As we all know, 2020 was a year of significant change, and one of those changes was consumers’ relationship with retail. With lockdown restrictions continuing to be widespread across the UK, shoppers are still being widely denied what may have previously been their favoured retail experience of brick-and-mortar shopping.
In turn, though, our lives have come to be lived much more ‘online’, as evidenced by such trends as a major rise in virtual meetings, online education and – of course – ecommerce.
So, if you’re looking to generate the best sales and revenues from your online store in the year ahead, you can’t simply keep on doing the things that might have been serving you well enough in 2019 or early 2020, before the pandemic made itself felt.
Instead, you need to be constantly looking for new ways to evolve your e-tail store to boost engagement and conversions from all of those (presently largely home-based!) customers. Here are a few ways in which you might do exactly that, while tapping into the power of images or video.
Put a greater emphasis on user-generated content
You might be accustomed to thinking of user-generated content, or UGC, as customer reviews, and that’s about it. And yes, those remain crucial in this ‘new’ COVID era. But with this also being the era of social media and selfies, UGC can also take other forms, such as photos and videos contributed by real customers, showing them using a given product of yours.
You may therefore look to create galleries of these customers’ images or videos, or incorporate them into your blog posts. All the while, the message to your prospective shoppers should be clear: “real people, just like you, use our products”.
Incorporate inspirational and ‘how to’ videos into your product and landing pages
Many of your target customers may be spending a lot more time in their homes at the moment, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be happy to spend that time sifting through other parts of your site, just to find more information about particular items. After all, there will be other sites out there ready to provide them with a better experience.
So, embracing video on your product and landing pages could be a really powerful step to take with your ecommerce site this year. That could take the form of short and informative videos showing ways of using your products, or – building on the UGC point above – you could invite customers to submit such video content themselves.
Embed live video chat into your site
Yes, we said “video” chat – not just referring to the kind of text chatbot you might have made a feature of your site already.
In truth, video-based customer service may be best suited to online stores with a more ‘niche’ or luxury emphasis. After all, some of you reading this might be wondering how you’ll be able to ensure staff are actually available to provide customer service via video.
Nonetheless, if live video chat is a workable option for your ecommerce store, it might make a lot of sense indeed. It would allow you to personalise the shopping experience, making it feel somewhat closer to the experience the customer might expect to have from staff in a brick-and-mortar store.
Is your business ready to investigate these or other ideas for bringing your ecommerce presence firmly into the 2020s this year? If so, don’t wait any longer to get in touch with the Piranha Designs team about our website design or other digital marketing services.
