Signage – Turning the tables for e-commerce retailers

Signage speaks louder than words – That’s the modern day slogan. If you are running a successful online shop and aren’t able to lure offline customers outside your retail outlet, the problem may be in your signage. Quality signage is one of the most effective ways to attract customers and easily convert them. Signs are silent like your online banners and ad copies, but they have a lot of potential to increase the footfalls to your store. 

Creating good signage for your store requires brainstorming. You need to figure out the kind of branding you want to apply to your signage, the content you want to write down and a variety of other things. You can also blend your online and in-store experience. Some of the mobile application development companies in New York also provide apps to promote your offline e-store online.

For an effective signage ideally consider being specific and to the point. Include all the important details and keep the overall message simple and attractive. Set the signage in three parts 

(a.) the headline 

(b.) the explanatory text and 

(c.) call to action. 

You can use your own version after testing a few. Make sure that the call to action isn’t really confusing and the overall proposition is lucrative.

Let’s understand the different kind of signage to help you design it better 

Outdoor Signage is right in front of the store entrance. They provide the first impression of your business to the prospects passing by. If you are planning to put up an outdoor signage, take care of the visibility and ensure that the reach and frequency is maximum. The main objective here is to increase the brand name, footfalls and popularity of the store.

Informational signage is the second form of signage that is more or less used to show the directions and finding the way within a store. Large bold fonts with catchy colours are good way to highlight the informational signage. With accurate informational signage, clients can navigate your in-store space easily.  

Persuasive Signage is one more type of signage that is usually displayed to influence the consumer behaviour. Such signage shoots up the persuasive value of the product or service. You can use such signage using walls, point of sale area, mats and a lot more. Such signage should increase the sales of the product. Some of the mobile application development companies in New York have the capabilities to promote such signage online by developing apps for your e-store. 

Remember, e-commerce is an online business, but there are companies that manage both e-store and physical retail store. For all such companies, it is essential to exhaustively utilize signage and increase the offline conversion. To do so evaluate each of these above mentioned options and think afresh on how you can develop one for your own store. Customize it in your own branding, be honest and keep updating it from time to time depending upon the response from the customers. 

Big Data is good when you avoid these 4 critical mistakes

Customer data is what keeps the e-commerce sites moving. Big Data is the centre of attraction now-a-days. Data collection, processing, conversion to meaningful interactions and conversion or cross-sell – it’s all so much inter-connected. Data collected from the predictive modelling, browsing behaviour, demographic and social inputs, past purchases etc. is utilized to improvise on the products, make the checkout simpler or even cut down the prices.

These data centric decisions can really turn the tables upside down for you, if you fall prey to the below mistakes:

1. Mere data collection and no talking:

Data collection is important, but not limited to it. Collecting data only based on the predictive models and algorithms might really be a good idea, but don’t restrict yourself to it. Talking to customers is always a good idea. Personalizing shopping experience based on big data surely interests’ customers, but talking to them and understanding what they value matters the most. Care about your shoppers needs and apply your survey findings on your in-store and e-store ambiance. Also customize your mobile store, resort to a company that provides custom web application development in New York for data collection.

2. Software API Integration:

If you have a lot of apps, website data, in-store data and a lot more data on your table and unable to seamlessly integrate it with one another you might not be able to use the data accurately. Systems should be well-integrated and if need be they should be connected via software APIs. You can hire developers who can help you achieve you the integration objectives. Without integration, you wouldn't be able to come to a common consensus about your customers’ behaviour. 

3. Don’t push too hard:

Being aggressive is good, but being over-aggressive is bad, really bad.  Don’t push your branding and marketing too hard to your customers. Let them get accustomed to your products and services before showing them tons of re-marketing ads, pop-ups and sending them dozens of email every day. Use data to personalize the customer experience, but restrict it to a limited frequency. 

4. Probe less:

The purpose of collecting data is to ease the life of subscriber or prospect or customer and let them shop in a hassle free way. Don’t overload them with a lot of forms. Asking more information will also make the customer experience meaningless. Moreover, more information seeking will make the customers sceptical about the privacy issue. Keep it limited, say how it all is going to be used and make the best out of the information available on hand. Check with the companies that offer custom web application development in New York so that you can customize the apps and grab all the information.

Big Data is really interesting and you can make the journey of your customers once in a life time experience, but for that to happen make sure you focus on it radically and avoid making the aforementioned mistakes during data collection, integration and analysing. 

Generating power packed testimonials for your e-commerce site

E-commerce is the business of word of mouth marketing. Reviews, ratings and testimonials are the key to success of any e-commerce store. Customers like to skim through reviews and testimonials before making the decision to buy. 63 percent of online customers say they are more likely to buy on sites with positive reviews. 

So, how would you ensure to have better credible testimonials on your product pages?

1.Make it credible:

An informative testimonial might be more credible than a small one line statement of praise. Mention the head shot of your client, the name and complete testimonial. Ideally, a video testimonial might really make the case for it.  Make sure that the testimonials are integrated in your own brand colors and guidelines. One good way to present the testimonial is through a reverse testimonial method where it starts with a doubt and concludes with praise. The agencies that are complete e-commerce web design solution providers can help you devise a right strategy for the same.

2.Share your customers’ story:

Every customer that has bought with you has a story within. Bring it on. Let them express how they felt buying your products and the journey so far. Share a story within a testimonial so that it becomes an inspiration for many others, otherwise not interested in reading the one line testimonials. Ask customers to mention the challenges they encountered and solutions they received. Keep it genuine and work on the negative feedback, if any.

3.Approach them via questionnaire:

The next step towards making better testimonials is approaching to your customers via questionnaire. Ask your customers clear questions so that they are able to answer them in an apt way.  Consider asking the below questions:

- What was your main concern pertaining to buying with us? How did that get resolved?
- Which FAB’s did you like most about our products?
- How did our product help you in your daily life?
- Would you consider recommending us to some of your friends? If so, any specific reasons?
- What else would you like to speak about our association?

With these questions in place, you will get a structured testimonial from each single customer. You can add and delete questions as per your experience with customers. You can also resort to complete e-commerce web design solution provider to design the questionnaire in a better way.

4. Automate Testimonials:

One of the most modern ways to generate power packed testimonials is by implementing automation within your testimonials. A simple way to do it to keep the above listed questions in a template and the same can be shared with a customer, the moment he completes the purchase or may be, after a few days depending upon the nature of the product. Incorporate live dynamic content to personalize the automate template. You also need to identify testimonial sharing mechanism to increase the positive word of mouth across the social channels. 

The above tips will surely help in generating the best in class quality testimonials and lure more prospects to buy with your store.

Simple ways to leverage YouTube Marketing for better sales

Have you continuously updated your e-commerce site with new blogs? Have you done enough of direct sales and promotion to increase sales? Have you also planned to go ahead with customized mobile and android application development? It’s high time for you to give a shot to videos now! Short, crisp and captivating videos are making their way all over.

Videos boost your marketing mix efforts to a new level. If used correctly, videos have the power to convert sales and be your impersonal salesmen. According to MultiVisionDigital, a video production company, consumers are 64% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product video. We have a host of video tools available to be utilized and explored for video marketing, but YouTube ranks at the top.

In this post, we will browse through some of the top ways to leverage YouTube marketing:

Adopt a shortcut

Short videos that are produced for Vine might be too short for some of you merchants. In this case, try to produce and shoot videos under 2 minutes length. According to one recent analysis, YouTube videos under 2 minutes in length get almost 50% of all views. One more reason that should motivate you as a merchant is the updated YouTube algorithm. The videos that are watched till the end have more chances to go hit and generate a good visibility than those long videos that the algorithm hides.

Create a channel:

Set-up a dedicated channel for your online store as this has multiple benefits. (A.) Having videos coming from your own store makes it more credible than videos coming from a personal account.  (B.) People will b e able to find you with ease as you have your own dedicated YouTube channel.

Categorize your videos and organize them into different playlists. Define the various product lines and develop different videos for each of these lines. Beard brand that offers grooming kits excellently produces its own channel and successfully receives 10,000+ subscribers. Here’s a screenshot:

Content dominates videos:

Creating a channel isn’t enough. For a long-term and committed YouTube marketing, regularly curate interesting video content that can arrest the eyeballs of your audience and keep them engaged. Consistent frequency of high quality Vlogs (Video Blogs) might as well help increasing the sales. You can also look forward to certain customized mobile and androidapplication development agencies who can help you create a content app for your audience. Spread a word about your YouTube posts across your other social pages to make it a real hit.

Use Annotations

Annotations are those small boxes that open as a pop-up commentary. Annotations, one of the powerful YouTube features allow you to put text and links over your videos. Going to video manager, you can select annotation manager and add active links or speech bubbles. 

Concluding it, YouTube marketing is still quite undervalued. The power of marketing on all the social channels is humongous however; YouTube, being a video platform provide more flexibility of creating visual content with voice and motion without any time limits.