How to maximise ROI and growth even during the initial stages of eCommerce engagement

For any business, regardless of the sector, any large spend needs to be justified. In this case, if you’ve invested in a new eCommerce platform and strategy, you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to maximise your ROI. Here are some tips to help you ensure that...

1. Increase average order value
2. Provide personalised content
3. Boost mobile engagement
4. Know what you want to and can achieve as a business

If you prefer watching videos, watch the video below to check out the time when we chatted to Episerver about this topic...

1. Increase your average order value

You can prevent your sales from plateauing or staying at a consistently low level by focusing on your customer acquisition. But this isn’t the only approach. In fact, it can be a more valuable strategy to work on increasing the average basket value of your existing customers.

After all, it costs five times more to attract a new customer than it does to retain an existing one.

Here are some ways to increase the basket value of your existing customers and bump up your average order value at the same time…

• Launch a customer loyalty scheme to entice shoppers into purchasing more items more often to work towards rewards
• Send your existing customers personalised marketing content with relevant offers, promotions and even exclusive loyalty promo codes
• Upsell and cross-sell products – such as recommending complementary products
• Bundling products – show your customers they can save money by buying a bundle and ultimately, persuade them to spend more
• Offer free shipping with a minimum order value because most customers love free shipping and would rather spend more to get it

2. Provide personalised content

Personalisation is huge right now and it’s likely to stay this way as consumers prefer to only receive content that’s relevant to them. And when it’s relevant, they’re more likely to be engaged.

Here are some examples of personalised content:

• Product recommendations – up or cross-sell products, ranges and services that your consumers might be interested in based on their purchase or search histories
• Products sorted by interest level – whether your consumers search for a specific item or they visit a page, you could show the most relevant results based on their previous behaviour
• Category-specific promo codes – you could make promo codes relevant to your consumers by ensuring they relate to the category they’re frequently or currently browsing
• Show consumers what they’ve previously interacted with – such as what they’ve searched for, clicked on and purchased in the past
• A product builder – encourage sales by presenting your consumers with a product builder where they can create the perfect outfit, car, lawnmower, software package or whatever they’re looking to purchase
• Blog posts they might be interested in based on their previous interactions

As you can see, these five examples all aim to provide consumers with content they might be interested in so they can be persuaded into purchasing something.

3. Boost mobile engagement

Mobile commerce is one of the most popular industry trends – not that this will come as a surprise. You only need to take a look around you when you’re out in public. It won’t take you long to notice that almost everyone is on their phones, whether they’re browsing social media, reading news articles or purchasing goods online.

In the UK, nearly half of consumers (43%) prefer to shop online via their mobiles. This is why having a mobile app can help boost your overall customer engagement.

There's a range of technology options available with different cost and benefit profiles that need to be considered. Here are some key ones:

• Optimised responsive web site 
• Single page mobile app 
• Mobile app 

Like your eCommerce site, you should also focus on creating an intuitive user interface (UI) to enhance user experience (UX) as this will reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment.

4. Know what you want to and can achieve as a business

As well as reviewing your goals when it comes to eCommerce, you should also know what you can actually achieve as a business. So, look at what aspects of your business work well now with your current eCommerce offering or what you want to change and identify what might be holding you back from an operations point of view.  

Also consider the key points of leverage within your organisation, whether it’s a system or the way your teams work together, and how that might work with your new strategies or systems.

Essentially, it’s not necessarily about your choice of eCommerce system. It’s about how that system fits into your business and can help propel you towards achieving your goals.

The first step to maximising eCommerce ROI is to satisfy your customers

Boosting customer engagement can help you improve the ROI of your eCommerce platform but it all starts with satisfying your customers. There’s no use investing in a state-of-the-art eCommerce platform, complete with a shiny new CMS and PIM system, if you’re not attracting customers and adequately meeting their expectations.

This is what we discussed in our discussion with Episerver. The video above is just a snippet of the full discussion. Click the button below to watch the whole interview and discover how you can boost eCommerce sales and grow your business.