analytics model is vital to ecommerce companies. Studies show that companies that use customer behavior information to their advantage outperform competitors by 85 percent in sales growth. Additionally, estimates show those who use behavior analytics beating competitors by an extra 25 percent in gross margins. The current influx of data available to measure customer behavior patterns is making it easier for ecommerce businesses to use analytics in the following ways:

  • Support core sales and marketing goals
  • Increase customer satisfaction rates
  • Improve product/service criteria
  • Optimize marketing channels
  • Make insightful improvements to overall sales strategies
  • Increase customer loyalty

Developing a customer behavior analytics model is vital to retail success for a variety of reasons, and ecommerce companies shouldn’t be without one. Read on to discover seven key ways to build the right customer behavior analytics model for your ecommerce business.

1. Use Detailed Data

As previously mentioned, there is an influx of big data in ecommerce businesses that help monitor customer behavior. Present analytics platforms can delve even deeper into consumer patterns, and tracking tools have become far more accurate. Estimates for the 2020 fiscal year suggest that ecommerce sales will pass over 4 trillion, and companies with a pulse on consumer behavior will take a larger chunk of those sales. The following forms of data can help retailers build a broad customer behavior analytics model:

  • Order tracking: includes buying patterns, most purchased products, and reordering habits
  • Consumer engagement: helps gauge what features, products, and information matters most to consumers
  • Changes in order patterns: helps businesses anticipate possible upcoming ordering changes that an online consumer may go through
  • Conversion rates: how many consumers convert from visitation to purchasing from a brand
  • Retention rates: how many consumers remain with a brand long-term
  • User feedback: customer satisfaction ratings, reviews, comments, and likes

The ultimate goal of using customer behavior analytics in retail is to get actionable insight into what consumers are looking for. Criteria for that can vary by company, which means the data needed can also vary; the list above gives forms of data that are useful to every ecommerce business. This is just a short list of ideas, and there are many forms of data that help ecommerce businesses build relevant models for customer behavior analytics. When determining what data to add, keep all major business specific KPIs in mind to get the best possible analysis of consumer behavior.

2. Throw Out the RFM Model

Use a life-time value (LTV) model instead of a recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) model. Ecommerce businesses in particular benefit from using LTV over RFM. Digital tracking and an increase in the accuracy of analytics platforms has made RFM models a poor choice for customer behavior analytics. The reason they aren’t a good fit is because the majority of the key indicators for that model are based on immediate sales. They also primarily focus on those who spend the most money, and they lack any tangible insight into retaining new customers long-term. LTV models can provide actionable insight to take for individual consumers, target their long-term value to the ecommerce business, and select appropriate marketing for them.
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3. Stop Making Assumptions Based on Age, Demographics, or Finances

There are 35-year-old people who watch cartoons, and believe it or not, that’s an excellent point of reference for this segment. Customer behavior isn’t measured by simply lumping age groups, demographics, or income levels into tidy piles and assuming what they will or will not respond to. Making assumptions about customer behavior patterns is not conducive to developing a successful or accurate customer behavior analytics model. The goal is to start thinking of customers as individuals, not groups. A 70-year-old can buy hiking gear and a 20-year-old may purchase knitting needles. To get the best possible results, find out what individual consumers want by basing analytics on real data and not assumptions. In short, don’t stereotype.

4. Use Predictive Analysis

Predictive analysis is an excellent way to draw in potential customers, keep existing customers, and anticipate future needs in order to suggest relevant products. Predictive analytics drive the following ecommerce metrics:

  • Customer acquisition: helps by tracking the consumer’s journey from the initial site visit to checkout to personalize their experience
  • Customer retention: helps by anticipating problem areas to repair based on data such as customer feedback or drop rates
  • Customer growth: helps retailers create calls to action based on ordering patterns during specific periods

Personalized advertising, suggestions, and promotions can all be tailored to customers using data obtained from predictive analysis. Using predictive analytics to understand the behavior of customers is another way to use big data in ecommerce to make changes that improve retention.

5. Know Your Goal and Create Steps to Reach It

Building a comprehensive customer behavior analytics model means knowing what goals your ecommerce company wants to achieve. There are many steps to building customer behavior analytics that companies can take advantage of to reach goals, including :

  • Set analytics goals and KPI’s, and track them
  • Determine critical paths, then break them up to get the most data
  • Set user properties to receive data on customers using your site
  • Continually monitor and adapt analytics models based on consumer practices and new data
  • Measure success of new products to determine their impact on sales
  • Use funnel analysis methods

Having specific goals in mind while developing customer behavior analytics helps ecommerce businesses make marketing and advertising decisions and changes based on reliable data.

6. Incorporate Funnel Analysis

Funnel analysis is particularly useful for determining abandonment rates through each stage of the checkout process. They also help establish the set of steps consumers must go through to reach any specific outcome on a website. Funnel analysis helps ecommerce organizations visualize data by showing drop off points. For this reason, these types of analytics are ideal for verifying drop rates, tracking site abandonment, and showing weaknesses that exist in each stage of the process. Funneling is also an excellent tool for ascertaining why conversions were unsuccessful.

7. Search Out Customer Access Points

Are you getting the most customer engagement from external or internal links? Are they accessing the site through social media posts or click ads? It’s important to pinpoint consumer access points for your brand and track behavior across all points. This type of behavioral analysis helps businesses target areas that produce the most clicks and conversions. That way, retailers can position ads appropriately to maximize their potential draw. Being able to allocate resources properly is one of the key benefits of analyzing consumer behaviors. For customer behavior analytics models to be successful, they have to include data from all areas of the business that consumers have access to. Access areas to include during the process of developing a customer behavior analytics model include:

  • Primary website: main ecommerce site
  • Apps: downloads, uninstalls, in-app purchases, and feedback
  • Social media: Facebook®, Twitter®, Instagram®, etc.
  • Click ads: any advertisement that provides a direct link to primary site
  • External links: links on other sites that direct users to primary site or other company resource

Metrics measurements should span across any location that gives users access to your brand, or they are not truly accurate. Using data from websites alone can give a lopsided view of customer behavior, because not everyone will access your product through the main site. It all circles back to the importance of analyzing customer behavior on an individual level.

The insight gained into the personal habits of customers is crucial to recommendation searches, email campaigns, and product suggestions. Do you have any insights into creating a successful customer behavior analytics model? Comment so readers can add them to the information they gained from this post. If you still need guidance on how meet your ecommerce consumer goals, contact eZdia where our professionals will be more than happy to help you succeed.

Author: Kristin Ann Hassel

eCommerce Content Optimization

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Creating a Seller Management Platform for the E-Commerce Marketplace

Creating a Seller Management Platform for the E-Commerce Marketplace

by | Nov 24, 2019 | Ecommerce, SEO Strategy

In an ever-growing e-commerce sector, marketplaces are looking for ways to onboard quality sellers, improve the customer experience for various pages and increase the conversion rate for their sellers. And sellers, in their quest to sell better, are continually adding their own stores and products in these marketplaces. There’s one thing that both sellers and marketplaces need: good content. (more…)

3 Tips to Create the Best Walmart Rich Media Content Pages

3 Tips to Create the Best Walmart Rich Media Content Pages

by | Nov 18, 2019 | Content Tips, Ecommerce, Marketplaces

With the steady rise of mobile devices and online ordering systems, it isn’t surprising that Walmart began offering a platform for rich media content. E-commerce sales have become crucial to the success of small and large businesses, and Walmart’s Rich Media API tool offers users a way to build on preexisting content. The Rich Media API is available for content providers, drop-ship vendors, and warehouse suppliers. Using a media-rich solution allows sellers to include the following content on their page.

  • Videos
  • 360-degree views of products
  • PDFs
  • Interactive tours
  • Brand story layouts

Mobile responsive rich media pages are a must, as most purchases online are now made via smartphone or tablet.

Why Build a Walmart Rich Media Page?

While some sellers may not feel a rich media page is essential, there are tangible reasons why they are becoming the norm in e-commerce. Online sales have been shown to increase with the use of rich media on seller pages by 10% or more. Using videos, PDFs, and 360-degree views of products enhances content value and draws customers, which in turn accelerates sales growth, especially since roughly 84% of communications are visual.

It’s in the Numbers

A person is 85% more likely to buy products that have visual influencers like product videos. Rich media pages enrich the customer’s transaction and contribute to a more authentic human experience. SEO-driven marketing content is crucial to obtaining a top spot in search engine results. Staying on top of search engine results is crucial to drawing in customers, and SEO content marketing solutions like those at eZdia create the right content to ensure success. Professional writers develop unique content descriptions, using effective keywords that optimize online sales. We work tirelessly to understand our clients, their KPIs, and their target customers, then come up with a bespoke, client-centered SEO, and content strategy, then use our hand-picked teams to execute. On top of that, we can help you migrate rich media pages between platforms like Amazon and Walmart.

Combined with strong SEO content and marketing, a Walmart Rich Media page is a solid benefit for any seller. Providing enrichment to pre-existing SEO marketing content in the form of visual data draws customer attention. According to a recent article on Business Insider, an estimated engagement rate increase of 5.7% occurs across vertices when visual influencers are used. A Walmart Rich Media page truly makes the difference in forming a personal relationship with your customers.

How to Create a Walmart Rich Media Page

As previously discussed, Walmart offers Rich Media API tools for content providers. Sellers that want to create the page themselves would need to have a working knowledge of computer coding and content development. Alternatively, you’d need to use a compatible template and a specialist eCommerce content agency with an omnichannel experience like eZdia.

1. Get Image Specs Right

Walmart has strict guidelines for photos, and all product images need to meet the following specifications:

  • 1500×2000 pixels for zoom capability
  • 600×800 pixels for standard
  • 1 MB file size
  • RGB color value
  • 4:3 aspect ratio
  • Acceptable file formats: JPEG, JPG, BMP or PNG

2. Making Customer-Centered Videos and Virtual Tours

There are four key things to keep in mind when creating rich-media videos and virtual tours for e-commerce sites: engagement, education, quality, and call to action. Engagement requires using visual queues that keep the customers’ attention and hold their interest throughout. Use images that show personal belief in the quality of your product. If you build the items by hand, take the viewer through the process, or highlight the company’s quality standards and testimonials. Be careful of being too long-winded during this process, as the average person only has an eight-second attention span, so grab focus early in the video. Education encompasses product benefits, features, and uses, as well as the materials and the creation process. Keep the following questions in mind when determining how to educate a customer on the product:

  • Why should they choose your product?
  • What can you offer that other products don’t?
  • How can the product benefit them?

Quality videos don’t have to destroy a budget. High-resolution videos can be created using tools found pre-installed on most laptops. Virtual tours of product lines, the creation process, environmental practices, or how you live your mission statement work well to create a more personal relationship with the consumer, getting them to buy into you, not just your product. Finally, end with a call to action. Avoid flowery language like “you simply have to have this amazing product” or “be the envy of Kalamazoo, with the hottest product on the market”. It comes off as salesy and artificial. Active words like use, create, make, or enjoy are less pushy.

3. Using Templates and Tools

Generally, only skilled developers should use the Rich Media API tool, and a media-rich page will always include more complex coding than a standard product page. You can, however, use templates that may have one or all of the following beneficial features.

  • Rich media
  • Content tool that works across retailers
  • Item set up
  • Content health reports
  • Above-the-fold content
  • Tracking for miscellaneous items like pricing or availability (Webcollage Inc., 2018)(Salsify, 2018)

Above-the-fold content is the first content a user sees without having to scroll on the page or jump to another page. It is important that this content grabs the customer’s attention and makes them want to browse through the rest of the page. Content health reports will help the seller gain valuable insight into changes that can be made to increase traffic and sales.

walmart-product-pages

Mistakes to Avoid When Developing Rich Media

Creating Walmart Rich Media pages is time-consuming, and there are lots of elements to perfect. In their rush to get their pages published without utilizing the proper resources and expertise like those offered by eZdia. Here are the most common mistakes we see – and ones that can easily be avoided.

  1. Using non-unique copy. While it can be tempting, you should never just paste an identical copy, as Google does not like plagiarism – even if you’ve only plagiarized yourself.
  2. Creating unique but painfully fluffy descriptions that don’t tell the reader how your product benefits them and why they should buy it.
  3. Not conducting the right keyword research. Neglecting niche, relevant keywords, particularly long tails, in favor of only using head terms, or choosing keywords that aren’t relevant to the product is disastrous because you won’t be ranking for the right terms in search, so buyers can’t find you organically.
  4. Not including enough images. Because your customers can’t touch, pick up, or get close to your actual product, you need to include as many images as possible to show your product from all angles, to give the customer a sense of how the product will look, feel, or perform. 360-degree product tours are incredibly useful for this.
  5. Adding rich media modules before adding product information. This results in absorption failure. Get your product information in and successfully absorbed before you add rich media modules.

How to Get the Most Out of Walmart Rich Media Pages?

To get the best possible Walmart Rich Media page, utilize the information pages available on the Walmart Developer page to find out what can and cannot be included. Find a template option that you can trust to develop content that will attract and keep customers. Make sure products are displayed prominently, and descriptions are honest and informative. Content should be fresh, and imagery should be clear and include product branding when applicable.

eZdia’s CrewMachine Platform helps brands, sellers, and suppliers to update their product pages on Walmart.com with Rich Media within 24 hours.

Let’s get started!

  1. Just give us your rich media source URL and Walmart.com. URL where you want to publish the content.
  2. We prepare a proof of how your Walmart.com page(s) will look with the Rich Media. You can approve or request changes to be made.
  3. Your page(s) will go live on Walmart.com within hours of approving the proof. This all takes less than 24 hours.
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