As retail e-commerce sales are predicted to reach $4.13 trillion in 2020, e-commerce has become a core element in the growth strategy for many businesses seeking to improve sales, decrease costs, and grow their brand awareness. Although it is important to engage with customers and refer to a key channel such as a website or marketplace store, consumer shopping patterns indicate that each user demographic will engage with your brand in different ways.

All businesses need an e-commerce component

In a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on e-commerce, especially during the pandemic, many businesses are realising that having an online presence is a necessity. Customers have a greater choice of products across multiple platforms, making it more challenging to stand out amongst a sea of competitors.

However, merchants can thrive online during this period and beyond by using the latest consumer trends to formulate a data-driven multi-channel strategy and target potential customers using their preferred methods of shopping.

Why it can be beneficial to expand your channel presence

Similarly to brick-and-mortar retail stores, positioning can play a vital role in the success of your online strategy. That’s why the concept of using a sole channel to drive consumer engagement, communication or sales can be limiting. There are strategies to boost the sales of your key channels, but the absence of a multi-channel presence will limit the level of growth that can be achieved. The right multi-channel strategy will provide consumers with more choice and options about where to shop, what they buy and how they can engage with your brand or products.

Better engagement with consumers

Businesses focused on engaging their online customers through a diverse range of channels will make their brand more appealing to a wider target audience. Customer retention will often become much easier to sustain and improve as shoppers have easy, convenient access to a brand. In turn, this can afford brands the chance to establish better customer lifetime values that will drive growth and lower acquisition costs. Around 65% of customers will also research products online to compare price, range and value as part of their purchasing process, so brands with a diverse presence online will have a better chance of captivating a potential customer.

Compete in real-time

Online retail is becoming one of the most competitive elements of global e-commerce. Although this creates more competition, online merchants have the added advantage of performing real-time price comparison tracking and competitor campaign monitoring. The information that can be extracted from online channels is essential to creating a data-driven strategy for boosting sales.

However, price is not the sole determining factor of customer value and the information can also be applied for effectively maintaining competitiveness in service areas that customers consider valuable, such as product reviews, speed of fulfilment, customer support, returns policies, and more.

Turn customers to loyal brand followers

For many e-commerce businesses, a customer engagement strategy is a key area of focus. Merchants are frequently competing for customer attention on channels that are becoming increasingly cluttered and competitive. Connecting with customers to create brand loyalty is becoming difficult for sellers that fail to adapt their communication and product offerings on each channel.

Most e-commerce platforms now offer an array of tools to enhance a seller’s advertising and communications, which are ideal for reaching new and existing customers. Activ8 recommends that sellers always research the target consumer on each platform to ensure that communication is well-optimised, and the right budget is allocated to reaching shoppers.

Enhance your marketing opportunities

A multi-channel e-commerce strategy provides merchants with flexibility to create more targeted marketing initiatives focused on increasing engagement, sales volume or margins on a specific channel. This can include specific promotions and offers that are time-limited, or initiatives designed to drive customer traffic through other channels that are more lucrative.

Tips for multi-channel brands

When expanding channel presence, the challenge for most businesses isn’t choosing a platform but knowing how to maintain a competitive edge. We have collected some useful tips to consider when establishing an effective multi-channel strategy:

Define your scope & channels

Just because you can launch and sell on every channel, it does not mean you should. It is imperative that brands consider every channel carefully, ensuring that it fits with their existing business model, industry, product category, and target demographic.

By considering these aspects, it is more likely that a business will be able to identify the best method for communicating with their consumer. It is always worthwhile to investigate a competitor’s strategy to analyse what works and what doesn’t before beginning.

Understand your consumers

It takes more than one interaction before most consumers will make a purchase. Even a visit on a website originating through organic search can often result in no conversion. People are also less likely to purchase an item the first time they see it, and will often search for reviews, compare product prices or channels, or conduct some type of research into a product.

Growing and scaling your channels effectively is heavily linked to understanding the customer journey. Consider the entirety of the purchasing process, including the stages of awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase. By doing this, businesses can gain a better understanding of how customers interact with various touchpoints, which can be used to develop a better experience.

Create channel-specific content & planning

Every online channel is different, and what works on one platform may fail on another. Merchants that attempt to replicate their sales, marketing or content strategy across all platforms will often struggle to gain the most out of each channel. An effective strategy should consider the expectations of each demographic for every channel to craft a more tailored experience.

Maintain a consistent experience

Merchants should always aim not only to deliver value to customers but to deliver it in a way that looks and feels similar across all devices and channels. When customising each channel, always ensure to maintain consistent colours, images, branding, and messaging tone.

Things to consider when choosing an e-commerce platform

1.       Scalability

Most businesses will have a different vision and growth goals, so you must consider the level of support each channel will offer when scaling your brand. This can include features such as additional product space, global expansion capabilities, flexible payment gateways, or rich-media content capabilities. Most platforms will offer some scalability with their features, but always consider how your business is likely to change over time so that you invest resources into a platform or channel that will grow with you. 

2.       Ease-of-use and integration

A compatible platform should be easy to use, as more complex sites can make it difficult for customers to shop, and sellers to manage ongoing maintenance. Consider platforms that will offer:

• Centralised Management

Ongoing maintenance should be as easy as possible, with each platform integrating into a centralised channel management system. This will ensure that each platform can be managed in an organised manner, especially as product ranges and order volumes increase over time.

• Product and SKU management

For sellers with a lot of different SKUs covering a wide range of categories, automation should be at the forefront when selecting new channels. Bulk uploads and third-party platform integration will save time spent managing product lines.

• Marketing tools

To succeed on any e-commerce platform, businesses will need to ensure that customers are aware their products exist. Most channels will now offer the ability to manage customer relationships, optimise SEO, organise promotions, and set up email campaigns, as well as promote your brand and products. Utilising the most out of each platform’s marketing and SEO tools can streamline results and minimise effort.

Conclusions

Navigating the world of e-commerce can be difficult, but is an excellent opportunity for businesses looking to scale by increasing sales and visibility at a lower cost. Choosing the correct channels that provide dependable, scalable support for your business can help you avoid costly mistakes or changes to infrastructure along the way.

Once you have selected your channels and strategies, always ensure to test and refine over time. The complexity of many customer flows mean that you won’t always engage with your target customer, so it’s important to keep using new insights and data to enhance your strategy. Monitoring key performance indicators will also help with defining future marketing and sales plans to help deliver a more consistent experience and value.